Sometimes I think about the woman I was six months ago, before COVID-19 exploded and changed everything a woman who went from saying when this is over to saying things like when this is all over, Im making out with everyone.

Single people are going through it during the pandemic, experiencing a combination of (admittedly selfish) relief in watching our coupled friends grapple with months of nonstop togetherness and the incapacitating reality that dating, meeting people anywhere besides the internet and especially the prospect of casual sex feel out of reach at best and impossible at worst.

There were options, like dating via Zoom. But, like most things Zoom-centric, it got old. Fast. With warm weather came socially distant dates, taking walks or getting to-go cocktails and drinking them 6 feet apart from each other. But no matter how people have decided to try to date during the pandemic, many of these encounters seem to end with the same question: Is sex, with a stranger or otherwise, worth the health risk?

New York City guidelines state sex with yourself is the safest option , but six months in, I think most of us agree there are needs that go beyond what we can accomplish by ourselves, even with the help of porn or digital get-downs.

So, in an effort to learn more about how others are surviving sexually during the pandemic, I chatted with six people about what their sex lives have been like over the last six months.

Is this dick really worth dying for?

Steve (not his real name) had his first quarantine sex encounter in May, with a man he used to sleep with regularly.

He and I discussed how much contact we were having with other people, he told HuffPost. I felt OK about his level of precautions, so he came over. We did kiss, because I was desperate. We had sex for a couple of hours, and he went home.

Since then that partner has opened up his social circle to include more people, so Steve is no longer comfortable seeing him.

More recently, he hooked up via an app with someone he didnt know quite as well. Though they discussed general precautions, Steve became nervous when it was time to actually meet.

I started getting panicked, feeling he may not have been fully honest about how seriously he was taking lockdown, he said. I thought to myself, is this dick really worth dying for? I went through with it, more because of my own social anxiety and nonconfrontational nature stopped me from calling it off in the moment. We fooled around but didnt kiss. The next night he messaged me that he had hooked up with another guy and it was really fun. That freaked me out. I went into full quarantine for two weeks and got a COVID test near the end.

Steve has kept his hookups pretty much to himself, despite the fact that friends seemed to be more ready to meet up with people for casual sex than him.

I feel like it was easier two or three months ago to find someone who was willing to have sex but also be cautious, he said. Today everyone seems more comfortable taking risks than I am.

Sometimes I was actually using it. Sometimes I put it on the kitchen table while I was scrambling eggs.

Sexting was an attractive option for many people in the early days of the pandemic when even venturing outside felt daunting.

I was super scared to leave my house, so I basically let anyone with [whom I had] at least one mutual connection sext [with me], Taylor, who lives in Los Angeles, told HuffPost. This included a Hinge match who knew a friend from business school, friends Id never hooked up with but who were rumored to have big dicks and a guy named Brian who sold bicycles. I often let them control my Bluetooth vibrator. Sometimes I was actually using it. Sometimes I put it on the kitchen table while I was scrambling eggs.

Eventually, Taylor started hanging out with guys IRL but was turned off by many of her partners behavior.

It was frustrating when the other person was constantly talking about [the pandemic] or being paranoid about it, she said. Hang with me or dont, but dont say yes to hanging and then make me feel bad. Own your decision.

And though she would prefer to meet up with someone she knows, she isnt ruling out other options.

I do hope to get laid again before the coronavirus is eradicated, she said. For now, its back to swiping and starting all over again.