Posted on

An Excerpt From the Introduction to ‘Chastity Is For Lovers’

[callout]This post is an excerpt from the introduction to my forthcoming book, Chastity Is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, (Ave Maria Press, 2014).[/callout]

Chastity_is_for_Lovers_3DI rested my head on the tall back of a black vinyl, executive-style chair and stared at a computer screen. The chair’s wheels rolled audibly across the mat beneath it as I—a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times—reached toward the desk in front of me to type.

The e-mail, addressed to an editor named Jim, expressed my sudden reluctance to do what I already promised I would: write about sex. A week earlier, I had pitched the idea to Jim with confidence: a sex essay for the front page of the “Perspective” section of the Times, inspired in part by the demise of a bad relationship.

The day I pitched it, how many readers we had—more than four hundred thousand on Sundays—hadn’t dawned on me. When it finally did, all that had been bold in me got anxious. I—a budding columnist, a practicing Catholic, and a virgin by choice—had a passion for putting what I believed in print. But that morning, the thought of revealing my virginity to the secular public sounded like a bad idea. I so warily considered the potential repercussions—unwanted attention, unsafe situations, and uncomfortable colleagues—that I forgot why I pitched the idea in the first place. Continue reading “An Excerpt From the Introduction to ‘Chastity Is For Lovers’”

Posted on

Q and A: How soon do you tell your date you’re saving sex for marriage?

The Q: “With our society as it is today and everyone expecting sex outside of marriage, how (or how soon) do you let somebody you’ve started seeing know that you practice chastity (and that therefore, you abstain from nonmarital sex)? -a reader

The A: How I tell a guy I’m saving sex has varied, and — let’s face it — Google usually beats me to it. But if an interested guy hasn’t Googled me, that I’m saving sex inevitably comes up when he learns that I’m a writer and asks about what I write. How I disclose that I practice chastity, however, has more flexibility than when I do it.

When do I disclose it? Immediately! Here’s why: Continue reading “Q and A: How soon do you tell your date you’re saving sex for marriage?”

Posted on

Why I don’t date men who are ‘willing’ to save sex for marriage.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said to a man on his couch in a Tampa apartment. He—then in his late twenties and interested in me—nodded, and waited for me to say it. I, then in my early twenties, breathed in before I did: “I’m saving sex for marriage.”

I breathed out while he silently processed what I had said. Then he turned his face toward mine and spoke: “If you want to wait, I’m willing.” But waiting had never been part of his world. He agreed to abstain from sex with me because he knew that if he didn’t, I wouldn’t date him. He agreed to behave as if he practiced chastity, but was only bound to nonmarital abstinence by my prohibition of nonmarital sex.

He respected my boundary, until he didn’t—until he mocked my decision to save sex and chalked it up to “immaturity,” in effort to manipulate me into changing my mind. He said “no guy will wait that long,” and begged me to break my promise to practice chastity. Instead, I broke up with him. I learned a lot in that relationship, including this:

I’d never date a guy again who was only “willing” to save sex. Here’s why: Continue reading “Why I don’t date men who are ‘willing’ to save sex for marriage.”

Posted on

The single best way to reduce abortions.

When Lisa Selin Davis told a cabdriver she was going to have an abortion, he pulled the car over on the Brooklyn Bridge in a blizzard. He begged her not to do it. Davis, then a 22-year-old aspiring filmmaker, had conceived the child with a married man she met at a film shoot. But she “didn’t want that baby, with that man,” she wrote in an essay that printed in the Perspective section of the Tampa Bay Times on Sunday.

The story is sad but bold. When Davis resisted the cabdriver’s appeal, he took her to the clinic to which she had asked him to take her, where after it was over, she woke up sobbing in pain and a paper gown. She was sure she would never be a mother. She was wrong. Fifteen years later, she wrote, she gave birth to a daughter and later, to another.  And, she added, “I want my daughters to have the option of safe and legal abortion, of course. I just don’t want them to have to use it.”

Continue reading “The single best way to reduce abortions.”

Posted on

Five arleenspenceley.com additions worth noting.

I am stoked today to share my site’s redesign, brought to you by a small but mighty team of talented friends and a week’s worth of sleep deprivation (Worth it!). It’s worth noting that the redesign resulted in five fabulous additions to the site:

1. The book page.

The old site had a book page; the new site has a better one. Click here to see the book, and to see what a handful of your favorite famous Catholics wrote about Chastity is For Lovers after they read it. (Best. Endorsers. EVER. So grateful.)

2. The schedule.

The old site had a schedule; the new site has a better one. Click here to see a list of upcoming events (including but not limited to two Chastity is For Lovers book launch parties). Bonus: Each time I add an event to my schedule, it’ll pop up for you as a post and add itself to the ever-growing list. Keep checkin’ it for your hometown.

Continue reading “Five arleenspenceley.com additions worth noting.”