Why I… Didn’t Have Sex For 6 Months

A while back, a close buddy of mine inquired about my current sex life in an attempt to figure out why I hadn’t brought it up over the past few months. As teens, he and I used to joke around when we said our prospects were “nonexistent,” but for a 20-something guy to say that would sound more like an alarm for untreated depression. It felt like a strange thing to admit at the time, but I was making a conscientious effort to not have sex for six months. An even stranger thing to admit? The break was actually giving me a healthy lifestyle balance that I wasn’t used to.
At the start of my sexual hiatus, I was fresh from a college relationship and neck-deep in LSAT textbooks. Studying provided plenty of stress and I was antsy to get laid, but I discovered that not having a partner to indulge with was unexpectedly relaxing. There weren’t any sleepless nights, feelings to reconsider, or VD tests to schedule. Cutting out an activity that’s reported to reduce stress was producing surprisingly cathartic results, and I initially didn’t understand why. Then I realized that while I had generally found sex to be a natural progression of attraction, even when it does feel natural, it comes with expectations and responsibilities.
Since sexual desire had always been saddled with self-imposed pressure for me, I entertained the thought of not falling victim to it. I still continued to date over those six months and made it a point to make my intentions (or, more specifically, my lack thereof) very clear. This tended to garner either an impressed or frustrated reaction. (Dates having the latter didn’t hang around for very long.)
The biggest benefit that came out of my hiatus was that it moved me away from viewing intercourse as a normal human function and made me see it more as a way to create a deeper connection with someone. In the past, treating sex lightly had occasionally opened up avenues for potential misuse, such as when I did it for revenge against a former partner or as a confidence booster to help mask personal insecurities. After a couple years of breezy hookups that left me feeling empty, I didn’t feel driven by a need for sex so much as by a need to care for another individual. Keeping the chastity belt on for a while made me more willing to build a relationship based on a mutual desire to better both partners. Six months turned out to be enough time for me to find that right partner and finally feel grown-up in comparison to my more adventurous days. I’m not sure I could’ve achieved that if I had been busy trying to get busy.