For men, the benefits of entering a celibate community are less clear—unless the men were reluctant to engage in vaginal sex in the first place. Some Shaker men could not separate the idea of sex from sin and were willing to live apart from their wives in return for the promise of a heavenly reward. For men who felt little or no desire for women, however, the Shaker life offered the opportunity to live in a community where interaction with females would be only intermittent, and highly regulated. Instead, they would live in intimate communion with other men