Can you be too close for intimacy? Here's what the experts say

How can you keep the spark alive when you’re both in comfy clothes and working from home on a regular basis since covid struck? Experts say that love needs closeness, but desire needs distance

Relaxed pair watching movie at evening home. Family spending enjoying together. Picture: iStock

Do you and your partner love to lounge? Are you deep inside a comfort zone of familiar intimacy, where snoozing together on the sofa has replaced swinging from the chandeliers?

Before we start asking ourselves if our libido is still broken after covid wrecked our sex lives, remember the comforting words of Marge Simpson: “Passion is for teenagers and foreigners.”

Given our 21st-century openness about all things sexual, it can be easy to believe we’re not having enough sex — and are definitely having less sex than the people next door.

But if you are both happy being snuggled in slankets, lounging in loungewear, sharing close emotional intimacy rather than re-enacting the Kama Sutra in another room, you’re all good. The keyword here is both.

That said, sometimes when you both do want to heat things up, switching gear from cosy intimacy to erotic intimacy can feel almost task-like. How do you get there? What if you’ve been in a bit of a sex slump since the pandemic, comfortable and content yet with a vague feeling that you’d like to do something about it?

Psychotherapist Esther Perel argues in her seminal 2007 book, Mating in Captivity, that love needs closeness, but desire requires distance: “What makes for good intimacy does not always make for good sex. It may be counterintuitive, but it’s been my experience as a therapist that increased emotional intimacy is often accompanied by decreased sexual desire. Eroticism requires separateness. In other words, eroticism thrives in the space between the self and the other.”

She urges an “ability to tolerate separateness” as a “precondition for maintaining interest and desire in a relationship. Instead of always striving for closeness, I argue that couples may be better off cultivating their separate lives.”

Not everything has to be revealed. Everyone should cultivate a secret garden.

Maintaining separateness — physical or emotional — became almost impossible during the pandemic, and this impacted our sex lives in a way we didn’t anticipate. Instead of being locked up together, resulting in more sex, we had significantly less of it. It’s difficult to feel aroused when stressed and depressed.

Research in 2020 from the Kinsey Institute in the US showed that during the pandemic, despite being cooped up together, people had less sex, probably because of being cooped up together. Similar research in Turkey and Italy around the same time showed how sexual desire plummeted the longer we were locked up together.   A 2023 meta-analysis of multiple studies found a significant decrease in sexual activity in both genders during the pandemic.

Covid may have killed our mojo, yet it’s difficult to find definitive research about how much sex we are now having or not having post-covid.

Does it really matter, though? Clinical sexology psychotherapist Orlagh Reid reminds us that it’s perfectly natural to feel content together hanging out in our pyjamas, rather than fretting about libido levels; that it is human nature for sexual interest to dissipate over time with a long-term partner, especially as we age.

Clinical sexology psychotherapist Orlagh Reid Image by Firechild Photography

However, unlike ageing and a natural, gentle decline in libido in long-term relationships, there was nothing natural about how the pandemic jammed a spanner in our sex lives.

And how proximity de-eroticised us.

Working from home

“One of the most persistent — and still prevalent challenges couples face since covid is the impact of working from home 24/7,” Reid says.

“Living in constant proximity to a partner can and often does diminish desire, fun, spontaneity, and sexual chemistry.

“Five years on, many couples are still feeling the effects of this closeness or, in many cases, one partner never leaving home, and the other getting on with a life outside the home. It’s led to a kind of emotional and erotic fatigue that quietly erodes attraction.”

Reid explains how couples usually begin their relationships in what psychologists call eros — a passionate, romantic, and sexual love bond.

“Over time, this can shift into storge — a more familial form of love that feels safe, stable, and affectionate, but often less erotic. When partners stop seeing each other as sexual beings, it becomes harder — if not impossible — to foster that previous sense of sexual desire towards each other.”

Living in constant proximity to a partner can and often does diminish desire, fun, spontaneity, and sexual chemistry. Picture: iStock

Reid says that monogamy should not feel like monotony.

“The more you can both get out — have separate interests, hobbies, activities, exercise, and your own sense of vitality, while still consciously maintaining your sexual and romantic connection, the better,” she says.

“Quality time, not constant time, keeps relationships alive.”

She describes how desire discrepancy repeatedly presents in therapy.

“It’s the same story over and over again — men want more variety in sex and to feel desired and wanted sexually, while women want more emotional connection and validation and to be seen as a sexual woman, not just a mother, homemaker, and carer,” she says.

“Couples really need to consciously work on, tend to, and grow their sexual and intimate relationship, not just leave it to fizzle out.”

Sexual intimacy doesn’t exist by itself — it needs looking after.

Clinical sexologist Emily Power Smith agrees that “cosy isn’t sexy – it’s not an aphrodisiac.”

Sexologist Emily Power Smith

But this is not the reason people have stopped having sex.

“Being cosy and cute together is usually not the reason people are not having sex — they may use the idea of being cosy and comfy as an avoidance excuse, rather than the actual underlying cause,” she says.

“For some people, cosy can mean feeling secure, warm, comfortable and safe — a feeling which can be a precursor to sex. If you look good in lounge wear, is it a turn-on or a turn-off? Or are you supposed to wear an uncomfortable underwired bra, a thong, and high heels that kill your bunions? A lot of people find comfortable clothes sexy.”

But it’s not about clothes, or comfort, or lack of comfort.

“That’s a red herring, rather than the real source of the [sexual] block. Sex is about communication and play — nobody has ever come to my therapy room and said that their problem is loungewear. If one partner says, ‘I don’t find you sexy in that’, it’s not about what the person is wearing. It’s never as simple as trackpants or suspenders.”

Communication is the answer

Power Smith reminds us that rushing out and buying your partner fancy underwear or a sex toy to jumpstart a stalling sex life can be jarring, pressurising, insensitive, or all three.

“It may be tempting to do this, but it’s not the answer,” she says. “The answer is communication. Always.”

Sex therapist Aine Ward says that the biggest issues facing couples are not the ones we assume — sex, money, childcare — but how we talk to each other.

“Communication is the big one,” she says. “Couples find themselves in a vortex of escalating arguments because there’s a deficit in emotional regulation, they can’t communicate without shouting matches, without sadness or anger, but don’t know how to regulate their emotions, or being able to say, ‘I’m sad’ or ‘I’m angry, I need to walk away but I’ll come back later’.”

As well as learning to speak calmly and openly to each other, she urges couples not to compare.

“It’s not about other couples and what they’re doing, it’s about your couple and what you are doing,” she says.

“If you’re in a happy, contented relationship and are not having sex, that’s great. If you’re in a happy, contented relationship and having lots of sex, that’s great too. The problem is when one of you wants more sex than the other.”

Ah, yes. The desire discrepancy again.

“In long-term relationships, sex is an activity that needs to be worked at,” she adds.

“It doesn’t just happen. Sitting on the sofa hibernating in your pyjamas doesn’t do that. For a healthy sex life, we need to prioritise it and make time for it. It’s like if you want to get fit, you prioritise the gym, you schedule it in, and make it habitual. It’s the same for sex — you make it happen. Things like scheduling date night, scheduling sex, and making time. Turning off phones, TVs, taking the time to connect.”

This does not mean you automatically have physical sex, it just means making time for sexual intimacy. “Being comfortable together, being able to communicate,” she says.

Loungewear optional.