The forced stay of couples at home disrupts their pace of life and their sexuality. In the program "Sans rendez-vous" on Europe 1, Catherine Blanc responds to a listener who cannot explain the drop in the number of sexual relations with her partner, after a burning desire during the first days of confinement.

After several weeks of confinement, some people observed spikes and then falls in their sexual activity. In the program "Sans rendez-vous" on Europe 1, sexologist and psychologist Catherine Blanc invites us to rethink her "normal rhythm" for fulfilling sexuality.

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François' question

The first week of confinement with my boyfriend, we did not stop making love, up to three times in the same day. But since then everything has come back down, for example this week we only did it once… How to explain it?

Catherine Blanc's response

For the sexologist and psychoanalyst, the problem is not to look for on the side of the current activity, falsely lazy, but rather on the side of the unrestrained sexual need of the first days of confinement.

Can we not speak of a "holiday effect" of containment?

On the contrary, for Catherine Blanc it was not the enthusiasm for a new situation which here pushed two people to make love unceasingly, but rather the fear of a lack. "It's almost the same principle that made everyone rush to the stores to fill their fridge," poses the sexologist.

"We have impulses [...] there was a renewed anxiety to not have its share, to risk being in frustration and suddenly a disproportionate and perhaps bulimic attitude." For sexuality as for food, the announcement of confinement created a lack. Consequently, the frantic sexual activity of the first days was fear-not to be totally in phase with the reality of desire but arose from a need to "consume".

Is one report per week a normal rhythm?

Two people in a couple do not forget their sexuality in a week. One report per week allows you to fully develop your sexuality. François seems to be experiencing a sort of "return to normal" compared to the beginnings of confinement. "The libido follows the rhythm of their desire ... and not that of the idea they have of desire" which was largely due to the anxiety generated by the current period.

Should we rethink its link to the other in this period of proximity?

Some might think that the forced proximity strikes a blow at the desire in the couple: the sexual relationship would then, once again, be controlled by anxiety since it would translate the fear of losing the other. For Catherine Blanc, we can nevertheless create a new bond during a period of confinement. "One should not blend into one another [...] two individualized people, with two personal outbursts of curiosity, creativity, different thoughts [are] led to go towards each other."