Meaghan Wray has been celibate for over 18 months, but she didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to stop having sex.
“It was more of a slow burn decision, one that started with being completely turned off by men and wanting nothing to do with them, to deleting most of my dating apps,” said Wray, a 34-year-old writer from Toronto.
The catalyst was a “bad experience” with a man she’d met on the dating app Feeld; he’d seemed great, but when they met and hooked up, he removed the condom without telling her, then unmatched and unfollowed her. “I just realized I felt a lot happier removing dating and sex from the equation.”
Initially, Wray just told her inner circle (“my friends are the most supportive people on the planet and would support me becoming a nun if I wanted to”) but eventually she discussed it on social media and Substack, which elicited many reactions.
Some people were shocked that I could make it one whole year with no sex. While some were like, ‘One year? Try seven! That’s where I’m at.’” she said.
In fact, deciding to abstain from sex for a prolonged period of time — for reasons that aren’t rooted in faith or cultural norms — is having something of a moment.
Khloe Kardashian’s celibacy was a plot point on the current season of her family’s reality show. “I just haven’t been intimate in quite a long time,” volunteered the third Kardashian sister, whose former relationship with Tristan Thompson was tabloid fodder for years.
“I think once you go a certain time frame, it doesn’t matter anymore,” she added in a subsequent interview with Us Weekly. “You’re like, ‘OK, now you have to be really worth it to break that.’”
Drew Barrymore shared in a 2021 blog post that she hadn’t had “an intimate relationship” since her 2016 separation, and has spoken about it many times since on her talk show. Last year, Lenny Kravitz told The Guardian that he’d been celibate for nine years, saying, “it’s a spiritual thing”; 50 Cent said he was “practicing abstinence” to focus on his career; and former Playboy model Kendra Wilkinson told People that she’s been celibate since her 2018 divorce as a way to “rewire” her relationship to sex.
On social media, it’s common to see Millennials and Gen Zs posting announcements that they’re “boy sober,” eschewing dating apps and hookups in favour of self-improvement and self-care. It’s a less extreme and explicitly political version of South Korea’s 4B Movement, which emerged a few years ago as a radical response to gender inequality and societal expectations that women must marry and produce children.
Julia Fox, who many came to know when she dated Kanye West in 2022, insouciantly shared she’d been celibate for two and a half years in a TikTok comment, saying she’d “never been happier.” Expanding on this in a Marie Claire interview, Fox said she felt “done with men,” a feeling that was amplified by the overturn of Roe v. Wade. “Why would I lay down with someone who won’t stand up for me?” she said, adding that she’s heard from many like-minded followers. “Women are tired. They’re like, ‘I wish more women understood how great it is not to do this.’”
For Talia Cadet, who’s shared her celibacy journey with her 175K TikTok followers, a bad breakup led her to “intentionally and proactively abstain from sexual relations” for about three years.
“I had every intention of getting back out there, but I had to take a step back after going on a few dates with new guys. It wasn’t fulfilling. I didn’t feel like I was having my needs met. Then the pandemic happened and made the choice of celibacy for me,” said Cadet, a Washington, D.C.-based content creator in her 30s. “The timing was kind of perfect.”
There are many definitions of celibacy — some people limit only sex, some rule out dating — and Cadet decided not to engage at all with any man she was attracted to. “No flirting. No talking. No texting. No dates,” she said. “I was extreme about it, because I wanted to focus on myself and my goals. Men would’ve been a distraction.”
She was surprised by how easy she found it. “I was never really into casual, noncommittal sex. Although I very much enjoy sex and consider myself very open-minded, I’m only interested in sex with people I have deep connections with,” she said. “I wasn’t finding that before celibacy, so I was fine during it.”
In fact, it became a source of creative inspiration: She has written a forthcoming romance novel whose main character has been celibate for several years, and like Cadet now, is exploring romantic connections again.
“She’s dating with intention and doesn’t want sex clouding her judgment, but she also wants her sexual needs and desires met,” said Cadet. “I think a lot of readers are going to see themselves in the female lead.”
In sharing her stories about celibacy on TikTok, Cadet has noticed a lot of curiosity about it from women. “I think women are increasingly frustrated with dating,” she said. “Women would rather be single than be in a situation that doesn’t serve them or enhance their already wonderful lives.”
After her last relationship ended, Mandana Zarghami realized she was attracted to toxic people and behaviours and decided to become celibate in order to “completely decentre men, work on myself and truly find my spark again.”
There’s a self-care element to it for the 29-year-old Miami-based business owner and content creator. “Engaging in any physical intimate act is a way of transferring your energy from yourself to that person and vice versa,” she said.
For her, not having sex created space to heal from past traumas, focus on her career, and nourish her friendships and family ties. It brought an added bonus when she started dating again. “This was a great way to weed out a lot of men that were trying to get to know me for the wrong reasons,” she said. “I stood on my beliefs and definitely had some weird responses and reactions.”
In sharing her celibacy story online, Zarghami said the only negative feedback came “from men making rude jokes and comments.”
Speaking of men, it’s noteworthy that they’re less represented in this phenomenon. “[The ‘boy sober’ movement] is really tied to some of these classic power dynamics between men and women in relationship to each other,” said Toronto clinical sex therapist and author Laura Federico. “We’re still trying really hard to find ways to push back against the expectations of what this is meant to look like.”
Federico hears over and over from clients of all genders that they feel pressure to have a certain kind of sex life. “Usually, what they’re using to evaluate it is frequency,” she said. “It’s much further down the list that they are evaluating how much they like it, or when they desire it.”
She links this to the idea of “compulsory sexuality,” explored in a book by Sherronda J. Brown framed as a Black, asexual lens on our sex-obsessed culture. “There have been these expectations that for a person to be well, to be whole, to be in a relationship that’s good, sexuality has to fit an erotic template that involves a certain amount and type of sex,” said Federico. “The layers of judgment are so many and so deep that it’s terrifying for a lot of people to imagine that they could be happy without sex looking that way — or without sex at all.”
She links the rise in celibacy to increasing visibility for poly relationships and other “different relationship constellations.” “It’s people just saying, ‘These are different things that work for me,’” she said. “People get really fed up with making decisions for other people and not themselves. It’s not isolated to this one area of their life. It’s an accumulation, they sort of reach a breaking point and want to take things back for themselves. One of the most empowering ways to do something like that is through our own bodies.”
For Wray, choosing to be celibate has meant untangling a complicated knot of feelings. “As a fat woman, I grew up feeling like I had to be having tons of sex with men in order to feel beautiful and desired, and I honestly still feel a bit of that pressure lingering today. If I’m not having sex, does that mean no one wants me? Am I not worthy or desirable?” she said. “Unpacking all of that while being celibate has been incredibly valuable.”
For anyone considering celibacy, Wray suggests focusing on the “why” behind it. “It helped to stop framing it as deprivation,” she said. “I sometimes felt like I was missing out on something, but reframing it as making space for the self, healing and breaking harmful dating dynamics made the experience feel so much more important.”
