NO SEX PLEASE, WE'RE... TRAUMATISED? BY SANDRA HARRIS.

NO SEX PLEASE, WE’RE… TRAUMATISED…?

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

Last year, Ann Summers Ireland Ltd. reduced the number of shops it operates in Ireland from three to two. Also last year, sales from the Irish arm of this UK company’s adult sex toys and lingerie retailers nose-dived by a whopping forty-five percent, from 3.34 million euros to 1.82 million. So, what gives? Are the Irish having less sex and, if so, why? Well, there might be a couple of theories to explain this extraordinary state of affairs.

For one, it might have had its roots in the COVID-19 pandemic, which was well underway by this time five years ago. Can you even believe it’s been five years? It’s mad how fast time flies.

During this pandemic, if you were lucky enough to live with your spouse or significant other, you could have as much sex as you liked, because you weren’t required to socially distance or isolate yourself from people you lived with, unless you or they actually contracted the virus. In fact, people probably did spend a sizeable chunk of this time in lockdown shagging, as there was feck all else to do for a while there. I expect births went right up as well a few months later as a result of all this unaccustomed nookie.

But if your boyfriend, girlfriend, f*ck buddy or even spouse lived more than- what was it- two kilometres away from you, you were bound by law not to meet up with them until the danger from the coronavirus was deemed to be past. That seemed to take forever, though, so there would have been a lot of Irish people doing without actual physical sex for weeks and even months during this strange period.

You could have had phone sex or Zoom sex (you’re on mute, Sandra love, I can’t hear you!) with your absent other half, or engaged in solo sex, also known as masturbation, but none of those things are a decent substitute for the real thing, I don’t care what anyone says.

When the shackles of the pandemic gradually began to fall away and we were more or less free to go back to our normal habits, it was a changed world we were tentatively stepping back out into. Any kind of negative change in our lives is capable of having a detrimental effect on how sexy we feel and how motivated we might be to go out and seek sexual congress with others.

(Some people may even be currently suffering from PTSD post-pandemic, especially if they lost loved ones due to COVID and were not permitted to be with them when they passed away. You don’t get over that kind of thing overnight and it’s probably not conducive to feelings of excessive randiness.)

A ton of little cafes, restaurants, pubs and nightspots had closed down forever, crippled by the demands of the pandemic. It was quite depressing to see that some of our favourite little meeting places had gone by the wayside. 

I myself lost a friend purely, I think, because the little café where we used to meet weekly to gossip and drink wine was one of the casualties of lockdown. If she was really your friend, Mum, my kids say to me, then why didn’t ye look for another coffee-shop or restaurant where ye could meet up? But for some reason, that just never happened…

I wasn’t really a person for nightclubs even before the pandemic, but imagine if you were a guy or girl who went out every weekend with the intention of hooking up with someone and suddenly there was a distinct shortage of night-time venues. That’s a big lifestyle change right there. Some boffins think our night-time economy still hasn’t recovered from the hits it took during the couple of years of ongoing lockdowns.

Also, it seemed like we were being plunged into a world that was a lot more disturbing and frightening than the one we remembered, and when you’re disturbed or frightened sex isn’t really your main priority. 

Suddenly there were wars breaking out, and thousands of displaced people like the Ukrainians were coming to our country to seek refuge from Russian bombs and tanks. Also, the ongoing war on Gaza occupies a lot of space in people’s minds and Irish people are out protesting every week against the genocide. It’s probably hard to think about sex when you have the images of war front and foremost in your mind a lot of the time.

Add to all this a cost of living crisis (my daughter was telling me recently that her weekly food shop has nearly trebled in price in recent months and I can well believe it, having experienced something similar myself), a housing crisis in which affordable housing for first-time buyers is in short supply, a homelessness crisis in which we have record numbers of people sleeping on our streets and in emergency accommodation, a huge increase in knife crime and a lack of Guards to patrol our streets and keep us safe, and it’s a wonder that sex hasn’t tumbled even further down Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

In fact, it’s the aforementioned housing crisis that people mostly blame for the dearth of sex being enjoyed by Irish people today. Up to half a million young(ish) people are still living in their childhood bedrooms in their parents’ homes today, for one of two reasons: they either can’t afford to move out because private renting is prohibitively expensive and new houses are beyond their reach, or they moved away for a bit and now have had to move back home because they can’t afford to live independently and who could blame them? Everything’s so flipping costly nowadays.

Even if you have your spouse or significant other living with you in your childhood bedroom in your parents’ home, it’s hard to feel sexy with your old dog-eared WHAM! or Duran Duran posters gazing judgementally down at you when you attempt a bit of how’s-your-father while the auld ones are watching the Late Late Show of a Friday night.

Even worse would be trying to make the beast with two backs while your parents are wandering in and out asking you how to access the snooker you were supposed to record and if you want a nice cup of tea before bed. An embarrassing situation, made worse by the fact that you’re brandishing a whip while the hubby’s tied to the bed wearing a ball-gag with a feather duster where the sun don’t shine. Jesus wept. No wonder sales of sexy toys and lingerie are way down.

So, what’s the future for Irish sex? If we’re not having much nookie, our birth-rates will be down and that will have repercussions for the future of Ireland, no doubt. But I don’t think Mother Nature will permit our people to die out for the want of a place to have it away.

Our esteemed politicians have suggested that fancy sheds at the bottom of your parents’ garden are the way forward for the housing crisis. Not the kind where you keep the hoes and the wheelbarrow, but the kind you live in. Would that work, do you think? Maybe, if you don’t schedule sexy time for when your dad cuts the grass or your mum hangs out the washing…