On Celibacy

So, at this point, I think you all know how much my dating life has sucked hard. So hard. Harder than you'd think anything could suck.

I hope you've read all about The Asshole. If you've been around since the beginning, you've seen me go through 2 fairly traumatic breakups. I'm worn down. I'm done.

I just don't want to think about dating or the potential for dating or even sex with someone else.

As I was typing, I almost wrote, sex with another human being, but I think that made it seem like I'm willing to have sex with animals or extra terrestrials. But I am here to say that not only am I not willing to defile a sweet animal (or even one not so sweet) (I mean, fuck, I'm not in a fraternity or anything.) (just kidding. I know there are no sheep in hazing rituals.) (there aren't right? RIGHT?), but an alien is just crossing a line. Even a girl like me has to have standards.

Anywayyyyyyy, in an effort to regroup, I have decided to be celibate for 90 days. No dating. No kissing. No sex.

Of course my vibrators can stay. Of course.

Yours truly is currently celibate.

I am actually really excited about this. No more wondering when I'm going to meet someone nice. No more sifting through potential love interests. No more. At least for a while.

Instead, I am taking myself out of the game. Without worrying about dating, I can really focus on me. Figure out what it is I'm doing. Refocus what it is I want and who I am in the process.

Meet people without the scent of sex and dating tinging everything. Imagine that? Interactions sans any sort of sexual undertones. Friendship sans any of the judgments one makes in selecting potential mates.

I have to say, the amount of pressure lifted off of me already has been incredible! Truly relieving.

I know it's not the 18th century. I know women aren't property to be traded any longer (well, I think marriage is still about that and the slave trade is still alive), but it's not fucking Jane Austen any more. A woman of 25 isn't a burden on her parents. Isn't an old maid, doomed to a life of poverty or insanity or both. We've come a long way since 1965. Snort.

But hell if it doesn't sometimes feel like it. Hell if those cultural underpinings aren't still driving our society. Hell if isn't hard to be a single gal getting older every year (which, by the by, I enjoy doing. getting older that is) without any real prospect of love. Without ever having any success in the dating department.

I have said this before, but I am so fucking sick of the judgment. The assumption that there must be something wrong with me. I get this A LOT: You're single? But you're so pretty. As if being pretty has anything to do with cultivating a healthy relationship. As if this is 1857. Because if you're pretty and single, there must be something else fundamentally wrong.

Well fuck that.

I've heard concern for my "lifestyle." As if because I'm okay with just being me and make jokes about being an eternal cat lady, then I'm shunning love and connection.

But it's not that simple. Life never works out quite the way you plan when you're a teenager. As life goes on and things look differently than you'd anticipated, you make jokes. Being flexible with life is the only way to survive it.

What I'd like to see is more tolerance for the myriad life paths we find ourselves on.

I get this kind of thing all the time. I hear that I am not working hard enough to find love. To get a relationship. To make a family. My time is running out, you know. Every year will get harder and harder to find a decent man.

Well fuck that. Every year since I was 15 has been damn hard to find a decent man. And I am fucking sick of the constant questions about my relationship status. The constant efforts to make my life "right."

Don't get me wrong. I do want love. I do want a relationship. A family one day. But I want it to happen naturally and all this pressure isn't helping the process and isn't helping my psyche.

So I've relieved the pressure. Just for a finite amount of time. Where I can just live and be me and worry about my life without that ever-present reminder of that one deficiency in my life which everyone seems to find so goddamned important. Because of all that pressure, I begin to believe it. Begin to think there's something wrong with me because I'm single. Alone. Indefinitely.

Maybe I can remind the world (and myself) of my worth as a human being. A single woman alone in the world. I have many amazing qualities which, despite never being fully appreciated by a romantic partner, can be appreciated by many others and, of course, myself. I need to learn to appreciate myself again.

Wish me luck! I'll keep you all up to date with how it's going of course.

And hell, if I reach 90 days and really like it, maybe I'll just keep going.