Do you really want to give up sex?
A series of sexual encounters have failed to delver anything of more lasting substance. So what do you do? Well, when someone suggests a period of celibacy one frustrated girl feels that it might just be worth a try. So what does she end up thinking about – all the time?
Anne Sexton, 14 Jul 2010
My friend Ciara decided to give up sex. Not permanently, of course, just temporarily.
Although her last few encounters with men had been satisfying sexually, Ciara didn't think she was getting what she wanted from them emotionally or psychologically. It would have been easy to blame the men for this, but Ciara didn't think that they were necessarily at fault. The real issue, she realised, was that she hadn't a clue what she wanted in the first place, so she was hardly in a position to give out about the perfidy or insensitivity of her chosen suitors.
We were sitting in a coffee shop – lattes for them, green tea for me – when Jim suggested abstinence.
Abstinence has many fans, normally of the religious and/or conservative persuasion so you could say I was more than a little surprised that Jim was one of them, seeing as he is neither. I looked to see if his tongue was in his cheek, but there was no sign of it.
Abstinence has been suggested for many reasons. It is believed that freeing yourself from sexual desire allows the mind to concentrate on higher, more spiritual topics; that refraining from sex until marriage makes for stronger, more intimate relationships; and that sex before a match saps a sport star's vitality.
I don't know if any of these things are true. What I did know is that from what she had said, Ciara wasn't searching for God, a husband or the winning goal. Her ambitions were far more mundane – to figure out what she wanted from relationships. Or so she claimed; I suspected what she was really after was to find some deeper meaning in life, but that's a much harder quest.
"Maybe you could do with a little time out; avoid men until you decide what you want and then make sure you're going to get it before you get sexually involved," said Jim.
"Abstinence?" asked Ciara, horrified, and then turned to me. "What do you think?"
I shrugged my shoulders. Ciara had made some bad choices with her sexual partners – as most of us have from time to time – but the notion that avoiding sex for a prescribed period of time would make her choices any better was speculative at best.
Page 1/4 <Previous 1 2 3 4 Next>
©Hot Press 2011. Why be a member? | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy