Education - Abstinence

Abstinence

One way of dealing with the wonderful, mysterious and sometimes rather terrifying power of one's sexuality is simply to abstain from expressing it at all. This is an option people have exercised for centuries, for brief or prolonged periods and for a variety of reasons ranging from religious conviction to lack of desire to lack of a partner.

There's nothing wrong with abstinence and no reason to believe it's harmful to one's health, according to the Kinsey Institute. But it is, perhaps, a testament to the astounding power of sexual desire that there are so few individuals who remain sexually abstinent for very long. (The body provides an "escape valve" for sexual tension, even for those who are abstinent during their waking lives -both men and women experience orgasm during sleep, although only men produce nocturnal emissions.)

Does and Who Doesn't

The late Dr. Alfred Kinsey found in an early survey that among men under age 31, only 2.9 percent were completely abstinent or had sex once every ten weeks or less often. Only 11.2 percent of men in this age group reported having orgasms as seldom as once every two weeks or less frequently.

Women of all ages were considerably more likely to be sexually abstinent than men, Dr. Kinsey found. And of course, as people get older, they're much more likely to become sexually inactive (although usually because of ill health or loss of a spouse, not by choice).

One recent survey of almost 2,000 men and women over the age of 60 found that 26 percent of the married men and 44 percent of the married women reported that they were no longer sexually active. (Yes, there is a strange discrepancy in those numbers, but it's not clear who is lying, or why.) Among unmarried men over 60, 69 percent said they were abstinent; a rather astonishing 95 percent of unmarried women that age said they were not sexually active.

The Consequences of Doing Without

What happens to your body during periods of brief or prolonged sexual austerity?

For Men: Super Sperm

In men, brief periods of sexual restraint seem to increase both the volume and the potency of semen. In a Swedish study, semen samples taken from a group of healthy men after one day of sexual abstinence and then later, after three days of abstinence, showed that when the men refrained from sex, the total volume of their ejaculate increased, as did the concentration of sperm. In fact, after three days, their total sperm count more than doubled.

Generally, guidelines for sperm donors and couples being evaluated for the treatment of infertility are to have the man refrain from ejaculation for three to six days before giving a specimen or having a sperm count done, in order to optimize the sperm count.

For Women: Vaginal Atrophy

But prolonged sexual abstinence, especially in women, may result in genital changes that make it a little more difficult to resume a satisfying sex life later on. Older women who lose their husbands, for instance, often notice that their vaginas gradually grow drier and less elastic. In older women who are sexually abstinent for many years, the vagina even may gradually begin to close up and undergo such severe atrophy that intercourse becomes virtually impossible," says Gloria A. Bachmann, M.D., associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Providence, New Jersey.

On the other hand, the best way for older women to stay "genitally healthy" is to stay sexually active. Sometimes, obviously, that may not be a realistic option. But studies have shown that "women who continue to be sexually active, either with a partner or through self-stimulation, maintain a more nearly normal state of genital health than abstinent women," Dr. Bachmann says.

In one study of 59 women aged 60 to 70, for instance, those who remained sexually active had significantly less vaginal atrophy and greater vaginal elasticity, depth and lubrication than those who had closed the book on their sexual lives. In sex, as in many other areas of human physiology, the old, crude adage applies: "Use it or lose it."

Abstinence as Ritual

Many religious orders of priests, monks and nuns require lifelong sexual abstinence of their members, but the notion that sustained sexual abstinence is a good and purifying thing probably predates modern religions. In some primitive societies, male hunters are required to abstain from intercourse for a short period before they go on a journey or a big hunt, and women must also practice abstinence before they brew beer or sow crops-otherwise, it’s believed, the enterprise will fail. Anthropologists suggest that these ritual forms of abstinence may have been primitive humanity's attempt to control the forces of nature by reining in one of the wildest and most uncontrollable forces of all, thereby snatching a handful of power from the radiant realm of the spirits.

If you think that's a crazy, primitive idea, why does almost every modern day coach or athlete have a strong opinion, one way or the other, as to the advisability of sexual abstinence on the night before a big game? One recent review of the medical literature, by the way, found virtually no evidence to support either idea -that pre-game abstinence was good or that it was bad.

The Great Sublimation Debate

Then there's the notion that prolonged sexual abstinence can be a way of "sublimating," or diverting, energy to higher things - the dross of mere physical desire transformed into the gold of great art or literature. This notion, often ascribed to Freud, is a much more ancient human idea - but there doesn't seem to be much evidence to support it.

History does have its share of accomplished poets, artists and scientists who seem to have been sexual teetotalers-but a much greater number of famous people were known to have an enthusiastic appetite for the pleasures of the flesh.

After studying the tiny proportion of men in his sample who reported having sex twice a month or less for the past five years, Dr. Kinsey was particularly skeptical that there was anything to the idea of sublimation. Virtually all of these men were in poor health, extremely timid or inhibited, restrained by religious conviction or simply had very low levels of sexual desire. At least among this group, Dr. Kinsey found no evidence at all that any of them had successfully sublimated their lowly desires into lofty achievement.