Celibacy Matt

Some, it is said, choose celibacy; others have celibacy thrust upon them. Or something like that. I would fall into the second category, although I like to think that there's a degree of choice in it anyway. I am an Interesting Medical Specimen who provided my endocrinologist with hours of gleeful amusement and publishable anecdotes when I turned up with only half the normal allotment of pituitary gland. (For those of you who don't follow endocrinal issues, that little guy is located in your brain right between your eyes, and pretty much controls chemical balances and has a lot to do with sex drive.) So after a long marriage that produced two splendid children, my allotment of libido was, in effect, cashed in as I near my 40th birthday.

I give myself a variety of life-sustaining hormones by weekly self-injection and, other than an "incurable" disinterest in sexual intercourse, am just fit as a fiddle. Unfortunately, my new orientation didn't match up well with that of my beloved spouse, she of the Complete and Entire pituitary, and she sped off post haste to explore more active alternatives. Interestingly, however, the interpersonal relationship between us has been distinctly more blissful since we found out what's going on. I think this bodes well for intimate, substantive relationships with all sorts of folks who I don't want to jump on (and their numbers, these days, are legion).

I guess I find myself in what some who are struggling with celibacy may well find to be an enviable position (I still have some trouble with that idea, having been to the other side and back again). But to me, celibacy offers the potential for building rewarding and vibrant relationships with people free of the expectations and pressures wrapped up with intercourse-based intercourse; in which people are free to be comfortable; to play with each other; to be thinking individuals who don't have to think about how they're going to get the other one naked (or consciously guard or structure their conversations and relationships to facilitate or avoid that event); to experiment, in other words, with how people get along.

I think I AM making a choice: to not try to change what is essentially unchangeable, to accept my situation with good humor, and to help make celibacy a respected and accepted alternative lifestyle. I think we should be careful of defining celibacy in terms of what we don't do, and define it more positively, in terms of what it frees us to do.