Study Says 1-in-4 Singles Have Had Sex with Their Platonic Roommates During Lockdown

Source - Seventy-one percent of singles willing to talk about their sex lives during the COVID-19 pandemic said they went without sex entirely, according to a survey released Tuesday by the online dating company Match. 

 And 20% of singles said they’ve had sex less frequently during the pandemic, with 24% of men reporting less sex, compared to 17% of women. Thirteen percent of singles were invited to have sex with someone they were not locked down with, but declined.

Many of those who did get it on did so with roommates. A surprising 25% of those responding to the survey said they had sex with a non-romantic roommate, Match said.

I appreciate the challenges of single people in all this, I really do. Being young and unattached is not everything us old married think it's cracked up to be. Not now, and not when I was single, and the biggest risk you had to worry about could be cured with a penicillin shot. Even when the world isn't one big maximum security facility and all the places you normally go to for the mating ritual are padlocked, it can be rough out there. Having all that pent up energy. Not knowing the next time you'll get some. Or if you ever will. The awkwardness of trying to find someone up to your standards but with low enough standards to accept you.

I try to hang onto those bad memories and keep them in mind any time I'm envious of single people. And remind myself that at least I have the benefit of being married for 27 years. And the assurance of knowing that I won't be getting any that comes with it.

That said, from where I'm sitting, as an amateur anthropologist, I don't see how roommate sex is the solution. Maybe it's possible to just keep it to that. To solve the problem with that "any port in a storm" solution. I just can't imagine a scenario where that doesn't create more problems than it solves. Based on my own understanding of human nature. But also of every movie and TV show ever where two people try to keep it purely physical but can't. Mila Kunis and Timberlake couldn't do it, and they are two of the sexiest people alive. 

Maybe I'm just projecting my own history onto this. I never lived with a woman until after the wedding. (Sometimes people used to do that. Ask your parents. Or probably your grandparents.) Mainly because I didn't want to go from living with my mom to living with a woman without having spent as much time as possible living with other guys. And it helped me appreciate what filthy animals we are and make me want to get married and stop living like Cro-Magnon Man. And what I learned is that roommate relationships are unique in all the world. You can be friends, but not really. Enemies, but not really. Housemates but not exactly cohabitating. You're sharing a space but not a life and you absolutely need that personal bubble you can return to when you need some space. That's not exactly the kind of arrangement where you can put body parts into each other's body parts and have it not increase the weirdness by an order of magnitude.

I can't imagine Young Single Jerry having unattached sex of convenience with a hypothetical female roommate any more than I can my actual roommate who never went out, used the kitchen seven nights a week to cook his two food groups: pork and sausage, chain smoked and used to use the TV in the common area to watch detective shows when Monday Night Football was on. It seems to me that you're just inviting crippling amounts of awkwardness, quarantining be damned. You're acting out desperation. Settling. Like two heterosexuals in prison. Even if it's totally consensual, it can't really be what you want or else you wouldn't have waited until you had no other options. So you're just simulating actual, satisfying sex you're wired for. And afterwards you'll have to face each other. 

No thanks. Take it from Life Coach Jer. You're better off riding this out and save it up for when quarantine ends. The day they come up with a vaccine it's going to be like backstage at Van Halen (rip) in 1986 out there.  For you and your platonic roomies. You'll thank me.