Marital Life and Sexual Functioning Among Urban Married Individuals During Covid-19 Pandemic

Background: Corona virus is an infectious virus which has turned out to be a pandemic all around the world. The preventive strategies of spreading this virus is sanitization hands, surfaces and social distancing leading to a nationwide lockdown. This pandemic has affected the physical and mental health of each individual along with the marital life and sexual functioning of married individuals. Marital quality and sexual functioning are parameters of good psychological health and poor marital life and sexual health often leads to a poor psychological state of mind. Aim: This research has been undertaken to assess how the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has changed the quality of marital life and sexual functioning among urban married individuals. Methodology: The study was conducted via Google Forms using a semi-structured questionnaire. A total of 60 responses, 30 from married females and 30 from males were recorded. Mean, standard deviation, chi-square was used for statistical analysis. Results: Majority of females have reported their spouse to be understanding about their feelings, receiving cooperation from spouse in maintaining domestic responsibilities and work from home, experiencing feeling of security from their spouse, taking decisions and having discussions together with spouse about household matters with an improved quality in overall marital functioning and communication with their spouse. No change has been reported in the sexual functioning when compared to the previous times before pandemic as perceived majorly by females than males.  Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown has shed light on the importance of relationships like marriage which has been experienced in a more strong manner by the females whereas sexual life, as reported by females has not been found to be affected due to this stressful, difficult and uncertain situation.