BeamBlog

The haunting stare emanating from the foot of the bed.

The incessant scratching at the closed door.

The time a third (fluffy, four-legged) party actually nosed its way into the middle of the action.

If you’ve ever lived with a dog or cat, you likely know what we’re describing: the myriad ways that pets can interfere when you’re trying to get busy.

“The only place where we definitely won’t be bothered is the shower,” says Tahirah, who lives in Washington and shares a pit bull mix with their partner. “The shower is sacred.”

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The struggle to maintain intimacy with pets in the home is very real — and very commonplace, confirm animal behaviorists, sex therapists and pet owners. (The pet owners in this story spoke on the condition of partial anonymity to speak candidly about their sex lives; unless otherwise specified, they are referred to only by their first names.)

Abby, a dog owner in Atlanta, likes to date men who have dogs, too. “I think it shows that they have some level of responsibility,” she says. But this preference sometimes comes with drawbacks. Like the time she was seeing a guy who lived in a studio apartment.

When she and her date started to cuddle, his dog immediately began barking and trying to wedge in between them, she recalls. Without a bedroom door, the guy took out a circular pet gate — but there wasn’t enough space to set it up around the dog. Instead, he enclosed the bed. “I not only was dealing with the noise of the dog,” says Abby, “but I was also feeling like I was sort of an animal in a cage myself.” That relationship didn’t last.

Even better behaved animals have a way of making their presence known. Tahirah, the pit bull owner in D.C., says they and their partner have trained their dog, Ori, to sleep in her own bed on the floor. Nonetheless, “when it comes to having sex … all of a sudden, I look around and there’s a dog staring at me,” they say. “It gets me out of the moment. It gets my partner out of the moment. It takes away spontaneity, in a way.” Hence, the sanctity of the shower.

Emily, who lives in the Hudson River Valley, had trouble of a different kind with her two cats. While they didn’t seem to care when she had sex with her partner, every time she turned on her vibrator, the sound prompted a very specific reaction from the felines: they would prance around with each other and generally appear to have “the best time.” Their antics took Emily’s attention away from her fantasies: “Look, it’s [supposed to be] me and Cillian Murphy, not me and Cillian Murphy and cats.” (Still, she admits it was pretty funny.)

The reasons that pets act up in moments of intimacy vary from one situation to another, but experts point to a few common themes. Cats, says LeeAnna Buis, a training and behavior consultant with Feline Behavior Solutions in Portland, Ore., often dislike being shut out of the bedroom, and express their frustration with loud meows or scratching. Or they interpret movement under the covers as an invitation to play and go into pounce mode.

Many dogs, meanwhile, struggle with being separated from their humans, say Amy Campbell and Lillian Ciardelli, co-owners of pet-training business Behave Atlanta. Signs of separation-related distress include whining, barking and destructive behaviors while being relegated to a different part of the home.

Guarding behaviors are often a more serious problem in dogs. This occurs when a pup thinks he has to defend an item of value, whether it’s the bed or one of the people in the relationship. Some dogs can get aggressive; they may snarl, growl or even attempt to attack one of the humans engaging in the romance. These behaviors can gradually worsen, so don’t ignore them. (And, generally, any sudden behavioral changes in your pet are a reason to contact your veterinarian.)

One common reason animals interrupt, though, is much less serious: they want in on the good times.

“She has FOMO, basically,” says Jean, a Los Angeles resident, of her eight-pound Shih Tzu mix, Peach. (Jean asked to be identified by her middle name because her first name is unusual.) “She knows there’s something fun happening in the other room.” Jean has tried putting Peach into a playpen and leaving her a puzzle toy to keep her occupied. But she says Peach’s interest in whatever’s occurring behind closed doors is relentless. As a result, she barks the whole time.

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Pet parents can at least rest assured that their animals don’t understand the specifics of what’s going down. While the distinct sounds, movements and smells of a romantic romp can trigger reactions in animals, “it’s not like a young child walking in on their parents and feeling like they’re scarred for life,” says Kate Anderson, assistant clinical professor at Cornell’s Duffield Institute for Animal Behavior. Rather than recognizing sex as a mating activity, Anderson says disruptive dogs and cats are often just responding to the fact that the attention isn’t on them.

If anyone is scarred by the experience, it’s much more likely to be the human. Tahirah, for one, feels weird about Ori being present for the show: “Not my puppy, not my baby!” they recall thinking whenever the pit bull gets an eyeful.

But there is hope for pet owners looking to keep their animals out of the mix.

Behavior experts recommend working to change a pet’s association with a shut door to something more positive, with the use of treats or toys. “It’s as simple as making good things happen for your cat when a door gets closed behind them,” Buis says.

For dogs, you could ease in with a pet gate, says Campbell, so that the animal can get accustomed to distance while still having you in their sight. Train your dog to sit quietly on the other side of a gate by rewarding the behavior with a long lasting chew, lick mat or Kong — something that takes the animal’s attention away from you. Slowly increase the time they’re separated from you, or the time between treats, building up to a shut door and repeating the same routine of providing a reward for quiet, calm behavior. (Pet gates can also work with particularly unsporty cats.)

If you don’t want to share your bed with your pet, you can save yourself some trouble by getting them accustomed to sleeping in their own space from the get-go. It’s much harder to give up co-sleeping with a dog once it becomes a habit, Anderson says. “I spend a lot of time trying to very carefully extract dogs from the bedroom,” she says. “People end up unfortunately not sleeping with their partner because the dogs won’t sleep alone.”

Which underscores a common observation among sex therapists: While they report hearing frequently from clients about pets getting in the way of getting it on, these professionals say the humans are often the ones to blame.

Andrea Battiola, founder of Peak Couples and Sex Therapy in Washington, routinely sees clients whose pets sleep with them, which “can end up acting as a very physical barrier to opportunities for intimacy.” Rather than kicking the animals out, though, she suggests rethinking the timing of intimacy. “Often, when we’re talking about a pet being a barrier to sex, that’s usually happening at bedtime. And generally, whether a pet is in your life or not, detaching sex from bedtime is a good idea because often at bedtime we are tired,” she says.

She has also noticed that, sometimes, humans use their pets as scapegoats. “Let’s say that one partner is feeling really dissatisfied with the sex that they’re having, but for a variety of reasons, is struggling to bring that up to their partner,” she says. They might instead blame the presence of the pet as a way to skirt the issue.

Ian Kerner, a sex and couples therapist in New York, echoes this insight, reporting that one of the top excuses couples give for declining intimacy is the interference of pets. But he’s skeptical. “Sex is such an important part of being in a healthy relationship, and to sort of blame your faltering sex life on your [dog or cat] seems to me to be a sort of ridiculous excuse,” he says.

A dog lover himself, he sees many more ways that pets contribute to overall relationship satisfaction: “They help couples to laugh and distract themselves. They bring out love and tenderness. They create shared laughter, shared experience, shared rituals.”

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