my year of celibacy

what i've learned from opting out of sex with men for 12 agonizing calendar months

I’m not going to lie, writing that headline made me cringe.

Truly, it makes me feel like a fucking loser. It takes me back to high school, where I’d enviously watch couples skitter off to the bathroom at house parties to screw around, while I nursed a Smirnoff Ice and wished from the sidelines for someone to just look my way. I was the clown who got too drunk for laughs, not the one the boys wanted to smooch on carpeted, beer-soaked staircases. It takes me back to my sexless and so painfully horny early 20s, when I pleaded with myself to just get the fuck over whatever was stopping me from getting with someone—anyone. And then when I finally did it, it was all so very… meh.

I realized I came up on a full calendar year of sexlessness while on the phone with my friend samantha bitty a couple nights ago. “Wow, it’s been a whole year since I had sex,” I lamented, following that up with the announcement that I was officially back on Feeld, my chosen hook-up dating app. “I’ve abandoned my pussy personally,” she responded in her typical hilarious way, “but I wish you the utmost best. You deserve a railing.” I nodded to myself, agreeing with her. I did deserve a railing. In fact, I had deserved one for the entirety of 2024 too.

So, what the fuck happened?

It’s kinda funny that one of my last newsletters was about how I wasn’t celibate, and it’s kind of true. At the time I wrote that, my celibacy didn’t feel intentional. I was on and off dating apps, interacting with disappointing man after disappointing man after one disappointing woman, like it was my part-time job that I wasn’t being paid for. Actually, that’s exactly what it was—more like an unpaid internship that I willingly signed up for. Free labour in exchange for Lite Trauma™.

“The way I understand myself at this moment sexually,” she tells me later, “is that I’m no longer willing to have my heart broken to get my back broke out.” And I felt that. That was the conclusion I came to last February after my unfortunate run in with a quintessential fuckboy (read about that here) who mirrored exactly what I was looking for and disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared, leaving a trail of metaphorical shit in his wake. While I wasn’t nearly as broken as that experience would’ve made me a few years prior, it did feel like a sign. If sex with men was more risk than reward, then why was I partaking?

And after that, I just… stopped. Stopped really looking, stopped swiping, stopped making half-hearted plans with men who said things like “I just want to go with the flow,” but were, in fact, just desperate for validation (narrator voiceover: There was, in fact, no flow). And then the weeks and months stacked up. Save the few brief moments imagining being in bed with another person and how nice that could be, I kind of stopped thinking about sex altogether.

Me, on my 34th birthday, almost one year celibate

Here’s what I did think about:

1. Holy shit, I would die without my friends. I look around me at people who prioritize dating and romance and I wonder how they actually get through life living within that hierarchy. Over the last year, I spent so much time pouring into my friendships, growing many of them into realms I didn’t think they’d get to. I spend a lot of time ragging on polyamory, but maybe I’m more poly than I thought.

2. My body image kind of sucks. Remember the validation I mentioned earlier? I looked for that too in the majority of my relationships with men. When I took away the option of seeking it with sex, I realized how tumultuous my relationship with my body really is right now. And that the temporary relief with intimacy was just that—temporary. And also that it’s okay to seek that kind of positive reinforcement if you need it, knowing that it also has to come from within, too.

3. Uh oh, I think I have maybe never spoken up for myself in the bedroom. Yeah. Admittedly, I am really not great at doing basic things like, I don’t know, asking partners to wear or use protection. I am not really great at advocating for my own pleasure. And these things are just as much my responsibility as they are my partners’. Taking a step back gave me a wider perspective on how important this is not only just for during the act, but in every part of my life from work to friendships to family relationships, and just showing up for myself in general.

4. There are things to do outside of seeking physical intimacy. For a few years there, I was on a bit of a quest to have as many sexual experiences as possible, because I mistakenly thought that made me more interesting. Things last year that actually made me interesting: Getting really into strength training, taking a hemming and tailoring workshop, helping my neighbours as part of our tenant committee, working on a new podcast, working through a list of horror movies with my best friends, taking a sexy dance class, collaging, going to more community events, etc.

5. Self-pleasure feels like a waste of time (and that ain’t good). Anyone else ever feel this way? I got to the point where I didn’t even care about it anymore. It was a quick means to an end, or didn’t happen at all, because my narrative was: What’s the point if I’m not sharing it with someone else? There are so. Many. Points. I’m sure of it. I’ll let you know when I find them.

6. I am not define by who wants me. So much of my self-worth was tangled up in whether or not I was wanted, desired, chosen. Without anyone to validate me in that way, I had to find other ways to feel valuable. I realized that being desired wasn’t the same as being valued, and that my worth doesn’t depend on anyone else’s attraction to me.

7. Not all connections need to be romantic. Not all evenings out need to be bookended by cute guys. As much as I prioritize friendship, I can’t help but think about the potential for every night out to lead to My Person. This year really emphasized for me how much more fun it is to do away with that possibility entirely and just be in the moment.

8. I don’t need to have an opinion on everything. Looking back, this was my first year doing less of the journalism thing. I’m not happy about it exactly, but it did give me time to breathe and think about what I really want to talk about. I used to feel the need to weigh in on every debate, every trending topic, every piece of news. But sometimes it’s better to just listen and learn from the people who know more than you. Not everything needs my input, and that doesn’t make me indifferent. It just means I’m choosing my battles, letting the experts speak, and saving time for the things that really matter to me and my community.

9. Not every relationship is meant to last forever. A revelation I had this year, while trying to grow my TikTok account, was this: The success of a relationship, romantic or platonic, doesn’t hinge on how long it lasts. This is still a touchy one for me, because I want everything wonderful to last forever. But I’m learning to be okay that they don’t always, and that sometimes people are meant to be there for a particular time in your life. The same goes for romance.

10. The kind of sex I want to have with the kind of people I want to have sex with. Eventually, I’ve made it back around full-circle to thinking about sex again, thinking about how I want to build my intimate life that stays true to what I’ve learned over the last year. Abandoning myself for the sake of connection never, ever worked. I want to be with people who respect me, who value genuine connection, and who understand that casual doesn’t me careless.

    Let’s see what happens next.

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Did you know my friend Sadaf and I just launched our own podcast? It’s called Eat Your Heart Out and here’s the gist: From debunking myths about traditional romance to redefining friendship and intimacy, we’re here to cut through societal expectations, rewrite the rules of connection, and make room for what really matters.

Listen to our latest episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.