“Hugging With Masks on”: LGBTQ+ College Students’ Relationship Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic led to increased stressors for many college students, and for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) college students in particular (Nowaskie & Roesler, 2022; Salerno et al., 2020; Whittington et al., 2020). Minority stress theory (Meyer, 2013) suggests that LGBTQ+ young adults are already at higher risk of mental health issues and stressful life events compared to their heterosexual peers (Watson et al., 2018), and the pandemic exacerbated these health disparities (Nowaskie & Roesler, 2022; Parchem et al., 2024; Salerno et al., 2020). Among LGBTQ+ adults, the pandemic negatively affected romantic relationships (Li & Samp, 2021). Non-cohabiting LGBTQ+ individuals, in particular, may have experienced challenges in seeing their partners in person due to pandemic-related restrictions such as social distancing and campus closures. Considering the importance of romantic relationships for mental and physical well-being (Braithwaite et al., 2010), we consider LGBTQ+ college students’ romantic relationship experiences early in the pandemic, specifically focusing on students in non-cohabiting relationships. In particular, we consider relationship dissolution, opportunities for in-person and virtual interactions, and changes in sexual behavior to understand non-cohabiting LGBTQ+ college students’ relationship experiences.

Minority stress theory (Meyer, 2013) suggests that LGBTQ+ individuals experience stressors unique to their LGBTQ+ identity that their cisgender heterosexual peers do not have to manage (McLemore, 2015). Minority stressors may be either distal (e.g., prejudice events) or proximal (e.g., expectations of rejection) and are both negatively associated with LGBTQ+ individuals’ overall well-being (Meyer, 2013). For instance, LGBTQ+ individual may believe they need to conceal their LGBTQ+ identity (i.e., a proximal stressor) due to their minoritized identity not aligning with conventional societal norms (Meyer, 2013). Minority stressors may also be associated with how LGBTQ+ individuals navigate romantic relationships (Rostosky & Riggle, 2017). Relationship formation and maintenance are salient developmental tasks in late adolescence (Rhoades et al., 2011), especially as youth transition to college (Shulman & Connolly, 2013). In contrast to their cisgender heterosexual peers, LGBTQ+ college students must navigate romantic relationships while also dealing with minority stressors (Meyer, 2013; Rostosky & Riggle, 2017). Relationship dissolution, in particular, is a normative, albeit often distressing experience for late adolescents, and stressful life situations increase the likelihood of dissolution (Rhoades et al., 2011). The COVID-19 pandemic introduced new points of conflict between romantic partners, at times exacerbating pre-existing relationship issues and vulnerabilities (Dotson et al., 2022; Li & Samp, 2021). For instance, LGBTQ+ adult same-sex couples who moved in together during the pandemic had more intentions to dissolve their relationship than same-sex couples who did not move in together (Li & Samp, 2021). The combination of minority stressors and pandemic-related restrictions may have uniquely influenced LGBTQ+ college students’ relationships. Thus, we consider the prevalence of LGBTQ+ college students’ relationship dissolution due to the pandemic.

The unique circumstances of the pandemic and related restrictions, including social isolation (Salerno et al., 2020; Scroggs et al., 2021), may have exasperated minority stressors for LGBTQ+ college students and raised questions about how, and through what modalities (e.g., in-person and/or virtually), non-cohabiting couples interacted with each other. Spending time with a romantic partner can benefit both the relationship and the individuals (Rossignac-Milon & Higgins, 2018). However, due to COVID-related restrictions on face-to-face interactions, LGBTQ+ college students may have found it difficult to interact with non-cohabiting partners (Gattamorta et al., 2024; Goodboy et al., 2021; Herbenick et al., 2022). Indeed, between the end of March and early April, half of Americans did not interact with people outside their household in person (Feehan & Mahmud, 2021). However, in Australia, although adults’ face-to-face interactions with family, friends, and co-workers during the pandemic declined, such interactions with a romantic partner increased (Rogers & Cruickshank, 2021). To maintain interpersonal connection, which may have been particularly difficult for LGBTQ+ college students due to their minoritized sexual and/or gender identity (Scroggs et al., 2021), LGBTQ+ college students who did not live with their partner had to either see their partner in person despite COVID-related restrictions, or compensate for in-person interactions with virtual interactions. For example, adults in Belgium and Italy reported increased use of messaging apps, texting, and voice and video calls early in the pandemic (Gabbiadini et al., 2020; Ohme et al., 2020). Thus, we examine non-cohabiting LGBTQ+ college students’ in-person and virtual interactions with their romantic partner.

The pandemic may also have influenced LGBTQ+ college students’ sexual behavior with their romantic partners, disproportionately affecting non-cohabiting couples (Herbenick et al., 2022). Some evidence suggests LGBTQ+ college students’ sexual behavior decreased during the pandemic (Herbenick et al., 2022; Leistner et al., 2023), but other research indicates that, compared to their heterosexual peers, LGB young adults were more likely to report increased sexual behavior (Wignall et al., 2021). The pandemic led to increased stressors for most people (Manchia et al., 2022). Minority stress theory suggests that LGBTQ+ young adults would have had even greater stressors overall given these universal stressors and LGBTQ+ specific stressors. Given that stress is linked to decreased sexual behavior (Bodenmann et al., 2010), LGBTQ+ college students may have experienced decreased sexual behavior during the pandemic. In addition, pandemic-related restrictions such as widespread stay-at-home orders and social distancing policies likely decreased opportunities for non-cohabiting couples to see each other, restricting opportunities for sexual behavior even more (Herbenick et al., 2022; Luetke et al., 2020). Thus, we expect that this decrease was more pronounced for non-cohabiting LGBTQ+ college students than cohabiting LGBTQ+ college students.

Method

Results

Fifty-two percent (n = 236) of participants reported being in a current romantic relationship. The majority of students in a romantic relationship reported that they did not currently live with their romantic partner (70%; n = 165). With regard to RQ1, 6.3% (n = 28) of all participants experienced relationship dissolution due to the pandemic.

Regarding RQ2 and RQ3, more than half of students in non-cohabiting relationships reported they were not getting together with their partner in person (see Table 2). Of the almost half of non-cohabiting students who saw their partner in person, 20% (n = 32) saw their partner more than once a week and 70.1% (n = 114) considered their partner to be an exception to social distancing. When LGBTQ+ non-cohabiting students saw their partners in person, most students reported engaging in entertainment activities, followed by just being together, eating meals together, and sexual behavior (see Table 3). Students also reported engaging in other activities (19.4%; n = 13), such as going on walks, hiking, studying, and “hugging with masks on.” Finally, the majority of non-cohabiting students reported regular virtual contact with their partners (see Table 4). For instance, most students reported that they texted, messaged, and/or used social media at least daily.

We hypothesized that sexual behavior would decrease more for non-cohabiting LGBTQ+ college students due to the pandemic than for cohabiting LGBTQ+ students (H1). We conducted five, 2x3 chi-square tests to examine how cohabitation status (cohabiting vs. non-cohabiting) differed by change in sexual behavior (decline, no change, increase). The association between cohabitation status and change in sexual behavior was significant for kissing, touching, oral sex, and anal sex, but not penile-vaginal sex (see Table 5). Post-hoc comparisons (ps < .01) revealed that students in non-cohabiting relationships were more likely to experience decreased kissing, touching, and oral sex and were less likely to experience increased kissing, touching, oral sex, and anal sex than students in cohabiting relationships.

Discussion

Overall, most non-cohabiting LGBTQ+ college students did not see their partner in person but engaged in frequent virtual interactions, and experienced a decline in several sexual behaviors compared to cohabiting LGBTQ+ college students. Only a small minority of LGBTQ+ students reported they had experienced relationship dissolution due to the pandemic. Our findings have implications for LGBTQ+ college students’ romantic relationships during stressful times, and shed light on minority stress theory (Meyer, 2013).

Considering that many LGBTQ+ students in our sample did not live with their partner or experience relationship dissolution, our results potentially support research conducted with adults demonstrating that same-sex couples who did not move in together during the pandemic were less likely to dissolve their relationship than couples who moved in together (Li & Samp, 2021). Further, prior research supports minority stress theory in suggesting that LGBTQ+ college students faced particular social vulnerabilities during the pandemic due to their minoritized sexual and/or gender identities (Scroggs et al., 2021). For instance, in Spring 2020, many college students unexpectedly moved home to be with family, which frequently led to stressors such as rejection and negative comments from family (Hanna-Walker et al., 2023), minority stressors that their heterosexual cisgender peers may not have experienced. However, despite these stressors, our results suggest that LGBTQ+ college students did not dissolve romantic relationships because of the pandemic. It may be that students experienced other relational impacts, such as conflict with partners (e.g., Goodboy et al., 2021; Leistner et al., 2023), that we did not assess, or that as the pandemic progressed, more students experienced romantic relationship dissolution as a result of the pandemic, both important questions for future work. Indeed, there is some evidence that a small percentage of LGBTQ+ college students in romantic relationships at the start of the pandemic dissolved their relationship during the pandemic (Herbenick et al., 2022). Prior research, however, did not assess whether LGBTQ+ college students attributed their relationship dissolution to pandemic-related issues (Herbenick et al., 2022), and our results highlight that although the pandemic may have increased minority stressors for LGBTQ+ college students (Hanna-Walker et al., 2023), these stressors were not detrimental enough to end a disproportionate number of LGBTQ+ college students’ romantic relationships.

Only about 30% of LGBTQ+ college students were living with their romantic partners in the first months of the pandemic. Pre-pandemic estimates of cohabitation generally for this age group (18–24) in the U.S are even lower, at about 9% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2018). It is possible that unexpected campus closures in Spring of 2020 led to increased rates of cohabitation with romantic partners. For instance, some college students who normally spend academic breaks living with parents may have been unable to travel to family; others may have chosen not to return to their parents’ home during a time they would normally be living more independently. And still others may have simultaneously lived with their romantic partner and their own, or their partner’s, parents. Additionally, about half of students in non-cohabiting romantic relationships never saw their partner in person. This rate is similar to findings that half of American adults were not getting together with people outside their household at the start of the pandemic (Feehan & Mahmud, 2021). These changes in opportunities to spend time with romantic partners may have been particularly challenging for LGBTQ+ college students given that they may have been unable to access resources (e.g., campus LGBTQ+ support centers, gender-affirming care, LGBTQ+ friends; Hanna-Walker et al., 2023) that may have helped mitigate minority stressors before the pandemic (Meyer, 2013).

Among LGBTQ+ students who did see their partner in person, a majority indicated that they considered their partner an exception from social distancing. It is possible that these LGBTQ+ students placed particular value on their romantic relationships during the pandemic, potentially as a way to counteract social isolation that disproportionately impacted LGBTQ+ college students due to their marginalized identities (Scroggs et al., 2021). It is also possible that LGBTQ+ college students continued interacting with their romantic partners as a method of managing minority stressors that may have results from LGBTQ+ college student being forced to return home to potentially unsupportive environments (Lawrence et al., 2021). Our results also indicated that engaging in entertainment activities was very common, with sexual behaviors less common, which aligns with prior research for LGBTQ+ college students (Herbenick et al., 2022). In fact, non-cohabiting LGBTQ+ college students were more likely than cohabiting students to decrease most sexual behaviors. It is possible our findings on in-person activities for students in non-cohabiting relationships suggest that although LGBTQ+ students valued their romantic relationship and thus continued to see their partner in person, they may have been careful to engage in behaviors that involved less physical contact when they did see their partner. Prior evidence suggests that LGBTQ+ students had high rates of compliance with social distancing guidelines (Lawrence et al., 2021), perhaps in an attempt to protect adults living in their household, and thus, even when with their partners, students may have maintained some social distancing.

Although many non-cohabiting LGBTQ+ college students reported not seeing their romantic partner in person, the majority regularly engaged in virtual contact, most commonly texting, messaging, social media, voice, and/or video calls. These findings are consistent with pre-pandemic research on college students in long-distance relationships, for whom texting and messaging are the most common forms of technology-mediated communication, followed by video and then voice calls (Hampton et al., 2017). Prior research suggests that texting and voice calls help to maintain relationship commitment, satisfaction, and intimacy/support in college students, and thus, LGBTQ+ students may have used these forms of virtual contact for relationship maintenance during the pandemic as a method of combating social isolation (Jin & Peña, 2010; Morey et al., 2013; Scroggs et al., 2021). Thus, despite not living with their partner, non-cohabiting LGBTQ+ students found ways to stay connected with their partner on a regular basis. Given the known value of social interactions to increase happiness, reduce sadness, and even mitigate pain (Bernstein et al., 2018), these interactions may have helped reduce potential negative effects of minority stressors on LGBTQ+ students’ well-being.