Abstinence Makes the Heart...

By Disco

You decide. I have toyed with abstinence in my time. After I lost my virginity - more on that next Sunday - I abstained from sexual activity for another year and a half or so before I ventured into oral and digital sex. I did not have full on sex for more than two years after I lost my virginity.

I am currently not - by the strictest definitions - celibate. I maintain a cyber/phone sex relationship with a certain someone I am advised against maintaining a sexual relationship with - more on that another time, as well - and I have only gone about a couple weeks without physical sex.

As plainly seen by my quick reversion back to celibacy after I lost my virginity, I wish I had waited longer before I had popped my cherry. I have also had a very difficult relationship with sex since I had been molested just before losing my virginity - the combination of events and the subsequent fuck-with-your-mindedness left me feeling very, very negatively toward my sexuality. I was so afraid that someone would use me for that and not actually care about me. I thought for years that someone being sexually attracted to you was bad. I honestly thought it was an awful thing to have happen to you.

I had fantasies about finding the perfect mate who would never want to touch me, and we could go lay in a field a reasonable distance apart and stare at the stars and talk... Seriously, those were my fantasies. When I was in relationships, I thought it was falling apart if the person wanted me sexually. It wasn't the relationship I wanted. For a good while I thought I was asexual, and maybe I was. Celibacy was my dream.

I have a difficult relationship with that now. I like sex, when it's good. I like to masturbate. I like men. And women. I like it all. It has much to do with my last boyfriend who was very, very instrumental in teaching me that my sexuality is OK, and his being sexually attracted to me was an OK thing. At the beginning of our relationship, if he touched me sexually without warning me, I would burst into tears. I would break down. By the end of our relationship, he could do anything he wanted to me. I trusted him, but more importantly, I trusted myself. I trusted that I was strong enough to be a sexual person and that my sexuality was not a threat to my own happiness. It could very much be a part of my happiness and my becoming a whole person.

For these reasons, sex to me is a highly - I'm going to say - sacred thing. Not sacred as in wait until marriage, or even a serious relationship, but sacred as in only do it if it contributes to your wholeness or your happiness and always be present and in control. I think this starts in and mostly falls into the realm of masturbation - everyone should learn to please themselves to points of incredible ecstasy and learn to be a whole sexual human being alone before they begin to branch out into activity with others. That's my opinion. So, if you require moments of celibacy to fully understand what your sexual nature is and how it contributes to your identity, then I thoroughly support that.