Secret sex: how illicit affairs flourished in lockdown

With social distancing in place and all of us told to stay at home, the rise in blackmarket dating was inevitable, says Emily Hill

‘I hadn’t spoken to a man in so long, I signed up to Unicef because a hot guy stopped me in the street’ ‘We’re all hoping for a new summer of love. But some know they have had it already – in secret’

Call me Covid Carrie if you will, but “I couldn’t help but wonder... has any singleton been having secret sex in the past 12 months?” When lockdown was declared, we all got screwed – by the Prime Minister – because sleeping with anyone else became illegal overnight. So unless you had stupendous luck, if you stuck rigidly to the rules, you’ve been celibate for an entire year.

Pressure makes diamonds and I don’t deny it. One of my closest friends – like me sensing the candles on her 40th birthday cake and fearing she’d never meet anyone and could kiss her hopes of having children goodbye – had said “sod it all” and had gone backpacking in Sri Lanka. The night before the Government ordered all British citizens back, she enjoyed spectacular (and spectacularly unexpected) sex with a handsome stranger before they had to flee the borders. On landing in the UK, they had to confront the fact that they lived so far apart, if they didn’t commit immediately and quarantine together, they’d probably never see each other again. (In Lockdown I, so much lovemaking was done that their baby was born in Lockdown III.)

I have uncovered four typical fates for singles in 2020: you stuck so rigidly to the guidance you endured the loneliest year of your life; you went to stay with your parents and ended up like the spinster in a Jane Austen novel; you became so unhappy alone you “bubbled” with some chap who was nice to Netflix and chill with but had no idea what the clitoris was; or you existed as a secret sex Covidiot.

From late March to May, like almost every single in the land, I didn’t see anyone – let alone a date – and became so lonely I cracked and ended up rushing into one of the worst relationships of my life with a man who started crying (“sorry – I’ve just been so lonely”) the first time he kissed me. All the details after that depress me so much I’m afraid I can’t go into them, but my own prospects of love are so blasted by despair I’m starting to question the wisdom of writing them down.

Other souls than mine coped like nuns. “I’m a mess,” confesses Philippa Crabb, host of the podcast How Not To Date At 28. “By November, I hadn’t spoken to a man in so long, I signed up to Unicef because a hot guy stopped me in the street. Obviously, he just wanted me to sign up to a direct debit for a tenner a month. But I was so desperate to speak to him I didn’t care, and I’ve since spent £40…”

“I stayed with my parents over the first lockdown which is the biggest mood killer when it comes to dating,” says 23-year-old Charlotte who works in communications. “By November, I was back in London and am ashamed to admit I did go on a few dates with someone, but I’m only human. We went to Tate Britain to see the Christmas lights and drank mulled wine. I had to have a wee by the river side because all public facilities were closed which broke the ice. It resulted in a brief affair of terrible sex… When I raised the fact he didn’t seem to know what ‘foreplay’ was, it transpired he didn’t know what ‘patriarchy’ meant either – he thought it had to do with the monarchy. During the current lockdown, I’ve invested in a couple of vibrators and have been sticking strictly to the rules…”

But those still stuck in the sticks with their parents don’t get to deploy the sextoy option. “Unlike a city, with chance encounters on the bus or in Waitrose, the only attention you get on a rural walk is from a herd of Friesian heifers,” my best-looking man friend complains. “I understand, now, why Mr Darcy plunged into his lake at Pemberley. I take two cold showers a day. At least.”

Other singles exist only in the virtual world. “I’ve had over 100 Zoom dates during lockdown,” says Instagram influencer Jodie Weston. “But only six became ‘real dates’ when restrictions briefly eased. The rules meant they often cancelled or used it as an excuse to invite me over instead. This is a huge red flag for me as clearly they don’t even know me! Where has chivalry gone?”

Whisking a lady off her feet in the midst of a pandemic like a hero striding out of a Mills & Boon novel was, alas, punishable by law: the 28-year old jailed in December for breaching Covid rules jet skiing across the Irish Sea to visit his girlfriend was a textbook case. Personally, I think he deserves the Jilly Cooper award for services to orgasms and we ought to make a statue of him. How else will we commemorate all the secret sex – forever lost in the mists of time – unless the social stigma lifts?

Miranda – in her mid-thirties – was one date into a new romance when it was shut down by government decree last spring. In August, they reconnected (“in that awkward stage of do we hug?”) and have now been together seven months: “We’ve spent so much time together and so much time apart, it’s been very intense... It’s not ‘real’ life. He’s still not met my parents.”

Singles were supposed to maintain social distance – even in the summer – and not go around dating lots of people trying to find a mate. So when restrictions were reintroduced in autumn it all went to hell: silently so many of us clenched our fists and cried: “We’re not Greta bloody Garbo. We don’t want to be alone.” “Business meetings” were allowed – falling in love wasn’t. Curfews designed to stop “crushes” created them. “In central London the street corners and bus stops would be full of people snogging,” the Samantha in my life recalls. “On a Tuesday night at five past ten.”

But some take pride in admitting their lawbreaking lovemaking. After drunk-texting an old flame, a spark reignited for 33-year-old James: “I made up a story for my housemates and took my first trip on the supposedly disease-ridden underground from Highgate to Royal Oak for a filthy and forbidden tryst… I don’t wish to appear braggadocious but six times. Six.” As lockdown – hopefully – ends soon, we’re all hoping for a new summer of love. But some know they had it already – last summer – in secret.

“Blackmarket dating went so well for me I saw the sunrise some mornings,” says Jake, a 34-year-old marketing manager. “It was like we were all part of a secret society, a silent revolution. We could tell who wasn’t in a ‘state sanctioned bubble on bench’ but ‘snog-fest post-Prosecco in park’.

“When I first moved to London, I had a dear friend in his fifties who I met out raving at gay clubs, and he always said to me, ‘It’s no fun now dear – the fun was breaking the rules, running from the rozzers!’ It’s only now, thanks to lockdown, that I get what he meant.”

Writer Emily Hill, at home in London