Do you really want to give up sex?

My friend Ciara decided to give up sex. Not permanently, of course, just temporarily.

Although her last few encounters with men had been satisfying sexually, Ciara didn't think she was getting what she wanted from them emotionally or psychologically. It would have been easy to blame the men for this, but Ciara didn't think that they were necessarily at fault. The real issue, she realised, was that she hadn't a clue what she wanted in the first place, so she was hardly in a position to give out about the perfidy or insensitivity of her chosen suitors.
We were sitting in a coffee shop – lattes for them, green tea for me – when Jim suggested abstinence.
Abstinence has many fans, normally of the religious and/or conservative persuasion so you could say I was more than a little surprised that Jim was one of them, seeing as he is neither. I looked to see if his tongue was in his cheek, but there was no sign of it.
Abstinence has been suggested for many reasons. It is believed that freeing yourself from sexual desire allows the mind to concentrate on higher, more spiritual topics; that refraining from sex until marriage makes for stronger, more intimate relationships; and that sex before a match saps a sport star's vitality.
I don't know if any of these things are true. What I did know is that from what she had said, Ciara wasn't searching for God, a husband or the winning goal. Her ambitions were far more mundane – to figure out what she wanted from relationships. Or so she claimed; I suspected what she was really after was to find some deeper meaning in life, but that's a much harder quest.
"Maybe you could do with a little time out; avoid men until you decide what you want and then make sure you're going to get it before you get sexually involved," said Jim.
"Abstinence?" asked Ciara, horrified, and then turned to me. "What do you think?"
I shrugged my shoulders. Ciara had made some bad choices with her sexual partners – as most of us have from time to time – but the notion that avoiding sex for a prescribed period of time would make her choices any better was speculative at best.
"Don't look at me, I retorted. "My life is just as messy as yours. I think you should do whatever makes you happy."
Jim was convinced that the source of Ciara's unhappiness was the haphazard state of her romantic life and that should she settle down with a person she cared for, and who cared for her in return, she would feel more content.
Jim believed this because it had been true for him. His devil-may-care bachelor days hadn't made him happy; he drank too much; had sex with dubious women; wasted his evenings in idle chat with men he called friends but who hadn't provided much of a support system. Since abstinence had worked for him, he thought it would work for Ciara, and me too if the truth be told.
"The problem is you choose guys mostly because you want to have sex with them. You don't consider the other stuff," said Jim.
"What other stuff?" she asked.
Jim seemed at a loss. "I don't know… Like what kind of a person he is, whether or not he'd make a good boyfriend."
"Not much point in having a boyfriend if you don't want to have sex with him though, is there?" Ciara replied.
"I'm not saying that," said Jim exasperated, "It's just that sex is so high on the agenda with you, you don't consider whether or not there's any future in the relationship and you don't give people the chance to see what a wonderful person you are, inside and out."
At this point, Ciara looked like she might burst into tears.
"Do you know what you want?" she asked me.
"Right now, a chocolate brownie," I said. "Other than that, I haven't a clue."
Jim's words must have hit home; after a period of reflection, Ciara decided to give it a go. She tried to rope me in: like the AA buddy system, we could keep each other on the path of righteousness, but I wasn't having any of it.
"Let's see how you get on first," I said. "If you discover the answer to life, the universe and everything, maybe then I'll give it a go."
A month into the experiment Ciara had to admit that things were not exactly going to plan. Of course, like everyone else, she'd had long stretches where she didn't have sex, but this was different – not a combination of unfortunate circumstances, but a decision she had made freely herself.
She confessed. The first problem with celibacy is that sex was all she could think about. The second problem with celibacy is that sex was all she could think about. It was the third problem too. The fourth was she just wasn't very good at it. Celibacy that is.
In the first week she had not quite consummated sex with – she didn't quite know what to call him – her ex? That term suggested a level of seriousness that hadn't been there. Friend? Supposedly, but for the most part Ciara doesn't think that sex, even unconsummated sex, with friends is a wise idea. Former fuck buddy? That wasn't quite right either, she said, as it seemed too cold and uncaring.
During the second week she got drunk and kissed a girl, which meant she wasn't only failing, but failing bisexually. Week three brought yet more failure in the form of a friend of a friend. But, in mitigation, she pointed out that it was only a kiss, and as she had not wanted it to go any further than that, it hadn't, and she'd gone home alone.
Week four disaster struck, this time in the form of the same ex/friend/fuck buddy/whatever from week one. Once in the evening and again the following morning.
"In the morning, when he woke up, he looked at me and asked 'What are you doing in my bed?' and I thought to myself, 'That's a very good question'."
"Well, what exactly were you doing?" I asked cheekily.
"At that moment, dozing."
I laughed. "My dad used to say it's not the sleeping that's the problem."
She sighed. "He asked me if he'd taken advantage of me, but I think it might have been the other way around. After all, I'd trotted home after him, like a puppy."
"Look, it's like everything else. So you had a relapse, like an alcoholic who fell off the wagon, but you can always start again. If you want to, that is."
"I don't know. On the one hand I think Jim may be right, but then I think one day I'll be seventy and no-one will want to have sex with me."
"Might as well get it while you can then, huh?"
"Exactly."
While Ciara is given to moods of bleak introspection, I am an optimist. Ms Sexton can always find the silver lining in any cloud, and I'd spotted a good one here.
"You know, perhaps the experiment wasn't as much of a failure as you think. You did learn something important about yourself. You might not know what it is you want, but you certainly know what you don't want."
She looked at me quizzically. "Yeah, what's that?"
"You learnt that you don't want to be celibate. It's not much, but hey, at least it's a start."