Sexless and loving it

Dawn Eden, author of a new memoir about chastity, gets frank about why she thinks forsaking sex has made her a better Christian, a better lover and a better friend.

By Rebecca Traister

Read more: Religion, Sex, Dawn Eden, Celibacy, Christianity, Rebecca Traister, Life

Dec. 22, 2006 | As we near the annual Christian celebration of a chaste birth, it seems like a fitting time to have a conversation with a woman who has just published a book touting the joys of Christian chastity: Dawn Eden.

Thirty-eight-year-old Dawn Eden Goldstein, who dropped "Goldstein" from her byline back when she was 16 and writing for the Jersey Beat music fanzine, did not start out chaste. She started out writing music journalism and liner notes and enjoying, to hear her tell it, puh-lenty of sex. But in her late 20s, Eden began a series of religious transformations, first becoming a Christian, and by her early 30s, a devout Catholic with extremely conservative politics. Slowly but surely, she began to lay off the sex.

Eden eventually segued from her career as a freelance writer to copyediting for the New York Post, a job from which she was fired in 2005 for changing the language of a story about in vitro fertilization to reflect her extreme antiabortion, pro-fetus stance. Her dismissal made her a media circus freak of sorts: the woman too conservative for Rupert Murdoch.

Eden got mileage from her firing -- in her book, "The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On," she thanks Post editor Col Allan, as well as Susan Edelman, the woman whose copy she changed, writing that "without them, this book would not exist." Now she is a deputy news editor of regional editions at the New York Daily News, and she maintains her religious, pro-life blog, the Dawn Patrol, through which she engages in fierce Internet skirmishes with combatants from the liberal and feminist blogosphere.

"The Thrill of the Chaste," published in December by Thomas Nelson, chronicles the history of Eden's sex life and her new, no-sex life. Eden maintains that after a few stop-and-start attempts, she has been chaste since the end of 2003, and she says she doesn't masturbate. To hear her tell it, chastity cures everything that might ail a single woman and might as well clear up acne. Salon talked to Eden about how keeping her legs firmly shut has changed her social life, opened her up to the possibility of motherhood and aided her lifelong search for a husband.

How did this book come about?

Over the past few years I went from living the "Sex and the City" lifestyle to striving for chastity. The motivation came from becoming a Christian in October '99. Before that I was a Reformed Jew, agnostic. I had not been taught chastity as a kid. My parents split up when I was 5; I was brought up by my mother, who was dating -- and the impression I got growing up was that men come and go, and you can't expect one to stay and value you, and you certainly can't expect one to marry you if you don't have sex with him. I really wanted to get married, and I believed that the only way a man would marry me was if I had sex with him.

So when did you start having sex?

I didn't start having sex until I was 23. But I lost my innocence well before that, because very early on I would try to get a man to care about me, to fall in love with me, by giving myself to him physically.

I delayed full sex in part because I tended toward depression and feared that if I had sex with a man who didn't stay with me, I would fall into deeper depression. Which of course is what wound up happening. I got into my 20s, past the age when most people got married, and my dating life had not resulted in marriage. So I became cynical. I thought, "If I'm not able to get what I really want, which is marriage, I should get whatever pleasure I can." And so I fell into this vicious cycle: being lonely and depressed, having low self-image, having sex, thinking it would make me feel attractive and better about myself, and the man would leave, and I would feel more depressed and lonely.

So when I received my faith, I was transformed from this agnostic Jew and a fairly liberal person (I was reluctantly pro-choice, which will be a surprise if you read my blog now) into a Christian. I started absorbing conservative values and realized I had to become chaste.

So you just stopped having sex?

It was a process that took a few years. It was about learning to be chaste without feeling uptight, depressed and deprived. I had a couple of years when I was trying very hard to be chaste, but I was really more just abstinent.

What's the difference?

[When I was abstinent] I felt deprived; I thought about sex a lot and the sacrifice I was making for God and how he better darn well appreciate it because it was no darn fun! Then I had a couple of affairs and one relationship that lasted nine months. That's with the character I call Tom in the book. Then after that, I had one brief rebound. And then, oh, wait, I'm forgetting some. Anyway, it was at the tail end of 2003 when I just finally got serious about chastity and got over the hump, so to speak.

So now that you're chaste and not just abstinent, you don't think about sex anymore?

I do, but I'm more conscious of it and better able to steer my thoughts away from it. I recently started dating someone very special and he is committed to remaining chaste as well. I am so attracted to him that I've sometimes caught myself fantasizing about him. But I'm able to stop myself and think, "Is this really how I want to envision my relationship?" Because even if I did fantasize every kind of sex imaginable with him, I would be limiting our relationship. If it's God will that we are to be married, then I risk thinking "Oh, I hope it's like [my fantasies]!" And it will disappoint me if he doesn't touch me where I imagined him touching me at the moment I imagined him touching me there.

But don't our fantasies about life -- or love or sex -- help drive us toward the things we want?

It's important to have fantasies and to have hope, but there's a difference between imagining a man putting a ring on my finger, kissing me in front of my friends and family, and imagining a man moving two inches to the right.

But isn't it possible that he might not put the ring on your finger exactly how you imagined it? Then don't you also risk disappointment in fantasizing about your wedding?

There is that possibility. Chastity isn't just about avoiding sex or sexual fantasy; it's about being open to all the blessings that others have to offer and not trying to fit people into pigeonholes. I have all these things I've been hoping a boyfriend would do with me -- holding my hand in public and going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have a five-page mental list, and some he'll want to do with me and some may not be his style. He might not be the kind of man to hold my hand in public. He may express his affection in other ways. In that sense, it can be just as objectifying to picture [how he would behave at the wedding].

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