Chase was a stand-up guy. We met for a drink after a couple of chats at a cocktail bar in East Houston. He was tall, funny, and well-dressed.
He speaks English eloquently for a native of Oskemen who self-taught himself English online.
I was drawn to him by his remarkable communication skills. Being around Chase made me feel safe and wanted. He knew how to make a woman happy.
We were going slow. I was starting to lose my guard. Even though he made it a point not to pay for any of our dates, I looked forward to seeing him every day.
But he was a busy guy and I respected that. He was a software developer and rarely dated. However, we video-chatted almost every day to make up for the lack of physical contact.
Our sex was usually planned to fit our schedules because I was busy too. Though I like spontaneity better, I still manage to get comfortable with his conscientious lifestyle.
He would stay over the night some days and make me breakfast in the morning before leaving. He made it a duty to tell me his plans ahead of time.
Then gradually our communication dwindled. His replies would come in late and sometimes he wouldn’t reply at all.
I thought something was wrong. Maybe he had an emergency that was taking his time. But whatever it was didn’t give me a good feeling.
Chase and I had been dating for two months so I had picked up on a few habits of his. But this habit of not speaking to me for three days in a row was new.
When he finally called he said he was neck-deep in an app he was developing for his client but he would be going on a camping trip with his team and would keep me posted.
That was the last time I heard from Chase. The following day I texted him to find out if he arrived at his destination safely, but I didn’t get any reply.
It took me about five weeks to accept that I had been ghosted. It sucks every time this happens. I meet a guy, we have sex a couple of times, I get all comfy with him and then boom. He disappears without warning.
Every time I get ghosted, I hate myself for letting my guard down. I go on a rebounding date to get over that obnoxious feeling. But still, after a couple of sex with different guys, my heart still wants the first guy back who led me in that cycle.
Sexual liberation may have opened doors to reproductive control and hookup culture but it did not erase the one thing everyone longs for and that is to feel wanted.
Nothing will leave you feeling less wanted than a situation where a person doesn’t stick around.
Whenever I have a boyfriend, it feels like a novelty until eventually, I get bored. More often than not, I lose interest because my perception of them didn’t line up with who they actually were.
However, when they are the ones to get bored first and disappear, I feel miserable, lonely and heartbroken.
Although most of my relationships are casual, I still expect my date to stick around much longer.
Often, people do not want to invest time in serious relationships so they date casually. Hookup culture has become so normalized that sex and intimacy are immediate expectations when two people express interest in each other.
If you fail to uphold that expectation, you will be criticized for not fulfilling their expectation — because you dare say no to sex, especially if someone else is expecting it from you?
Regardless of the number of times we want to say that we have sex “only for pleasure”, we cannot avoid emotions designed in us.
Various studies have shown that men and women have emotional damage and regret after connections. A study indicates that 72% of the students have inspected at least an earlier sexual experience.
With our hearts at stake and a lot of emotional evidence to support the facts, women choose celibacy to prevent the emotional damage they feel when their relationships fail.
Women feel the negative emotional reactions from casual sex more than men because we internalize everything.
These reactions include feelings of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, embarrassment and loss of self-respect.
Nowadays there’s so much stress around relationships and celibacy is a way to reconnect with our emotions.
I have way too much to lose now at this point in my life and I care about my health and wellbeing too much to risk it on these emotional rides of ghosting, breadcrumming and catfishing.
Hook culture and society sexualize women’s bodies and as such women are seen as instruments for pleasure. This reinforces the idea that other people are entitled to a woman’s body.
“It’s hard to find someone who wants to date and who doesn’t want you just for sex. Every time I talk to a guy, the first he wants is sex. And that’s not just a few instances, that’s every time,” says Leonor a 39-year-old Professor at Indiana University.
Immediately expecting sex from someone you’ve just started talking to is a problem within itself.
This expectation could make the sexual encounter dangerous and carry the risk of assault if the partners don’t share the same ideas.
I see celibacy as a way of expressing my vulnerability — to communicate and voice out my desire if my partner is not satisfying me the way I want to, instead of reserving my opinion to avoid hurting the person.
This doesn’t mean that I’m necessarily looking for long-term commitments. Rather a sexual connection that is fun, responsive and reciprocal, even if it’s for a short time. Being in such a company is much more exciting than simply breaking a dry spell.
In the past, I have used sex as a form of validation, or to make myself feel good I’m heartbroken. Sex is like a drug. It can act like an emotional bandaid and you can easily become attached to it, which can affect the quality of your life.
I would prefer to see sex as a bonus to already feeling good, rather than rely on it to fix any negative emotions I may be feeling towards other things in my life.
Although this period will be temporary, as someone who loves sex and physical intimacy, celibacy has been essential in helping me get what I want out of future sexual relationships.
I gained more space to consider my own goals when I went celibate. Making progress with building my own life as a single woman has been far more fulfilling.
Celibacy has helped me find my self-confidence and realize that I really have control of my own body. By abstaining from sex, I feel much more safe in my decisions about my love life.
More women are using celibacy as a tool for their emotional well-being. When we consider the fact that most men are self-centred with their sexual needs and the hookup culture is often non-committal, it’s easy to see why celibacy is higher among women.
“When I abstain, as someone that wants to build a lasting relationship, I feel liberated,” says Isabella, 34, a single mother of two.
Celibacy can be a helpful option to people and support them in feeling in control. You’re taking charge of where you are, how you want to conduct yourself, and how you’d like things to be.
It can be a healthy way to go about relationships. Young women can often find it empowering to put their own boundaries in place, boundaries that feel comfortable to them.
Young women use celibacy to regain something they lost, rather than missing the experience.
While the sexual liberation movement portrayed sex as a means of empowerment for women, the realities of hookup culture have actually left many young people feeling disempowered.
Our culture indoctrinate women into giving men what they want while disregarding their own feelings. Women are hypersexualized through porn, the media and television, hence the movement of casual sex was created for the sole benefit of men.
“I’m personally sick and tired of hookup culture. It’s unhealthy mentally and physically, and we start to lose the true value of sex by normalizing it so much,” u/Valkyrie1313 commented on Reddit.
“I’m tired of wasting my time and energy on totally meaningless connections.” She continued.
Women are approaching abstinence as a way to spend time learning to pleasure themselves. While some women say they’re taking a break from sex to look deeply for a serious romantic connection, others are completely opting out of dating.
Furthermore, reproduction rights are increasingly threatened because of the abortion ban in many parts of the world, while a number of women have faced legal punishment for undergoing abortions.
The 4B movement, in which women are rejecting heterosexual relationships is spreading across countries and survivors of traumatic events are using celibacy to recover.
Others are celibate to see if it provides an answer to the modern dating scene they’re so fatigued by — whether the goal is still to meet a partner, or to shift focus towards a life lived single, celibacy has given women true liberation.
Some think celibacy implies restraint, but I’m not restraining myself. I have no urge to share myself with anyone until I have an emotional connection with them.
Instead of maintaining the false pretence that causal sex is cool, we can now openly acknowledge the complicated feelings we experience.
I don’t have the pressure of sleeping with someone to see if we are compatible or not. It feels good to have some personal boundaries about this.
Knowing that sex isn’t on the table makes things a lot easier for me to decide if I’m bringing my date home. I leave it at a kiss and put some distance between me and them sexually.
My unintentional abstinence from sex has led me to be more discerning about the few opportunities sex has offered me.
I understand now that I was chasing sexual connection solely for momentary attention and as a means to regulate my self-esteem. Inevitably, it left me severely lacking emotional connection or self-confidence.
I know now that having many sexual partners doesn’t mean you know what you’re looking for sexually. In some ways, this period of abstinence has taught me more about intimacy than the sex itself.
Celibacy can be a very sensitive topic for some people. But I think it’s important that we have these conversations earlier on in the relationship to help each party know what to expect from the other.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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