By the time she was in her 30s, writer Melissa Febos had been in a relationship for 20 consecutive years. One romance will end, and if it hasn't begun yet, another will begin immediately: the partner's long-term relay competition. In a very rare period of singleness, she always gets into a fascination in order to catch the baton as soon as possible.

To many people, this may sound lucky. “Our culture tells us that this abundance is a privilege,” Febos acknowledges in her new book, Drought season: Memoirs of no sex in a year. However, based on her experience, the rich feeling is more like constraints. She wrote that during a terrible two-year relationship, she often cried so much that the skin near her eyes began to fall off. Her girlfriend's text message made her so anxious that she had to continue changing her alert voice. At other times, she details the quieter torture: always considering her latest flame, always expecting to tell them her whereabouts, never really working, reading or peace. Her body is no longer like her own, but like a “working animal sleeping in the barn behind my mind.” She recalls feeling like a "ghost of hunger": always starving to death for love, but never tolerate it. Her therapist told her: "You can't get something you don't need.".

Finally, she decided to take a break. Or rather, she has five more runaways - "like the last few popcorns you stuffed into your mouth after you decide to stop eating" and then resolve In fact Take a break: She will be single for three months.

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Yes, three months. Febos thanks her goal for ridiculous modesty. But she thinks it's ambitious for her: not only trying to hold her breath, but also trying to find the bottom of her "bottomless need." Drought season It is a description of this period that later became a year, during which she avoided sex, dates and flirting. It doesn't ask for an end to romance, but yes Prosecution of dependence, for partnership. Febos doesn't want to lose her passion, but she needs to find a balance.

Febos' speech is particularly rich - I can't say I'm personally familiar with it. I don't think many people are, nor are they. In her few months, she had to boycott suitors after she had to appear like a road barrier in a racing race. There was a writer who begged her to have sex at a meeting. Friends who acknowledge her attractiveness; a friend who thinks her dinner is a date; a playwright who keeps texting. There was a hot stranger on the plane.

But Febos never claimed that her journey was universal. She turned on how to learn early and get people's attention so they want her stuff. When she left home at the age of 16 and provided herself with the job, skills and its survival, it depends on it. She also tells her history of addiction – how she stopped using heroin, but to some extent, she was still pursuing the next reward. And, anyway, I think most readers, whether they are continuous monogamous, struggle at some point to turn off any autopilot settings that are in their best interest to cut. As I read, Febos’s celibacy challenge went from feeling like a symbol of humility to a deep effort. When she settled down, her observations began to resonate. She details a part of my precious singleness, too, and I hear it again and again in the coverage of romantic coverage, even from the celibacy season, not over-choice.

One of the qualities found by Febos is absolute tranquility. She was luxurious on a quiet morning, no one caressed the bed or waited for her resounding. She spent the weekend reading the mysteries of paperbacks, bringing them to the bathroom, and was lost in the bathroom since she was a child. Calmness is not only physical, but more importantly spiritual. When I talked to people who quit the date, some people told me they found a huge peace. With Febos' attention, she noticed the smell of summer in New York. The flowers she passed along the street; the "sour explosion" of each raspberry she ate from the entire carton.

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As the romance distraction disappears, quietness also leaves a way for freedom. When researchers asked people that they like being single the most, many mentioned a sense of autonomy. Febos expressed her schedule when she was hungry, giving up mealtime and eating pleasures - placed on green apples and cheese, olives and nuts, marinated from jars. Her liberation is not only about action; it is about possibility, openness. She inevitably makes her life constitute her life based on some narrative. “Identity is the story that others tell us, and we learn to tell ourselves that it’s in a relationship,” she wrote. It may be comforting, but it’s also suffocating. When she wakes up alone in bed, or returns to the world after immersing herself in books, she doesn't recall that she is someone's girlfriend, Melissa. She just exists.

This is not to say that Febos spends her dry season in forgotten loneliness. on the contrary. She described calling with her mom and her friends on the phone, a million things beyond her crush. She wrote that while spending the night with an old friend, she was shocked to find herself “nothing else, no one can call, hope good night, there is no priority than being with my friend.” This is probably the biggest benefit of being single: the deepening of other connections. The survey found that singles have more friends on average than married people and are closer to them. They are more likely to spend time with their parents and siblings and get to know their neighbors. They provide more volunteering for certain organizations. At the same time, many couples tend to look inward. Staying in a comfortable bubble is mainly about thinking about each other. For various reasons, not all of them are bad, and today’s partners spend more time than they did in the 1960s.

Febos recognizes the appeal of a more constrained life. The outside world seems to only become more discordant and chaotic. Focusing on a partner can be a way to protect yourself from completely dealing with bad news and angry words. "It seems impossible to keep your heart open in this world," she wrote. "It makes sense to keep your heart narrower into a single person's width, stare in the keyhole of a single room, instead of turning to face the world."

But when Febos stopped looking at the keyhole and turned around, she found that being single felt like dry season. This was the most emotional and spiritual fertile period of her life. The connections she strengthens are not only social: she also begins to connect with nature, art, and the surroundings. She wrote: "I have no holes that narrow my feelings. She doesn't love her partner. She is in love and goes all out.

Febos knew very well that despite her enjoyment of being single, she never intended to wander there forever. She didn't. After her year of celibacy, she almost quickly fell in love with the woman who became a wife. If I say I'm not disappointed a little bit, I'll lie as if she's giving up her entire adventure of claiming the championship, just confirming that the lucky ones without luck are indeed losing. But Febos’ biggest challenge actually begins at the end of the book. In a sense, being single is easier than a partnership and still retains your other relationships, your interests and yourself.

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She has been preparing for this test. Febos makes it clear Drought seasonwhat she wants is not only to stop default romance. She also aims to withdraw from the relationship culture rooted in patriarchy. A woman who often leads women, even those who don’t date men, makes herself so small that they disappear. She found that among women who chose to live in celibacy or loneliness rather than partner life, she was allowed to retain unusual agents. Benedictine Abes and ultimately the saint Hildegard von Bingen lived in the Middle Ages, when women's lives were severely restricted. However, by claiming direct boundaries to God, she was able to become a composer, lyricist and author of many scientific texts. Beguines was a group of medieval laymen who traveled and lived independently, providing teaching and work for the poor rather than becoming a property of husbands.

Febos studied these models, and also listed all her past entanglements, analyzing each model, hoping that she could discover and destroy her own patterns. She began to believe that she had conditionally determined what someone wanted and measured her worth by giving her power. My value depends on my lovelyshe wrote down a piece of paper. Then she went to Coney Island, dug a hole in the beach, and burned it to ashes. She promised to be "faithful to what I found."

But is she no longer single now? Febos seems to have gone a long way from where she started. When she first had lunch with her prospective wife, she knew they had chemistry but didn’t let her know. She focused her attention on the world around her: the trees had just begun to bud, the numerous people, the pinch in the left shoe.

I want to believe that is enough: if you are interested, you can be someone’s companion without losing yourself. I'm not sure I'm doing this. Maybe Febos still eats kimchi directly from the jar, sleeps alone, spreading across the bed. But when she wakes up, she will know she can never “be anyone” again. The story of her relationship will be shaped. She will bend herself into half of the whole in some way or another. You can't turn to someone without staying away from other things.

This doesn't mean she should be alive or she fails to achieve what she intends to do. Instead, she seemed to be well aware of what was sacrificed for love - she wrote a book about the overall debate on it. I think she just chose some of her own losses because she thought it was worth it. These are the tradeoffs we make. Even a serious opponent cannot completely separate himself from the society of worship partnership. It is best to pay attention to your attention. It's better to draw it to the world around you again and again: to pinch in shoes, to buds in trees, to people (all many), who are next to you.