What a break from sex can teach you

0:00You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, it's Marielle. Today on the show, we are talking about sex. It's a part of life, and this is Life Kit, after all. Now, sex can be amazing, obviously. It can also be intoxicating. Not just the act itself, but the pursuit of it, and everything that comes before it. The courtship part, the seduction part, the feeling that's generated in you, knowing that you're desired. All sorts of delicious chemicals flood our brains throughout this process. Like once those little chemicals get released, suddenly I'm making different choices because I want to feel more of that.

0:46I want to keep the party going inside of me.

0:52this is melissa phibos author of the dry season a memoir of pleasure in a year without sex so this craving for sex and seduction it can sometimes lead us to a reckoning point a point when what makes the most sense is to pull back for melissa that moment came in her 30s she'd been in back-to-back relationships for most of her adult life basically when i was 15 I started being preoccupied by romance and love and sex and those pursuits and how they made me feel about myself. And that was a huge preoccupation of mine for the next 20 years. And then she went through a devastating breakup, which was really a devastating relationship.

1:35Where I had become so abject and obsessive and really kind of ruined my life. I had lost friends and crashed my car and my health had suffered and I had really just sort of gone completely off the rails. And I thought, what is going on? How did I get here? And why am I stuck in this pattern? And how do I change? Some friends had suggested she take a break from dating and sex. And she says eventually she was in enough pain to try it. She started with three months, but then went a year without having sex. And the gifts that emerged from this time were bountiful. A dry season, it was not. Everything else became so much more sensual.

2:22It was like my sensual and erotic capacity became expressed in so many other places. On this episode of Life Kit, I talked to Melissa and others about the practice of celibacy, specifically taking a likely temporary break from sex. This episode isn't intended for people who are celibate for religious reasons only. Although, if that's you, you might find some wisdom here anyway. Melissa says celibacy can help you understand yourself better, develop new patterns of behavior, and also reconnect with a partner. I could never have foreseen how profound that change would be. I could never have foreseen how it would literally change the entire course of my life.

3:07That's after the break.

3:11When Melissa Phoebus was in her 30s, she went to something called a cuddle party, where people get together and plan to engage in some sort of non-sexual physical affection, like hugging or lying next to each other. There was a workshop on consent at the beginning, and they said, don't cuddle with anyone you don't want to. And yet, she cuddled with people she didn't want to. I thought, what the heck happened here? Like, I'm a queer woman, I'm a feminist, I know all about consent. why was I saying yes to spooning with strangers that I don't want to? And I sort of followed that question all the way back to my early like social education in sex where I got all of this explicit and implicit messaging that it was just bad to disappoint people when they wanted something physically from you.

3:58And like I've had a lot of sex over the course of my life that I didn't really want to have because I felt like I should. And taking a break from sex is a great way to sort of look at that and try to stop doing it.

4:14So one reason you might consider a celibate period is if you have patterns or behaviors that you're trying to change. Takeaway one, consider your intentions. Why do you think a period of celibacy might be in order? If you're hoping to interrupt certain patterns or behaviors, What are they? And what role do you play in these dynamics? Journaling or making an inventory could help you figure that out. During Melissa's celibacy, she made a list of everyone she'd ever been with, sexually or romantically. And she asked herself some hard questions. Like, where was I dishonest? How was I self-centered?

4:53Like, what happened here? You know, I had a story about who I was in my past relationships, and it was much more heroic than what I saw when I did the inventory. Doing the inventory really showed me what I had to be accountable for and how I'd been complicit in every sort of romantic disaster of my life.

5:17For a lot of us, our patterns involve some form of self-betrayal. Doing things you don't want to do or that don't align with your values. Or having intimate relationships where you're not getting your needs met. One version of this is the person who wants to find a serious, committed partnership, but keeps having sex with people who don't want that. If that's you, and casual sex doesn't feel good to you, Trevor Hines says a period of celibacy could help. I think at the end of the day, it's going to give you the tools to value yourself, love yourself, and look past that initial lust and surface-level connections and go for the depth.

5:52And it also really repels everybody who's not interested in you for you. The ones who are for you, you'll be able to identify. Trevor is an artist in Canada, and he uses celibacy as a tool in his life. He once went celibate for three years. He says celibacy can also help you figure out all the things you love about yourself outside of your sex appeal. I think when I was younger, like in my early 20s, I kind of like led with a little bit more ego and talent. But when I was celibate, it allowed me to identify with other qualities of myself, like being kind or compassion or my creativity. Another reason you might consider celibacy, it gives you the time to explore other interests and platonic relationships.

6:34There's a quote in Melissa's book where she says, Time had always felt in short supply, and it began to appear that it had simply been splurging it on romance. During celibacy, she started spending more time with her friends and family. Her other relationships flourished. I was going out dancing. I went out dancing more often that year than any other year of my life. And I was also having these long, rambling phone conversations with my friends, kind of like when I was a teenager. She also got to know herself better. What she likes, what she doesn't. That I actually sometimes like to eat dinner at 11 p.m.

7:10and have a plate of, like, pickles and cheese and dried fruit, like some ancient Greek person or something. And that I actually liked to be alone a lot. But I had no idea how much alone time I needed to be happy. And I think I had needed it for years, that I'd actually been starved for it. So far, we've been talking about celibacy for folks who are single. But if you're in a romantic relationship, you can take periods of celibacy too. Melissa says those can offer a chance to reset. Even if you think about, like, if you're having technical problems in your computer, restarting it is the solution to most things, right?

7:49And that's been true in life, and it's true for a lot of people in life. Melissa is married now, and she and her wife have done this when she felt her thinking about sex was getting narrow, or she was having a lot of shoulds pop up in her mind around the topic. They'd take sex or certain parts of it off the table and focus on other kinds of physical intimacy. So these are some of the many reasons why you might consider celibacy. But yeah, let's say you're curious. You want to try it out. Takeaway two is to define what celibacy means to you. The first question to ask yourself here is what are the rules, right?

8:27What do you consider sex? Are you going to participate in any kind of romantic touch? Is kissing off the table? Masturbation? Trevor decided no sex, no romance, no masturbation. I wanted my focus to completely go somewhere else and not go to sex at all. So anything that really came under the umbrella of sex, I got rid of it. And even like romance, really for me, it was about focus. I wanted my focus to go inward instead of outward to woman. So for me, like those were my rules. Your rules might be different. During her one year celibacy, Melissa quit sex and romance, but not masturbation. She asked herself early on, is masturbation part of the problem for me?

9:11And the answer was no. The behaviors she wanted to change were ones that she exhibited with other people. My sexual relationship to myself was totally cool. I had no problem with it. It felt very healthy to me. So I do think that, you know, sex is one of those areas where people have to define abstinence for themselves. They have to really get honest about where the issue is and where it isn't. Another question to ask yourself is do you want to set a time limit? Trevor chose to be celibate for a year at the outset. I think a year is just like a cycle. And I felt like when I mentioned it to like my friends, for some reason, they thought like a year was crazy.

9:51So I felt like, okay, a year is good. A year seems like a good challenge. Melissa, on the other hand, chose three months at the start. That was as long as I could imagine not having sex. And I was trying to work with myself, you know? I knew if I picked longer than that, I probably wouldn't stick to it. Then at the three-month mark, she extended her celibacy for another three months, and then another three months. And then at nine months, she stopped setting deadlines. At that point, I was really comfortable, really happy with where I was. And I honestly had begun questioning if I would ever want to be in a relationship or have sex again.

10:24And then, you know, things got interesting. Then she met her future wife. But we'll get back to that. Her advice for you? Give yourself some sort of structure to start with. but also start modestly. Angel Suarez is a licensed marriage and family therapist and a sex therapist in New York. They have some thoughts on this too. One is that time limits might make you feel safer, but they also might stress you out. So I think based on the personality type, if you know that you need an end date or deadline for yourself to feel more in control of what's happening with you, then I think that would work.

11:00But if you actually want to just be celibate because you're feeling like, I want a more connection with an individual, and that's when I'll know if I'm going to be able to engage in sex again, then I think having a time structure will actually put more pressure into finding someone. Okay, you figured out your celibacy rules, and you're ready to get started. Takeaway three, expect some discomfort at the beginning of your celibate period. Understand that you might break your own rules. That doesn't mean you should stop. Early in your celibacy, you might be tempted to go back to the same patterns you're trying to break.

11:36This can be a really powerful urge, especially if you don't know what to do when it happens. For instance, if you've decided not to have sex or to masturbate, what do you do if you get turned on? Trevor was reading a lot of spiritual texts during his celibacy. And one idea he came across that really resonated with him is that sexual energy and creative energy can be the same. So what he did, and what he suggests you do, is expect that your body might feel cravings. But you can identify that just as like energy. And now you can ask yourself, well, where do you want to place this? It doesn't have to go to the sneaky link or it doesn't have to go to a website.

12:13Because most likely there's studies you'd like to focus on or a creative project you'd like to do or a business you want to build or whatever it may be. Maybe it's your body. You want to take up boxing lessons. Like all that energy can truly just be transferred into another activity. Here's the other thing to know. You might break your own rules. Trevor did in the first 45 days of his celibacy. He was out partying and saw someone he knew. And then we ended up having sex. And I woke up and I remember I just felt so upset with myself that I broke this vow to myself. And I was like, well, why did I break this vow?

12:49I was like, well, I was under the influence of alcohol. Which brought him to a realization. A lot of the time, he felt like he needed a drink to have sex. And I was like, well, that means you're not even really comfortable. You're not even really comfortable that you need liquor confidence to even go there with this person. So which means you're not comfortable with this experience at all, but for some reason you feel like you have to. And I didn't realize that until I was celibate. He decided to quit drinking too. Trevor says there's nothing wrong with failing at your celibacy and feeling regret.

13:19Because those broken promises to ourselves give us information. Any goal you set, you're going to stumble and fall. And I think it's just important to identify like, how did you sway? And that will teach you more about yourself. Angel Suarez asks that if you do fall short of your celibacy goals, you show yourself some grace. Really, you know, everyone else in this world sometimes is very critical of ourselves. We're growing, and so how do we act with love for ourselves when we make mistakes or we go against our value of what we're trying to work for in celibacy? All right, time for takeaway four.

13:55Appreciate the gifts that celibacy brings.

14:02One reason I think that people enjoy sex is that it can be, at its best, a moment to slow down and appreciate the sublime. To touch another person's body. Really look at it. The beauty mark they have that looks like a thousand stars exploding across their back. Or the scar they have that tells you some story about their life or the way their eyes sparkle. It's like they become a work of art and you become a work of art. And you get a chance to play and appreciate each other. It's easy to forget that there are other pathways to those sensations. When you take sex out of the picture, at least momentarily, you realize, you know, I could get really into this raspberry that I'm eating right now.

14:43That ability to slow down and marvel at things and cultivate curiosity for them and appreciate the intricate design of a raspberry or a hydrangea or my own hands, you know, or my pet. We all have the capability to sort of slow down. It is maybe the most beautiful application of our self-consciousness that we can appreciate other things. In her book, Melissa says, I had been thinking of this time as a dry season, but it had been the most fertile of my life since childhood. Another gift that celibacy offers is it can allow you to detach yourself from what other people think about your appearance.

15:26Melissa says she'd been wearing heels since she was a teenager because she's short and she thought they made pants look better on her. And by better, what I meant is they made my body look more like I had learned would attract other people slash men, even though I wasn't even trying to attract men. That was still buried in there. And buried beneath it was this belief, like, if I can't appear attractive or lovable or sexually viable to strangers, then that's a bad day. Without that pressure, she started wearing sneakers every day. She stopped wearing makeup. That doesn't mean she never wears those things now, but she feels more aware of her choices and what she actually likes and wants.

16:12Yet another gift of celibacy is that over time, Melissa learned that she could do something that once seemed impossible, saying a firm no. A warning here, we're about to talk about an instance of someone pressuring another person to have sex. Melissa was at a conference with a fellow writer who wanted to have sex with her. The writer was drunk and didn't want to take no for an answer. What Melissa might have done in the past would have been to cave and give the writer what she wanted to avoid embarrassing her. But she says in the book, I knew that the alternative was also a kind of mortification, a submission to something that would hurt me.

16:51Right up until the moment I did something different, in my mind I was like, oh no, oh no, oh no. Like, I'm definitely going to do what I've done every other time. But there was this little scrap of gumption that was like, no, we don't want to. And then the moment when I do something different feels in a way like a moment of grace, like something becomes possible that was not possible before. After a while, Melissa felt that she might be celibate forever. I really felt so fulfilled. And I thought, if being with other people is risking what I have found in my celibacy, I'm not willing to give it up.

17:30So I just sort of like stepped into the future as a celibate person. Then she met her now wife, a poet, who she started a correspondence with after loving her latest book. Their connection wasn't romantic at first, but it turned out to be. Takeaway five If you want to end your celibacy do it thoughtfully Trevor had a similar experience in that he didn't step out of celibacy until he met someone he was really interested in It really just kind of happened naturally like I just met somebody and it was through conversation I was just like I want to explore this person and I was really interested about their mind they're a very beautiful person but like I was just really interested in this person The way I'm talking about all this might make it sound easy Seamless, like a fairytale ending.

18:18It was hard. They were both afraid of what ending celibacy would mean. Trevor was afraid to have sex. Am I even going to be able to have sex? Am I even going to be good at it? There was so much fear around it. But being with someone that, one, who I told them my journey and everything, and they respected it, and then also just highly respecting this person for who they are in their mind, made it a lot easier to take that step when we did go there. And Melissa, she didn't want to lose the beautiful life she'd built or all the gifts that came with celibacy. In the book, she talks about the first time she and the poet had lunch.

18:53She was acutely aware of her attraction to the poet as they walked to a cafe. So she turned her attention to her surroundings. The trees, the people, the smell of french fries wafting through the air. I was here, in my body, in the city of Washington, D.C., walking down the sidewalk beside a tall stranger, she says. Choices. All the way. Holding onto herself within this committed relationship has required some work. She's had to find aloneness, even in the company of a loving partner, and to protect the space she built for herself without pushing her wife away. Now, no one can tell you when the right time is for you to end your celibacy.

19:35But Angel gives this rule of thumb. I definitely think that when people know they're ready is when they're making the healthiest choice for themselves. They say if you have a lot of doubts coming up, that could be a sign that you're not ready, that you have more internal work to do. One thing Trevor cautions is that we shouldn't stay in celibacy out of fear. Because you can sit in fear and then the journey is going to be doing the opposite from transformation. Now you're going to be like you've created your own prison and your own cage. And I think most people will know when they've hit that point.

20:07because at the end of the day, I think most people step into celibacy to strengthen the connection with themselves. And naturally, you're going to want to share that love that you have for yourself with somebody else.

20:26Okay, time for a recap. Takeaway one, consider your intentions. Why do you think a period of celibacy might be in order? Are there patterns you're trying to break? Are you hoping to reconnect with a partner? Journaling or making an inventory could help you figure out what you're trying to change. Takeaway two is to define what celibacy means to you. What do you consider sex? Does kissing count? What about masturbation? And do you want to set a time limit? Takeaway three, expect some discomfort at the beginning of your celibate period. Expect that you might break your own rules. That doesn't mean you should stop.

21:04Takeaway four, appreciate the many gifts that celibacy brings. And takeaway five, end your celibacy thoughtfully and when you're ready.

21:34npr.org slash life kit newsletter. Also, we love hearing from you. So if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, email us at life kit at npr.org. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our visuals editor is Back Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Garib. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tegel, Claire Marie Schneider, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Simon Laszlo Jansen. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.