In my early thirties, I went 1,358 days without sex. To save you the calculations, that’s three years, eight months and 23 days — more than the combined length of Jennifer Lopez’s first two marriages plus the number of days that Lisa Marie Presley was married to Michael Jackson and Nicholas Cage.
Now, don’t get the wrong idea: I am not all that virtuous. In my twenties, I’d always been able to nip my dry spells in the bud — a weekend fling here, a spur-of-the-moment tryst there. At 30, I dumped my commitment-phobic boyfriend and I assumed that while searching for Mr Right, I’d take more than a few test drives with Mr Remote Possibility.
My dry spell started out as an ordinary run of bad luck. Though I was meeting plenty of men, through friends and an internet dating service, match.com, that spark was simply elusive. But then, a couple years after my break-up, it dawned on me that I’d crossed some invisible line. My predicament had escalated to the level of full-blown crisis, like when a tropical storm is upgraded to a hurricane. It was time to assign my crisis a name — The Streak — and keep track of it with a number.
For a while, I used The Streak whenever I was in need of sympathy from friends, and the strategy worked. The number made an impression on people, eliciting both shock and condolences. But then, as it entered high triple digits, The Streak began to backfire. Sentiment started to shift from “Gee, that’s really awful” to “Gee, Suzanne, what’s your problem?” Fair question. By this time, I’d screened thousands of potential boyfriends on match.com and, of these, I’d corresponded with at least 300. Eliminating men who sent e-mails like “My best friend is my hairless little dog”, I had met for coffee with about 40. Yet I’d made it past a first date only once, with an architect who treated his fork and plate as a percussion instrument.
Clearly something was amiss. I realised that factions were forming around full-blown theories. The most popular was, in the words of my grandmother: “You’re too picky.” It was alternately known as: “Who do you think you are, Gwyneth Paltrow?”
Advertisement
Of course, the very people espousing this theory were the same ones setting me up on ludicrous blind dates. One date, billed by a friend as a “writer”, turned out to be a rider — a motorcycle rider who’d recently filed for bankruptcy and was 27 years older than me. My friend’s excuse: “Hey, I met him in a bar. It was loud and dark, and he was wearing a hat.”
Another friend tried to fix me up with a stockbroker whom she had never met. Our conversation went something like this.
Me: So, what’s he like?
Sheila: Well, I know both of his parents and they are very good people.
Me: Is he athletic?
Advertisement
Sheila: Well, he must be — he’s quite tall.
When I failed to shower these friends with gratitude, I was accused of being unappreciative, as if I were a homeless person refusing the offer of a bed unless the sheets were silk. I began to wonder: had my own friends put me in the desperate category? Did they think my only criteria were a pulse and a penis?
Now, it’s true that I was choosy. I wanted something more than sex. I wanted a guy who could utter the words “I feel” in a context other than “I feel like eating at McDonald’s”. Still, I didn’t have a trivial list of requirements, like a certain salary or a graduate degree. And I certainly wasn’t as obnoxiously nitpicky as some of the men on match.com, like the one who wrote: “Seeking a gorgeous, exotic woman who is my intellectual equal. No offence, but please do not reply if you weigh more than 55kg (8st 9lb).” When I dismissed a prospect, I felt sure that any reasonable woman would have done the same.
Still, my friends and family insisted that I was to blame. Among the other theories explaining my drought: I was too assertive; I wasn’t assertive enough; I was looking for love in all the wrong places. One friend insisted I join a Harley-Davidson club. (Never mind that I was deathly afraid of motorcycles.) Another friend decided the problem was an energy imbalance in my apartment. “Hire a feng shui consultant,” she insisted. In the spirit of hopefulness, I tried out that theory. My $400 (£223) feng shui consultation left me with a huge fishless aquarium — but no sex.
Naturally, I did from time to time wonder whether my appearance might be the problem. My grandmother didn’t hesitate to suggest that hypothesis. “Have you gained weight?” she asked. “You look heavy. Men don’t like heavy.” I didn’t take this notion too seriously, however, since a week later Grandma said: “Have you lost weight? You’re too skinny. Men like a girl with some meat on her bones.”
Advertisement
Then there were the “get therapy” theorists. These friends insisted that, if only I’d seek counselling, I would give off the sort of vibes that would draw men to me like mosquitos to a bug zapper. “Once you deal with your issues, a relationship will just ‘happen’,” one friend said.
But I knew exactly what my issues were: I hadn’t had sex in two years and it sucked.
Just how bad was it? Well, a friend once told me that when it comes to sex, women are like camels: “They can go long periods without any, but eventually they need to replenish or die.” Though I was fairly certain that I wasn’t going to expire from celibacy, I can assure you that enduring a streak like mine is no picnic.
A good bit of the time, of course, you’re consumed by lust. Sometimes you catch yourself having thoughts that are, if not criminal, then at least totally inappropriate.
For example: you’re lifting weights at the gym and your eyes focus on a tall, muscular guy doing squats, and you think “Hmm, that guy has a nice ass” — and then you realise that, in addition to having a nice ass, the guy probably has chemistry homework, since he looks to be in the sixth form.
Advertisement
Naturally, you have your share of fantasy sex, but here’s the strange thing: even though, in your fantasies, you can imagine having sex with anybody you want, you find yourself dreaming of sex with men you aren’t attracted to and sometimes with men you dislike, and you realise to your horror that your imagination is doing what you swore you’d never do — settle.
Here’s another odd thing: even though you desperately want sex, you can’t actually remember what sex with another person feels like. Sometimes you fear that you’ve forgotten how to have sex. What if, like a car that hasn’t been started in several years, when you finally get the opportunity you won’t “turn over”?
When you’re in the midst of an epic celibacy streak, you have little patience when people complain about their own, less heroic, dry spells. Once, flipping through a magazine at a supermarket, I ran across an article titled Could You Give up Sex for 40 Days? Forty days! Such sacrifice! What will next month’s story be: “Could You Give up Shopping for 20 Minutes?”
When you haven’t had sex in forever, you’re especially intolerant of married people who complain that they “never” have sex with their spouse by which, of course, they mean 1) never as much as they want it, or 2) never as much as they used to have it. But “never” doesn’t actually mean never. This is a common complaint among couples with infants. But if you do the maths, you will see that even someone with an 8-month-old is still — worst-case scenario — well under the 600-day mark.
While I was doing my best to plot an end to my streak, I was dealt an additional blow: my younger sister got engaged. The moment she heard, my grandmother turned to me and shrieked: “You should be the one getting married! Why can’t you find a man?”
Advertisement
Comments like these weren’t easy to slough off and I’ll admit to shedding a few tears now and again. Still, I never lost hope. I went on with my life — I worked and traveled and took up cycling — all the while figuring that eventually The Streak would end. But when?
“Enough already!” snapped one friend, who was almost as weary of hearing about The Streak as I was living it. “Why don’t you just march down to the nearest bar and put an end to the damn thing?”
I had given that idea some consideration, especially since I now had an actual deadline: I had parlayed my marathon dry spell into a book deal and had promised my publisher a dramatic — no, a climactic! — final chapter. The pressure was on. Yet despite my best efforts, I reached the dreaded One Thousand Days — my own personal new millennium.
Something about this ignominious achievement put my predicament into sharper focus and finally some answers began to emerge. Despite my preoccupation with sex, I realized that I had, inadvertently, grown protective of The Streak. At age 34, I’d regressed to the virginal mindset of “saving myself” — a mindset that I didn’t possess even as a virgin. I saw that I was holding out for Mr Right or, at least, Mr Significant Probability.
My streak had nothing to do with morality; it was really a matter of practicality. Even in my libido-starved state, I knew that there really are stronger urges than sexual desire, and one of them, in your thirties, is the urge to find true love and happiness.
I wouldn’t wish 1,358 days of unintentional celibacy on anyone but, in my case, the wait was worth it. After nearly four years, I broke The Streak with a handsome, down-to-earth, redheaded marathon runner I met on match.com.
Let’s just say that sex with Paul, on our fourth date, was even better than I could have imagined. Afterwards, I remember feeling so comfortable in his arms and realising that all my worries had been unfounded. What I recall most vividly was Paul’s reaction, a few hours later, when I told him about The Streak.
I’d wrestled with whether I should reveal my big secret, knowing it was the sort of information that could send certain guys sprinting out the door. But I had so much confidence that Paul wasn’t one of those guys that I took the chance. We were still in bed when I spilled the beans. He looked at me in shock and, it seemed like five minutes before he was able to speak again. “But ... but ... you are so normal. How could that be?”
I think it’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me. A year later, we were married.
1001 Nights without Sex, by Suzanne Schlosberg is published by Mainstream Publishing on September 2 at £7.99.
©Suzanne Schlosberg 2004. The book is available from Times Books First at £6.79 plus p&p. Call 0870 1608080 or visit www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirstbuy