Chastened: The Unexpected Story of My Year Without Sex
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Seeking love in an age obsessed with sex, journalist Hephzibah Anderson chronicles her year without sex.On the eve of her thirtieth birthday, Hephzibah Anderson glimpsed her college boyfriend going into a jewelry store with a smiling blonde—-and in that moment realized it had been years since a man told her he loved her. This discovery led her to question a decade of emotionally frustrating relationships with commitment-phobes. As she examined her past, she recognized that most of these relationships went off course at the precise moment sex was involved. Anderson decided it was time to spend a full year without sex to rediscover its meaning and purpose in her life. In this confessional account, Anderson shares the results of that year, narrating each month as she flirts, dates, and swoons but doesn't have sex. The results—-her feelings about femininity, her body, and romance—-are illuminating.Told with Elizabeth Gilbertesque candor, Chastened... Publishers Weekly Everything but the sex seems to be the theme of this fluffy dating chronicle by British journalist Anderson. Having recently turned 30 and being determined to break a baffling, bruising cycle of “consistently mistak[ing] casual hookups for rose-tinted beginnings,” Anderson decided that she'd had enough sex without love; it was time to try love without sex. The purpose? Not, as she hints with feminist bravado, to become “faithful to my instincts” nor even to achieve “emotional self-sufficiency” (as she enjoyed some playful banter with potential boyfriends like Dan, Jake, Quiet Guy, the Beau, N, Rafiq, and so on), but to snare a mate—and that sadly didn't happen at the end of this year. Using an unwieldy chronological structure by month, Anderson moves from her resolve to embark on a year of chastity after a final emotional disappointment with Jake in late summer (“You sleep with these men too soon,” her mother had warned her), through numerous travels and dissatisfying encounters between London and New York. Along with way, Anderson lards each chapter with ponderous emotional reflections, injecting just enough research and quotes from heavies to keep the reader engaged, such as brief mentions of psychotherapist Brett Kahr, a Hepburn-Tracy movie, chastity rites in ancient times, and Samuel Richardson's Pamela.(June)
Introduction xi1 My First Time 12 ...And My Last 203 September or Dressing Around 344 October or Brief Encounters 565 November or At the Movies 776 December or Party Time 947 January or Sexual Sobriety 1098 February or Romance on the Dance Floor 1289 March or Swooning to Conquer 14510 April ... in London 16211 April in New York or Chasing Tales 18412 May and June or Vive la Différence! 19513 July or Mirror, Mirror 21414 August or What a Woman Wants 228Epilogue 243Acknowledgments 263
