The Latin Quarter. Friday night. My friend Joanie is holding court. She knows people. She’s having an mmm-hmmm hot conversation with the guy behind the bar. He looks like a kid but I’m pretty sure he owns the joint. She’s in her fifties and he’s fascinated.
I’m fascinated. She can salsa. She can hold a man’s gaze and say something utterly innocuous and make it sizzle. She’s sultry.
The woman can flirt. If I wrote down the things she says, you’d say what? There’s nothing innately smoky in that sentence.
It’s not what she says. It is how she says it. She says it hot.
So whenever we get together, we speak a mutual language: men.
We like ‘em.
LOTS.
She discovered Plenty of Fish. She announced that she was holding auditions for the role of “boyfriend”. There was a flurry of dating. Lots of dating.
If I’d had a blog then…oh the stories we’d tell.
So when she told me she’d decided to be celibate, I was incredulous. I had to get her to define the term because I was sure we were using it differently.
When you say you’re celibate, what does that mean?
She explained.
Yeah, it pretty much means “not having sex.”
Stunned. STUNNED, I tell you.
I’m not sure I’ve ever known anyone who was celibate.
I’ve known people who weren’t getting laid, but that was never by choice. I have had many conversations about sex, but until then, I’d never had one with a sexy adult who said they’d decided not to have sex.
So…why? What’s that all about? What’s that like? And why, again?
She was exhausted and disappointed with the dating scene. All this energy, activity, heat-seeking action, and very little connection. Holding space for a partner. Yearning, scanning, searching, mingling, chirping, chattering.
She said it was bit hamster-on-a-wheel: a lot of activity, with very little traction or direction.
So she thought she’d opt out. For a bit. Until she got her bearings.
Or until someone inspired her to change her mind.
I’ll admit it: I was not sold.
I was, however, curious.
Joanie is juicy. What was it like for this delicious creature, built for lovin’, to be solo and sexless?
Joanie said that she found it quieted the noise in her head – the noise that she was so accustomed to hearing that she didn’t even hear it, any more.
Until it was quiet. And then it was really quiet.
When she took sex – and not just sex, but Looking For Love – off the table, she started noticing and connecting with the people around her. In the moment. Just to connect. Not to angle, anticipate, interpret, discern, or decode.
She said that when she was ‘in the market’, she’d go to a party and scan the room, trying to figure out who was with whom, who was looking, who was looking at her. And that informed who she talked to and how she talked to them.
It was all agenda. It was all seeking. It was more noise than signal.
And when she decided ‘no more sex for you!’ (to herself), the noise…subsided.
Now, when she went to a party, she was at the party, not in her head. She was with you, not wondering about your orientation or availability.
She just enjoyed herself, in the moment, instead of engineering future imaginary moments.
That blew my mind. Turn down the volume? Be here, now?
Wow.
But I wasn’t giving up sex or maybe A Great Big Love for inner peace.
Screw inner peace.
(I feel very peaceful after sex, for example.)
Right now, I’m digging me some inner peace.
I don’t know if I’m going to claim the word ‘celibate’ because it seems so dried out and well, unsexy, to me – and I doubt I have much of a commitment to the word or the course of action.
So something’s shifted in me in the last three months. I’m not having sex. I’m not collecting men. But I am pretty damn happy.
And it’s not just me who noticed. At our recent sex toy party (strangely good timing, don’t you think?), my friend’s husband told his wife that I looked “really happy.” My daughter’s daycare leader wondered if I have “a really good man in your life, because you look so…happy.” My sister told me that she’s noticed that I seem really relaxed and…wait for it…happy.
And my friend Joanie was right: the noise was overwhelming but I was so used to it that I couldn’t hear it.
Now, suddenly, I hear all kinds of things that I ignored, before.
Like what the men – and women and children – in my life are really saying to me. And what they mean to me.
And trust me, it’s juicy.
I will ponder, re-read and respond more…AWESOME!!
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on March 23rd, 2010 at 11:13 pm
@Renee Michelle (Michelmustro), thanks so much…look forward to ‘more’
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See, I knew this. I knew that you were doing it to see you without all the busy-ness and distractions and the hurly-burly of love.
I’m so glad that the underneath you is happy.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 10:50 am
@Catherine Caine, you’re so intuitive!
Yeah, I think I’ve inadvertently stumbled upon my happy place.
That being said: I have NO commitment to going without sex or relationships. I’m just not necessarily there, right now.
[Reply]
I am so glad you’re pretty damn happy Kelly, you deserve it.
Whenever you do opt to ‘grow up’ as you put it, whoever gets to benefit from it will be pretty damn lucky!
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 10:51 am
@Shannon O | Confessions of a Loving Wife, awwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
trust me, I’ll make sure my future hypothetical he knows that
[Reply]
Choosing to still the noise – however you choose to do it – is an amazing sacrifice. Not stilling the noise but what needs to be done to do this.
I do have to say that I am much more me and enjoy a social setting much more when I am either not looking for whatever reason.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 10:52 am
@Nicki, it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice at all. Isn’t that amazing?
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If others are noticing that you are radiating happiness, that means something … So glad to hear it!
xo
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 10:52 am
@Lindsey, or maybe it’s the new hair do. Whatever it is, I’m not complaining. xoxo
[Reply]
OK. Are you somehow tracking a parallel path in my brain…maybe days ahead of me? It’s like having my cards read, not always liking what I hear, but recognizing their inherent truth. All right, already!
Beautiful, my friend; truly.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 10:53 am
@Ronna, yes honey, we’re sharing the same hive mind. Resistance is futile. mwah.
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In my experience, changing gears in life from goal oriented to process oriented can allow you to see the journey from an entirely different perspective. It’s like the difference between taking the express way, with all its traffic and noise, and taking the scenic route. You still end up at the same destination but taking the scenic route allows you to enjoy the trip on an entirely new level. Plus, you may even get to connect with some people along the way.
When you look at the road map of your life and stop seeing DESTINATIONS and start seeing ATTRACTIONS, your experience is painted with a different brush and making true, meaningful connections is par for the course.
I think you are living that right now and feeling the difference. It obviously looks good on you.
Whether you blast down the I5 in record time or take the 101, enjoying the curves and views from the coast, Wallyworld will still be there when you get there.
So enjoy the trip. I’ve no doubt it will be epic.
PS: Keep dropping us postcards from along the way…we love it!
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 10:53 am
@John, that was some truth talking. Start seeing attractions rather than destinations…yes I think I’d like some of that.
thanks so much
[Reply]
Dave Doolin
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 11:33 am
@John, what you said.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 11:43 am
@Dave Doolin, and he said it beautifully.
[Reply]
John
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 11:54 am
@Kelly Diels, Awww shucks guys! *blushes* *stares at feet*
[Reply]
Dave Doolin
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
@Kelly Diels, he did.
It turns out both roads are viable.
I say this because I’ve spent a LOT of time running up and down the 1 (I’m in Nor-Cal), and sometimes, it would be nice just to Get There.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
@Dave Doolin, on highways as metaphors: I spend a lot of time on #1 and #99 (Vancouver). Methinks there’s some truth in that.
do you remember this?
http://www.kellydiels.com/2010/01/01/nothing-says-happy-new-year-like-a-hula-hooping-manifesto/
keep driving.
[Reply]
Oh my God! Kelly, I completely love you. You say everything I’ve ever thought, but couldn’t put down in words. If I’ve ever been addicted to a blog it would be yours.
Keep up the amazing work!
Alicia
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 10:54 am
@Alicia, that is so incredibly gratifying to hear. Thank you sooooooo much.
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This reeminds me of my experience with deciding not to watch porn. Honestly, I haven’t completely cut it out, but it’s getting easier to let it go now that I am ready to let in all the strong feelings that watching porn would always push away.
I am definitely not anti-porn any more than you are anti-sex; it’s merely a way of challenging yourself to regain your ability to innately appreciate different forms of intimacy, without having to “try.” I am on the way there, and I am pushing myself, but I don’t think I am ready yet… but it was good to read this perspective! Thanks.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 10:57 am
@Positive Mitch, something must be in the air. I have a friend who told me the same thing you just did. He’s sworn off of porn because porn was making real sex a disappointment to him. Curious, huh? Porn is meant (I think) to stand in for sex but can end up overtaking sex and being more satisfying than sex…which is a bizarre live-action tautology.
Thanks for your thoughtful and brave (as always) comment, Mitch.
[Reply]
Hey, I’m doing this too! I call it my manitorium (moratorium + men, get it? I’m so clever). Anyway… it’s kinda cool, yet it also sucks.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 10:58 am
@Whitney, ok you just made me belly-laugh. Manitorium is so much more fun than ‘celibacy’. (I was calling it a man diet but it made me sound like a cannibal which was pretty much the opposite of what I’m intending!)
[Reply]
big smiles. big love. thank you for writing about the quiet bliss buzz, sans the sex imperative.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on March 24th, 2010 at 10:58 am
@ali, you rocketh.
[Reply]
it’s wonderful how you can be out of your head when you let go of expectations and just be in the moment. can’t wait to learn more about how your manitorium progresses
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I haven’t been there in awhile – on the dating scene that is – but I can remember that the excitement was balanced (maybe unbalanced) with stress. Sounds like you’re lifting some stress off yourself – which would make anyone happier
The best is yet to come though – because this happens when you least expect it.
[Reply]
Really great writing Kelly. Thanks for sharing this jem
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Such awesome serendipity – found this last week while ‘considering’ a similar choice. Then committed heinous fuckwittery. Now temporarily chaste – for all those reasons and more. Thank you (& Joanie) for blazing the trail!
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