How difficult is it to use the vernacular of the truly rooted Christian life when it just isn't popular or sexy? Like, not even to yourself. No matter how good all of these words might be -- or rather, no matter how good the life is that these words point to, they just aren't hip or fun or clothed in the rampant sensuality our world is clinging desperately to at the moment. And they aren't helping you find the authentic, sexual part of yourself, because ugh... male privilege hiding in said Christianity and everything it represents repressing female sexuality, blah blah blah. So you try and change your perspective, or your language, or both...
For me, language and perspective are inextricably linked so I have no choice but to change both. That means opening up my celibacy for conversation again and lately I've realized that I don't talk about this or share it or have open discussions about it like I once did; the subject matter is both too personal and too sexual and too religious all at the same time, and no one really wants to have these discussions so I have learned to tiptoe around it and talk about it in short and funny terms, if at all, or sometimes in very intellectual and cerebral terms that leave it safely clinical.
So if you don't think you can handle a fully honest read about sex/God/health et cetera, I suggest that you just stop reading. Also, I suppose I should include a trigger warning for anyone with experiences of sex in a violent or unwanted fashion. So, even though I still believe sex is and/or should be healthy and wonderful, it often isn't (and certainly was not in my case, as I'll share) because it
is the most common form of manipulation currently being employed in the world,
in my opinion and studies bear out my opinion pretty sufficiently. Rape, sexual assault and abuse
are rampant, and because this is a difficult thing to discuss (super difficult for
women, almost impossible for men) the situation doesn't change. It is used as a form of warfare in conflict
torn countries, and it runs across socioeconomic lines and leaves silent
damage in its wake even in the most “normal” families here in affluent North America. It changes people and how they interact with
one another forever.
As a form of
childhood trauma it rivals cancer because of the inner damage it does for which there are no protocols or treatments. It is the saddest thing in the world to me that one of the most creative and sensual forms of human interaction is also the most corrupted. There is no cure and no quick fix for the
damage that is caused by rape or sexual abuse. What's necessary is to normalize it, partly because that damage can become something beautiful. This means talking about it because, the thing is, rape and sexual violence don't take place in a
vacuum. They happen right in the middle
of our lives. Sometimes really boring
mundane shit is happening right alongside it.
That is one of the reasons it can hide in plain sight.
I just don't think it is going to get any
better until we talk about it. Until we have open and unfiltered conversations about it. (*Editor's note - I wrote this long before the #metoo movement. The conversations and the potential paradigm shift we are experiencing still seemed light years away) When we realize how many millions of people
it is happening to there just might be a way for us to stop thinking of
ourselves as outside of the norm. Sadly,
but empoweringly enough, it is the norm. I think once you get to that realization it is so much easier to put the thing down and walk forward into your life without it weighing you down. Talking about it as a society just helps people put it in context instead of compartmentalizing it within the rest of your life like it is a separate entity. More later about why compartmentalizing can be debilitating.
So...how and why did I stop having sex??
Just to be clear - I am a very sexual/physical person. Just because I stopped having sex does not mean I still don't relate to situations/people from that perspective. I have a pretty healthy attitude towards sex in that I believe very strongly it is a natural and good thing to do. As a person of faith, I believe that God created our sexuality and the sexual bits that go into making it a totally fantastic experience. He didn't just make our bodies with the right equipment to have sex, He also made our nerves to experience pleasure from the situation and he gave us imaginations and a very tactile character so that it would be a dynamic thing to do. It's not just a minimal biological function.
I also believe that the act of sex is, and should be, an ongoing conversation between two people which ensures that you never stop learning about one another, and that the conversation should be satisfying and fearless.
Because I feel that way one of the hardest choices I've ever made was to go without this very natural, expressive and delightful act - for over 20 years. The question is, why? Actually the questions are myriad. Why did I make this choice? What has happened in the meantime and what do I want to do now? I am still processing all of these questions and have had to go way back to retrieve some memories and try to make friends with them in order to own my truth and be more authentic as a woman in my prime. Mhmm.
Like many women (1 in 4, although some say the ratio is closer to 1 in 3 because of how many remain unreported) my first experience was rape. I was 14 years old and the 17 year old I was dating decided that it was time. Oh, and the only reason in his mind for not really giving a shit if I was okay with it was because he assumed that all girls were just a little concerned with how much it was going to hurt so he'd just get that over with as a favour to me.
To this day I don't really believe I was especially traumatized by this interaction, but for clarification I will say that, while there are four groups of peoples that are in danger of developing PTSD, it is rape victims that have the highest degree - 93% of them - of developing it. It is a violence done to your own personage in such an intimate way that it doesn't have to be multiple times or particularly brutal to be traumatizing, so it could have traumatized me, but in this instance it's just that I was 14 and pretty nonchalant as most teenagers are. I was more disgusted than upset and I can safely say that while it coloured and informed my view of the male/female dynamic as well as making me very wary in any physical situation with men, it was not actually traumatizing in the clinical sense. It was very brief and I remember being in the bathroom cleaning myself up afterwards and thinking, so that's it, that was all about him and not about me for a minute (er, actually less than a minute). Where was his self-control??? I despised and disrespected that he hadn't had any. Subconsciously at first, from that point on I think I did everything I could to learn how to be in the driver's seat where a man was concerned, even though that is not particularly satisfying. I've only recently realized that I am looking for something a little different, but I won't delve too deeply in this post as it's a little tricky and may seem contradictory in this context. Just understand that if your sexual paradigm was impacted by rape or assault, there is nothing wrong with you in terms of how you react to sex or live out your sexual appetites so long as it does not hurt another person.
However, anyone that has experienced sexual assault or a sex act against their entire will is going to have to come to terms with it at some point because, even if you have a different level of trauma than someone else, you have still been affected at your deepest core and it will come out of you as the need to be healed gets the better of you.
The other thing is that I just had no idea I'd been raped, and it wouldn't be the last time. I mean that quite honestly. I didn't feel the need to tell my parents (not that I told them anything anyway, no matter how traumatic it was, but this didn't even warrant a thought in that direction) nor do I believe I shared this info with a girlfriend. They wouldn't have said much. The most I would have gotten out of telling a friend would've been that it was unfortunate my first experience having sex was rushed and crappy. Aaaand this is how millions of women have experienced rape over the millennia. No fanfare, no assault reports, no uproar or outrage from our loved ones or the world around us. Just silently and with an uneasy acceptance that this was our lot as women in this world. In particular, "date rape" was not in our vocabulary in the 1970s, it hadn't entered the lexicon yet, nor did anyone talk about sexual assault.
I didn't have a word for it until I was about 28 or 29. I was out at the bar one night and a friend from college was there as well. He asked if I wanted to leave the bar and go for a walk by the water instead. I did, and eventually we found ourselves talking about sex. I think I told him I'd recently decided to become celibate and he wanted to know my sexual background as well as trying to figure out if he could perhaps talk me out of it, even for one night, lol. I was talking about my first time like it was just a bit of nothing (which it still was to me) and he stopped me and put his arms on my shoulders and said, "Wait a minute. You are saying that he raped you!" I was totally taken aback. I started to say, "No, no. It wasn't like that." He shook his head and said, "Um, did you want to have sex with him?" "Well, no." "Did you ask him to stop?" "Yes, I yelled it repeatedly."
"You. Were. Raped."
"Oh."
Yes. The irony of a man having to be the one to tell me that I'd been raped. He was appalled and I had a lot to think about.
So... I chose not to "go all the way" again until I was about 18. This experience was unheated and unrushed; more like a tutorial. I was grateful though, and it gave me a little more breathing room from which to explore sex.
Or it should have... that breathing room didn't last because right after that I ended up living with a man who was violent and damaged and unpredictable; it lasted for about a year and a half. This is another area of my life that I don't like to look at but that has had profound ramifications right to this very day. So very frustrating. I am currently trying to exorcise this particular demon once and for all because it is probably at the core of every emotional/relational mistake and dysfunction that I have.
I don't exactly remember having sex with this man, because I shoved all of those memories far from my conscious mind, but I imagine that I thought the sex was good at first because I thought I was in love, (I was not, I was just happy to be out of my parent's house) but it very quickly became a way to make sure that everything stayed non-violent and that he would just go to sleep and whatever situation was escalating would stop. It was, I guess, a voluntary violation each night to avoid even more unpleasantries. It was a way of thinking that I was in control, but it was self-denying and soul crushing.
Eventually I got out. Getting out was extremely complicated. I believed I was responsible for his reactions because I left him and he was wounded. Leaving catapulted him into a full blown psychotic break and he responded by stalking me for almost a year. I was trapped in my house because I was followed everywhere, threatened all day, every day. The phone rang over a hundred times a day and with it came messages of menace and threats as well as begging and pleading and attempted negotiating. I would wait till after 1 or 2 in the morning when I knew he had finally fallen asleep wherever he was and go out and walk around the city by myself for hours just to find a way to breathe and be alone with my thoughts. Well... just to be alone, period. He tried to kill himself several times - showing up at my door, cutting his wrists open with a knife in front of me, calling me as he was overdosing, as well as threatening my life and the lives of whoever I was interacting with. He was a never ending, malignant presence and I began to shut down until I barely functioned. I froze people out of my life. I couldn't even let my own mother hug me and I know this was very hurtful to her, but I felt like I was going to explode if even one more person wanted or needed something from me. I started to experience super wild mood swings from numbness to rage which were exhausting and confusing. Basically, nothing about that time is good and it changed me and my ability to interact within a relationship dynamic forever.
Oddly enough it was my dad who helped me break free of this man. As I said, I had thought it was my responsibility to keep him sane and safe even though he was making my life a living hell. Call it the learned reality that women look after things. My dad was not given to handing out advice or talking to me about anything personal or that involved feelings, but one day, after watching me field the 50th call that day, he took me aside and said, "I know this will seem counter-intuitive because you think you are helping him, but what he is taking from the fact that you engage him and talk to him every time he is falling apart is that you still care, and that there is still a chance that you will take him back. It is never going to stop until you simply cut him off. You have to rip off the band-aid. It might be a cliche, but sometimes you really do have to be cruel to be kind." Truer words have never been spoken and, even though it didn't happen overnight, eventually the phone calls slowed down, the times I was followed and threatened became sporadic rather than constant and then, one day, it just stopped.
That is my best stab at explaining that. It is almost impossible to relay what it feels like to be stalked and have your freedom hampered by another individual and, truthfully, I just don't like to put myself back there emotionally in a way that would allow me to verbalize it more thoroughly. It is new to me to even talk about this whole segment of my past because after finally getting some much needed therapy from the Victoria Sexual Assault Centre a couple of years ago (I am giving them a plug here because I'm hoping that any women reading this who have yet to deal with their issues might know there is a amazing resource to go to when and if you are ready to heal) I learned that I had suppressed most of this and that I had no idea I was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress or what to do about it. Not to mention that if you had tried to label what I was going through at the time, I would not have listened or believed anything about it anyway, in fact, it is still repugnant to me that I have to deal with a mental illness because control was taken away from me by someone I just wanted to be free from.
Anyway... I hit 19 and I hit the bar scene. It was the early 80s and everything was done to excess. I was finally free, in body at least, and it was exhilarating.
At this point sex became liberating instead of the opposite, as good sex does, particularly when you are not self-conscious and particularly when you are the one in control of your choices. I had sex in elevators and on roof tops and in church parking lots because I could. I had lots of one night stands and also several lovers that I kept for years. Maybe one day I'll write a post about how to have/keep a lover because there is an art and a finesse to it that seems to be escaping people nowadays in amongst the constant need for gamesmanship and forced nonchalance. I was not promiscuous in the same way that many of my friends were back in the day, because I was/am only attracted to one person at a time. If I had a one night stand, I wouldn't be able to have another one for quite a while. If I was with a lover or a friend with benefits, I could not turn around and be with someone the next night or the next week or whatever. The hidden reason that having a lover worked for me and not a boyfriend was that there is a supposed freedom to be with other people. It's just that my choice was to remain faithful to the one lover I had even though I would never have told them that. So even though I am wired to only be engaged physically by one man at a time I had no problem with the fact that they were with other women because it stopped them from believing that they had any ownership over me, which at the time was of paramount importance to me although I didn't really understand why. I didn't elect to use my freedom, but it was/is important to me to believe that I have it.
I have never cheated on anyone because I feel a profound loyalty to anyone I am intimate with even to the smallest degree. Well, also anyone I care about in any way. Unfortunately I still wasn't developing any trust or respect, I guess, for men in general. It was too easy, there was no thought or emotion in it and I just didn't want any of them getting that close. I think I was maybe 26 when I finally let someone call me their girlfriend. I was not a good girlfriend. I was constantly on the verge of making the situation explode and probably made them feel insecure about how well they were doing in the relationship. Somehow, miraculously, most of these men have remained my friends even though the 6 month mark was all I could ever make it to in a committed relationship dynamic. This is most definitely the part that living with the psycho retarded in me because the thing is, when I finally got free of him, I just didn't look back at that part of my life. I closed the door emotionally and mentally and pretty much acted and pretended that it had never happened. I completely compartmentalized it and tucked it away in what I thought was a safe place, having no idea that it was simply a ticking time bomb in my brain. What was happening was that each time someone got close enough to me to make a difference in my life, I was paralyzed by a sense of claustrophobia so intense I just couldn't breathe or respond like I wanted to. Instead I just panicked and left the situation without examining why this was the case.
I was about 28 when the the idea of just not having sex anymore entered my head. I was extremely comfortable with who I was sexually and physically as it was my primary method (read only method) of expressing my emotions inside of a male/female dynamic. I am, or was, an extremely passionate person so when I express something in that way it can be very misleading to say the least. And at the time I didn't see a reason to restrain anything I might be feeling, even if it had nothing to do with the person I was physically with (this was true more often than I'd like to acknowledge).
It dawned on me that the situation was this: when I first got to know a man, I was all about the talking. Exploration of any kind is intriguing and exciting to me. Then, we'd have sex and it's almost like a part of my brain would think, "This is what you have been after so now this is all you get." (I have to acknowledge here that this would be the effect of having my first sexual experience be a non-consensual one, most likely) No talking, no explaining, and no warning when it was over for us. When I was done it was done so fast that it left them completely in the dark because I was only capable of processing what was happening to me emotionally in my own head and never out loud. I remember wanting to let them know what was happening, or thinking I should, but I just freeze verbally if I am being sexual. Everything I had previously felt about them would just be gone (sometimes immediately, sometimes after a few months) as I became numb from the inner battle that I had no real idea I was fighting. This is super confusing when you've been nothing but warm and responsive physically and then are saying coldly, I'm finished with this. I spent quite a bit of time apologizing to exes when this realization hit. Again, shocking that they are still my friends.
So I began to think that I should spend some time retreating from sexual situations and focus on maybe even being in love before I had sex again.
This lasted for about a year and a half.
That's when I realized that my faith needed to play a role in how I was managing this part of my life. I fully believe that God wants you to have good things in your life, but it's part of my faith that He also knows you better than you know yourself, and He knows if you are being self-harming and lying to yourself about the things that make you temporarily happy versus giving you peace and joy, which so far exceed happiness as to be ridiculous. As the apostle Paul said, "All things are permissible for me, but not all things are beneficial." This means that sex is good and natural, but if you are not doing it in a healthy way, for both yourself and those you interact with, then you need to take a step back from it. Same goes for food and eating or drinking and drug abuse or whatever else we indulge in to fill a hole and not look at ourselves and our intentions honestly.
For the first 10 years of my celibacy I tried to keep to my new values and boundaries while dating and putting myself in normal relational situations. These were all doomed to failure. Each one started out pretty much the same way. "Oh, you haven't had sex in how long? That's fascinating. (There's a word I came to recognize as a red flag) How do you manage? How far will you go? Do you masturbate? I kid you not, every single man is interested in how he is being replaced. I do, btw, but it is not anything like being with a man. It is a counterfeit and is not truly satisfying. In the end it really only makes you want that thing that it is a place holder for. Don't get me wrong - ladies should learn about their bodies and how they work so that they can communicate this to their partners, it's just not a good substitute for intimacy, for me at least, and doesn't make up for that lovely component that only a man provides, at least in my hetero sex paradigm.
After initially being fascinated by my stance and expressing their respect for it, the inevitable contest would begin and it would ultimately implode and so I just retreated from the whole man/woman world and stopped even trying to date. Saying you are sexually unavailable to a man is akin to painting a target directly on your vagina. This is not something most women understand. I would not really think much of it if a man told me that he hadn't had sex for a super long period of time. It would not make him sexier or less sexy. It would just be a fact. I know men like a challenge so I guess it is just in their nature? Basically, this is one of things I am trying to work out right now because in my head, every time I had to tell a different man I hadn't had sex in X amount of years, I would be thinking, "Well, I am sure this will be the un-sexiest thing he has ever heard. I used to think that they would just be like, "That's weird," and walk away. That is not ever the reaction that I got and I am not usually dense about things, but no matter how many times the same scenario with the same reaction was played out, I still thought it would turn out differently. That it would be a huge turn off. This might be one of the reasons I don't talk about it anymore; I still think it would sound ridiculous and yet, I am assured that men would still primarily respond the same way. I just don't want that to be a thing anymore so I don't talk about it.
Back to the linear journey - as expressed in an earlier post, I then got totally out of shape and, well, 20 years older, so I stopped thinking of myself in any sexual terms that I was comfortable with. If I didn't want to look at myself naked, why would any man? In other words, this whole thing became a cerebral concept exercised in a vacuum; just an intellectual exercise.
I believe that all of the reasons I stopped having sex outside of marriage were completely valid at that time in my life. I don't regret any of this, truly. For me, the idea of waiting till I was with a husband was very multi-layered and one that worked for me for a really long time. However, it is the one thing that I am now weighing the merit of.
First of all, for myself anyway, I grew up in a time of history when it was still fairly common that people were waiting, or at least still saying they were waiting, wink, wink, till they were married to have sex. The sexual revolution had not completely filtered its way into small town, conservative places like the one I was raised in.
Once upon a time, there was this lovely balance that took place between a man and a woman. A man gave her his name. Which was everything. It was who he was and what he was. It was his honour and his history and his legacy.
A woman gave a man her body and her unsullied reputation. These were gifts between each other and there was equal respect for what was being given. At least that is the myth that I was raised on.
A topic perhaps for another post but there are many different rationales; philosophically, physically, socially, and spiritually that I based this decision on that I still believe are valid which is why I am struggling with whether or not to leave the course or continue on with it.
Regardless of how you look at sex; whether you are someone who views it as something compellingly deep and personal, or just a fun night of getting some strange, it is a pretty intimate act and you are exchanging knowledge of yourself with another human being, even if you aren't doing it on purpose. It is like mixing sugar and sand.
The thing is, I miss being intimate. Physically, mentally, emotionally, et cetera. It's the details of it all that I'm missing, I think.
But here's the catch-22. I have not truly been able to find out if I know how to be physical and stay authentic with someone emotionally instead of shutting down because I stopped putting myself in any situations that would teach me anything new and now I won't know until I try. I have also realized that the psychological harms from being with someone who tried to control my life have made marriage seem very hard and very confining and I don't know if I will ever be able to commit to it. It seems unlikely because, in addition to just not ever learning how to stay in a relationship, I then proceeded to raise a child and, the minute she was out of the house, I basically became a caregiver to my mother. Time alone is now an amazing gift to me and the last thing I think I will be able to handle is another person in my space in a significant way. I could be wrong. And not for nothing, but I like being single. I am a free agent and I come and go as I please. It is familiar to me and I enjoy it. It's what I know. I may have been waiting to have sex, but I sure haven't been waiting for someone else to complete me.
I will just be as honest as possible and say that I am totally unsure of how to proceed. The world is changing and I am changing; evolving. Yes, I do believe that the things of God stay the same, but I also believe that inherent untruths have been spread by fearmongers in the name of God especially about women and sex, so I go back to "all things are permissible for me"...
So do I stay celibate? I mean, is it time to just completely acknowledge that I will never be open to that part of life again? Do I just have sex again in a no strings attached environment with someone I am attracted to and trust to a certain degree in order to find out if I have learned how to be open emotionally at all? I'm really not sure I want to lay all of this on a marriage, if marriage was something I could even wrap my head around, or someone that I am completely invested in when what I think I might want at this point is a friend or a lover that I can learn how to communicate with at a level of respect and intimacy that is reciprocal instead of me just shutting down as per usual. At the very least I have to get more comfortable in this new place. I am not going to put a label on myself at this point and say, "I am this and this only." I can only respond to what is happening right now in my environment and part of this truth is that the "celibacy" itself has almost become something of a separate entity from who I am, who I've become, and I'm not sure that it's valid currently. I think it is time to give myself the grace to be a new person with new goals and perspectives. Not one of us is a finished product. We are all a work in progress and I don't mind taking time with this season. I'm thankfully not in a rush to put any of this to the test.
At least I have my diet figured out...
Final edit:
I will say this one thing about my first time being raped, which I have recently had some time to reflect on given the overwhelming #metoo movement; there are studies that show that your "flight, fight, or freeze" response is programmed the very first time you experience trauma. That means that if it is freeze, as so often it is for young women, it will take a monumental amount of counselling and effort for it to be fight, or flight. It is something that is critical to understand in this grey area of consent and men not really understanding that we may not want it. The truth is that for those of us that have been raped or assaulted, we were taught that our words did not stop it and that they have no value and no power in the realm of men holding the cards in a sexual/power dynamic. So that ability shuts down. No amount of well-meaning advice on how to get out of an escalating situation is going to help if you have been programmed this way at an early age in particular. So, both men who date us and women who are trying to "help" us (or the few who still feel the need to judge us when we do come forward) need to understand that this isn't a simple fix. This is multi-layered and complex af. Please keep this in mind. And ask questions instead of prescribing aid or help if you haven't been in this situation, and even if you have, understand that not everyone experiences it the same way.
