I wanted to bolt before my mom could answer my question.

While I waited for her answer, I forgot why I even had asked. I had listened to an interview with organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich, who has studied self-awareness. One way to increase your self-awareness is to host what Eurich calls a “dinner of truth.” Invite a trusted loved one out for food and ask him or her what I asked my mom.

And, oh, it is terrifying. 

My eyes were probably closed, my heart probably pounding while I waited to find out what I do that bothers people.

Here’s what my mom said.

There’s the one from Miki: “Are the readers of Florida’s largest newspaper and Tampa Bay’s leading news website now better informed, resting comfortably in the knowledge that you are a virgin? Or is this the first onslaught of writers [sic] block and you had nothing else to say? Try again please but in the future choose the subject of your articles with a bit more intelligence.”

Or the one from John: “No offense, but talk about the voice of inexperience. How can you contribute on the very subject you have never participated in?”

But the finale email for the video I never filmed absolutely would have been Eric’s:

“This should be on a bookshelf, not my driveway at 4 o’clock in the morning. … I don’t know where your assignments come from but I can surely tell you that your prose was not news-relevant nor relevant to anyone but you. If you’d like to write a biography … you are free to do so. In the end you clearly made no point about others, your surroundings, hardly even yourself. It was a courageous first type into bigger things than journalism, but dig deeper girl.”

I probably would have said, “TOOK YOUR ADVICE, ERIC!” at the end of the video and then held up a copy of Chastity Is for Lovers.

Hard to believe that this Sunday, Nov. 28, marks seven years since Chastity Is for Lovers actually did hit bookshelves.

I pray it still comforts people who’ve felt alone and that it still makes people who think chastity’s crazy feel uncomfortable enough with the alternative to consider the virtue. I pray it causes breakups that need to happen and engagements that need to happen, too. I pray it equips readers to practice chastity in a culture that isn’t conducive to it. And I pray, if you’ve read it, that it has done that for you.

If you haven’t read it yet, or if you know somebody who should, use code BFCM21 between now and Nov. 29 to get it from Ave Maria Press for under 10 bucks (and free shipping!) here.

For signed copies or to read an excerpt of this book, click here.

And to read the most popular of my sex essays from the Times, click here.

We’ve trained ourselves to skim. We can’t even bring ourselves to read posts if they’re long (and by long, I mean more than a couple paragraphs). Most of you will navigate away at the end of this sentence.

But if most of us only can skim the surface of content, why would we be good at doing more than skimming the surface of the people who create it? We tell ourselves “when I meet the right person, I’ll want to go deeper. I’ll be interested. I’ll want to commit.” Really?

The onus for your ability to go deeper is on how “right” someone else is? So you’re telling me you can see whether a person is right for you before you’ve gotten to know him or her deeply—that what you can see in somebody in one or two encounters is all you need to know (excluding encounters with people whose dealbreakers are evident).

Or maybe you’re saying that literally just meeting the right person suddenly makes us feel able to commit (and that there couldn’t possibly be any other reasons you’ve been unable to commit so far).

I get that you need to be attracted, that you have to like a person. Truth! But is it actually on the other person to motivate or excite you into getting to know him or her? Are we all just closed off to each other until merely being in the presence of the “right” person unlocks an ability we couldn’t access before?

Or are these just things we tell ourselves so we don’t have to admit that there may be other reasons we don’t like people or want to commit even when we like them? Like how so much of what shapes us shapes us to be shallow. How pornography, social media, video games, and texting are supernormal stimuli that rewire the brain until normal stimuli don’t stimulate, satisfy, or interest us anymore—like people and our physical, social, and emotional interactions with them.

Are you sure you can’t date him or her because you “didn’t feel a spark” or you “don’t feel what I think I’m supposed to feel” or because “in order to want to date you, I’d need to be unable to get you out of my head” (all real things real people I know have said)? Or did you really mean “I don’t want to date you because you aren’t a supernormal stimulus?”

That, my friend, is a bold way to end a first message you send to a woman whose CatholicMatch profile doesn’t say “princess” anywhere. And—confession—I didn’t respond to him, for lots of reasons.

I’m in Florida and he isn’t. He wants to take me dancing, he said. You couldn’t pay me to go dancing on a date. But even if I were open to a long-distance relationship right now, his princess line may have done him in.

Here’s why.

—

New to my work? Check out my book, Chastity Is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin.

And you have to go through it. Without conflict, new levels of emotional intimacy really aren’t an option for you.

But we’ll never be open to conflict if we don’t stop believing the 3 lies about it that I listed in my latest post for CatholicMatch.

Click here to read it.

While I struggled to want to finish all five rounds of the workout, I winced, convinced it would take me forever. And I said what I said—I didn’t struggle to finish the rounds. I struggled to want to finish.

I am a power athlete, not an endurance athlete. And until this morning, I assumed my body is what makes that so. But in my fourth round of a 200 meter run, 10 hang power cleans (unbroken at a challenging weight), 53 single-unders, and 10 push jerks (also unbroken, same weight as the cleans), I saw something I hadn’t seen before.

I always pick power over endurance.

Yeah, I’ll agree to do one thruster at 95 pounds before I’ll agree to do several of them with an empty barbell.

But I’d also rather have one BIG fight once in a while than a little bit of bickering every day.

I also prefer to spend one day doing an entire project, start to finish, over doing a little of a project daily over time.

You catch my drift.

And so while I worked out, I started to wonder: Am I a power athlete because of my body or am I a power athlete because of my mind? Am I built for power in the gym, or do I participate more willingly in power athletics because I favor power in every context? Do I choose power because I’m good at it or because I don’t want to endure?

And I felt my heart start to open.

I’ve been working on endurance at the gym. If I break up a set of reps, I make myself start the next reps a few seconds before I really want to. And I do a rep or two more after I already feel ready to rest.

But have I been working on endurance outside the gym?

Maybe that’s in St. Josemaria Escriva’s heroic minute—getting up when the alarm rings instead of hitting the snooze just because the “power” part of me can get ready fast. Maybe it’s in taking the call from a friend instead of letting it go to voicemail because the power part of me knows I’ll be done faster with whatever I’m doing if I do it without interruption.

I don’t know, exactly. But after this morning, I do know this: 

I may prefer power. I will probably continue to choose it.

But endurance is worthwhile. And maybe God made me capable of choosing that, too.

– – –

New to my work? Check out my book, Chastity Is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin.

And though he had not signed up to let me teach him about the virtue of chastity, one passerby actually stopped. Under one arm, he clutched the Chinese takeout he’d picked up from the restaurant next door.

Instead of going home to eat, he listened intently while I explained how to practice chastity—that is, to do the right thing every day regarding sex, to honor the Lord with our sexuality. The man’s eyes were wide while I told the crowd we’re all called to practice chastity, no matter how old we are, no matter whether we’re single or married or priest or nun, and no matter our pasts.

And when I ended my chastity talk, that passerby raised his hand. He had never heard of chastity and he had questions. Lots of them. Difficult ones.

Do your friends who don’t practice chastity have hard questions, too? Or maybe you’re the one who has some questions.

Six years ago—on Nov. 28, 2014—Ave Maria Press published my book, Chastity Is for Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, with an important goal: to answer those questions.

In honor of my book’s sixth birthday, signed copies are $14 for one, $20 for two, and shipping is FREE through Nov. 30 on orders of $20 or more from my store.

But if signed copies aren’t your thing and you’d still like to stock up, you also can get 30 percent off and free shipping plus a FREE Advent book when you order Chastity Is for Lovers (or other Ave Maria Press titles) while using the code BLACK20 through Sunday (Nov. 29) here.

Six years later and I’m still moved by the feedback I get from readers—women and men, single and married, parents and grandparents, teens and college kids. I’m still doing my best to answer their chastity questions. And I hope my book helps you do that, too.

Nonetheless, many of them do. And there’s a virtue in that. It is selfless to let their preferences slide so we can get what we want. There is generosity when they endure parts of us that clash with parts of them. They are gracious to keep their mouths shut when they could call us out for behaving badly. And we should be grateful that they accept us as we are. 

Though if we’re honest, we have to admit: We shouldn’t always let them. A girlfriend or boyfriend (or husband or wife) doesn’t ask you to change your behavior isn’t proof that you have none worth changing. None of us needs to be told that we could be healthier and holier. All of us have room to grow. We are all called to die to self in relationships.

But if I expect someone else’s death to self to result in his or her settling for my bad behavior, I’m expecting to be in relationships that won’t sanctify me. When I let my significant other settle for my status quo, I’ll settle for it, too—I’ll never grow.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to. Use the questions I pose in my latest CatholicMatch post to determine whether (and where) we have room to improve.

The moonlit waves hit the shore while we sat in the sand, bundled up on a cold night at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. My date—a super fun guy I’d met at Mass a month earlier—had taken me out a handful of times but still hadn’t broached an important subject: our relationship.

That he kept his secret so long was a red flag I couldn’t ignore. In my latest post for CatholicMatch, I write about 5 more red flags you don’t have to settle for. Click here to read it.

We talked for so long I didn’t realize the restaurant closed nor notice its staff cleaning up around us. By the time he walked me to my car, I knew we’d have a second date. And we did, plus many more. We met for Mass several Sunday mornings. We held hands, and kissed, and, when he traveled for work, we FaceTimed. A few weeks in, I knew what I wanted—to discern marriage in earnest. I thought he did, too.

So I was surprised by what he said in passing a month after our first date: “…it’s still too soon to put a label on our relationship.” I didn’t know then what I know now: that people who are eager to kiss you but are not eager to call you “girlfriend” or “boyfriend” are not interested in discerning marriage with you. When you date them anyway, you will not end up with a spouse. You’ll end up with a fling.

Flings are fun at first but never last. Here are 4 signs that you’re in one (in my latest post for CatholicMatch).