Dating while sober

Hi Lisa, good question! This is very common in early sobriety especially. There are many threads on it; if you search the word “dating” or similar words above you’ll find some - here’s one:

There’s a link to another one in there too.

In early sobriety you’re working on your most important relationship: your relationship with yourself.

You need to get to know her, clearly, fully, deeply. You need to see her pleasures and fears, her hopes and dreams, her daily rhythms of mind and mood. She is a complex web of thoughts and feelings, and it will take time to get to know her.

Our addictions were about numbness and escape; avoidance; running. Something about our lives or experiences got us running to the numbness of addictions and in sobriety we’re just waking up. It takes time to learn who we are, clear, steady, sober.

If you invest time now is developing your relationship with yourself, it will make any future relationships much stronger, because you’ll know who you are and where you stand. The things you learn in recovery groups like AA or SMART help you do that. I myself joined group therapy for my ADHD (which wasn’t specifically about recovery but helped me understand my mental health). I also took time to make friends, take walks by the river with groups of friends, visit friends’ dogs :innocent: etc etc. All of these things helped me get a sense of myself and who I am in the world, sober.

Take care Lisa, and always remember: you’re a good person who deserves a safe, sober life where you can be your full self.

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