Febos’s life flourished while taking a year off sex and dating. In a new memoir, The Dry Season, she explores the allure of romance
When Melissa Febos decided to be celibate for a year – after what she describes as a “ravaging vortex of a relationship” and “five other brief entanglements” – she felt “pretty self-conscious and kind of weird”. But other people’s reactions surprised her.
“I thought people were going to laugh at me or be like, that sounds boring, but so many people would lean in and either get this eager look on their face or this sort of dreadful look on their face, and they would say, ‘Oh, I think I should probably do that too,’” she says. “I had no idea how many people had been in relationships for their whole adult life.”
Febos, a professor at the University of Iowa and author of books about working as a dominatrix, young womanhood and writing, chronicles this celibate era in her new memoir, The Dry Season. “I had scrutinized my experience and self in many different areas, but in this area, I was fairly unexamined,” she says. “I didn’t have as much insight about that part of myself.”
The experience ended up affecting more than her reliance on love and sex. “All the other areas of my life began to flourish and feel really fulfilling and complete,” she says. “I had kind of a honeymoon experience with myself, especially at the beginning, because I realized almost immediately that I enjoyed my own company profoundly, perhaps even more than I enjoyed the company of any other person.”
