For monastics brahmacharya is total: Digambara and Svetambara mendicants are celibate absolutely, and the rules governing contact between monks and nuns are elaborate and strict. For householders the vow is svadara-santosha, contentment with one's own spouse, together with restraint in frequency and abstention on specified days, and it is common for older couples to take lifelong celibacy by mutual agreement while continuing to live together — a recognised stage rather than an eccentricity. The places where the vow shades into something imposed rather than chosen are worth naming: the initiation of very young candidates, where the vow is taken before it can meaningfully be understood; and the position of widows in some conservative Jain communities, where expected austerity and non-remarriage has functioned as a social sanction rather than a spiritual choice. Jain reformers, including within the community, have pressed on both. The tradition's own logic — that a vow taken without full volition binds karma rather than shedding it — is the strongest available argument against both practices.