There were years of doing it and not ever thinking I’d be here, stone-cold celibate.

It’s been a few years, and I haven’t really kept count—let’s say ’round two—that I’ve given up sex. Masturbation included.

I realized what I always knew—that sex wasn’t for me. My formative years as a sex incumbent made realize that what I was missing most in my relationships was me. I never felt like my head was totally in “the game,” and when having to consent to sex, I always felt rather pressured. It was never my intention to be willfully a part of it. Well, because I never really liked it.

It was this, and years of dancing around with the idea that I gave my consent even when I didn’t really want to, that finally opened up my eyes to the fact that I didn’t have to.

Relationship or not, I can remain celibate and there’s no need to forfeit the pleasures of having a partner because I practice my right to abstain. I think it is this deliberate action to abstain that will make my relationships much more fulfilling.

Having a partner who relies less on the intimacy I’ve spoken against, and fills in in other areas where intimacy can and should always be worked on, is more exciting to me than foreplay.

As a self-respecting woman, I can’t find it in me to do something I dislike so much and that I have no genuine desire to attain.

That’s why I decided that celibacy is best for me. It is a personal choice I find so freeing and so culturally different I wonder if I’ll ever find the man for me. Although I’ve decided to remain single for now, it is a question I play with momentarily as I remind myself that if I do, it is for a reason that brings me strength and pride.

There is a victory in upholding to something you believe in so much in spite of societal standards, and to hold it with such conviction that I don’t have any plans of amending it—unless some major personality change takes place—makes me even prouder to say that I have never felt more myself now that I have the courage to turn away the thing I never wanted in the first place.

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