In a society where sexual stimuli and messages are the essential ingredient of TV programs, films and sometimes television news, that sexual abstinence is a topic that is being discussed more and more often. A recent survey, the results of which were published in various newspapers, revealed that more and more couples are choosing chastity as a way of lifeto. Chastity, or sexual abstinence, involves the renunciation of all (or almost all) aspects of sex.
The reasons that can induce a person or a couple to make this lifestyle their own can be many; often at the basis of such a choice there are psychological reasons (e.g. having had negative experiences in the past), philosophical or religious motivations.
Not infrequently the purposes of this lifestyle are completely practical, when it is done for fear of contracting sexually transmitted diseases or for avoid unwanted pregnancies. But as we said recently it has emerged that the percentage of couples who deliberately make this choice and use sex only to conceive is increasingly higher.
Beyond the reasons, which are mostly religious or spiritual in nature, it is a choice that undoubtedly goes against the tide with respect to the life models of our society and how sex is understood and experienced in today's world.
The tendency to chastity stands in stark contrast to the bombardment of messages of a sexual nature that come from the media and the means of telecommunication. It is therefore a kind of return to the past, a way to detoxify from the excess of sexual liberalism that characterizes modern times.
In this regard it must be said that in most cases the fact of not having sex does not depend on a conscious choice but would be more like a consequence of the famous decline in desire deriving from the charge of sexual stimuli that come from outside and that undermine the libido.
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But the problem is even deeper: the enormous amount of sexual content that we receive every day from TV and the web is gradually producing a loss of meaning of true love between two people, who seek their most intimate and profound union through sex. According to the European Federation of Sexology, forty couples in the country out of a hundred do not make love and only 30% of couples have satisfying sexual relations with a frequency that satisfies both partners.
The blame for this would be attributed to men who, fearing the judgment of their partner, prefer the transgression offered by virtual sex on the web or the company of a prostitute to home sex. This aspect too would be a consequence of the continuous "binges" of virtual sex to which we are continually subjected. In these cases, sexual abstinence within the couple, especially in the case of married couples or couples who have been living together for a long time, is a negative consequence produced by many factors which, put together, undermine the harmony of the couple.
In this regard it must be said, even if it is already well known, that the decrease in desire is always lurking especially in the case of long-standing couples and can seriously undermine the quality and quantity of sexual life. But more and more often sexual abstinence becomes a conscious and thoughtful choice within a couple. More and more people, both singles and couples, are joining dell'Aven (Asexual visibility and education network) they choose to abstain from sex by focusing their life on chastity. A choice of this type is generally dictated by religious reasons; for the Catholic religion, for example, chastity demonstrates respect for one's neighbor and for one's dignity, therefore it must be considered an important value to which both individuals and couples united in marriage are called.
Chastity within marriage is respected if the spouses are ready to welcome the eventual arrival of a child. In the latter case, in fact, conjugal sex is not contrary to chastity because it is aimed at procreation. To push a couple towards such a unique lifestyle today there can also be spiritual reasons: most of the spiritual traditions recognize the value of chastity as an essential virtue of the human being and believe that abandoning oneself to the pleasures of the body distances the man of spiritual knowledge of himself. The choice to remain chaste and have sex only with the aim of giving birth to a child can thus be an attempt to restore the right value to a gesture that in the collective imagination has almost completely lost its deepest meaning.
Beatrice Spinelli
