Celibacy

Celibacy: The New "In-Thing"

Leanne Carigma

Psychology 101

T-TR 9:00-10:50a

Every man and woman has his or her choices. Whether it's deciding on the clothes we wear to what restaurant we want to eat at for dinner. But what if the decision-making came to your sex life? Deciding to be celibate or not is an extremely important decision. There are no "instructions" on giving sex up; it's just a mental response. We can choose to be celibate just as we can choose to be sexually active. It is more of a personal and conscious decision one must make on behalf of one's own personal growth.

Before doing this research I didn't fully understand what it is that you as a person gained from being. It seems that we are now in an age of increasing emphasis on self-development. The light is not on just how you have sex or whom you have sex with, but if you choose to have sex at all. If we lose the sex factor does that mean we are one step along the way to developing the capacity to love? I believe so. You have a right to be engaging in sexual intercourse with anyone and everyone. It is useful to remind oneself that being celibate is an alternate way to love, even to make love. You can learn to touch non-possessively, without a future goal and to make love non-sexually, unmotivated by the need for sexual gratification. Being aware of one's sexuality and thinking about it as a passive state rather than an active one helps place the emphasis on a generalized feeling of love and well-being rather than on an unemotional response.

So why is celibacy all the rage now? In a 'Celibacy Study' conducted by Penthouse magazine, it was concluded that celibacy is taking on a new respectability. Less than half the men and fewer than 40 percent of the women said they were celibate because of fear of disease. And they found benefits in being celibate, particularly emotional and spiritual ones. Seventy-four percent of the women and 68 percent of the men felt that their views of the opposite sex were broadened by the experience. And more than half concluded that being celibate was a healthy thing to do.

Although it seems that, nowadays, celibacy is a new thing, we are very wrong. Celibacy is only new to us everyday civilians but in the life of the religious, celibacy has long been a spiritual discipline, an exercise for the person to advance in spiritual growth. Suggestions have been made that celibacy offers a way for the religious individual to have his or her attention most purely absorbed in the commitment to experiencing God. Of all the world religions past and present, celibacy is most widely practiced in the Eastern religions, particularly in Hinduism. It is stressed to those that you do not have to be a priest to lead a celibate life. In general, sex in the East represents the spending of energy, and celibacy its conservation. Excessive sexual interest is not considered a sin but rather a weakness, an unnecessary waste of mental and physical energy, whereas celibacy represents mental and physical strength through the conserving of energy.

When collecting statistics and information I noticed that a growth in the numbers specifically increased in married couples. This is because a realization may have come that sex is not as enjoyable as they would like, yet they drifted along in sexual activity anyway. If sex has become unfulfilling to the couple but they continue to engage in sexual activity, then I think it takes on a character of unnaturalness. Meaning that sex has become an inappropriate means of expression. If people convey something other than what they are or less than what they are at any given moment, they will feel frustrated, less open, less full, diminished, cut off from their feelings. The fuller levels of feeling, the deep levels of tenderness and intimacy, can easily be lost in sex probably because sexual activity is so dominating and tends to hold the focus of attention when people are making