The Case for (Temporary) Celibacy
In his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul issues one of Christianity’s better-known if lesser-observed dictates: It’s best to remain unmarried, full stop. But, he continues, if people “cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”
The message was clear: Celibacy is best; marriage is a concession. But as the centuries progressed this hierarchy collapsed, first in Christianity and then in the broader secular world. Now some form of committed sexual monogamy is the norm and “celibacy” has become largely associated in the news with unhappy men on Reddit who think they can’t get a girlfriend because they’re too short.
It’s quite a comedown.
Yet celibacy — by which I mean deliberately going without sex — persistently returns to the public conversation. When the dating app Bumble recently ran cheeky ads admonishing women with the line “Thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun,” the company might have expected to rile only a handful of traditional Catholics, but instead it angered its user base and was forced to apologize. Lenny Kravitz just announced his own sexual abstinence, and Julia Fox’s recent boast of celibacy as a way to “take back the control” recalled a similar statement from Lady Gaga in 2010, when she announced that periods of celibacy allowed her to be “strong and independent.”
If I search TikTok today for “celibacy,” the videos — mostly, though not exclusively, by heterosexual women — form a resonant chorus: Why have sex if the sex is usually bad? Why have sex with people who don’t respect you? Why not walk away until somebody can make it worth your while? Much of the current vogue for celibacy is not driven by a desire to discipline the flesh but by disgust with the digital-age dating scene.
As a Catholic who generally tries — though not always very hard — to follow the church’s rules about sex, I’ve watched celibacy’s occasional quasi popularity with some amusement. (The Catholic term for not having sex is continence, incidentally; celibacy means remaining unmarried.) But I also get it: Sexual celibacy can have the same superficial allure as other ascetic lifestyles. The Quakers adopted simple, unornamented clothing to resist the world and its vanities; I can now have the modern-day equivalent shipped to my door from Everlane.
Yet I do believe that celibacy, as a discreet spiritual practice, has something to offer. When we abstain from drinking for a month without committing to full-time sobriety, we call it Dry January — a practice that’s become increasingly popular. We might consider embracing a similarly measured approach to sexual abstinence: Call it Dry Spell July.
