Chastity Isn't a One-Time Decision

If you live in the modern world, are trying to date, and have even a minimal sex drive, you’ve encountered some sort of sexual temptation. And frankly, in today’s culture with its over-sexualization of, well, everything, it’s hard not to be tempted. Must grocery checkout lines be filled with magazines blasting the word SEX all over them? Do watches sell better when pressed up against mens’ naked chests? Why does Hooters exist at all??

What all of this is really reminding us of is pleasure, not sex. And this can be hard to resist. God made us sexual beings. The issue isn’t that we are sexual; it’s that we often give into the world’s temptation of pleasure over the real deal.

Catholics know that sex doesn’t mean lust. In fact, we know that they’re the complete opposite.

Option 1, lust, is simply using another person for your own pleasure. It says, “I want to be with you in this one moment or night but without any strings or commitment, without giving you all the rest of my emotional or spiritual life, and I want to pleasure and be pleasured by you. I also probably want you to leave before breakfast, or maybe not even sleep next to me.”

Option 2 is sex as designed by God. This is professing, with your body, that you are joined to this person in every way: physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially. That you agree to not only this one, pleasurable moment with them, but that you also will be there when they lose their job, when a child is sick, when your hips widen and sag over the years, to loss and adventure and hospice and whatever struggles and joys lies ahead. It’s yes to their whole person and giving them your whole self.

Okay. We all want option 2. Our hearts long for it deep down because, it’s how we are made—for something transcendent. But the hard part is, we have to say, “No” to option 1 a lot. In fact, we’ll have to say it constantly and as long as we live, even in marriage.

Chastity isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a lifetime decision.

Like any virtue, it takes dedication and practice to cultivate. But chastity is an especially hard virtue to practice, because practicing it means saying, “No” a lot. And to make it even harder, we often have to say no to something that can look like the real thing.

Once upon a time before marriage, I was in love and in a serious relationship. Surely he is the one! I told myself. And so, because it felt right and seemed right, I permitted myself (and him) to push things too far physically. But as it turned out, he wasn’t the one. Even though I was in love, I hadn’t said yes to loving him “as long as we both shall live.”

It’s especially hard to say, “No” to someone you genuinely love, a boyfriend or girlfriend or fiancé. It might look or feel like the right thing and our society tells us it is the right thing. But we know in our minds that we can’t say yes until we’ve made a permanent vow. Otherwise, we choose the counterfeit (and oh boy, is it a very, very good counterfeit sometimes! I went to confession a lot when I was single...).

Practicing chastity in the single life means always being on your guard. For example: Don’t watch that sexy movie or read that provocative book; block your own internet for those moments you’re lonely or bored and it would be too easy to hop on over to a free pornography site; give yourself a curfew; and don’t share a bed with any romantic interest.

Even in marriage, practicing chastity means not lusting after your spouse, not looking at pornography, not flirting with other men or women.

It can feel like a lot of “don'ts” and “avoid this” and “saying no’s.” No buts about it, chastity, especially as a single person, is super hard.

But the real beauty of chastity is that it’s saying no to some things so you can yes to one thing.

We say, “no” to the counterfeits, in order to say “yes!” to the real thing. In fact, this is the same decision.

When you reject the world’s offer of easy pleasure, of using another person, of the temporary, you are in the same breath saying yes to real lifelong joy, to loving another person, to the transcendental and eternal. When you fight to maintain your purity, it’s so that you can choose to freely give it to your spouse without past stain. (Or, even if there has been past stain, take heart in knowing there’s an ocean of mercy and forgiveness waiting for you like there was for me.)

Even though in the moment, it’s hard to say no, and Satan, the master of lies, makes it seem so easy and it feels so good—remember that your body and your heart and soul are made for something more. You were made for the loud, resounding, eternal YES to your spouse in front of all of your family and friends and all the saints and angels in heaven (not the quiet, half-hearted, mumbled, shameful yes the world tells you to give).

To be chaste means saying no over and over again until you can say yes once and for all. You were made for it.