For some people, sex is the last thing they want to think about when dealing with the crush of uncertainty that comes from living through a pandemic. But for others, fears about financial ruin, sickness or even death may drive them to want an intimate connection with another human being.

Marty Klein, a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified sex therapist, is based in Palo Alto and is author of a number of books, articles and blog posts on sexuality and sexual health (Courtesy of Martha Klein) 

Marty Klein, a nationally renowned Palo Alto-based sex and marriage and family counselor and author, said these inclinations are felt by people of all ages and backgrounds. That includes couples in long-term committed relationships who find themselves confined at home, often with kids who need attention and homeschooling.

It’s a situation that can make partners ask: “Is this the person with whom I want to face the end of world?” Klein said.

Meanwhile, singles may miss sex or just someone to hold. They may wonder, should I try dating, even if it’s by Zoom or FaceTime? Would it hurt to meet up with someone in a social-distancing way?

In an interview, Klein said that most of us will survive the pandemic, and the need for social distancing will be lifted. What he said won’t go away is any damage we have inflicted on ourselves and others around us if we don’t adequately deal with our anxiety and communicate our concerns to our intimate partners.

When it comes to sex and relationships in this time of self-isolation, a crisis always “exposes the the parts of a structure that are not well put together,” Klein said.

“This is like an emotional earthquake,” continued Klein, who these days counsels individuals and couples remotely. “If a couple isn’t good at conflict management or good at giving each other enough space or handling disappointment, those issues will be exacerbated and exposed.”

What is safe sex now anyway? 

One concern is that people’s anxiety and feelings of helplessness will lead to risky sex, Klein said. In past crises, notably the HIV epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s, some people developed a sense of fatalism, asking themselves “What’s the difference what I do?”

But, “the coronavirus has not suspended the laws of the universe,” Klein said. “Don’t let your despair or loneliness drive poor sexual decision-making.”

Both Klein and Planned Parenthood say that it’s OK to get intimate, but only under certain circumstances. COVID-19 isn’t classified as a sexually transmitted infection, in that it doesn’t appear to be spread through semen or vaginal fluids.

However, you can get COVID-19 if you come within 6 feet of an infected person and they cough, sneeze or breathe on you. Because COVID-19 is spread through direct contact with saliva or mucus, kissing also can spread the virus.

Both Klein and Planned Parenthood say you’re definitely more safe with someone you already live with — as long as that person isn’t sick or probably doesn’t have COVID-19. You should definitely try to stay away from anyone outside your home, such as a person you recently started dating, or anyone you’ve just met on a dating site.

But really, the safest sex partner right now is yourself, Klein added.

“Masturbation is the original form of sexuality and can be a wonderfully nourishing activity,” Klein said. But he suggests that people do more than quickly pleasure themselves; he said people can slow it down. “If we’re craving touch, our own touch has a lot of value to it.”

Relationship strategies for sheltering in place

As Klein said, the infrastructure of every couple includes “systems for communication, making and keeping agreements, conflict management, anxiety and fear management,” as well as ways for deciding how to spend money, parent and when and how to have sex.

In our pre-pandemic lives, we may have avoided looking too closely at the faults in that infrastructure, by keeping busy at work, by raising kids or by enjoying a busy social life.

“There were a wide range of ways of getting over the unpleasant moments of your partner being snippy at you or giving you the cold shoulder for three days: You’ve got work where you get to accomplish something, or you can see friends for lunch,” Klein said. But those distractions are no longer available to us, he said. Being in a confined space with someone being snippy or giving you the cold shoulder will start to “feel like a lifetime,” Klein said.

“A cold shoulder has never been a good coping strategy,” Klein said. “Now we don’t have the luxury of those adolescent coping strategies right now.”

Don’t forget about sex 

As couples work out new shelter-in-place systems for who shops for groceries, how to divide housework, or who oversees the kids’ homeschooling while the other partner works, they also need to attend to their emotional and sexual lives.

Different levels of desire have always been a major source of sexual conflict between couples — conflicts that are likely to be heightened in a time of crisis, Klein said.

“It’s like eating and depression,” Klein said. “When some people get depressed, they eat everything in sight, while others who get depressed forget about eating. For some people right now, they want to clean the house multiple times a day, while others are too upset to do anything. For some, the last thing they want is sex. For other people, the first thing they want is to have sex.”

Klein said both reactions are normal and OK. “For couples there are dozens of domains for them to be similar and to be different: One person might be a neatnik, and the other doesn’t care, or they have different ideas about how to raise the kids. Sexuality is one of those domains.  For some people, sex is the only way of being close, but for others, it’s not the most important thing. That was true before the virus, but with the virus, it’s even more so.”

Overcoming desire differences 

Right now, some people’s libidos may be out of whack because they’ve been taking care of kids all day or because their college-aged kids are back in their old bedrooms. Some people may feel less attractive because they can’t get to the gym or to their hair and waxing appointments or because they’ve put on a bit of weight with all the pasta dinners and emotional-eating.

“If people are talking about how they’re going to change their routines around grocery shopping and other things, they also need to talk about how they’re going to change their routines around sex,” Klein said.

Changing the routine could involve rising before the kids wake up to have sex, or meeting in the car in the garage, Klein said. It could also mean that sex doesn’t just involve intercourse but means couples just holding each other and doing a lot of kissing — if neither partner is sick.

As always, it’s important for couples to talk about what they are really looking for with intimacy, whether it’s to feel emotionally close or to feel attractive. Klein added that disputes in “so-called desire cases” often stem from one partner not like the way he or she is approached.

“It’s often that Person A can say to Person B that if you approach me in such-and-such a way, I’m a lot more interested in sex than you think,” Klein said.