Dating : Brahmacharya and Tinder: Is Life Possible without Sex?

For a long time, I abhorred the concept of dating. I was in my late twenties and my experience with it was downright displeasing. Truth is I was terrible at dating. I felt it was awkward to sit across from a stranger and pretend I was at ease.

I just wanted to skip that painful experience and get into a relationship as quickly as possible. My impatience took over and caused me to attach, at the speed of light, to someone who was not a proper match. I’m showing my skills in euphemism here because that approach led me to land and stay in a toxic relationship.

In my mid-thirties, after I ran away and finally stepped out of a 4-year unhealthy relationship, I went back to what I dreaded the most and took a long, deep, and unwilling breath into the world of single life. The societal pressure associated with settling down before you hit thirty was behind me. I had nothing to lose. I decided to give a go to those new ways of playing the dating games: I downloaded Tinder.

Let me tell you straight; I didn’t know what I was doing there in the first place, and I didn’t know what I was looking for. If you don’t know what you’re searching for, how can it ever be found? In that case, you can look absolutely everywhere. You will probably end up finding things you never set out to find at all!

Well, initially, as you can imagine, I went through the Tinder downward spiral, losing myself in the obsession of swiping, rejecting profiles for shallow reasons, and deleting and reinstalling the app numerous times. I also had to deal with a couple of disappointments.

Well, probably because you find the only thing you can — and what can you find if you don’t know what you want to find? Or maybe to find something, you must stop looking for it in order to find it. Just some thoughts. I don’t know if you are following me on this because I am kind of confused myself (perhaps a recollection of the early age of my Tinder history).

In the end, Tinder and I were into a love and hate relationship (at least, I found one) until I decided to completely change my approach to, both, dating and men in general.

To be honest, I didn’t really vibe with the hook-up culture and all its nonsense. But even though Tinder is widely known for its ease of getting strangers to engage in sexual relations without the emotions or commitment of a relationship, I was somehow convinced there was more to it.

Also, I believed if I was a being with freewill, putting myself out there voluntarily, I could as well view my singlehood as positive and see my experiences on the dating app in a new light. After all, it was my choice, right? In other words, if I was stuck in Tinder nightmares and feeling miserable when it came to dating, I could simply choose to stop participating and walk away from it. But if, for some reason, I stayed there, I could choose to start enjoying the process and actually achieve a positive outcome.

Hence, I resolved to turn Tinder and its superficiality into my spiritual practice.

That’s right.

You are probably wondering how the heck that would be even possible; how those two things could ever go hand in hand.

I swear and certify under the laws of the Dating Code that the foregoing is true and correct and nothing but the truth.

I started a Brahmacharya Challenge along with being a Tinder user. Not kidding.

What is Brahmacharya? For those people who are not versed in yogic literature, Brahmacharya is one of the five ethical precepts that all yogi aspirants should try to adhere to in order to move along the path of self-realization.

According to ancient yogis, we must be careful how we handle sex because it’s one of the most powerful distractors to the spiritual path. The yogis made some prescriptions on what should be done to overcome such distractions.

Some said the best thing to do is to get rid of sex. Once we are on a spiritual path, we just have to forget about sex to be contented with ourselves and sublimate our energy and passion into meditation. The yogis who followed those precepts, as a matter of fact, ran away and went to meditate on the top of the Himalayas or in some remote jungle. Unfortunately, they discovered that running away from women didn’t mean running away from sex. They realized the more you run away from a thing, the more your thoughts go there. Running away from a distraction is in no way overcoming the distraction.

There was another school of thought that went to the other extreme. It said the best way to deal with sex is to fulfill our desires for it. So they recommended having free sex to satiate ourselves so much we would get tired of it and never think of it again. But those yogis ended up being unable to come out of the sexual world they created and found out that excessive indulgence never removes the desire for sex.

Here comes the dilemma. If you resist something, you’re being caught up in it; if you overindulge, you’re also being caught up in it.

So what do you do?

Brahmacharya prescribes very strict norms in order to find common ground:

1. Treat sex as a normal activity of the body

2. Don’t get absorbed in it

3. Don’t let your attention be held by it

If you avoid something excessively, your attention is focused on it. If you indulge excessively, your attention is still focused on it. Therefore, do neither — neither avoid nor overindulge.

Ancient yogis also believed gratification of the spirit could be found at higher levels of consciousness, which automatically take you away from sexual pleasures. They purported the true answer to the problem of sexual distraction is found by journeying within self where the joy and pleasure are such that there is no need to indulge in any lower pleasures. You must progressively go within and reach this higher level of consciousness. And those who achieve this level are neither distracted nor attracted. They merely take sex as a biological phenomenon.

Brahmacharya is often translated as a vow of celibacy and chastity. However, celibacy might not be accurate enough to describe what Brahmacharya really is.

Brahmacharya means that you’re working to organize your body in such a way that your joy, love, and all you need are within you. As a result, you move from being a compulsive human being driven by lust and strong sexual desires, to a conscious human being that is choosing to connect with another being through a sacred ritual.

All right, let’s move on with this. Practically speaking, how did I manage to conciliate Tinder with my Brahmacharya Challenge?

Obviously, when chatting with men or going to a date — or an “audition” as I sometimes call it, I would say that I was on this dating app to “extend my social circle and eventually see where it goes in case of any affinity or chemistry.” (Literally meaning, I’m not looking for anything special but if you tick all the boxes, game on!)

It rarely crossed my mind that I had to mention I was celibate. Only if I was forced to do so after meeting a couple of times, I would reveal that I was not only single but celibate. I may have appeared as Public Enemy Number 1 to a guy who just wanted to get laid.

I’m a monster. Sue me!

The truth is, and as I already revealed, I was there for my spiritual practice i.e. my main purpose was to learn to get to know myself through my interactions with men. My intention was to know them on a friendship level first before considering them as potential dates. I was aiming at setting the boundaries I had never had before and training myself to say “no.” Sex was a long way at the bottom of my list, if not to say a non-existent option. And guess what? It felt great!

Thanks to the Brahmacharya Challenge, I completely changed my perception of the dating space.

It became a place of connections, free from disappointment, frustration, and hopelessness; a place where I could be as free as I have ever been and will ever be, to put myself first.

In the end, I believe I was there to free myself from the perspective that finding someone is the most important thing in the world. It is one of the greatest gifts I have ever given to myself.

But, hey! I am also forever grateful for the incredible men out there whom I met through Tinder. In one way or another, they all helped me in my healing journey.

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