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Surveys show that most people have engaged in a one-night stand at some point in their lives.

In recent times, Tinder, more often than not, helped that along. There would be no need for a hookup app, if casual hookups weren’t a thing.

In fact, they were still ticking along tidily until just a few months ago, before a global pandemic shut down the party.

People still meet up online to do what people do when they’re feeling frisky, nudes are sent, and text conversations get heated, but human contact is all but forbidden.

To be clear, COVID-19 is not sexually transmitted, despite evidence that it has, on occasion, shown up in semen. A condom would sort that out, but until full-body condoms are invented (please don’t), breathing on each other, speaking, and making out are the likely culprits for passing it along.

While lockdowns are easing up across the globe, physical distancing measures, like staying two metres apart and wearing masks in public, aren’t going away anytime soon.

So, is this the end of the one-night stand? The Huffington Post asked around.

Quarantine fatigue has set in for many. And given the length of this ongoing public health crisis, is it realistic to expect people who are not in relationships or do not have a consistent sexual partner to abstain from sex altogether?

“I don’t think it’s reasonable,” Dr. David Bell — an adolescent medicine physician and associate professor at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City — told HuffPost. “It is human nature to need human connection, sex and intimacy.”

Writer Alex Ebel says that people need to fight the urge to pretend like nothing has changed.

“We’re still in the middle of a pandemic, and just because people got too bored and decided to go to the mall again doesn’t mean it’s actually the smart thing to do,“ he said.

“The same can be said for casual sex and one-night stands — though arguably that does seem a little safer than going out with your ‘brunch squad’ or whatever it is stupid people say when they’re drinking mimosas with their masks around their necks. Of course that’s assuming they wore masks in the first place.”

Bit harsh on mimosa drinkers, but point taken.

People are mostly wary of one-night stands because they often happen with relative strangers. It’s tough to trust that someone is adhering to physical distancing protocols when you’re both breaking them by meeting up.

“As we repeatedly consume messages about social distancing, even the notion of shaking a stranger’s hand can be intimidating — and best avoided,” said Sula Malina, a therapist in training at The Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center in New York City who uses the pronouns they/them.

“Given the sex-negativity that permeates today’s society, many people already perceived one-night stands as in some way ‘immoral.’ This has likely only been compounded by messages of social distancing as the morally ‘right’ thing to do.”

“Typically, the decision to have one-night stands impacts only ourselves and our partners,” they added. “These days, however, the activity has more widespread implications.”

To compound things, bars and clubs, where people often meet someone for a night of fun, have been closed to prevent large gatherings and virus transmission.

That hasn’t stopped some from weighing up the risks and tossing them aside, though.

Sexuality coach and sex blogger Ashley Cobb of Sex With Ashley said she doesn’t think the pandemic has really affected people’s views on casual hookups.

People with more adventurous sexual personality types might be more open to one-night stands despite the potential health risks, Wise said.

This is not ideal for obvious reasons.

We aren’t allowed to visit friends or family at the moment, but that could change as South Africa drops down in alert levels.

Even once we’re allowed to visit people in their homes again, your safest sex partner is still yourself, followed by a partner you live with. Then, if there is some serious trust in play and you know them very well, someone outside of your house.

Before meeting up, ask your partner if they’ve experienced any symptoms or come into contact with anyone experiencing symptoms. Don’t risk it at all if you or the other person has an underlying condition that could make either of you more vulnerable.

Or, you could just stick to virtual sex.

There might be a vaccine on the way, so hang in there.

[source:huffpost]