She was a 'serial monogamist,' then she gave up sex: What she learned surprised her

USA Today

4 days ago

She was a 'serial monogamist,' then she gave up sex: What she learned surprised her
Talking about sex is still taboo. Talking about not having sex? Maybe even more so.
Melissa Febos didn't go into her year of celibacy planning to write about it. The memoirist, known for 'Girlhood,' is a self-described 'person of extremes.' She's written candidly about her recovery from drug addiction, but in 'The Dry Season' (out now from Penguin Random House), she embarks on intentional abstinence to solve a different kind of addiction – one to romance and partnership.
Febos was a 'serial monogamist,' having been in relationships on and off for 20 years since. After one particularly fraught breakup, she knew she needed to change. The result was wholly transformative and, despite the sexual 'dry season,' the most sensual year of her life.
'The tools that I learned during that year are the ones that I will keep with me for the rest of my life in terms of how to be awake to all of my passions, not just my romantic ones (and) what true intimacy and partnership with other people consists of,' Febos says.
How a year of celibacy helped Melissa Febos find herself
Febos determined early on in her journey that her problem couldn't be boiled down to a sex addiction. But she did compulsively jump into romantic relationships, which needed to change.
In her addiction recovery, Febos learned how to create a personal inventory to analyze past behavior. She applied the same to her love life – a log of past lovers, crushes and partners.
'I had a story about myself in love that maybe wasn't exactly true because it wasn't quite adding up, … I was having a repetitive experience and that I had hit a kind of bottom,' Febos says. 'If I was just a passionate person who fell in love a lot and was basically a great partner to everyone, why was my life ruined?'
When she was ready – and only when she was ready – to hear it, she had a close friend look at the list and deliver her the hard truths.
'You're a user,' they told her. 'You use people.'
Hearing that was devastating, but then came the relief, Febos says.
'I had written a story about myself in love that was more complacent than I actually was,' Febos says. 'This reflects a kind of national story that we have in mainstream culture where the task in love is to find the right person and when we find the right person, love will work out. … Something I realized during that year was that I needed to also become the right person.'
Febos met her wife shortly after ending her abstinence. They've been together for eight years now.
'The Dry Season' isn't a book about finding a spouse at the other end of celibacy – Febos instead clarifies that this period made her the independent, autonomous person who was capable of having a long-term relationship.
Melissa Febos says celibacy is not about absence of sex but the abundance of self
When you think about celibacy, which words come to mind? Lack? Absence? Dry?
Febos feared that, too, but says she found nothing but abundance. Her instinct was no longer to 'run straight into the beautiful anesthesia of another' but to enjoy the satisfaction of her own company. When she says 'erotic,' she doesn't mean in a traditionally sexual sense, but in a fullness-of-life manner of speaking. Her platonic relationships thrived. She had more time for herself. She talks of the 'vivid sense of engagement' she felt – dancing with friends, sleeping in, reading a whole book in the afternoon, eating a perfectly ripe raspberry.
'Overwhelmingly, I did not feel that I was missing anything,' Febos says. 'I had a sense of what I had been missing for years by being obsessed with love and sex."
Not having sex? You're not alone.
At first, Febos felt embarrassed to tell people she was voluntarily celibate. But as her year continued, she found more and more people who related.
'Almost everything I have ever written about started by feeling unspeakable to me,' Febos says. 'I was afraid that I was alone in those experiences, but I have had those expectations upended time and time again. Every single time I've written about an experience that I felt really alone in and estranged from other people, I have found myself part of a vast community of people who suffer from the exact same burden.'
It's a growing cultural conversation. In recent years, celebrities like Julia Fox, Mýa and Lenny Kravitz have opened up about their celibacy. Some young women are going "boysober." Americans aged 22-34 are having less sex, according to a recent study by the Institute of Family Studies. That data showed sexlessness doubled for young men and increased by 50% for young women between the late 2010s and early 2020s.
Febos finds common ground with both voluntarily and involuntarily celibate individuals.
'We live in extremes and we ... have a fraught relationship to aloneness,' she says. 'We have not made friends with solitude, and I think that looking for partnership with oneself is actually the first step to having a more comfortable relationship with aloneness.'
Febos sought comfort in a long history of intentionally celibate women, like Virginia Woolf and the ancient Greek poet Sappho. She 'nerded out' over nuns (surprising for Febos, given she's not religious) like German Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen. Especially for the spiritual, celibacy was not about sacrifice but power.
'It requires incredible consciousness and mindfulness and consistent work to live against the grain of the ways that we're socialized to accommodate other people, both in our intimate relationships, but also in the world at large,' Febos says. 'Women are really taught that they're selfish if they put themselves at the center of their story and their decision making.'
Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY's Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you're reading at [e-mail].