A man has shared his experience of being celibate for three years, detailing why he chose to distance himself from his formerly promiscuous lifestyle.
With the rise of online dating, it’s evident that relationships have become more casual.
In 2020, a Pew Research Center survey found that 62 percent of US adults believed casual sex between consenting adults not in a committed relationship was generally acceptable.
Despite this, celibacy appears to be gaining popularity.
The National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior reported a significant increase in adolescents abstaining from sex, with numbers rising from 28.8 percent to 44.2 percent between 2009 and 2018, as reported by The Guardian.
One individual embracing celibacy is Australian influencer Jamie Zhu, who has not engaged in sexual activity for three years.
Explaining his choice, Jamie shared with his 859,000 Instagram followers in a video last month: “I’ve been in the social media game for 11 years now as a career and that exposed me to a lot of partying, drinking, sleeping around, all these things.”
He described experiencing ‘spiritual warfare’ and wanting to ‘eliminate the soul ties’ he had formed with his past partners.
“I had to literally trick my own brain into being celibate long-term. Now how did I do that? I set myself a 100-day challenge,” Jamie continued.
“I said, ‘Jamie, you’re gonna be celibate for just 100 days and after the 100 days is over, you can go back to your old ways’.
“But I knew very well in those 100 days that I would be able to break the habit and then move into celibacy.”
During this time, he redirected his ‘sexual energy’ by running or working out.
Discussing the impact on his mental and physical state, Jamie noted: “The mental clarity, the focus, the drive, the motivation for life that I feel each and every single day is something that I cannot compare with anything else.”
He added: “After the first one to two months or so, I noticed that my energy was absolutely through the roof.
“I stopped having those afternoon crashes and my capacity to work was unlike anything I had ever felt before. I used to burn out easily if I was working too much, but the notion of burn-out doesn’t exist anymore.”
Jamie also mentioned that he became ‘hyper-focused’ on his career, and managing temptations became more manageable.