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Having a six-month break from sex made me better at dating

IMAGE VIA @HARA_THELABEL/INSTAGRAM

WORDS BY Saskia Morrison-Thiagu

“I dated myself for six months and I loved every minute of it.”

In 2021, I decided to take a vow of celibacy. No, I’m not religious – far from it. I did it because I was so tired of dating and was burnout emotionally. It also helped that partway through my celibacy Melbourne went into its sixth lockdown, but I’d like to think being celibate was mostly intentional.

The moment I decided to be celibate was two weeks after I had just been ghosted by a guy from Hinge. We had only been on one date and when he started ignoring me, I felt like I was going crazy. I even triple texted, which makes me vomit a little in my mouth just thinking about it.


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I had barely known this man, yet I was letting it get to me so much. I now understand that because we had such a lovely date and ended up having sex, it gave me a false sense of security. I was confused and later ashamed because looking back, I didn’t really want to have sex, I just felt like I should.

I once heard someone refer to heteronormative relationships like this: “Women give sex and men take it”. That really stuck with me because it encapsulated the way I felt about sex at the time. It felt like I was giving something away and when that wasn’t appreciated or respected, it made me feel like shit.

I understand that there are many women who feel liberated from casual sex, but there are also many women who don’t. Hookup culture and dating apps make casual sex easier and forming emotional connections harder.

In 2004, Barry Schwartz released a book called The Paradox of Choice. It’s the idea that when you’re presented with too many options, you can end up feeling dissatisfied with your choice. I believe this theory can also be applied to online dating. Why would you invest time and energy into someone when there is an unlimited supply of options at your fingertips?

It leaves both women and men feeling like a placeholder until the better option comes along. It’s not a healthy mindset to be in, yet I still hear people talk about dating five people at once and having them on a “roster”. When I ask them why they have a roster, they say it’s so they don’t “get attached” to anyone. But what’s wrong with being attached and emotionally connected to someone?

Who is really benefitting from hookup culture?

Do people actually enjoy hookup culture, or are we just pretending to impress our friends and act like we’re Samantha from Sex and the City? Exchanging stories between friends about a dud root or a good root is pretty commonplace now.

I won’t deny that I love to talk about the time a guy called me a “good girl” in the bedroom and I immediately started laughing, or when a guy leaned over to my friend in a nightclub and said he was “gonna eat [her] out like there was no tomorrow”.

Some of these stories are hilarious, but some of them aren’t. I won’t tell my friends about the time I was coerced into doing something I didn’t want to do, or the time I was told they were sleeping with heaps of other women to make me feel small.

It wasn’t until I took six months off sex that I realised how much the bad times often outweighed the good times. Or how I’d convinced myself I was having fun and being liberated when I was really just in denial that I’d actually been assaulted.

Stealthing, the act of non-consensually removing a condom during sex, is now a crime in Victoria. According to one Australian study, it’s a practice that one in three women and one in five queer men have experienced.

It happened to me. I had been in denial about it for a long time and it wasn’t until I could remove myself from sex altogether that I realised how violated that had made me feel.

Not only did I use that time alone to work through my trauma but I worked on my self-worth and insecurities. I highly recommend reading the book The Unexpected Joy of Being Single by Catherine Gray, which really helped to solidify my feelings on hookup culture.

In the book, Catherine is open about the struggle of being perpetually in relationships/situationships. She had never taken the time to truly be single (no sex and no dating) and found the experience liberating. After one year, she decided to date again, but admitted that it wasn’t very easy.

How a period of celibacy allowed me to heal 

In 2020, I stopped dating for three months for similar reasons to 2021. But when I started dating again, I didn’t feel any better about myself. I actually felt worse, because I hadn’t done enough of the work on myself.

I think this is an important thing to understand if you choose to go celibate. It’s by no means a magic solution to your problems – loving yourself is a process that takes time. There are always going to be shit people who will hurt you and make you feel bad about yourself.

But the best thing I learned from being totally alone for six months was who I am and what my boundaries are. As long as you feel confident in yourself and set boundaries, it’s easier to say “Fuck you” to shit people and move on.

Everyone has different boundaries, but some of the ones I have set for myself now are:

  • I don’t like having sex straight off the bat, I need some time to feel comfortable. If someone doesn’t like that, then it’s “Adios, dickhead”.
  • I give one chance if someone fucks up, and then I let myself move on. I have learned that there’s no point stressing over someone who will never improve.
  • My happiness always comes first. If someone makes me feel bad about a hobby I love or tries to stop me from doing something I love (e.g. travelling overseas) then I have to move on.
  • If I start to feel unworthy or bad about myself around someone then it’s not worth it, even if they aren’t doing it intentionally.
  • I need to stop changing plans around to suit some guy I barely know. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve moved things around for someone, just for them to flake on me at the last minute.
  • Of course, these aren’t set in stone. But having these little rules has helped my dating life immensely. I don’t even use dating apps anymore; I just meet people out and being in that mindset of having fun in the moment has been really beneficial. I don’t want to talk to someone for weeks online just for them to ghost. I’d rather meet someone out, give them my number and if I get a text back, great! If not, no biggie.

Most importantly, when you do the work on yourself, you stop projecting your insecurities onto other people. No, I wasn’t ghosted because I look like Shrek. I was ghosted because that other person has poor communication and probably has their own shit to deal with.

Another question I always ask myself is: ‘Did I actually like them, or did I like the attention they gave me?’. The answer is usually that I liked the attention, which is totally fine – but it also means I should stop being so upset about it not working out.

I dated myself for six months and I loved every minute of it. After all, who cares if some random from Glamorama left me on read?

For more on the benefits of a period of celibacy, try this.

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