Opinion | Celibacy is having its big moment right now. Make the most of it.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul issues one of the better-known, if less-heeded, commandments of Christianity: It is best to remain unmarried, period. But, he continues, if people “cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”

The message was clear: celibacy is best, marriage is a concession. But over the centuries, this hierarchy broke down, first in Christianity and then in the wider secular world. Today, some form of compulsory sexual monogamy is the norm, and “celibacy” in the news is largely associated with unhappy men on Reddit who think they can’t find a girlfriend because they’re too short.

That’s quite a descent.

Yet the issue of celibacy—by which I mean the conscious abstinence from sex—repeats in public discussion. When dating app Bumble recently ran cheeky ads admonishing “Thou shalt not give up dating and become a nun,” the company might have expected to upset only a handful of traditional Catholics, but instead it angered its user base and was forced to apologize. Lenny Kravitz just announced his own sexual abstinence, and Julia Fox’s recent boast that celibacy is a way to “take back control” recalled a similar statement by Lady Gaga in 2010, when she proclaimed that a period of celibacy allowed her to be “strong and independent.”

When I search for “celibacy” on TikTok today, the videos—mostly, but not exclusively, by straight women—sound like a refrain: Why have sex when the sex is usually bad? Why have sex with people who don’t respect you? Why not stop until someone makes it worthwhile for you? Much of the current fashion for celibacy is driven not by a desire to discipline the flesh but by a dislike of the digital-age dating scene.

As a Catholic who generally tries—if not always very seriously—to follow the Church’s rules regarding sex, I’ve watched the occasional quasi-popularity of celibacy with some amusement. (The Catholic term for no sex, by the way, is continence; celibacy means remaining unmarried.) But I also get it: Sexual celibacy can have the same superficial appeal as other ascetic lifestyles. The Quakers wore simple, unadorned clothing to resist the world and its vanities; I can have the modern equivalent of Everlane delivered to my home today.

Still, I believe there is something to be said for celibacy as a discreet spiritual practice. If we abstain from alcohol for a month without committing to total abstinence, we call it “Dry January” – a practice that is becoming increasingly popular. We might also consider taking a similarly measured approach to sexual abstinence: let’s call it “Dry Spell July.”

When the possibility of sex is tacitly but decisively taken off the table, we lose certain opportunities and certain ways of knowing one another. But we also gain something. Perhaps the greatest gift that celibacy can foster is the ability to love people without wanting anything from them. Sexual love wants everything; it wants to erase the distinction between self and other, to uproot reason, to trample on anyone who stands in its way. Celibacy transforms other people from potential lovers into potential friends—friendship is the form of love that asks for nothing except that the beloved exist. It allows for warm, generous, but detached and disinterested love; it respects the boundaries that define another person.

Over the years, I’ve built up a canon of celibacy in my head, made up of scenes in which a character refuses sex. Jimmy Stewart’s Mike Connor gently tells Katharine Hepburn’s Tracy Lord in The Night Before the Wedding that there are rules about sleeping with drunk women, and that’s why he didn’t have sex with her the night before; Philip Marlowe rejects a naked Carmen Sternwood in Raymond Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep. Perhaps the most shocking book I’ve ever read is The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette, in which the heroine refuses to marry the man she loves—he’s a scoundrel—and goes to a convent instead. What I find moving and unforgettable about all these scenes is the way these characters can hold desire, with all its charms and possibilities, in their hands. Then they let it go.

Now, many readers might rightly object that this rather unrealistic portrayal of celibacy intentionally ignores much of what is so ugly about American “purity culture”: the chastity balls where fathers and daughters dance together before the girls sign vows of chastity, or the abstinence advocates who compare women who have premarital sex to chewed gum. But there can be a better celibacy without giving territory to the creeps, just as the existence of harmful ideas about dieting does not invalidate the idea that we should think about what we eat. Periods of celibacy, however brief, can be a fulfilling act of inward-looking exploration aimed at building peace and self-esteem, rather than an outward-looking act of performative purity.

In the same letter to the Corinthians, Paul describes the characteristics of love: it is long-suffering, kind, without envy or pride. It “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” This passage is read aloud at many weddings, perhaps because marriage is intended in part as a kind of erotic friendship and sexual attraction must therefore be understood in the context of the entire relationship. Celibacy is not the only way to learn how to more skillfully integrate sexual desire into our lives. But it is one way.

After all, celibacy is not asexuality. A celibate person can certainly want sex. But ideally they can recognize this desire, understand it, and send it on its way. You can learn a lot when you feel a desire without rushing to satisfy it.