Asking a celibate guy for advice on intimacy feels, to many, like asking a vegetarian to judge a barbecue competition. But that assumption says more about our cultural scripts than it does about celibacy.
In the ’60s, the sexual liberation movement argued that we needed romance and sex to be happy but that sex had nothing to do with marriage or procreation. In response, Christian purity culture for the most part accepted the tenets of the sexual revolution but dusted some Jesus sprinkles on top. Epitomized by Joshua Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye, the Christian countermovement admitted that we needed romance and sex to be full Christians and that marriage was primarily about our self-fulfillment. Purity culture simply added a spiritual paywall: if you stayed perfectly abstinent, God would reward you with “the one.” But any sexual sin might permanently damage your ability to connect with a future spouse and jeopardize whether you end up marrying at all.
As a teen who grew up steeped in Christian purity culture and MTV dating shows, I came to see my desires for intimacy as dangerous little intruders threatening my chances at marriage, love, and happiness. Later, I became increasingly convinced that God might be calling me to lifetime singleness for the sake of the kingdom, and my relationship with sexual yearnings changed. At times they seemed pointless. A nuisance. Other times they felt like a test to prove to God that I was faithful. Sometimes they felt like a torturous reminder of what I would never have.
Our desire for intimacy is just one expression of a deeper human truth: we are creatures who yearn.
Parallel to my discernment of vocational singleness, I was also coming to terms with how dysfunctional my relationship with desire was. A decade of shame about being gay, hiding in the closet, and self-medicating that loneliness and self-hate with lust and pornography had led to full blown sexual addiction. I knew I needed help. So I started attending weekly sexual addiction recovery meetings and doing a deep dive on my understanding of desire. Little did I know that recovering sex addicts (with a little help from St. Thomas Aquinas) would teach me how to be faithfully celibate by rejecting both the sexual revolution and purity culture while enjoying deep intimacy.
First, I learned from my brothers and sisters in recovery that my desires weren’t really about sex. I repeatedly heard from “oldtimers” with decades of sobriety that despite all of the sex they’d had before recovery–with every different kind of person in every different kind of circumstance and arrangement–it never satisfied what they thought were unsatisfied desires for sex. They had each had their own King Solomon Ecclesiastes moment and realized that a hotter wife or weirder sex wasn’t the problem. But then they leaned into the addiction recovery process. They learned to notice their own painful feelings and care for them tenderly. They brought their pain to others in vulnerable friendship. And they were satisfied. One day at a time, they chose to accept the bittersweet reality of living in a broken world and tended to their inner selves, offering self-giving love to others and experiencing true satisfaction of their desires for intimacy.
As a Christian attempting celibacy, I found this realization paradigm-shifting. When I believed that my lack of marriage and sex was the reason for my loneliness, it was easy to assume that my calling was uniquely difficult. That assumption fueled self-pity, drained my motivation, and enabled self-indulgence in addiction. But when married friends began to reassure me that a spouse and sex hadn’t erased their ache for closeness, I felt…strangely…relieved. If married people with active sex lives still felt lonely and unseen, maybe my longings weren’t proof that I was uniquely burdened. Maybe I was just human. Loneliness wasn’t exclusive to celibates. And the solution, I began to see, was the same for all of us: to see our sexuality and sexual desires more broadly, as yearnings for connection in the context of community which can be met in non-sexual, non-romantic intimacy that is still emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and even physically satisfying.
Second, I learned from St. Thomas Aquinas that each of our desires is trying to point us toward something truly good for us (although sometimes in a seriously roundabout way). God first made us to yearn inherently for good things he designed us to enjoy. Admittedly, the fall led to a bentness in all of creation that marred each of our abilities to desire perfectly. But our inherent desires for good have only been broken, not lost. At the core of every misshapen desire is an unfulfilled desire for something we truly need. As a result, the solution isn’t to squash our broken desires. It’s to discover what good thing we’re truly yearning for in the moment and redirect our desires toward enjoying that good thing. For my mentors in sex addiction recovery, this often looked like noticing a desire to objectify another person sexually and then exercising mental, emotional, and spiritual muscles to identify an ungrieved sadness or an unresolved conflict, each of which could be tended to by connecting in non-sexual but intimate ways with another.
Our desire for intimacy is just one expression of a deeper human truth: we are creatures who yearn. That yearning isn’t limited to romance or sex. We’re also wired to long for beauty, for adventure, for purpose, and for satisfaction. We chase the awe of a sunset, the thrill of risk, the pride of achievement, and the comfort of a good meal. These desires aren’t distractions from the spiritual life. They’re echoes of Eden! They remind us that we are not self-sufficient and that we are made for worship, for mission, and for connection.
But each of these desires, like intimacy itself, can either draw us toward communion or spiral into distortion. Ambition can fuel meaningful mission or become selfish empire-building. Adventure can stir holy courage or spiral into escapism. Hunger can nourish or enslave. Sexual desire can lead us into union or into objectification. Desire is like fire: it can warm a home or burn it down. The goal is not to extinguish it but to tend it with wisdom, structure, and care.
If Aquinas and my recovery mentors are right, the key to satisfying intimacy isn’t more sex or hotter sex partners, because our desires for intimacy aren’t really about sex. Nor is God asking us to live in cold self-denial. He’s inviting us to love others deeply in ways that truly satisfy our desires. The key is to become a student of our desires and live life to the fullest.
God made each of us for human connection in the context of human community. How do we know that? Because God delights in faithful and sacrificial love in the context of community and he made us in his image for those same things. Furthermore, Genesis 2:18 clarifies that God made us for more than just connection with him. Even before sin entered the world, Adam was lonely. Not because God was lacking, but because God made humans to need each other. And while Eve was Adam’s wife, she was also his first friend and co-laborer, pointing to the better-than-Eden New Jerusalem that Jesus would establish where marriage or sex would no longer be needed. Even Christians like me–called to abstinent singleness for the sake of the kingdom–are still made for deeply intimate, non-sexual companionship with others. God wants us to connect and love to the fullest.
Plus, his wisdom in the Scriptures regarding our sexual stewardship aren’t meant to test us by arbitrarily depriving us of pleasures that would truly satisfy. Instead, God knows that in a fallen world with fallen hearts and minds, humans will unwittingly reach out for the lowest-hanging rotten fruit. It is easy for us to be tricked by the Enemy to eat fruit that looks delicious but God knows is spoiled on the inside. God sees the proverbial hot stoves in our world that glow and tempt us to touch. He warns us not to touch them because he knows they will hurt us, even if they appear delightful. He invites us not to touch because he loves us.
But God doesn’t just warn us what not to touch. More importantly, he invites us to learn from our desires and be satisfied. The key to maximizing intimacy was to become a student of my desires. To see my inner yearnings as check engine lights attempting to show me what I truly need, although often messy and mixed with bentness, and discover the good that the image of God within me is reaching out for. To be proactive about meeting that healthy need in healthy ways. Often this looks like tending to the painful feelings inside me and enjoying self-giving love with others.
Or to put it in fewer words: God made us to yearn. So let’s be yearny.
