JANA HOCKING: This year-long erotic challenge freed one woman from a life of unsatisfying sex… but it’s so insane I’m scared to try it

It’s safe to say that I love sex.

The first glimpse of bare skin. Watching someone move when they think no one’s judging. That warm, satisfied haze that lingers after. Honestly, sometimes I think sex is what makes life worth living.

So, when I stumbled across a writer who voluntarily gave it up for a whole year, I thought she’d lost her marbles.

I mean, I’m baffled by people who choose Ozempic and cheekbones over orzo and steak bones – and now we’re voluntarily giving up orgasms too? For what? Enlightenment?

Oh lord.

Naturally, I had a million questions for Melissa Febos, author of The Dry Season, who decided after a particularly toxic relationship that it was time to swear off dating, sex, and even flirting for a full twelve months.

Melissa, now married to a woman, told me she was always either in love, in a crush, or wrapped up in a romantic obsession. 

‘I wasn’t just mourning a breakup,’ she said of that low point in her 30s. ‘I was mourning the way I’d been living. It wasn’t working. It was a kind of addiction. I needed to detox from it.’

So she pulled the ripcord. No swiping, no crushes, not even fantasizing about strangers on the subway. Reader, I would rather give up a kidney than go without that kind of trifecta.

But to Melissa’s surprise, life instantly improved.

‘I thought I’d be miserable,’ she said. ‘But suddenly I had so much time. I was dancing again, cooking, taking long baths. I felt like I was dating myself and I loved it.’

I’ll shamelessly admit, part of me wondered: how much sex was she having that it had disrupted basic hygiene and meal prep? But of course, it wasn’t the act itself. It was the endless emotional labor that came with it – the overthinking, the performing, the spiraling. To be fair – been there, done that.

‘I thought I was being loving and accommodating,’ she said. ‘But really I was curating an image of myself to be loved. I wasn’t being honest about what I wanted. I was performing.’

With the noise of dating and desire turned off, Melissa finally had room to hear herself think. She found pleasure in the little things, like watching old movies in fuzzy socks, building cheese-and-pickle snack plates and dressing for no one but herself.

‘It was like my neglected inner child finally got to take the wheel,’ she said.

One of her most confronting discoveries came when she realized she had spent years having sex she wasn’t actually that into – not out of coercion, but guilt. ‘I felt like if I said no too many times, I was a bad partner. So I just did it. To not be a disappointment.’

Now in a secure, communicative relationship, she and her wife approach sex more deliberately, even taking what she calls ‘pleasure sabbaticals’ to focus on other types of intimacy.

‘It’s not about deprivation. It’s about presence,’ she explained. ‘Sometimes we cuddle naked. Sometimes we just talk. It’s actually more intimate than any sex I had in the past.’

But here’s what really struck me from our chat: most of us don’t actually need to give up sex to get that kind of clarity.

Nope. The real takeaway isn’t to not have sex, it’s to stop using sex (or dating, or chaos) to avoid yourself. Celibacy was the tool Melissa used to break her patterns, but for you or me, that tool might look completely different.

My chat with Melissa didn’t make me want to close up shop on the ol’ love making, but it did make me pause and ask: what’s the thing I keep doing that leaves me drained, distracted and totally disconnected from myself?

Personally, it’s my god-awful taste in men. I have a highly specific talent for choosing the most emotionally unavailable guy in the room and then diving headfirst into a long, drawn-out situationship with him. So that’s what I’d be giving up for a year. Surely that counts as spiritual growth?

Because let’s be honest, these type of guys always show their red flags early. I’ve just been ignoring them while muttering those ancient, doomed words: ‘I can change him.’ Sigh.

My enlightenment over the past year: No. You can’t.

I didn’t need to give up sex to figure that one out, I just needed to start choosing a different kind of man.

For others, the pattern might be constantly saying yes when they mean no, doom-scrolling their ex’s new girlfriend, or abandoning their own needs the second someone gives them attention. (Also, guilty as charged.)

So no, I’m not giving up sex anytime soon. Let’s not be ridiculous. But I am breaking up with the chaos I keep calling chemistry.

Because maybe it’s not about going celibate, maybe it’s about going conscious. About finally realizing that just because someone gives you butterflies doesn’t mean you need to burn your whole nervous system to the ground chasing them.

Melissa used celibacy to take her power back. For me, however, I’m starting with a simple shift: if a man is emotionally constipated and allergic to commitment, I no longer take that as a challenge. I take it as my cue to leave.

So no more ‘I can fix him.’ No more ignoring the red flags just because he’s tall. Enlightenment doesn’t always come from abstinence. Sometimes, it comes from saying: I’m too grown to keep doing this to myself.

Bring on the orgasms with emotionally intelligent and available men. They’re out there, right?