Lockdowns have been an absolute pain to deal with this past year. The numbers in the UK of those who are affected by COVID-19 directly are high, but there has been a ripple effect that many know about but not many talk about – intimacy.
Couples may spend their time apart wishing that they could spend more time together, but then being thrown together in an unprecedented way is far more stressful, especially with kids around and jobs on the line. You may think that a week together would be a breeze, but time together is always easy when you’re on holiday and enjoying the sunshine, with the dilution of things to do and places to go. When you’re in lockdown, it’s stress, working from home, four walls to stare at and undiluted time together. And that can cause a level of stress for men that they may not have ever considered before.
Several months of lockdown and social distancing, closed businesses and schools opening and closing is stressful and any couple would find it a fraught time to be together. The stress levels going up mean that people are spending more time sniping at each other and less time enjoying each other and intimacy is the thing that struggles the most. Men who are exceptionally stressed may find that one of the side effects of this lockdown situation is in their ability to maintain an erection. When you have nowhere to go and nothing to do, sex is – of course – a positive thing that can keep your relationship together and keep you close. Unfortunately, erectile dysfunction is a popular side effect of stress, and this can lead to further issues and even a breakdown of your relationship.
Taking a Knock
The difficult combination of pandemic anxiety and the unknown surrounding further lockdowns can mean that your sex life is in for a knocking regardless of erection issues. Not only do you have to try and raise the kids while attending Zoom meetings and working from home, you have to try to make an effort to keep the spice up in your relationship. While there are things that you can do around intercourse but not the actual deed itself, it can make any man falter if he cannot maintain an erection. Drugs such as Tadalafil can help when prescribed, but the key thing that you can do is to manage your stress so that you can continue with a close, meaningful and pleasurable relationship. It’s so much harder to maintain an intimate relationship with erectile dysfunction, because once you experience it you have the anxiety that this will happen every time you get close, and you then have the added pressure of your partner being left unsatisfied. Combine all of this with lockdown worry and you have an anxiety soup!
If you’re used to snatching those moments of intimacy together when the kids aren’t around, you’re going to find that this becomes much harder when they’re in the house all the time. Changing your thinking when it comes to lockdowns can help, but that doesn’t make it easier on your stress levels in the short term. Wonder drugs like Tadalafil can help you with those initial issues with your erection (or lack thereof), but the bigger picture is just as important so that you can maintain those intimacy levels for as long as possible. So, how is lockdown affecting your relationship?
Switching Off: It’s Not Easy
The stress of trying to balance everything from home is the hardest part about lockdown. We need the break from the house to get out into the working world, to drop the kids off at school and then come home and leave work where it should be – at work. It’s much harder to switch off when you work from one room in the house and the rest of your life is in the other rooms. When you have interruptions to your day, it pushes your stress levels up and you and your partner end up sniping at one another. Trying to switch off by setting yourself a timetable for your work will change everything and help you to leave your work during “working hours” instead.
Balancing Love & Children
The kids being off school creates extra stress for your partner, particularly if they’re also working from home. This will lead to both of you taking your stress out on each other, leeching the intimacy from your relationship. It’s very important that you make time to communicate with one another. If you forget to do this, the intimacy will be harder to capture and the Tadalafil prescription you were given will be useless to you! Communicate and make time for each other. You can’t go on a date out to your usual restaurant, so recreate the experience at home when the children are asleep. Put on some music and slow dance. Have a water fight in the bathroom and end up in the shower together. Intimacy comes in so many forms beyond intercourse, and if you can ensure that you are dipping a toe in other avenues of intimacy, you may find that your erectile dysfunction is something temporary. The boost from Tadalafil will be helpful, too.
