Sex, Celibacy & Self-Love

“I knew you were going to be promiscuous from the time you were 3 years old!” This was years ago, but I can still hear her words ringing in my ears as she stormed off down the hallway to leave me alone with my thoughts. I can still feel the shame and guilt that bubbled up from my gut into my chest like there was a balloon pushing my lungs out and crushing my heart.        

My mind drifted back to the stories my mom would tell of how I would wander around the airport as a child waiting for my dad’s flight home, and I would “pass the time by sitting in strange older men’s laps.”  My mom was invited to the pre-school one afternoon because my teacher had received complaints from other moms about me hugging and kissing their sons. She explained to my mother that I had multiple boyfriends in the class, and would occasionally hold weddings during outside play-time.  After a week long summer camp in the 6th grade, the camp counselor left my mom with a grave warning: “You’d better watch out for that one and the boys.”  

I have always allowed myself to be defined by my relationships with men.  And I have always pretended that that was not the case simply by refusing to commit to them.  For as long as I can remember, I had to have someone that I was interested in, and, more importantly, someone who was interested in me.  More often than not, these were not the same person. In every class, I had (at least) one boy whose attention I would adamantly seek.  I would obsess over him in my free time to avoid feeling alone; I would log every interaction we had in a journal that I shamefully hid in the top shelf of my closet, as if I was chronicling it to have documentation of my worth.  

My fear of being alone and my fear of commitment matured at a rapid and parallel rate.  On the rare occasion that I did participate in a monogamous relationship, I spent the majority of my time lining up emotional safety nets for when that relationship inevitably failed.  I spent years hoisting broken people up onto a pedestal and then running through their life like a tornado. I was always left feeling devastated and abandoned. I faced both physical and sexual abuse, and because I was unable to endure the sickening hollow feeling of being alone, I found myself trying to crawl right back to the familiar destruction.  

My self-worth was completely determined by how the men in my life viewed me.  If I could find someone who adored me, then I would be alright for that moment; it didn’t matter who.  I constantly needed someone to affirm that I was pretty, that I was funny, that I was intelligent, that I was worth the space that I took up in the world.  The deeper I spiraled in my addiction, the more I needed validation from these outside sources. I clung to men like life rafts, all the while pretending that they meant nothing to me; insisting that they were disposable; completely baffled by my intense need for them coupled with a complete inability to actually love them.    

The truth is that if there were any more men left that would have put up with my bullshit, I probably wouldn’t have gotten sober.

But fortunately, there weren’t, and I did…

The first time I sat down to work with my mentor in sobriety, she asked me if I had a boyfriend and I told her no. She seemed very happy with my answer and said that being single in the beginning would make my journey a lot easier. At the time I truly believed that the three different men I was casually sleeping with were not relevant to this conversation. 

Without drugs and alcohol, my desperation to escape my own head intensified.  I found myself using men the same way that I would use drugs – to escape. The appeal to me was about far more than the sex itself – it was about the ability to take a break from being me. I could pretend to be whoever I wanted and get lost in the way that I was seen. Very simply, I saw myself as Kimberly: the uncomfortable, emotionally stifled, recovering alcoholic. But when I found that there were men who saw me as quirky, brilliant and spiritually enlightened, I could forget myself, even if it was only temporary. 

In early sobriety, the only change in my sex conduct that I was willing to make was being honest about my intentions. As long as I was open and upfront about the fact that all I was interested in was sex, no harm was being caused. Right? And yet, every time I found myself driving home at 3 a.m. I experienced an undeniable feeling of emptiness. What I had overlooked was the harm being done to myself. While my recovery from drugs and alcohol progressed, my relationship with myself was still virtually non-existent. However, since I had never before had any sort of healthy internal connection, I had no frame of reference to recognize the void. 

By 8 months sober, my sex conduct had caused conflict and harm in my relationships at work, to casual acquaintances and within my close groups of friends. But worst of all was when I found myself bringing new damage into the lives of people to whom I was trying to make amends to for the severe pain I had caused them in my addiction. I was stone cold sober and I was continuing to hurt people as severely as I had when I was drunk. I felt trapped in a perpetual cycle of selfishness and self-sabotage. I prayed and meditated every morning but I couldn’t connect to anything. Guilt and shame flooded in and I was being pushed closer and closer back to alcohol. It was here at the jumping off point that I realized if I was going to stay sober, I was going to have to change my behavior. 

In my state of desperation, I committed to 90 days of abstinence. During this time, I would not sleep with anyone, date anyone, spend time with men one on one or even have intimate conversations with men. Essentially, it was an emotional cleanse. The first few weeks it was like getting sober all over again. I experienced a mental obsession and felt completely isolated from everyone around me. I became acutely aware of the soul-crushing loneliness that resided deep inside of me, and realized that this is what I had been running from my entire life. The feeling of being alone with myself was unbearable. I had no distractions and no outlets in which to find relief. I was quickly forced to develop new coping skills and find new sources to draw comfort from. 

So I began each morning with a prayer asking the universe to please keep me sober and to please help me maintain my boundaries. In order to get out of bed, it was usually necessary for me to recite aloud a series of positive affirmations 10 or 20 times over. “I am worthy of life, I am worthy of love, I am worthy of happiness.” “I am made of light and love and I am being taken care of by the universe.” “I am spiritually and emotionally connected to the world around me.” “I bring happiness and healing everywhere I go.” “I am whole, I am complete, I am enough.” I couldn’t explain how, but when I spoke love and positivity over myself, I felt a faint warmth form around my heart that gave me just enough energy to drag myself out of bed and participate in life. I started to give attention to the way that I spoke to myself in my head. Rather than allowing the constant stream of criticism and negativity, I would intentionally insert self-affirming uplifting thoughts to interrupt the downward spiral. It didn’t matter whether or not I believed them yet, as long as I was diligent about doing the exercise regularly. In addition to a morning gratitude list, I would write down things that I was proud of myself for accomplishing in order to reaffirm the positive changes I had already made in my life. One of the most difficult things that I forced myself to do was to write qualities that I liked about myself and why I liked them. The first time I tried it took me 30 minutes just to come up with 3 things that I didn’t hate about myself, but it only took a few times for the exercise to start feeling more natural and believable. I did mirror work, which involved me looking at myself in the mirror and saying things like “I love you.” “My body is perfect and it is healthy.” “My body is divine and it is worth taking care of.” Over and over and over again. 

I forced myself to spend one evening alone each week in order for me to rediscover things that I enjoyed. I made myself eat alone in public, or wander around a book store by myself, getting to know myself the same way that I would a new friend. I practiced self-care by taking time to shower more regularly, do laundry, clean my living environment, read books, burn candles, meditate, take baths, do face masks and create various routines that allowed me to self-soothe. I pursued creative outlets such as playing piano, writing, drawing and painting. I surrounded myself with women, particularly women who were empowered and carried themselves with an air of confidence and self-acceptance. I went to my therapist and I asked for help and for the first time got honest with her about everything. I began an intensive 16 week course in DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) in order to work on impulse control and emotion regulation. After that we transitioned into EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy) in order to explore and reframe various traumas from my past. 

At the recommendation of my mentor, I wrote an ideals list on a partner.  She told me to write in great detail every quality that I wanted in another human being. I wrote a long list of admirable words such as loving, affectionate, self-aware, empathetic, patient, emotionally expressive, creative, passionate, altruistic, charismatic, open-minded, intelligent, thoughtful, adventurous, etc. When I finished the list I called and read it to her, and she told me that it was now my job to strive to become every one of the things I had written down. While the whole exercise left me feeling a little bit manipulated and foolish, I couldn’t argue that I did not deserve a person who was all of these things if I did not possess any of these qualities myself. 

I began to feel a shift in my focus from what I could get from other people to what I could do for others. I started small, by simply sending text messages expressing love and appreciation to the people in my life. I walked around and picked up trash before I left a room. I smiled at strangers. In conversation, I tried to listen more than I talked. I began asking people how they were doing and what I could do to help and support them. I started making sure that I followed through on the promises that I made. When I was in groups of people, I noticed that someone looked disconnected or uncomfortable, and I made an effort to introduce myself and try to make them feel a part of. I called to check in on friends that I knew were struggling with something. Over time, my desperate need for other people transformed into more genuine healthy connections. 

The beautiful thing about the way the universe works is that women who were struggling with the exact same things that I had been only months before began approaching me for help. As I walked them through the steps that I had taken, little parts of me began to heal. I started to become more open as I realized that my experiences could be used to help others. The more that I talked about the internal work that I was doing, I began attracting people who were doing similar work on themselves. Months later, I found myself immersed in a group of people exploring spirituality, pursuing deep healing and promoting personal growth. I began to experience complete openness, deep connections and unconditional love and acceptance. 

After a time I started to realize that it was never about turning myself into someone that could be in a relationship. In fact, none of it had anything to do with sex, men, relationships, or anything else of that nature. The purpose in all of this was for me to learn to love and accept myself unconditionally. It was to let go of the limiting belief that I couldn’t be happy until I found someone that made me happy. For the first time, I learned how to take responsibility for my own happiness, and the journey of searching for another person to fulfill me is what eventually led me to finding myself. The process of cultivating a healthy relationship with myself is ongoing and imperfect, and the path that I took is certainly not the only way of getting there. 

In the words of Madeleine L’Engle, “You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do. There is only one single way. Go into yourself.”