A Year Without Sex

[RyanGeist]

Here's an interview from the Atlantic, about an attractive, 30-something, jet-setting journalist who shrugged off sex for a year, and how it shaped her preferences in dating and romance. She collected her experiences in a book, "Chastened: The Unexpected Story of My Year Without Sex."

 

A selection of her interview:

 

Did you pinpoint what changed in a relationship after sex? Was it a perceived shift in the power dynamic, was it one-sided or mutual?

 

Yes, I felt that I needed so much more from them. And, to me, it felt like I needed much more than my right. At the end of the year, I would be able to say, "Well, that's ridiculous." I think we've lost any sense of healthy emotional entitlement. I think if you go to bed with somebody, it is a kind of bond; it's not nothing, however much we try to say it's nothing. Whether you're a man or woman, you're absolutely in your rights to expect there to be some kind of emotional gain.

 

Hephzibah Anderson doesn't come out and make a judgment call about abstaining, saying that it's best left a personal preference, but forms a strong argument that a certain kind of relationship requires a inclination to long-term emotional needs over short-term sexual desires.

 

Haven't read the book, but at least from the interview, it sounds like she strikes a fair balance between critiquing our hypersexualized culture and admitting the necessity of earthly needs, and exposes the farce of the post-feminist, post-postmodern hookup for what it is: "a casual sort of intimacy without intimacy."

 

Maybe it's just a tale of a woman coming to terms with the consequences of a grass-is-greener period from her 20s, who wasn't "in tune" with what she'd "actually wanted." But at least she turns it into an intelligent thesis.

 

link removed

[MetaphorDavis]

I would think something that is post-postmodern is actually postmodern.

[waveseer]

After spending about the same period of time celibate as the author (maybe more), I can tell you one thing...

 

Having no sex guarantees having no sex with the wrong person.

[pinkelephant]

I've been abstaining for 2 years and I say that life without sex is much less complicated. It is liberating, a little bit like fasting. It sounds ridiculous, maybe.

[dragon lady]

I went for 1.5 years without sex after having it regularly for over 4 years and I hated every minute of it. It would have been preferable to satisfy some short-term desires while I was waiting for something more substantial. I'd love to be able to say that it was nice to wait for the right person, but I can't.

[winchester3]

After a year with out sex she found out what works for her in relationships? Only to figure out that you need both an emotional and physical connection to make relationships work?? Who would have guessed..... (or am i way off here?). Come on creative writers and thinkers of ENA, lets write the ENA novel to perfect relationships.

[SometimesShy]

...It's one thing to choose to not have sex, it's quite another if you just can't find a good partner. I think she would have written a very different book if she wrote about a year where she could not find a partner to have sex with.

 

Involuntary celibacy is something many younger men, and older men and women experience quite often.

 

As a straight male, I equate this with men almost never being hit on by women, where most women will get hit on far more often. ( I've been hit on by women about 4 times in 20 years, and by gay men almost every week, which still happens to me in my 40's )

[Sparkly Eyes]

...It's one thing to choose to not have sex, it's quite another if you just can't find a good partner. I think she would have written a very different book if she wrote about a year where she could not find a partner to have sex with.

 

Involuntary celibacy is something many younger men, and older men and women experience quite often.

 

As a straight male, I equate this with men almost never being hit on by women, where most women will get hit on far more often. ( I've been hit on by women about 4 times in 20 years, and by gay men almost every week, which still happens to me in my 40's )

 

Even attractive young women experience it!

[Lady Rashomon]

Plenty of people decide they're going to be celibate to balance out their chi and focus on other stuff--how in the hell is this newsworthy?

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with this; I've been through periods of voluntary celibacy before that were wonderful. What bothers me is that her interview reeks of self-righteousness and subtle chastisement. Also, I don't know that I see long-term emotional needs and short-term sexual desires as being mutually exclusive. All of my sexual relationships have been emotional ones as well, but experiencing intimacy with somebody doesn't mean that you need to assume exclusive ownership over their bodies or build a life with them. Just because some people feel the need to fulfill their sexual desires without formally engaging in a relationship with the other person, it doesn't mean they are depraved or incapable of forming meaningful bonds with another human being.