On Chastity

The following was a comment posted on this article, over at ArtofManliness. I'm reposting it here both for personal reference and as a summary of my views on certain things.

I thought this article was very good but something needs to discussed a bit more and that is love. It was mentioned in the original article a few times but never defined or seriously discussed. Those who promoted the promiscuous point of view never mentioned it or talked about it except to say that they thought you could be promiscuous and then transition to monogamy no problem.

The big problem as I see it is that being unchaste makes you the type of person who finds true love repulsive. So what is true love? St. Thomas Aquinas points out that the pagan Aristotle perceived two kinds of love. The first kind of love (which I will call desire) is the love of something because of what it gives us. I love good food because it tastes good and makes me feel good. The second kind of love (which I will simply call love) is when we love something for it’s own sake and not for what it gives us - and this is the starting point of friendship.

If you really love someone though you don’t just wish them well, you actually give of yourself for the sake of their own true happiness. How much you love is measured by how much you give.

This points to the problem of lust and why being unchaste makes love repulsive. Several people have brought up the idea of needing to find out if they’re “sexual compatible” with the other person, that they learned some really neat sex tricks from other partners or porn, that wide-oats need to be sowed, etc. The problem with all of these is that it’s all about providing pleasure, ultimately for yourself. Even the people who want to provide pleasure to their partner get a great deal of pleasure from the pride of “performing well” and from the gratitude that they receive. But none of these things involve sacrifice. None of these things involve giving up what you have for the good of another.

The problem with promiscuity is that something can create a new life and unite two people together in an intimate way that involves (at least) two people and uses it for one’s own person pleasure. That’s called being selfish. And that is why unchastity is not manly. Because men think of others before themselves. And men who are great lovers reserve their first thoughts for the beloved. And people who think like that and love like that give their bodies totally to the one whom they have already totally committed their lives.