16: Celibacy and the Single Girl

We long-term celibates derive a lot of pleasure from life. However, I regret the publishing industry’s decision to tackle the subject of celibacy in the 21st century in the form of Melissa Febos’ new memoir, The Dry Season, now appearing on the book review circuit, to be released on June 3rd. The reviews are positive. Since I’ve only read reviews, it could be that Febos’s struggle with addiction more than her decision to forego sex for twelve months is really the focus. Regardless, celibacy today is so seldom discussed in the media that it’s a shame that the one book on the subject to garner national attention has been written by an outlier.

This is just a guess, but there are many, many celibate people who weren’t addicted to heroin, didn’t work as dominatrices in their 20s, and never became obsessive runners prior to becoming celibate.¹ It’s bad enough that many people still think celibacy has a pathological basis. I would hate for Febos’ book to reinforce that view.

Come to think of it, I shouldn’t even label myself “a celibate,” since that suggests that I chose to be celibate or, more to the point, that it defines me. This year is my twenty-second celibate year — no, it’s my twenty-third. Twenty-fourth? I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. I very rarely talk about my sexless life with my friends or family, not because I’m sensitive about it or ashamed of it or shy. My reticence has more to do with my general skepticism of the confessional culture that has come to dominate public discourse over the past 30 or 40 years. Perhaps it’s pompous of me to think I have more dignity than to — what’s the verb? — overshare facets of my life I consider private. But there you go. I’m provoked.

When I do address the issue of my celibacy, either directly or obliquely, I do so most often when I think other people are making unwarranted assumptions about me. Some people may think I’m selfish. Others may deem me repressed. I once overheard the husband of a friend say to his wife when discussing whom to invite to a dinner party, “No, no, no women without boyfriends or partners.” It has been clear to me for a long time that couples prefer to socialize with other couples. However, times are changing. It’s been some years since I had to bat away an attempt to set me up with someone.² Some people just don’t get it, but most of my friends accept me as I am.

I rarely read or hear about well-known public figures living a celibate life. And so, it was very refreshing to hear the actress and model Isabella Rossellini explain to Julia Louis-Dreyfus in an November 20, 2024 interview on JL-D’s podcast, Wiser Than Me why she did not want a partner.³ The subject came up at the end of the interview when Louis-Dreyfus asked Rossellini to talk about her private life (my transcription from the audio):

JL-D: Moving on to another topic, there was this incredible interview where you mentioned that there hasn’t been a piece of art that accurately reflects your sexual life in your 60s. And I would love to talk about the relationship with your body as you age, you know, your relationship to intimacy and sex.

IR: So, I don’t have sexuality. You know I haven’t had a boyfriend in 25 years except for a brief moment during Covid. How lucky I was. I didn’t have a boyfriend for years. And then just before Covid, as we were on the lockdown, I met a man who I liked a lot and then left. The Covid lockdown for me was fantastic. It was a sexual dalliance of sorts. So how it happened, I had my children, and I adopted my son as a single mom, because I was getting older and I wanted - I come from a family of a lot of brothers and sisters so I wanted my daughter to have that. And, uh, I was getting older, I didn’t have a man then or a man with whom I wanted to have children and so I adopted my son Roberto. And I still had boyfriends going out but it was difficult, you know. And the day never ended. You know, I started at 5 in the morning to get the children ready for school and then dinner, bath, you know, reading the story. And then the boyfriend wants another dinner, and then he wants to make love. The day never ended. So I was going to a therapist (laughing) and I said, how do I handle this? You know, I get up at 5, still at 1 o’clock still doing something for somebody, and she said “have you ever tried not to have a boyfriend?” And I had not. I always had somebody, you know, if it wasn’t a boyfriend it was somebody you went out [with] trying to figure out if he could become a boyfriend. And she said, “try it!” As you know, I am very adventurous, so I’m going to try and be single for 6 months…

JL-D: I love this “as an adventure.” That’s good.

IR: Let me try, let me try. It was fantastic. It was fantastic. It was so serene, no ups and downs. You know, I slept, I could take care of my children without worrying that, that…

JL-D: Somebody else needed attention.

IR: Somebody else needed attention or there was tension among them because when he’s not the father they don’t like it so much, the boyfriend. So the 6 months became a year, two years, and then, I thought, well, you know, it happened. And I spoke to other friends, oh, yes, I haven’t been married in 3 years, okay, so I never made the choice. 25 years went by without a boyfriend but for that very brief Covid parenthesis, luckily. Otherwise I would have been locked up by myself.

JL-D: But here’s the thing. Are you missing that now? Do you want to have another boyfriend? Or are you happy to be back to being single?

IR: Yeah, I think because I have a big community, I don’t need a man. If I fall in love, yes. But otherwise — a friend of mine says come to dinner I have somebody to be a companion. I don’t need a companion. I have plenty of friends, I have grandchildren, my community here living in the village, it does help to be single and live on a farm, you’re part of a community. In the city it would be harder, because going to parties without a husband or a companion is the worst. I cannot enter a party by myself. I hate it. To go to a party…

JL-D: What do you do? Take a friend with you?

IR: But they don’t want to come because most of the time it’s boring or too much chitchat or, you know, red carpets, so they are stuck in the corner waiting for me, and so they don’t want to come. None of my family wants to come. And sometimes other friends don’t want to come. And so I don’t go to parties. I never really liked them so I don’t miss them. Um, sometimes I miss the companionship, you know, “oh, let’s go see this movie together,” and then coming out and discussing it. But it’s not something so big, the missing, that it would make me…

JL-D: that requires a change.

IR: Yeah.

When I heard Rossellini, whose credentials now include a graduate degree in animal behavior (ethology), speak so openly about her life, I did a fist pump. Yes! Exactly! Soon after, I found another interview, one she had given to the New York Times 6 months prior to the one with Louis-Dreyfus. The interviewer asked questions similar to the ones Louis-Dreyfus posed. You can tell Rossellini grew a little exasperated: “I don’t live my life to be a role model to anybody. I live my life as best I can.”

I say to you as an older woman and a wise woman: You’re asking me questions about men, as men are who is giving us our identity. They don’t. They do and they don’t. There are many other things that can give you identity: knowledge, children, friendship, curiosity. And we have been limited to wanting to have the men’s gaze to define who we are. It’s not necessary.⁴

Although I’m childless, the terms in which Rossellini describes her situation, preferences, and inclinations map closely onto my own. I didn’t plan to be single. It just turned out that way. Getting tenure, publishing, traveling to do research meant I had little time to think about romance. What’s more, my horror of dating apps is only surpassed by my aversion to Facebook, so that was never an option. What I did have was financial independence. I own, free and clear, my home. Solitude is my natural habitat, from which I frequently emerge for friends and family. I go where I want and, now that I am retired, when I want. I don’t have to negotiate with a partner over big or little travel plans, what to make for dinner, who cleans the house, who to invite over, what to go see, and a myriad other decisions. Instead of turning me into a self-centered Gorgon, this freedom has made me more flexible and open to compromise than I might otherwise have been, because I’m very aware of having fewer constraints on my time and attention than my partnered friends have.

Would I like to have had a long-term partner? Maybe, but I feel no incentive to find one. Although I’ve known one or two married couples whose half-century relationships I found moving to observe, I am conscious, too, of what I would have had to give up: my agency, control over my life. One member of most established couples will understand what I mean by that.

Did I want children? Yes, I did. It didn’t happen. Should I mourn what didn’t happen when my life is otherwise so pleasant? When someone asks if I’m afraid of being alone at the end of my life — no partner, no children — I’m not sure what to say. I’ve been at the deathbed of both my parents. In both cases, neither was aware of who was around them at the end. I think it matters more to the partner and children that they be present. 50% of every couple will survive the death of a spouse and face their own end more alone than they expected. Someone has to go first. In my case, if I don’t drop dead suddenly, ten or fifteen years from now, I’ll probably wind up arranging lunch dates with friends in the café of an assisted living-skilled nursing facility. There are much worse fates.

As for sex, at this stage of my life I view it as I do sports. I used to play but I’m older and out of practice. I’d rather coach. By which I mean I’d rather pass on the little wisdom about life I’ve garnered over time to the young people I’m close to. Young people today have to deal with a lot more than my generation had to contend with.

I don’t define myself by what I don’t have. I see myself as someone who has a lot, quite a bit more than most people. My identity rests on my ability to acquire and maintain friendships, my love of books, writing, and learning, and my desire to participate in political change. That’s a life of plenty, as far as I’m concerned.

1. The Dry Season will be published on June 3rd, two days from the day I finished this piece.

2. As a historian of Mediterranean slavery (among other topics), I was taken aback when a department staff member handed me a message from a man who a friend was trying to set me up with. He showed up with no notice at my place of employment to introduce himself. Having looked at my list of publications on my webpage, he said to the staff member “Would you tell her I’m interested in buying a slave? Can we meet to talk about it?” According to the friend who pointed him in my direction, I lacked a sense of humor.

3. The part of the conversation I transcribed begin at the 1:06:45 mark.

4. “How to Grow Old like Isabella Rossellini,” The New York Times Magazine, March 3, 2024.