Celibacy: The Pros and Cons of a Celibate Lifestyle
The Cheese Stands Alone
There's something to be said for a celibate lifestyle, after all.
I know, I know--we associate celibacy with priests, or weirdness, or a signal lack of sexual fulfillment that makes us very grumpy , or a socially maladaptive personality that can't hold a relationship together. Most of the adult world walks around in pairs. A celibate person is looked upon as anti-social, or gay and in denial about it, or something.
Not me, not anymore. Now I'm the Number One Fan of a celibate lifestyle.
I was married, then got divorced. i started dating again, after a while. Omigod! I tried out the bars--the men I met in bars just seemed to want sex, now, tonight, without getting to know the person attached to the body at all. I could've been an inflatable doll, for all they cared. It was just no good.
I tried out a dating service. A couple of those dates really turned into a farce. One guy told me he went to a single-parent support group to pick up women, even though he didn't have a child. It was all too pathetic, or laughable, depending on one's mood...I had the thought, even then, that celibacy would be preferable to THIS!
I knew some men through work, but the good ones were married and I wasn't about to interfere with that situation, and the ones that weren't married--well, I could see why not. They could be very difficult to deal with. Or, they were too young for me.
Practically all my women friends were married. I was sad and hurt to see it, but they shied away from me after my divorce. I think they now viewed me as the competition, and weren't comfortable socializing with me as a single person. Married women are threatened by single women. I wish I could wear a sign today, and let all the married women out there know, I'm no threat at all. I've adopted a celibate lifestyle! Maybe then some of my married friends would come back to me. I miss them.
Men have been sexually attracted to me since I was a teenager. I'm fairly secure (or sometimes indifferent to) my sexual attractiveness to men. I didn't need reassurance on that point. What I needed and missed the most was simply companionship. I was lonely and missed having a man around; having a man in my life; having a man to love. I still miss that, even after having been celibate for many years.
I missed the social life I had as a married woman. Couples got together over a weekend in August and splashed around in somebody's pool; or we'd get together and play Liar's Poker and drink lime vodka or something. The women could have a girl's night out. I did seem as though I lost a lot of friends through my divorce. It hardly seemed fair--he didn't lose his friends. I'm still not too sure I understand it.
So my social life fell into the toilet. I'm naturally a pretty outgoing person. I missed it.
My work engrossed me during the week. I had worked my way up to more and more responsibility at work, so I was very busy during the week, preparing for presentations to the Board of Directors and sometimes travelling to conferences. They downsized at work right around this time and got rid of their info-tech person, and shifted those responsibilities to my desk. So I became the informal info tech person in addition to being the Finance Manager. It got to be quite hectic, though I didn't mind, really. It gave me a new challenge (I had very little formal training in info-tech, and what I had was old) and new problems to solve. It kept the lonelies away and helped me not to dwell overmuch on my personal situation.
After a while, I had a two-year live-in relationship with an Irishman from Dublin. He was an ex-pat working for Xerox, here on an L-2 visa. He brought a girl home with him one night and had sex with her in our spare room while I was sleeping in our bed! Bold thing, he was. Charming but absolutely unreliable.
I had a one-year not-quite-live-in off and on relationship with a man who owned a State Farm insurance agency, after that. He wanted us to join another couple for a foursome, and I was just not comfortable with that idea. He pouted and persisted so, when it was obvious the topic distressed me. He really wanted to re-visit his swingin' youth. I just let him go, finally. He wanted me for sexual insurance. He wanted me sitting in his back pocket while he pretended to be a teenager again, hitting all the bars, picking up women.
I'm not judging him. I really liked this guy as a person, most of the time. I understood where he was coming from. He was widowed after being married 25 years, and his poor wife died from MS. He was still recovering from her death and was wild and crazy for a while. We parted with very few hard feelings.
So now I'm just me, by myself. I got comfortable with that over time. It's been four years since I've dated anyone. I'm not looking, either. The decision to remain celibate is now a conscious choice. Celibacy is the right choice for me.
I discovered that some freedoms come with celibacy and a solitary life.
- I have control over the remote to the TV. As a matter of fact, I can have it OFF if I want.
- I get to see the movies I want to see.
- I cook only when I feel like it; I eat what I feel like eating. The downside is--I'm eating alone most of the time, but hey--I found I can live with that.
- I can take a walk whenever I want. I like walking alone because I don't have to match my pace to anyone else's and I can stop and look at whatever I want to look at.
- There's so much less noise; in my head, in the air, in my life. it's QUIET!
- I'm only running my own errands, not three other people's.
- I'm only doing my own laundry, not three other people's. It seemed when I was married I was doing laundry ALL the time. Now it's down to once a week.
- I definitely have more time. Too much time, sometimes, but I'm learning what to do with it--how to use the time constructively to developed my own talents, resources, hobbies and enthusiasms. Instead of trailing after my husband and adopting his interests, I get to developed my own.
- I can get more exercise. I hike and cross-country ski now. My husband discouraged me with his lack of interest in coming with me in those sports. Now I get out there more--a lot more.
- I can go dancing! How I love dancing! My husband just didn't dance.
- I can read a book solidly all the way through without being interrupted. How I love this. No disruptions. Such peace.
Looking this list over, it seems pretty selfish to me. So selfish that it's tweaked or warped or something, maybe.
I'm alone and I'm Number One to me and I'm happy that way.
It sounds awful, stated baldly like that, doesn't it?
Maybe it's still all right. Maybe I came in last on my own list of people to consider and care about when I was married and a stepmom, for too long. So many years putting everyone else first; considering everyone else's needs before my own, make this solitary life a big thrill for me now. I think I'm making up for some lost time, some lost ME time, with my celibate lifestyle.
Do I Miss My Bad Boys?
Well, to be honest, sometimes. How could I not and still be human? Would I trade the lone-cheese life in for a new relationship?
No. Really. Not.
If you want MORE, click HERE:
- Sex and the Baby Boomers: Free Love
Sex and the Baby Boomers--if you're a baby boomer, you know how sexy we were; how much we freed up sex and love. Are we still sexy today? - Sex and the American Teen
Sex and the American Teenager: American teenagers are having sex like crazy, and a lot of it is unprotected, according to some recent statistics for underage pregnancies and underage sexually transmitted diseases. - Drug and Alcohol Abuse and the Creative Artist
Drug and Alcohol Abuse and the Creative Artist--so many of our heroes in the arts were individuals with substance abuse or alcohol abuse problems. People like Johnny Depp, Charles Dickens, and Beethoven all had problems with alcohol abuse, amongst ma