In 'The Dry Season,' Melissa Febos chronicles a transformative year of celibacy

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

Writer and professor Melissa Febos had been in a series of consecutive relationships for decades. Then, one particularly devastating experience led her to take stock of her dependency on sex and love. She says she was in "the right amount of pain" to make a change. For Febos, that period kicked off what would become a year of transformative celibacy. Her new book The Dry Season chronicles the way abstinence from sex and relationships allowed Febos to awaken to her desires, motivations and decisions in a new way. In today's episode, she speaks with Marielle Segarra – host of NPR's Life Kit podcast – about how this year changed her outlook on attraction, attention, dancing, and the divine.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. When I was a teenager, I got into the
0:08.0	straight-edge hardcore movement, which was this subculture of punk where the music was super fast,
0:13.5	super loud, and it promoted a lifestyle based on not drinking, not smoking, not doing drugs,
0:19.6	and also not having, you know, a lot of sex.
0:23.1	It was the first time I'd ever encountered celibacy detached from religion.
0:27.9	And it seems different than, I don't know, staying away from cigarettes.
0:31.5	Like, even today, I think if you told someone you were sober from drugs or booze, they'd be pretty chill about it. But if you told
0:39.0	them you were staying away from sex voluntarily, you might get some raised eyebrows. It just doesn't
0:44.7	seem as commonly talked about. But that's what today's book is about. Melissa Fibos' memoir,
0:50.4	The Dry Season, is a look at her year-long journey into celibacy. And she spoke to
0:55.1	Mariel Sagata, host of NPR's Life Kit, about why she did it and what she learned. There's a lot
1:00.3	to get into here, so we're going to spend the whole episode on it. After the break, we'll learn
1:03.5	about the breakup that led to this experiment. In the U.S., national security news can feel
1:10.1	far away from daily life.
1:12.0	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
1:16.6	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
1:18.6	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
1:22.3	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:25.9	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:31.5	When did you first consider a period of celibacy and why?
1:36.9	I had been in consecutive, committed monogamous relationships for about 20 years.
1:47.2	Basically, when I was 15, I started being preoccupied by romance and love and sex and those pursuits and how they made me feel about myself.
	...

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