Israeli sex lives: Casualties of the war with Hamas - opinion

• Published date: 08 March 2024
• Author: BRIAN BLUM
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The ongoing hostilities between Israel and its jihadist neighbors are forcing couples to rethink familiar patterns of intimacy. When partners are consumed or paralyzed by the news, it's hard to keep one's mind clear for romance

It gets even more complicated when lovers have different ways of relating to said news. One partner may be proactive, fast to get out of the house and volunteer, while the other curls up on the couch, avoiding anything that might be traumatizing.

"We didn't have sex at all during the first week of the war," Sigal from Ramat Gan told Dana Spector in an article for Ynet. "It was all such a shock. We'd sit there from morning until 3 a.m., each of us glued to our own phones. We couldn't even talk to each other." On the outside, she says, "I was the same woman, but I was completely disconnected. I couldn't feel anything at all. My libido dropped to zero."

Indeed, with the war still raging and the remaining hostages unaccounted for, "Sex is the first thing to give up on," Michal Nir, who coordinates the sex therapy program at Bar-Ilan University, told Haaretz. "You have to eat, sleep, and breathe. You don't have to have sex."

"There's also 'survivors' guilt' – people taking on the guilt of what happened to women who've been kidnapped and punishing themselves as a form of 'moral duty,'" comments Keren Gilat, who heads the School for Holistic Psychotherapy at Reidman College. "If they can't experience pleasure, how can I?"

But there's also the risk that the emotional distancing will translate into long-term issues with intimacy.

Sigal knows this, too. "It's not healthy going so long without," she laments.

Survival mode doesn't necessarily mean sex is off the table entirely. People had sex in the concentration camps. People with cancer still desire sex.

For women, the impact has been particularly difficult.

A senior hi-tech manager, who finds she suddenly has to hold down her job while simultaneously handling all the household and childcare responsibilities as her husband is away fighting, told Ynet, "I pray that he'll get hit by shrapnel and that he'll come home. These past weeks have broken us."

That brokenness stems in part from what nearly all Israelis are suffering from today: secondary trauma.

Secondary trauma, or "compassion fatigue," refers to distress that's experienced indirectly by hearing details, or witnessing the aftermath, of trauma experienced by another person.

Secondary trauma shares many of the same symptoms as full-on...