#MeToo has kicked up the dust of some collective sexual pain. Sexuality itself is at battle. The French backlash against the semantically sinister #BalanceTonPorc (Call out your pig) fears a wave of puritanism, which has sparked some nods and some outrage. The movement continues its nuanced conversation.

I was assaulted by a Hollywood director and, in the wake of Weinstein, I have put in an incident report with LAPD. NYPD and Beverly Hills PD have since opened up an investigation against my abuser. Since reporting the assault, I have become part of a group of women who banded together on Twitter. We have met several times on either conference calls or meet-ups in LA streamed to others in other parts of the country, to further our mission for a safer society for women.

Referring to the open letter French feminists wrote to Le Monde, being part of the movement certainly does not make me into a perpetual victim. My assault is also not the worst thing that has happened to me. Excavating it, however, has opened up the vault on a range of sexual experiences where things happened that I did not want to happen.

Perhaps one of the most handy things to come from the movement for me is a growing a vocabulary for how to express what it is I do and do not desire. I’m with Natalie Portman on this: “Let us find a space where we mutually, consensually look out for each other’s pleasure, and allow the vast, limitless range of desire be expressed.”

The #MeToo movement has coincided with peak (or God forbid not even) paradox-of-choice in our crude swipe-based dating system. After divorcing three years ago, I have been out trudging in the online dating world – which I think is quite possibly the most personally polluting platform one can find oneself on.

If the future is to be female, what responsibility does that put on women to bring about their most feminine self? For me, and let’s be clear that I speak on behalf of myself only, it means I am going to stop having sex. Romance is my crack. It is a lot of single women’s crack. Men’s crack? Well, ours. These drugs are strong, and they are circumventing something deeper.

I’m all for the free movement of desire, but with the indiscernibly subjective nature of conditioning, for me that means jumping off the dating merry-go-round. I don’t know what it is like to date in France. Perhaps if I had been born French I would vow to have sex every day for a year. And that would be another perfectly reasonable response to begin an exploration of desire.

But out here in Los Angeles and over there in Sydney, in my experience, sex is cheap. Dating is an exercise in escapism. Women may be winning at the moment, but we are still submitting to the great fallacy of the American hippie movement: that free love is about free love, not about men being able to get laid more.

I can’t control-alt-delete my past, but I’d like to rebuild my own sexuality and relationship to desire by halting the deed and channeling that energy inward. I’m in my sexual peak, so don’t underestimate me when I say this is a sacrifice. But sacrifice is great when you know it’s for something better. That something better is the space it will create within me to fertilise my own work and creativity. The space usually held for a dude I’m “dating” is now up for rent for ME. Self-love. When I hear love songs, I’m singing them to myself.

I think this will help me sort out who really is The One, and who really is just fun. At the end of my non-sex journey, I hope to share with someone a new and deeper understanding of what sexual pleasure is to me.

I’m still cautiously up for dating. I’ll be upfront about my commitment to be monogamous to myself. And if I find another human I want to kiss all the time, if he’s not willing to wait until I’m really ready, it is my loss. And, it is his loss. It is a joint venture in culture-shifting behaviour. Because none of this carousel ride is good for any of us, male or female.

Now the love affair truly begins.

• Sarah Doyle is a playwright and film-maker

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