Caitlin didn’t set out to become celibate – at least not in the beginning. Three years ago, she was coming out of an abusive relationship and wasn’t ready to meet someone else. Then Covid happened, and the lockdowns made it impossible anyway. “I thought during that time I needed space to heal and reflect on what I’d been through,” she says. Towards the end of 2020, the 23-year-old artist started therapy. “I realised if I was going to be sexually active, I needed someone who would understand my past, and where I was coming from. I don’t want to be with someone unless I know it’s committed, and I’m not in a rush to find that.”
She had been on dating apps, but found it hard to meet men who wanted a relationship, rather than just sex. “I found they would stop talking to me if I made it known I wasn’t going to hook up with them on the first date. I found a lot of men would put on a bit of an act to appear as if they wanted a relationship, then as soon as you took sex off the table while getting to know them, they disappeared. It’s tricky when a lot of dating is around hook-up culture, which I’m not interested in.”
