Rome, 25 March (beraking latest news Salute) – Couples in crisis because they are suddenly forced to spend too much time together. Boyfriends who had to choose whether to give up seeing each other in the evening or transform the relationship into coexistence, new acquaintances become a hot desire precisely because of the impossibility of reaching each other between one region and another. And the singles who most of all have suffered from isolation, divided between the desire for sociability often resulting in online dating and closure with more consumption of pornography.
“The pandemic acted as an accelerator and a magnifying glass to our relationship difficulties – explains to beraking latest news Salute Marco Silvaggi, psychotherapist and sexologist at the Institute of Clinical Sexology -. Obviously there were different impacts depending on the relationship conditions” .
“As for couples – says Silvaggi – the compulsion to spend more time together at home, to live in a small, intimate space, and to have fewer opportunities for going out and distancing has had a more negative impact on men because they are less educated to defend their spaces within intimacy. They delegate their spaces of freedom to external factors: ‘I have to go to work so work becomes the embankment of my life’ “.
“As for sexual desire – notes the sexologist – if women have less desire, for cultural reasons they feel more authorized to say ‘I don’t want to’ and therefore to escape on an absolutely subjective basis. For men, on the other hand – he stresses – it is more difficult to say that they have no desire. Therefore they normally tend to use external commitments as an excuse, various activities that obviously fail in a period like this. The pandemic has brought down alibis – says Silvaggi – has put them at home, neighbors , available and they had to tell each other the truth. So, for those who previously suffered from the lack of time to be together, this pandemic worked as a prolonged honeymoon, greatly improving the relationship. Others that worked precisely because having a hectic life they saw little … they burst. ”
In this sense, some couples have been ‘saved’ by the presence of their children at home. “Having children at home prevents most of the time – says Silvaggi – to have privacy and intimacy, while the absence of children increases it exponentially. The effect this has on the couple depends a lot on how the relationship is organized. In the sense that – explains the sexologist – some couples who did not have a good relationship with their intimacy have decreased their tension on the basis that since there are children in the house, one could not be alone so the whole subject of intimacy, which represented more of a problem than anything else, was put aside and calmed them. Others, instead, who had a good intimacy and would like to be together, suffer tremendously from the fact that since there are children in the house there is no longer any intimacy “.
An acceleration was the one that the pandemic has brought in relationships between boyfriends. “Non-cohabiting couples, thanks for example to the curfew, found themselves at the crossroads: am I going to leave at 9.30 pm or will I stay asleep? Which is a crossroads – underlines the sexologist – that we were not in front of before. the impossibility of moving between municipalities has put many couples who would not have gone to live together in front of this dichotomous choice: either we are always together or we move away completely “.
So – Silvaggi reiterates – the pandemic has accelerated the times of many couples who were still in an intermediate area. The relational nuances have skipped with all the relapses of the case: those who had what it takes to reach a state of happiness reached it more quickly, the couples who instead supported themselves more on a long-distance relationship faced a marked crisis “.
Finally, “as far as single people are concerned – says Silvaggi – the pandemic at one point isolated them. So the reaction also depended a lot on the characters: some more fearful and introverted people broke off any type of relationship, other more extroverted people who have more need to be in relationship have begun to question integrity to try to maintain relationships anyway. And here the gender differences are less marked. I would not feel like saying that single men – says the sexologist – have suffered more because, as we often hear, men are more susceptible to the need to have sex. For all single people it is a very limiting and very difficult period to deal with “.
An important role especially for singles was played by the web. “The possibility of meeting online has become an unavoidable step – emphasizes Silvaggi – because the premises are closed, there are no longer the meeting places for which people get to know each other through online dating, chat and maybe decide to meet with the mask and distance but in the meantime they know each other. Unfortunately then – he concludes – there were some more susceptible people who instead took refuge in pornography intended as a substitute for any desire “.