The pandemic has aroused a wave of sexual exploration, Laura Pullman reports.
Entering our mid-thirties, my friends broadly divide into three camps: those with young children having precious little sex, those trying for children having precisely timed sex and those putting off children having progressively wilder sex. Obviously I'm fascinated by the latter group. Dabbling in open relationships, threesomes, masked orgies in a Mayfair mansion? Yes, yes, yes!
"Now anytime I sleep with anyone I'm, like, 'Spank me'," says my friend Hannah — firmly in camp three — over a bottle of red in a London pub nestled among Soho's porn shops, strip clubs and first-date bars. "I'm just a lot more, like, 'This is what I want and this is how I want to be having sex.' "
Like most unattached women I know, Hannah — 35, strikingly attractive, successful career in advertising — mainly meets potential partners through Feeld, the dating app "for couples and singles" that caters to non-monogamists, polyamorists (people who have multiple romantic relationships) and the sexually liberated.
Feeld, which launched in 2014 and was originally called 3nder until the rival match-making app Tinder sued, has made her more adventurous: "When you're texting people on the app, they ask what you're into, so you have to think about it and write it down. That processing of those thoughts starts fomenting … stuff." She wonders whether watching more porn throughout lonely lockdowns also shifted her mindset: "Maybe that's why I'm more open to trying new things — threesomes, sex parties, kink — that I wouldn't have done before." Recently she enjoyed a booze-fuelled ménage à trois with an old friend and his girlfriend: "We're lucky it worked out, but it felt wise to stop there before it turned into something more complicated."
Free from our anxiety-ridden, man-pleasing, often sexually performative twenties, Hannah and I agree that our thirties are a prime time for deeper exploration of our sexuality. "We've got confidence and self-assurance," Hannah says. "Plus, we've had the pandemic, which has stunted growth in so many ways. I feel I need to make up time."
Over the past month, the more I've grilled my wider social circle, the more I've discovered how my outwardly strait-laced friends are ripping up the monogamy rulebook and delving into saucier fantasies. Couples who've been together since university are blowing hundreds on latex and lingerie for sex parties such as Torture Garden, a fetish club night, and Killing Kittens, a members-only event where tickets for couples typically cost about £220 ($430). Or they're swiping through dating apps to find a "third" to join them between the sheets.
So has Britain been enjoying a bonking spree since the last lockdown? Has the pandemic unleashed more kinkiness? Are people becoming increasingly open to the idea of open relationships?
Although the much-discussed Covid baby boom never materialised — the birth rate in England and Wales dropped last year — being stuck inside our homes for so long inevitably affected our sex lives, libidos and desires. After an initial surge in people watching porn early on in lockdown, life became too stressful during the darkest days of the crisis to be horny, explains Kate Lister, author of The Curious History of Sex.
"People's libido seemed to drop and that's quite consistent with mass horrendous events," she says. "But what we've also seen is that following these kinds of events — the Spanish flu, the First World War and the Black Death in the Middle Ages — they do seem to be marked by a renewed enthusiasm for 'life is short, let's have some fun'."
Death and sex are closely entwined in the human psyche. Threats of death "tend to push people towards celebrating life — and one of the ways you do that is to shag and to do lots of it", Lister says. "Not only on a biological level of 'we must keep the human race going', but also it's a stress relief, a distraction, the antithesis of what we're fearing happening."
Such carnal carpe diem behaviour has occurred throughout human history. "In the First World War more soldiers were treated for venereal disease than any other ailment, with the exception of the Spanish flu. They were just, like, 'Oh sod it, let's go and have a good time,' " says Lister, an academic who runs Whores of Yore, an online archive of historical sexuality. There are records of religious leaders denouncing shaggers sinning in the open and having mass orgies during the plague-hit Middle Ages, she adds.
There's always a difference between what people claim they get up to and what they actually get up to, though. How much of it is just talk? On a bitingly cold Saturday last month, ever the diligent researcher, I attended a Killing Kittens "mansion party". Arriving at 8.45pm in my sexiest Zara dress, after a stiffener to calm my jitters, I joined hundreds of horny, masked partygoers in a sprawling Knightsbridge townhouse. The next few hours were a whirl of erotic performers, espresso martinis, small talk with polycurious strangers ("Come here often?") and watching women strapped to what looked like a torture device having their lingerie-clad bottoms whipped by a smartly suited male dominatrix.
I danced, was fed caviar, had prosecco poured straight from the bottle into my mouth by a long-haired man-mountain of a chap and avoided a fiftysomething couple, both first-timers, who seemed keen to get me starkers. As the clock struck 10pm the masks were ditched en masse and the "playrooms" opened. Cue an immediate surge of bodies racing upstairs to the maze of bedrooms, shedding clothes and grabbing condoms. This was carefree bacchanalian bonking as if the end of days were nigh.
In the taxi home I felt stunned by the ten-in-a-bedism, but also strangely impressed by these libidinous hedonists confidently leaning into their desires and not giving a fig about society's norms. Emma Sayle has seen close up how British attitudes to sex and relationships have changed since she started the Killing Kittens parties in 2005. "Back then you had straight and gay and bisexual in the middle," she says sipping sauvignon blanc at a Mayfair members' club. "If you were bi-curious or bisexual that was the bit that was shocking, whereas that's kind of just dull in the entire spectrum of what sexuality is now."
In 2005 polyamory wasn't spoken about in the KK world; now poly guests are par for the course. "We're getting more and more messages from throuples," says Sayle, a happily married mum of three who is an old acquaintance of the Duchess of Cambridge. The events happen in cities around the world, drawing a smart crowd and the occasional celebrity (Rhys Ifans was turned away for looking too scruffy). "We've seen a massive jump in membership, over 40,000 single girls joined in the past year and a half," she says, adding that she has been searching for bigger venues since lockdown.
You don't have to go to expensive parties to discover the wilder side of sex. There is of course technology on hand to help. Some friends, spurred on by a sense of lost time, have determinedly turned to the internet for shagging assistance.
"I downloaded literally every dating app. Hinge, Raya, Bumble, Tinder, Feeld, Pure, Happn, The League … On Ashley Madison the strapline is 'Have an affair' but there are loads of single people on there," says Felix, a handsome entrepreneur. He tells me how the women he has met over the past year, both online and through friends, have been far kinkier than any he has known before.
"Girls are feeling more empowered at the moment, more willing to explore their less orthodox desires and make themselves vulnerable. Every sexual encounter seems to involve some level of submission and dominance. It's much more acceptable," he says authoritatively. "Every usual sexual boundary is just stripped away immediately."
More puzzled than delighted by this shift, Felix recently ended a fling with one woman (late twenties, met at a party) because she was pushing for him to act out her rape fantasies. He is adamant that it is not only men bringing sex inspired by pornography into real life. "In the past two years it seems like everyone is talking about kink and has been quite far down the rabbit hole. I don't know why it has become so popular."
Easily accessible and increasingly mainstream, there's no doubt that hardcore pornography, which endlessly depicts men being aggressive and violent to women and humiliating them, continues to influence expectations for both sexes. Felix is not the only person I meet to worry about the impact that such viewing habits have on scenes in real-life bedrooms, or to wonder if some women feel an unspoken pressure to be seen to be wanting to engage in more extreme behaviours.
Meanwhile, open relationships and polyamory (meaning "many loves") are also becoming more mainstream. As well as shagathon television shows such as Industry, Bridgerton, Normal People and Sex/Life, there was Trigonometry, an eight-part drama on the BBC last year about a straight couple embarking on a "triad" relationship with their female lodger. More recently The Love Triangle, a (dire) dating show on Channel 4, helped couples become "throuples".
How does this cultural landscape influence behaviour? "I don't think people watch [those shows] and go, 'I'm going to become polyamorous now because I'm just that suggestible.' But it does make people realise that it's an option," says Lister, 40, who became polyamorous in her mid-thirties following a bad break-up. "We're on this script that you meet somebody, settle down and then this is the person for the rest of your life who's going to meet all of your needs — financially, socially, sexually, emotionally, intellectually. And programmes like that shift the dialogue. People wake up and realise it doesn't have to look like that."
In September the actor Will Smith became a poster boy for alternative relationship structures after talking about how he and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, experimented with an open marriage. "We have given each other trust and freedom, with the belief that everybody has to find their own way. And marriage for us can't be a prison," he told GQ magazine. "I don't suggest this road for anybody. But the experiences that the freedoms we've given one another … and the unconditional support, to me, is the highest definition of love."
Months earlier Smith's daughter, Willow, now 21, revealed herself as polyamorous. "With polyamory, I feel like the main foundation is the freedom to be able to create a relationship style that works for you and not just stepping into monogamy because that's what everyone around you says is the right thing to do," she said on Red Table Talk, the chat show she hosts with her mother and grandmother.
Many will roll their eyes at the idea of open relationships and polyamory, and note that toe-dipping into opening up a relationship is often a sign that the couple have boarded the one-way train to Separationville. I've enjoyed meeting polyamory advocates on both sides of the Atlantic, but I couldn't help noticing that the vast majority grew up in divorced or single-parent families. They've witnessed the breakdown of the standard familial structure, or suffered its consequences, and are (understandably) keen to build something different for themselves.
In New York this multipartner lifestyle choice is surprisingly visible. Swiping through the Hinge dating app in Brooklyn, where I was living until this summer, it was common to see "ENM", which stands for ethical non-monogamy, on people's profiles. Brits are also increasingly curious about "poly", according to Ana Kirova, the CEO of the Feeld dating app. The number of Feeld users in the UK has shot up by more than 50 per cent in the past year. "This is a sign that people are looking for something outside of the one-to-one [relationship]," says Kirova, 29, who comes across as smart, deep thinking and passionate about the poly crusade. "The number of users who've mentioned ENM and poly-related terms has increased by 140 per cent from January to September."
It's worth noting that there's a vast gulf between committed polyamorists and sleazeballs on apps using non-monogamy labels as a cover to cheat. Olivia Petter, the journalist and author of Millennial Love, is sceptical of the ENM tag: "I think it can be positive, but I also think there are definitely a lot of people who will see that label and subscribe to it because it [enables them] to just do whatever they want and hurt people. I don't think everyone is going to use that label as it's intended to be used."
Threesomes have long been the obvious choice for people wanting to open up their relationships. One friend who's "on the apps" with her boyfriend worries about how some view their search for a bisexual woman as ethically dubious because it could teeter into hump-then-dump exploitative territory. The practice has been termed "unicorn hunting", as it is a rare individual who wants to be the third wheel in a romantic relationship.
Another friend, 34 and based in Bristol, recently joined Feeld and Tinder with his wife. So far they've had nibbles on the line but no solid bites. "Our preference is to try and find a woman who will be more of a regular thing, rather than a one-night stand," he says. "It would be good to get comfortable together but without them becoming part of our relationship." They both feel confident in the strength of their ten-year partnership but want to explore his wife's bisexuality.
In May paparazzi photographs showing three-way kissing between Taika Waititi, the Oscar-winning screenwriter and director, Rita Ora, his pop star girlfriend, and Tessa Thompson, Waititi's co-star in an upcoming Marvel film, set tongues wagging. "People see that and initially get shocked, and then they start looking for it and find there is even an app," says Kirova, who describes her own relationship with Feeld's founder, Dimo Trifonov, as "monogamish" (open but largely monogamous). "[Polyamory] is becoming more accepted. More people talk about it openly. It's not about monogamy being wrong, it's just about it being one option."
The thriving sex positivity movement — which celebrates sex as natural and shame-free — and booming sexual wellness industry encourage people to feel secure in exploring and experimenting. Gwyneth Paltrow, arguably now better known for hawking jade vagina eggs than her acting career, was on the bandwagon early. It's a lucrative hustle: she hosts the Netflix sex therapy show Sex, Love & Goop, and sells paddles, whips, 24-carat gold vibrators and (groan) sex journals on her Goop website.
On a recent visit to a branch of Boots I spotted eight different vibrators for sale. The company says sales of sex toys in the past six months have increased 27 per cent compared with the same period last year.
"Within the kink world sex toys don't seem a big deal," says Petter, 27. "But for me and my friends to be openly talking about which ones they want to try is quite a big step and shows that it's becoming much more normalised." She hopes that women being more straight-talking about their desires will help close the "orgasm gap", the imbalance in satisfaction within heterosexual relationships. "We are pulling away the shame and stigma that surrounds sex," she says. "And that allows women to ask for what they want in bed, and actually guide a partner. That's all about female confidence and autonomy in the bedroom."
My Bristol mate divulges the details of the two Killing Kittens parties he attended, both in smart London mansions. "The first time my wife got led away by this woman and I got led away by a woman," he says. "Afterwards it didn't feel right doing it apart." Thankfully the next party was more satisfying: "We got approached by this very cute, very forward woman who said, 'I've been looking for a couple like you,' and we effectively played with her all night."
They have another party booked in for early next year but are not telling most of their friends about this adventuring: "Everyone goes straight to the idea of swingers, and that idea is comedically bad."
Another friend, eagerly squeezing in before-babies escapades, went to Torture Garden with his long-term girlfriend. They dressed up ("Latex is the most expensive stuff I've ever bought"), danced, drank and watched others have sex without joining in themselves. "You have to have a mature discussion with your partner," he says. "It's normal to occasionally fancy other people, and even fantasise about having sex with other people. Once you acknowledge that, these parties can provide an avenue to explore those thoughts safely together without any jealousy or guilt."
He finds it unsurprising that our friends weren't going to sex parties in their twenties. "Lots of people were probably interested in doing these sorts of things, but they would have struggled to explain it to their mates," says the 35-year-old, who plans to go back for another round. "Now no one really cares what their mates think and they're much more capable of explaining to their partner what they want to do." Plus, we now have more disposable income (these parties are reassuringly expensive) and smartphones mean the fun is all a few simple, discreet clicks away.
After my own Killing Kittens experience I tell a couple I know — together five years and hoping to have children one day — all about the ten-in-a-bed orgies I witnessed. They confess they've bought their masks and are heading to their first ball imminently. "We're older, more secure about ourselves and have this moment in our lives to try something that is fun and mind-opening, if you're careful to get it right," says the boyfriend, adding that they have to get up early the following morning for a godchild's christening. Which seems exactly right.
Some names have been changed
Mum and dad were 1970s swingers
How off-the-scale awkward is it when your parents have their 'special friends' to stay? An anonymous writer shares the abiding horror.
What did you get up to at the weekend?" was the Monday morning question I dreaded most when I was growing up. My chest would tighten as I heard my classmates share predictable tales of shopping trips with their families, picnics at the park or evenings in front of the telly. Our home was very different. For a decade of my childhood, in the late 1970s, I spent my weekends witnessing my parents' polyamorous lifestyle.
From the outside our life looked like suburban normality. My dad was active in the local community and worked as a solicitor, while my mum was a compliant housewife who taught French two or three afternoons a week to privileged middle-class children like me and my brother, both in primary school at the time. But beneath the surface their marriage was unstable and unhappy. The toxic combination of my father's overbearing presence and my mother's emotional detachment, coupled with her infidelities — we learnt decades later that she was on more than first-name terms with a number of the neighbours — made them think that an open marriage was the solution.
Via the medium of contact magazines — the 1970s version of swingers' websites — my parents embarked on a series of liaisons. Initially I was blissfully unaware of any shift in our family's foundations, but soon a small pool of regular "special friends" began to appear in our home on the weekends. No child particularly wants to see their own parents canoodling on the sofa, but watching your dad smooching someone who isn't your mum while your mum cuddles up to someone who isn't your dad occupies a whole different stratosphere of awkwardness.
Fairly soon the pool of special friends dwindled to a special couple, Carole and Tony. From that moment on, weekends became one long polyamorous switcheroo. Carole and Tony would usually arrive on Saturday and normal family life — sitting down for dinner, watching TV, communal catch-ups — continued over the rest of the weekend, just with two extra adults.
Everyone appeared to get on famously. Dad and Carole would decamp to the marital bedroom to discuss socialism and town planning combatively, while Mum and Tony would occupy the adjacent spare bedroom with their much gentler union. My brother and I trod carefully at the other end of the house, unsure of what exactly was going on. Sometimes my curiosity got the better of me. Once I was walking down the corridor and saw the door to a bedroom ajar. I peeked through to see my mother in flagrante with Tony. It felt a bit like watching a road traffic accident. I knew I should avert my eyes but I felt compelled to watch. I wished I hadn't.
Sunday mornings were the peak of my anxiety. An enduring family ritual was to deliver the newspapers to my dad in bed, which I'd always enjoyed doing. Less so when Carole, not my mum, was propped up naked on the pillows next to him. Equally awkward was the excursion to the next room to drop off two cups of tea to my mum, who was tucked up, postcoitally, next to Tony.
Later in the morning my friend Maria would come past our house so we could walk to our gymnastics class together. I lived in fear of her catching a glimpse of the other random couple at my breakfast bar, looking way too at home in fluffy dressing gowns, most likely sprawled across one of my parents.
The whole thing was excruciating. And it was made infinitely worse by the four adults' blind ambivalence to how strange the situation was for us. No explanations were given to clarify the new sleeping arrangements, but the obvious physical closeness filled in the gaps, coupled with the increasing sexual awareness of my brother and I as we approached our teens. The arrangement limped on for years, with Dad and Carole's politically driven relationship going from strength to strength as the beta union between Mum and Tony fizzled out.
The dictionary definition of polyamory is "the practice of engaging in multiple romantic (and typically sexual) relationships, with the consent of all the people involved". And herein lies the problem. We were obedient children and our silence was taken as tacit approval. Had we been asked just once, "Does this situation make you feel uncomfortable?" they would have discovered the truth. We had no choice but to accept our unorthodox domestic structure. It became "normal", but still we knew it was an alien — and alienating — lifestyle to all our peers. It just felt wrong. I was in my late teens before I told a soul. My brother and I didn't discuss the situation with one another until decades after that — such was the level of unconscious acceptance.
The shame and embarrassment at my domestic situation meant that I established a deeply embedded pattern of emotional suppression. Any uncomfortable feelings were simply stuffed back inside, which worked for a while, but as an adult I have experienced on-off depression, suicidal thoughts, feelings of confusion and hopelessness. Prevailing psychiatric research suggests that feelings of childhood safety, unconditional love and, most important, certainty tend to breed solid adult behavioural foundations. In reality it's impossible to say whether my poor mental health is linked to my home life as a child.
For a long time I clung on to the wish that one day my parents would issue comprehensive and heartfelt apologies, truly acknowledging the damage their lifestyle had caused, but despite years of debate they have never reached that deeper understanding of their actions. More than 40 years — and decades of therapy — later, I now appreciate that the collateral psychological damage my brother and I sustained wasn't intentional.
Admittedly their misguided search for sexual nirvana hadn't particularly cemented my psychological foundations, and yes, a little more emotional support over the years might have come in handy, but however baffling their actions, they simply didn't know any better. They just didn't have it in them to behave any differently. Still, as a mother of three teenage children myself, I remain astounded that my primary carers persisted with such a destabilising — and ultimately hazardous — parenting model.
As for the current renaissance in polyamorous relationships? I have no problem whatsoever with consenting adults having sexual relationships with as many different people as they choose. Whatever floats your boat. It's only when children become part of the equation that the trouble starts.
Written by: Laura Pullman
© The Times of London