How Do I Date Sober?

By Madeleine Aggeler

*****

“Drinking gave me the courage to flirt, to proposition people, to send typo-ridden texts at 2 a.m. Drinking made me feel gorgeous and hilarious. So now what?”

I spent much of my twenties in love with a guy I didn’t like very much. We didn’t have a lot in common, and we disdained each other’s core personality traits (he was disgusted by my chaos and insecurity; I resented his order and arrogance). But our paths had crossed at a time when both of us were young and stupid enough to imprint on each other in an indelible way, like shitty tattoos you get as a teenager.

It didn’t matter that I didn’t like him that much. I didn’t like a lot of the men I pursued. Romance, for me, was not about liking someone. It was not about warmth or connection or happiness. It was about conquest. None of the guys I wanted to make out with in middle school wanted to make out with me, and as a result, I came to crave the romantic validation of those who were least inclined to give it. The less they cared for me, the more I needed them. Mountaineers don’t brag about summiting gentle hills, after all. Oh, you entered into a loving and committed relationship with someone who respects and adores you? Well, I managed to seduce someone who doesn’t care if I live or die. And which is the bigger accomplishment, really? The air is so thin up here. 

Alcohol was central to all of this. Drinking gave me the courage to flirt, to proposition people, to send typo-ridden texts at 2 a.m. Drinking made me feel gorgeous and hilarious, and like the conquest was enough. Occasionally, I’d be seized by the longing for something more—the humiliating urge to be cherished and held and cradled in a glowy cocoon of love. A few drinks usually drowned that out.

By the time I quit drinking, I wasn’t really in contact with that guy anymore. Part of the reason I quit was because I was tired of worrying that I would get drunk and text him. I didn’t want to be with him. I knew we didn’t work. I knew I wasn’t that nice to him, or him to me. I knew we would never be happy together, and that even if someday I finally received his elusive acceptance, I didn’t really accept him. And yet, inevitably, a night out would leave me feeling lonely and maudlin, and I’d mentally draft overwrought messages of reconciliation. 

(I didn’t admit that reason for quitting to anyone at the time. It was too embarrassing. I was fine with people knowing I had a drinking problem, but I would rather have yanked out my own toenails than let them know I’d loved someone more than he’d loved me.)

After I quit, I started to get over him. In the bright, unforgiving glare of sobriety, I saw our relationship for the desolate landscape that it was -- there were beautiful clusters of memories here and there, sprouting bravely out of the rocks like desert wildflowers, but overall, it was an inhospitable place to be. I still thought about him occasionally, but it was more muscle memory than actual yearning. I was eager to recast my daydreams, to find someone else to fantasize about. 

*****

I spent my early days of sobriety lusting after a man who clearly found me annoying, probably because I acted really annoying whenever I was around him. The months after I quit were my personal nadir, charm-wise. I was jittery and moody and felt more insecure than I ever had in my life. Even more insecure than those first months on Accutane, when the skin on my lips got so dry that it kept splitting open and I spent the whole high school science trip pressing tissues to my mouth to stanch the bleeding.

I had developed a theory that because this man had a sarcastic sense of humor, he would like me if I were bitingly witty, even mean. Maybe he would find this cruelty impressive. Funny. Seductively intimidating. My hypothesis immediately proved incorrect, but I soldiered on, dutifully making unnecessarily snide comments. One time, at a friend's birthday party, I said that college a capella singers should be tried in court for perpetuating the lie that singing a bunch of CVS soundtrack songs without any instruments is cool, when in fact it was troubling, loser behavior. A fellow guest piped up and shared that they had been a tenor in one of their school’s a capella groups. My crush furrowed his brow and walked away. When I smiled, it felt a lot like one of those early Accutane smiles: tight, painful, gruesome to behold.

Around that time, I went with a friend to a palm reader who took one look at my hands and told me she saw a lot of emptiness in me. My friend and I laughed about it after, but I knew exactly what she was talking about. I felt it too.

I stopped pursuing that man. I stopped pursuing anyone. I did the sort of stuff that, unfortunately, really does help you feel better: therapy, exercise, meditation, sleep. Blah blah blah. I got closer with my family and my friends. Some days, I worried something terrible must be just around the corner, because surely one person shouldn’t be allowed to gorge themselves on love like this. Gradually, the emptiness shrank a little.

When I started dating again, I thought it would be easier than before. I thought all of this sobriety and personal growth would make me a magnet for a mature, meaningful partnership. Instead, after one of my first alcohol-free dates—coffee with a nice man who was tall and smart and made me laugh—I called a friend of mine, on the verge of tears. I told her I was scared I’d never want to have sex with someone again. 

Previously, I’d had all the restraint of a blow-up doll, and I could convince myself I was in love with anyone as long as they took a little too long to text me back. But this time, at this guy’s apartment, I froze up. When we kissed, all I could hear was the wet, spitty sound of our mouths. When he touched me, I snapped into rigor mortis. I worried that sexuality and alcohol had become so intertwined in my brain that one couldn’t exist without the other. My friend said maybe I just wasn’t into this guy. I was quiet for a while. The thought had honestly not occurred to me.

Cursed now with a modicum of self-respect, I realized that my pool of potential partners had shrunk considerably. Without alcohol to dull my senses, I was suddenly confronted with the reality of how I actually felt about people. And as it turned out, I didn’t want to set off on a grand romance with most of them or even make out with them. Most of them didn’t want to embark on a grand romance with me either, of course, but I’d already known that. (See: middle school boys not wanting to make out with me; lips gushing blood on science trip; chaos and insecurity.)

There were a lot of good guys I felt nothing for, and I usually found excuses to end things quickly. One guy spewed food when he chewed, another had a weirdly musty apartment. A few guys made me really angry. They were the ones who couldn’t be bothered to ask any questions, or keep a conversation going. I resented them for not being willing to do the small kindness of being a good hang. The Notes app on my phone filled up with drafts of break-up texts that I’d send after the first or second date. 

Eventually, I fell for a handsome divorcee who asked me a lot of questions and deftly allayed my anxieties about sober sex. He had a huge window behind his bed that we would lean out of after to stare at the moon. One night, over dinner, he told me a story that he thought was really funny about how he thought Millie Bobby Brown was so hot, but then he Googled her and realized she was underage. I said he should probably never tell that to anyone ever again. We didn’t talk much after that. 

When I’d gone on too many lackluster dates in a row, I shifted my focus. Maybe all the love, intimacy, and companionship I got from my friendships was enough, and all I needed from dates was sex. I met a stoner who’d had some bit parts in a couple of pornos. Mostly background work. The disgruntled gym patron who shakes his fist and says, “Hey, stop fucking on that treadmill!” Stuff like that. He didn’t really ask me questions, and he repeated his various theories on crypto over and over again, but I figured it would be fine.

Unfortunately, it turned out that when I was sober, I didn’t enjoy having sex with someone I didn’t really like. When he blindfolded me and rubbed oil into my breasts, I wondered how quickly I could leave without seeming rude. 

*****

Obviously, I’m the common denominator here. This isn’t an essay about the woes of modern dating. It’s an essay about me, and I’m the one writing it, so I’m able to reduce these dates to tiny, unflattering moments in the interest of advancing my own narrative. The reality is surely more complicated. Maybe some guys didn’t ask questions because they were shy, or tired, or had witnessed a murder on the way to the bar and were still processing their shock. Maybe the guy with the musty apartment was having issues with his air vent. Maybe some guys were just jerks, but jerks need love too. And I don’t know enough about crypto to know if the background porn actor’s theories were good. Maybe his thoughts really did bear repeating.

A couple of months ago, a neighbor told me she thought I was too picky. She meant it as a criticism, but I took it as a compliment. After years of subsisting on crumbs of affection, it felt nice to be chasing something more substantive. And being picky sounded sort of sophisticated. Mature. A picky woman doesn’t just passively accept her fate, she bends life to her will. 

But sometimes I wonder if I’ve overcorrected. As misguided and unhealthy as my previous approach to relationships may have been, it was thrilling to believe I could fall in love with anyone. Every stranger on a plane or at a party or in line at the pharmacy was someone who could potentially consume my spirit and ruin my life, and there was something lovely about that.

I wonder if I write people off too quickly. I wonder if I really am too picky, but not in a sophisticated way, in the bad way my neighbor meant. Am I really not into these people, or am I avoiding doing the work of actually opening up and getting to know someone? What’s a normal amount of people to like? What’s a normal amount to want to have sex with? I don’t know. There does seem to be more oxygen down here, though.

*****

Madeleine Aggeler is a freelance journalist living in Washington, D.C.

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