Melissa Febos recounts her 20-year journey through relationships in her memoir, The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex. Despite finding herself in a seemingly fortunate situation of constant romantic availability, Febos felt constrained, often overwhelmed by anxiety and the loss of her own identity. After enduring tumultuous relationships, she ultimately declares a three-month period of celibacy, aiming to address her deep-seated need for affection. This memoir chronicles her year of abstinence as a means of exploring the limits of her desires.
In a culture that prizes abundance, Febos reveals that her continuous relationships felt more like a constraint than a privilege, suffocating her sense of self.
Febos describes her body as a 'work animal who slept in a barn behind the house of my mind', capturing her feeling of losing autonomy within relationships.
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