August 20, 2013
-
365 Sexless Days & Nights
"I thought my love for Andrew was my belief system. Now I needed to find a new religion... Love had taken us halfway around the world and back. Or maybe it was only the idea of love. But it left us quietly in the arrival terminal of the San Francisco airport. And how could love do that after all those nights arranging the mosquito netting carefully over each other’s heads?" -- A Pact to Make the Heart Grow Fonder?2 people, madly in love, decide to do an experiment. A year without sex. A pact to abstain from sex with each other, with anyone. After those 365 sexless days and nights, they would take a trip out of the country, to Southeast Asia, and have sex for the first time in a year. It's unclear what the two thought would be accomplished from this experiment. Maybe they wanted to see what role sex played in their relationship, maybe they wanted to see how long they could abstain, I'm not sure, but what resulted is a heartbreaking account of love, distance, and loss.
The piece was featured in the Modern Love section of the New York Times, written by Susan Conley. I think it's a really interesting read, for those who are in a relationship and for those who are single. It examines the importance of sex, but not just sex, physicality in general in a relationship. I'd love for you all to read it and leave your comments below!
Do you believe sex is important in a relationship? Do you think you and your SO could go a year without having sex? What did you think about the couple in the article, and their experience with this experiment?
Comments (27)
did they mean a year just without physical sex or did they find loopholes and still sexted each other, had phone sex, webchat stripshow, flirted in love letters, and other ways to be sexy with each other from a distance? if they abstained from all forms of sex, then it would be an experiment. if not, I wouldn't take it that seriously. the sexual factor is important, but I could go without it. my bf is long distance and I've gone a long time without sex or sexual communication. we talk to each other like platonic best friends lately as if we're a senior citizen couple, whose sexual peak has faded-even though it hasn't since we're still horny-we just don't let it overtake us, but our friendship and bond still remains. he doesn't act bitter towards me or anything due to the lack of sex, but he gives me words of affirmation almost daily to show how much he adores and appreciates me in other ways. sometimes I can't even believe it, and wonder why he sees so much good in me, not that I'm not good, just not that good. sometimes I'm bad, but not that bad. that must mean that he accepts me for everything that I am
There seems to be a near endless supply of stupid people in the world.
Seriously, some people will come up with anything to get an article written about them. A woman, gasp, decides to go a WHOLE YEAR without makeup and gets all sorts of press for it. Two friends put themselves in a faux romantic relationship and post the journal, now this. I don't see the wisdom of taking a normal, healthy, appropriate function out of a relationship just to see what happens. It's one thing if life situations bring you to that place, but to purposely ditch any good significant aspect of a relationship as some sort of psych experiment, is to put priority on the wrong thing. Is my partner a person, or a lab rat?
@ccccourage@xanga - I agree with you.
as for my actual response to this, a) i assume that they're going to pull that whole oral is moral shit. dick in mouth (and vice-versa) counts.. b) everyone knows girls will pull that whole "i just see you as a friend!!" bullcrap. make sure you read that in a whiny, high-pitched voice, everyone.
@ccccourage@xanga - and for my next trick, i'm going to go a whole year WITHOUT GETTING A HAIRCUT!!!! OMG!!!!you'll be envious when i'm a media darling and you're still sitting on d-ish.
@ccccourage@xanga - is it that blonde lady I saw in the Colbert Report about her not looking in the mirror for a year and made a book about it?
From this article, I thought about this and how they ruined their relationship with each other. Without reading the article, I thought 'Without sex is not that bad. People who abstain do it. But there must be teasing and sexual tension... cause I honestly think you can train yourself to have a higher or lower sex drive and if your sole purpose is to break the trend at the end of the year-- it's obviously not going to be as good as if you practice with your partner and got good at it.' Though, if teasing and sexual tension was still a part of the game plan, even if the actual act of sex was not... then I think it's a fun idea. If we're talking about abstaining from everything, I say it's a relationship killer. I want to be in love with a lover, not a buddy.
these people have too much time on their hands. The article reeks of hippy dippy trippy eat-pray-love and hipster liberal arts major ramblings. The ending was anticlimactic and made you feel dumb for spending your entire 3 minutes reading this hoping it would give some interesting insight but it only served as a fancy advertisement space for her writing style and other works.
Having read her memoir now, I realize her mistake: Trying to have intimate sex while backpacking around the far east... Even more so: Waiting for the cramped and crowded city of HongKong to break the 365 day sex fast. I honestly think that HongKong was the only place I traveled to in asia with my other where I didn't have sex. No. Seriously. I was there for a week, never once. And he and I rub like bunnies. If I were her, I would have gone somewhere cold and with less bugs. That way's a good excuse to snuggle and not have any fear of bites on nekked skin.
No anything, or no sex sex? In any case, my husband and I can very, very, very not afford another child right now, and we can't afford birth control, so we're not having sex until our financial situation improves.
Sex is an important part of a loving relationship but it is not the end all to be all.I am in the most important relationship of my life but because of severe health problems tha t both of us are suffering through sex is im possible. But we are in this relationship and stay there because our love for each other is very debate even though it is celibateand we can't imagine life without each other. We have been together for 15+ years and will stay together until one of us dies.Life and love is much bigger than just sex and its a shame that we have such a narrow view point of that.
Sex makes love stronger but you don't need sex to love!
@Edith Recinos@facebook - Yup, because it's so profound that a woman did the radical thing that 99.999% of all the woman who ever lived have done. Buy hey, she's a genius. Honestly. She had gotten a ridiculous amount of press and publicity out of it because WE are fascinated by her "courageous" move.
@TheNotoriousGOD@xanga - That's the spirit! If we don't get famous for doing something, well can always get famous for doing NOTHING!
@Tallman@xanga - Yes, but your situation is normal, natural and springs out of genuine love and commitment to one another and this larger thing you two have built. Same with people who abstain because of religious beliefs, needing to liming family size, apart due to job, war, etc. It's not some lame brained experiment. You do what you do out of love, not a ploy to get publicity or kid yourself that you are avant guard.
I don't have a girlfriend so I cannot comment, could we well the two or three I was going to date/marry. one I could have do for a year since she just wanted to meet my mum, the other two maybe not. especially the one who wanted to marry me.
I could probably go ten years without sex and be just fine. I don't enjoy sex at all really. On the other hand, after the birth of my son and the recommendation to abstain for six weeks, around the fourth week my fiancé started getting a major itch, as in, a few more weeks and he would have had sex with any female who approached him. I have a real winner, huh?
I often think sex is the most ridiculous and nonsensical of all forms of interaction... until I'm horny, then it makes perfect sense. Then again, there are many things that make sense, but I don't necessarily feel the need to do them for that reason alone.As an arrogant, self-absorbed asshole, I see sex as something inexplicably sacred and meaningful. Only those who are totally empathetic and of superior moral fiber who understand all the intricacies of cause and effect don't see how another individual engaging in haphazard sexual encounters could possibly affect oneself or others. No... the ones who would be like "It's aight, I'll fuck you." are the ones who totally find it meaningful."If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat." - Douglas AdamsOne cannot observe without affecting. To test love is to dismantle it. I didn't read through this post thoroughly, but if they broke up or cheated I could've told you that would happen. It's one thing to forgo sex out of necessity, distance, or timing... it's another thing entirely to choose not to because you think it is unnecessary.
I can see why they wanted to do this experiment - they were interested in how big a role sex plays in their relationship. And that's fine to test but I felt like that trip to Asia was the first time the two were even talking to each other. My BF and I are somewhat long distance but we text, call, skype, etc. just about daily. It sounded like they didn't even communicate while they were apart for the year, so it would make sense why they felt distant after seeing each other after a long time. A lot changes during a year, including a person's character/personality. I thought it was a sad story, and I feel bad for the couple that their experiment didn't yield the results they anticipated. But at the same time, I'm sure if other couples decided to abstain for a year, they wouldn't end up the same way. It's not like relationships are nothing without sex. It just happened to turn out that way for one couple.
Does it count that much that they were pretty much long-distance for most of that year? It would probably have been a better experiment if they were living together or at least really close to each other for frequent interactions.Blah. That was a silly article. It was mostly about their travel through SE Asia and not as much about the actual experiment.Could I live without sex for a year in a relationship? Sure, because I don't really enjoy sex that much anyway and I think that there are much more important and wonderful things in a relationship than sex.
@HollowTendencies@xanga - @Marica0701@xanga - it makes me kind of sad to read that you guys don't like to bang. i recently dated a girl who revealed to me after some time (when we were both pretty blackout) that she didn't enjoy banging. i dumped her not too long afterward because i felt like i was raping her every time we did it, even if she was the one who initiated. anyway, i was going to say - i'm (generally) not one to criticize this sort of thing, but i'm so bothered by this that i have to ask...maybe you just haven't been banging guys who are interested in getting you off? (and this is coming from someone who has had absolutely *no* investment in his sexual partners' pleasure in the past.) idk, i guess i really feel like sexual pleasures in life are something you should enjoy, especially while you are young (and whether you're the casual type or relationship type). just a thought is all.
I think sex is quite important in a relationship. Can't imagine a year without sex!, like asking a normal person to be a vegetarian for a year.
Interesting experiment. I think once a couple has started being sexual with each other (and by that I mean both intercourse and other forms of sexual interaction), it's very difficult to stop. I could wait as long as my partner wanted to start having sex, but I think once I'd started having sex with my partner, it would be very difficult to suddenly say, "Okay, let's not have sex for a year."
that little "article" was the stupidest and most melodramatic thing ive ever read...and her boyfriend sounds even nuttier than i am.she sounds like a complete idiot for going along with his crap.leave the "abstinence" to the religious douchebags and give me my nymphomaniac kink freakiness!
@TheNotoriousGOD@xanga - Well I think it's a lot deeper than that, for me anyway. Guys always assume it's them, but it's not. I'm probably the selfish one, because I enjoy receiving oral more than anything, lol.
@HollowTendencies@xanga - haha. looks like we're a perfect match for each other then, cause i don't go down on girls!! :p
Comments are closed.