Everett CollectionAdvertisement - Continue Reading BelowThe final straw in my 10-year drinking career was the homely guy from the Internet. His OkCupid pictures hadn't looked especially unattractive—they were, you know, fine — but I met up with him anyway because I was lonely in a brand new city. I also had poor standards, especially when I drank.
We met up at a dive bar, sat on a crusty outdoor picnic bench and got drunk while discussing Writing and Movies and Life.
More From ELLEMark was smart, but I felt not even the tiniest twinge of attraction toward him. Still, he was a decent conversationalist, and he was a dude to pay for my drinks.
I don't remember leaving the bar, or how he ended up coming home with me. All I remember is waking up the next morning, in nearly no clothing, with a man I found physically repugnant, and bruises all over my thighs.
When I asked about the bruises, he said we'd hooked up. I'd seemed into it, he said, "Nothing crazy went down." I felt sick, and not just from my excruciating hangover. After that night, Mark tried to call me three times, but I didn't pick up. I again fought the urge to vomit when I passed him on the street six months later.
Over the years — way before Mark — three different therapists had suggested I try putting the bottle down, but it took that stomach-churning hookup for me to really listen. Joanie, my therapist at the time, drove it home even further when she told me, "Generally speaking, people who don't have drinking problems don't experience blackouts."
I was 29 when I decided to stop drinking. But I never expected that doing something so positive for my long-term sanity would be such a powerful hit on my love life. I've been sober now for the better part of eight years, and during that time, I haven't dated anyone for longer than three months, despite being smart, reasonably attractive, and gainfully employed (I'm a homeowner, for God's sake!).
I didn't think about the realities of sober dating much beforehand. I figured it might be tricky passing up the wine list on a dinner date, but I never considered the nerve-wracking nature of trying to explain why I didn't drink or, worse, the torturous awkwardness of getting naked with a new guy while stone-cold sober.
It was glaringly apparent that alcohol and I never made an attractive pair. I'd been a near-daily, frequent-blackout drinker since stomping off to college at 18. Alcohol served as an escape from my messed-up brain. I'd been diagnosed with depression at 16 and started meds at 17. Although the antidepressants helped, they didn't help enough. I still spent 90 percent of every day dogged by an ongoing inner narration of all the ways I wasn't good enough.
Alcohol also made the dude thing so much easier. I'd always been super-shy, and the guys at my high school barely looked at me. I felt monumentally insecure about my relative lack of experience. Plus, as a late-blooming American girl growing up in the '80s, I'd absorbed all those insidious cultural messages from movies and TV and magazines and distant great-aunts: A woman's nothing without a man to love her, I learned, and sex is the quickest route to earning said love.
Throughout college and beyond, I confused sex with validation. Every hookup felt like another brag I could add to my collection of conquests. It felt like my attractiveness level (which, messed up as it is, can make up a big piece of a woman's self-worth) magically shot up by each new man who wanted to sleep with me.
Drinking helped blur my senses enough to let me do things (and people) I'd never consider when sober. Sometimes I had enough wits about me to recognize that I was only hooking up with someone because I was bored or lonely. But usually I was just too wasted to care about the reasons. All that mattered was feeling, for even a few minutes, like I was the beautiful, desired center of someone's world.
First dates led into bed, which spiraled into months-long relationships with men I felt nothing for. That stout, earnest 26-year-old virgin with the black eyes and floppy hair? I flinched when he touched me, but at least I wasn't sleeping alone.
When I finally stopped drinking, it was hard, especially in the beginning, but it got easier with time. I started going to recovery meetings and swapped candy and coffee for red wine and vodka tonics. Ensconced in a new social bubble with likeminded strangers who were learning together to take care of ourselves, I rosily imagined staying single for six months, max, before being karmically rewarded for my epic sober bravery.
But ... no. Dry dating was about 6 gazillion times more difficult than I'd envisioned. I tried dating guys in recovery, but nothing panned out. They seemed fickle and immature, more interested in casual fooling around than in dating. Plus, I was way more picky about who I'd go out with, and I had no clue how or when to tell "normal" guys I didn't drink. What's a breezy way of saying "I'm a teetotaler" without giving the impression that you're either a disturbed ex-mess or a party pooper?
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