Male Chastity, Abstinence and The Facts Project with Master Antoni

Over the years that we’ve owned and run the House of Denial, the vast majority of our customers have come to us to buy a male chastity device for kink purposes. And within those kinky purposes come a wide variety of reasons - self locking for tease and denial to a sign of commitment in their D/s relationship to help with their porn or wanking addictions. In fact, you might even consider that would be our entire customer base but that’s not the truth!

Chastity is for everyone and the reasons behind exploring chastity are as unique as each of our customers. One particular demographic of our customers that we hadn’t really considered was from religious people who use chastity cages as a sign of their devotion to God and to practice abstinence. Their faith is core to their chastity journey.

This isn’t something that we’re overly familiar with, although we do understand the commitment aspect, so we reached out to someone far more knowledgeable than ourselves on the subject to learn more about it.

Master Antoni (which is not his real name) is a practising Christian and was raised in a religious household. Following a query he sent to us, we started chatting and he explained some of his history with chastity. In his youth, he explored chastity with his girlfriend (who later became his wife) as a demonstration of his abstinence and his commitment to his partner and to God.

Later in their relationship, she also began wearing the key to his chastity device. She became his chastity keyholder once they were engaged as a sign of their lasting commitment prior to their wedding.

As you’ll see from our conversation below, we’ve had a fascinating conversation about the intersections between faith and chastity/abstinence. We personally found it a really interesting reflection on all the amazing ways chastity can positively influence people’s lives in a whole variety of ways and how the True Love Revolution, then the Facts Project changed their lives.

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Mistress K: Thank you so much for agreeing to discuss this with us. We’re really fascinated in sharing your experiences of chastity from a religious perspective.

Master Antoni: Thanks very much for having me.

MK: As in Genesis, let’s start at the beginning. Has your faith always been a massive part of your life?

MA: Yeah, faith has always been extremely important to me. I come from a Polish family who moved to America when I was young but our faith has always been a pillar of our household. All of my family are religious and we’re regular church-goers as well as attending Sunday school during my youth.

I suppose in contrast to other people’s stories that have been shared with me, my parents were relatively relaxed about their faith - like, they had a quiet confidence in how powerful it really was. They were never forceful in making me study which allowed me the chance to think and question and come to the realisation, much like Christ, of my devotion to the Church.

The environment within our local community including the Church and Sunday school allowed me to realise how loving and embracing life in Christ is.

MK: That’s really fascinating - I was raised Roman Catholic but am a “lapsed Catholic” as I call it. Hearing the approach makes me realise how important those attitudes are when it comes to faith.

MA: Absolutely - it’s as they say in Psalms [119:30]; “I have chosen the way of faithfulness; I have sent my heart on your laws.” By having the freedom to think about my faith it meant that I don’t feel my faith was placed upon me like the cross upon the shoulders of Christ, it was a conscious and willing choice.

Having a supportive family who were confident in their faith but also weren’t preachy was key. When I struggled with my faith - as I think all people of faith have moments of - I wasn’t admonished. All things come through Christ who is love, so they practised sharing that love and acceptance. I know unfortunately that has not always been the case for everyone. But knowing you are loved and accepted makes all paths easier.

MK: How very true indeed. From so many perspectives, the key message of all major religions is that of love and acceptance but sometimes that isn’t the actual experience of those who are raised in faith.

MA: Completely true. And it meant for me that there wasn’t a massive conflict for me between my faith and my sex life when I grew up.

MK: Ha ha ha, that’s amazing as the next question I was going to ask you was about abstinence and how you started on that journey!

MA: It’s not my first time talking about this so it’s like I sense these things.

MK: Then would you mind explaining a little more about sex or abstinence in your faith?

MA: Absolutely. The Bible speaks to us about the dangers of sexual immorality and obviously perspectives on what that means have changed over the 2000 years we’ve followed the teachings of Christ. What always stood out to me were a writing from Peter [1 Peter 2:11] where he said “Beloved, I beg you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul” and a passage from Romans [13:14] saying “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provisions for the desires of the flesh.”

Don’t get me wrong - puberty is hard (no pun intended) for everyone that goes through it but fighting against the ‘desires of the flesh’ when you’re a horny teenager and not wanting to disappoint our Risen Lord is an experience! So I turned back to the Bible to help me through my temptations.

MK: So how did that lead to you pursuing abstinence?

MA: In Corinthians [1 Corinthians 6:18-19], it tells us to “flee from sexual immorality...whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whose you have received from God? You are not your own.” Whilst that’s a heavy thing to read as a teenager and as a young man with “vigorous spirit” shall we say, remembering that full quote of my body being a gift from Our Lord made it easier to bear. When I felt desire, I remembered the testing of Christ in the desert and knew that my body was not my own so I could endure as Christ did.

MK: I fully commend your fortitude of spirit in this and I can see how that quote would have been a comfort when you were struggling. So from what you’re saying, you were obviously tempted to have sex before marriage?

MA: Of course! I don’t believe many young men aren’t tempted and temptation is everywhere. However through conversations with others in my church group, my pastor and even with my family, I was reminded that my relationship with God came above all else and that I wanted to live a life in service to his teachings. Through obeying the teachings of Christ, we embody his love and communicate his message out into the world.

I found that prayer and reflection helped tamp down those immediate moments of physical lust and that those amazing people in my community helped with the wider reminders of my faith through conversation and practice. Within my church, I had a mentor who also supported me in remaining focused. Part of the problem with abstinence, which I’ve seen a few other blogs write about, is that you’re told to be abstinent as part of your servitude to our Creator, but you’re not given any practical tips to do that. It’s so easy to fail or to delude yourself if you don’t have structures around you. My mentor helped provide those structures.

MK: I think you’ve made a pretty critical point about lots of things there that it’s easy to fail without a plan or a structure. So in terms of your abstinence and remaining chaste, what sort of things did you do?

MA: OK, first I think it’s important to say that everyone is different so what helped me is subjective and might not work for everyone.

MK: Completely understandable.

MA: So chastity works in two different ways - you have abstinence, which is abstaining from sexual activity before marriage and then you have chastity, which is also about spiritual purity. That chastity is about mind, body and spirit all together as one.

MK: Similar to God as The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?

MA: Right, exactly that. So in order to be chaste, you have to work on it and you have to know what you’re working against. So first for me was the reminder of why this was important to me - which I prayed on for a few weeks and in Bible study - but also the reminder that abstinence didn’t also mean celibacy. In the book of Ecclesiastes [3:1], the verse “to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under Heaven,” reminds us that the act of sex happens between a married couple but should not happen before.

That’s the view I held onto when my wife and I were courting. The union between a husband and a wife is sacred in their commitment to each other and to God, so my wife and I understood that about our relationship right from the start. She wore a purity ring as a sign of her devotion until we got married as she was educated about “True Love Waits”.

MK: So before we talk a bit further about your relationship and physical chastity, I’d just like to explore if there was there anything else you did to help you remain chaste?

MA: Oh sure, a lot of it was just avoiding temptation - in Matthew and in service we ask to “not be led into temptation but to be delivered from evil”, but part of not being led is avoiding the path in the first place. So avoiding sexual content in things - it was the early days of the internet so actually I feel quite lucky I never had to work out porn blockers or anything like that! Even small things like checking movie listings for ratings helped back then.

It sounds obvious but even keeping busy was key - the less time you have to dwell on temptation, the less it’s in your mind. So focusing on engaging and supporting our community with food drives and mentoring other young people myself helped keep my mind away from focusing on sex. By devoting myself in other acts of service to others, it kept me from focusing too much on myself and any preoccupations I had which included everything from papers to fuel money to puberty.

What I was raised to believe was to remember that your internal actions count as much as your external actions. God is loving and forgiving above all else so does forgive us for our base natures but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing the work to follow his practices. To take from Corinthians [1 Corinthians 4:5] “He will bring to light what is hidden in the darkness and will expose the motives of the heart.” Again, some might see that as quite a terrifying thing to consider, but for me it just reminded me that Christ judges us in our entirety, not just for our external actions. Some might struggle with that, but for me I always knew that as I was Man, I was fallible and that I had to work to follow the path of God, so it served as a reminder for me.

MK: Thank you for clarifying that and I’m sure other people will find some of those tips helpful for them if they’ve never had guidance either.

MA: For sure.

MK: So moving forward, how did you end up exploring physical chastity and did you have any conflicts regarding that?

MA: It might seem strange but no, I didn’t. Similar to what we’ve just talked about, I saw it as an extension of helping me remain abstinent - it helped remove a temptation from me so kept me on the path to follow our Lord’s teachings. When my wife and I first got together, I was keen to remain faithful to our shared faith and to abstain until marriage.

We explored it together - not physically obviously - in that she was supportive of my reasoning and held the key for me to further reduce temptation. As we didn’t live together until we were married, that did require a lot of trust but helped to strengthen our relationship. My wife did want to spend time in chastity with me as well but we found that it didn’t work as expected. The belt that we bought for her didn’t react well with her skin and caused physical issues. Whilst I’m now aware it’s not impossible to wear a chastity belt longer term and there is a much wider variety than what we were able to find, we agreed that I would remain in a device and she would not. At the risk of repeating myself, it’s not just physical actions that count towards abstinence so we were both happy with the situation.

MK: Yes, the nature of female chastity belts mean they are not as forgiving as a male chastity device so I can imagine.

MA: As we did discover! Instead we focused on honest communication and prayed together when we found it hard to fight our sexual urges. We knew pretty early on that we thought this was true love for us both - it felt like finding the kindred part of yourself and we wanted to do everything in service of our love and our faith in the Lord to honour that.

It might sound old fashioned but it was pretty much straight out of Genesis [2:24] said; “a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” We both lived with our families until we married and then we set up our home together. I’ve never regretted any of the decisions I made because I know in my heart that we worked to honour and respect the teachings of our faith and our love in God.

MK: So you mentioned when we were messaging prior to this interview about The Facts Project, do you want to speak about that?

MA: I’d love to. My wife, as I mentioned, followed the True Love Waits project and after she told me about it, I did some further research myself. I’d heard of similar projects and I came across the True Love Revolution whose purpose was to educate people about the benefits to abstinence before marriage and how not having intimate relations outside of matrimony actually could benefit a relationship which I’ve talked a bit about already.

Reading about the True Love Revolution and seeing the strength the True Love Waits project gave my wife during our courtship made us want to give back to our community as well. Combining some of the tenements from both groups plus our own religious teachings, we worked to establish The Facts Project. It’s community-focused on educating people on positive relationships and the benefits of abstinence from a mental, physical and spiritual perspective, and also how it allows people to enjoy a more intimate relationship with God. We started out sharing it through our local church groups and then expanded it to reach out to other interested people online.

MK: Thank you for sharing that and informing us about The Facts Project. I’ve really enjoyed having this conversation with you about this - especially knowing the reasonings behind how you got into chastity.

MA: It was a pleasure, I’m always happy to have the opportunity to discuss my faith with others and if my words help others who are struggling, then I’m happy to be of service.

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Some of the interview was edited for length purposes and as mentioned in our first few paragraphs, we’ve provided some additional context that came up before we actually started going through the questions.

For myself as a “lapsed Catholic” as I said during our conversation, I found this really fascinating. I know quite a few people who enjoy a religious aspect (or sacrilegious aspect depending on your perspective I guess!) but had never considered how faith and sex/chastity could tie together.

From my perspective, I have seen how some narrow-minded teachings can be harmful to people in terms of physical expression and sex and the associated guilt from that - but in speaking to Master Antoni, it gave me the extremely welcome news that not all religious teachings can be as restrictive. Being raised in a welcoming and accepting environment is honestly the ideal I think we can all agree, and to hear how this benefited him and his wife in their relationship and with their relationship to God, it just reminds me how impactful chastity can be.

What are your thoughts on this? Has religion influenced you in terms of your sex or kink life in a positive or negative way? Did this article challenge you in a way you weren’t expecting? If you’ve got any thoughts, we’d love to hear them!