Jessica of Jezebel brings up a point I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: the consequences of all the political, economic, and social turmoil in the last few months.

In times of trouble, we all like to turn to a guru we know and trust: Dr. Ruth. On the Forbes website, the tiniest sex doctor in the U.S. cautions that sometimes sexual recessions and fiscal recessions go hand in hand. Dr. Ruth discusses the case of a sexually frustrated wife, whose husband was not in the mood for sex because he feared he was going to lose his job. “He didn’t tell her about his fears. He constantly imagined the dreaded day when he’d be called in to see his manager, sex was the last thing he craved,” Dr. Ruth explains. “But since his wife didn’t know what was going on—and since he was being especially silent about his activities during the day—she began to suspect that he was having an affair.” Not surprisingly, Dr. Ruth prescribes a healthy dose of communication.

“Only when couples understand the source can they avoid the mistake, which is thinking any growing distance between them is a relationship problem,” Dr. Ruth counsels. In addition to open lines of communication, Dr. Ruth also prescribes naked snuggling. “Even if a couple doesn’t feel like making love, they should make an appointment, take their clothes off and climb into bed together. Most of the time this will be enough to get them started,” the good Doctor notes.

Read the quotes in context here.

It’s funny… and I think I may have a whole post about this one of these days… but it seems like one of the consequences of living under the Cold-War promis of nuclear annihilation through too much of the 20th-Century is that our cultural models for coping with global crisis tend towards every-man-for-himself survivalism. (Where too often the assumption really is every man for himself.)

Consequently it’s not too surprising that too many people’s response to the current crisis keep circling the bowl of “stock up on beans, rice, and jerky and get a gun to protect it.” And even those not quite so caught up in visions of apocalypse… who think more in terms of the long winter of Desmet, South Dakota in 1880 or of bankrupt Europe after World War II or just the U.S.‘s more-moronic-than-oxymoronic stagnant upheavals in the early 1970s and early 1980s rather than, say, the utter breakdown of Mad Max seem to be feeling more isolated than connected to broader communities.**

Nor is it surprising that couples might lie lovelessly awake. If you buy the testosterone theory, well, testosterone declines in the face of anxiety and stress. If you buy the Hierarchy of Needs theory, well, concern for shelter, warmth, food, and the wellbeing of loved ones stand higher than concern for either ya-yas or reproduction. And if you buy sociobiology/ev-psych then for most long-lived and slow-to-reach-adulthood species then we probably have genes that “dollar cost average” reproduction, and thus horniness, so that in times of unusual stress we’re less likely to start pregnancies that might not make it. Heck, if you’re just a Bible Literalist then you’re already familiar with Jesus’s dire concerns for those who are pregnant during the end of days. Or, like a lot of people who don’t know about those kinds of theories, we and our partners might just be too bummed out for social, let alone sexual intercourse.

And so it’s really good to hear Dr. Ruth putting in a plug not so much for sex per-se as for communication. Which can be an amazing conduit to the sense of unity, solidarity, shared purpose, and community that makes sex just a heck of a lot more appealing.

[** Keep in mind that unlike the Cold War we really aren’t looking at global, physical annihilation, meaning rather than modeling a response from A Boy and His Dog we could draw on the experience of the no more fictional Who’s down in Whoville who stunned the Grinch by maintaining community after losing everything down to the last can of Who-hash. Just sayin’ —fl]