Abstinence is refraining from sexual activity. Chastity is the virtue of rightly ordering all your sexual desires toward authentic love. Abstinence is one expression of chastity – but chastity is the bigger, deeper, lifelong reality. You can be abstinent without being chaste, and chastity doesn’t end when you get married. It transforms.
The Deeper Story
This distinction matters more than most people realize. And here’s why: if you think chastity is just “not having sex,” you’ll white-knuckle your way through dating and feel like you’re missing out. But if you understand chastity as a positive virtue – a way of seeing and loving people as God sees them – everything changes.
The Catechism teaches that “people should cultivate chastity in the way that is suited to their state of life” (CCC 2349). Notice the word “cultivate.” Chastity isn’t a switch you flip. It’s a garden you tend. It grows over time through prayer, self-knowledge, accountability, and grace.
Abstinence says: “I won’t do that.” Chastity says: “I will love you as a whole person – not as an object for my gratification.” St. John Paul II spent years teaching that love involves “a totally committed and fully responsible attitude of a person to a person.” Chastity is how you live that out before marriage, within marriage, and in every relationship you have.
For the engaged, the Church frames chastity as “a discovery of mutual respect, an apprenticeship in fidelity, and the hope of receiving one another from God” (CCC 2350). That’s not deprivation. That’s preparation. It’s learning to love someone so well that when you give yourself fully on your wedding night, it actually means something.
What This Means for Your Dating Life
Stop thinking of chastity as a list of things you can’t do. Start thinking of it as training in real love. Ask yourself: Am I treating this person as someone to be loved, or someone to be used?
Practically, this means guarding not just your body but your imagination, your conversations, and your emotional intimacy. It means being honest about where you struggle. And it means going to Confession not as a punishment, but as the place where God rebuilds what’s been broken.
Where to Go from Here
Reframe chastity in your own mind this week. Instead of “What can’t I do?”, ask “How is God inviting me to love more fully?” Bring that question to Adoration or your next prayer time. The answer might surprise you.