Dating After Sobriety: Will AA Ruin Your Relationship? And Truth About Dating In AA

Dating in sobriety can be complex. Learn how to navigate romance,why not to date in AA meetings, and protecting your marriage while newly sober.

BOOKS FOR RECOVERY AND REINVENTION

THE SMALL BOOK: HOW I BEAT ALCOHOLISM AND WHY ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS DOESN'T WORK.

THE SHEPHERD AND THE RUNNINGWOLF: A PATH TO FORGIVENESS ON THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL

REINVENTION OF SELF: HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE AND BEING FOREVER

John Barleycorn taken from Jack London's book John Barleycorn first published in 1913
Video opinion of creator only not to be taken for medical advice

Transcript

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So you've gained sobriety and congratulations. But is Alcoholics Anonymous now going to ruin your marriage? And if you're not married, should you date within the commonality of your rooms? Should you even be in the rooms of AA after so much time? How to navigate the romance world as a newly sober person. Now, when one emerges from the fire of initial alcoholic recovery, the heat burns that skin for months until it finally cools. The recovery program I suggest is one for the reinvention of all four planes: the physical, emotional, career, and self-advancement, and the spiritual. But there's another aspect to recovery that should be addressed as one transforms from alcoholic to cured from the addiction, and that is the romantic relationship world. It's my great contention that the methods of Alcoholics Anonymous are destructive. They are destructive physically and emotionally. Their tactics impede the progression of self once one has left the life of addiction. And this destruction throws artillery on the terrain of romance as well, whether short or long term. Now, the standard advice one will get from AA the day one ceases alcohol is not to date for a year. I agree. This is good advice, and I followed most of it, even as one who did not attend the meetings at all the first year. The recovering addict, on his way to cure, has a mind that is fighting intense chaos with extreme emotional fluctuations, especially during the first six months of recovery. In these initial stages out of the inferno, one day you'll be depressed, one day you'll be euphoric, followed by possibly feeling suicidal. These emotions are normal those first few months as you make your way to the surface. You also will have bouts of insomnia followed by hypersomnia and then back to insomnia once again. Nightmares and night terrors are frequent as well as daytime panic attacks. All of these symptoms are a result of the neurological rebalancing that is occurring in a system which is going through the long protracted withdrawal. The whole process will last one to two years. The last thing you should be thinking about during these emotionally chaotic phases of recovery is who is going to be your love interest. At this time, the recovering addict's mind is not equipped to take on a relationship. So congratulations to AA for finally advising a method that actually makes sense. As I state in many episodes, once you are past the second phase of recovery, at the 30 to 45 day mark, is when you begin the process of the reinvention of the planes mentioned above. Part of this self-analysis will most likely include an examination of your romantic past relationships. It was for me, in the mountains of California, where I isolated myself for four months, after four months of sobriety. I mentally reviewed every type of relationship I'd ever been in with every woman over the decades in which I had continuously dated. And the end result to the equation I worked through kept coming out the same. Most of them were chaotic. Any psychologist could have explained why. Most alcoholics are that way due to past trauma and horrific upbringings. It is well known that women who have abusive fathers tend to marry the same. It is a strange phenomenon, but an accurate predictor for sure. We go to what we know. It is much like the teenager removed from the ghetto. The suburbs are safer, cleaner, and nicer, but one is comfortable with what one recognized. That kid removed, part of him always misses the ghetto. And the same is true for alcoholics. They are usually already predisposed to pick bad partners from the awesome examples their parents, or one, gave them growing up. But that chaotic gene is now compounded by the alcoholism itself. For how many good people do you think tolerate being in a relationship with an alcoholic when they aren't as so? The answer to that inquiry is a big fat nun. Sure, non-alcoholics date alcoholics, but there is usually something wrong with the person dating the alcoholic. She will have low self-esteem at the very least, and possibly the same abusive background which just didn't result in the alcoholism. So the pattern is easy to decipher. The alcoholic becomes used to the substandard in relationships, so the attraction to the chaotic will become even more imprinted in his brain. It's the same pattern that applies to non-alcoholics. What one thinks is a good partner is only because one has had so many bad ones. The same is true in the type of friends the alcoholic has. Alcoholics hang around their own types of drama. Once one is sober, those types of relationships need to end. And so do the relationships with bad partners. That is why AA states to wait at least a year, and maybe two, before you engage in pulling of Cupid's bow. I waited only ten months, and that was a mistake. I dated someone. She was leftover residue from what I was well used to. A totally chaotic individual whose life did not turn out well in the end. I was well into recovery, almost halfway to the cure mark of two years, but I hadn't fully recovered mentally and was stepping backward with old habits of the past. Luckily, I was self-aware of this phenomena, and checked off mentally when I ended it with her that this was a bad girl, and made sure it was the last one. Now here's an interesting question. Should one date with an AA once one passes that one or two year mark? My answer is good god no. First, if you must go to AA in those first six months to stay clean, I completely understand. But then you should begin to wean yourself off meetings as you focus on reinventing your planes as I describe in the rest of the episode. You should be pulling away from AA as you recover, not becoming more entrenched with its members. There are a few reasons why dating within AA is a mistake. First, because most in the program fail. They fail staying sober. How do you think that affects your chances of staying sober? It reduces them. Second, during the long protracted alcoholic withdrawal, which can last up to two years, those symptoms of emotional angst can still be periodic. Two people dating who have the same symptoms is a recipe for emotional disaster, especially if one falls off the wagon, which the chances of doing so in AA are high, and no one should be in AA after two years of sobriety. At this point, the sober should be going on with their now healthy lives. Commonality brings people together, that is for sure. But commonality can also be a double-edged sword. Chaos attracts chaos. The point of your life is to gain holistic health once you quit the barley. And unfortunately, the methods of Alcoholics Anonymous do not endorse this holistic health. As I've said before, AA destroys marriages. AA is a cult, and once one is indoctrinated, one becomes a cult member. Many marriages die before the person became clean, and justly so. No one should sacrifice a life to live with an alcoholic, which brings nothing but misery. But the non-alcoholic spouse who waits it out, who hangs in there while the addict gets clean, does she regain her spouse? No, she gets a cult member. Suddenly, the non-alcoholic spouse has nothing in common with her former alcoholic partner. Most of his evenings are spent in the rooms. This, as said, I can understand during the initial withdrawal. But five years later, an entire existence revolving around AA, it's ridiculous to say the least. Let's look at another support group that isn't a cult. Say you lose a child to some illness or accident. There are groups you can go to that might help, but you don't stay there forever, you don't become a committee member or show up to national conventions every year for life. You fix your grief the best you can, then you move on with your life. That should be how AA runs if it ran correctly in a healthy, holistic manner. It should be a tool to get sober, to get through the protracted withdrawal to two years, then should be passed off to the next newly sober. But that's not how AA runs. Here's the problem for future relationships. Alcoholics Anonymous makes alcoholism your master status. Of course they do. They state you are a forever alcoholic. Look at some of their comments. I've been sober for 17 years without AA, and they call me a quote dry drunk. They say I was never a real alcoholic. They can't wrap their heads around someone who can not only get and stay clean, but hugely reinvent every aspect of his life and far surpass the quality of that life to what they have in their rooms. And what really bothers them is I did it without them. That is the exact mentality of a cult. So what's this have to do with marriage? Well, what happens to the marriages of many AA members is this. The AA member is indoctrinated with the 12 steps, the big book, the sponsor, and the mantras. He stays long enough and decides one day he'll become a sponsor. Then he joins committees. He attends those national conventions. He doesn't go on a vacation without knowing where the rooms are in town. Every aspect of his life is focused on a disease he doesn't have and an addiction that's never ending in his mind. And that is where the addiction is now, only in his mind. The spouse loses all commonality with him and finally realizes his new mistress is AA. They divorce while his fellow cult members tell him that it was necessary for his continued sobriety. Like my entire recovery program that I developed, I have a better formula for holistic health and the methods of AA. For the married, the potential for divorce with my program never presents itself. If during the initial phase of recovery one must go to AA, then gradually wean off it. After six months, the attendance should be infrequent. At two years, your time with AA should be done. That person isn't planning vacations with the rooms in mind. That person is living life to the fullest and is enticing a spouse to do the same. Every person should be involved in physical fitness four to five nights a week. And couples can do this together, unlike the time spent in the meetings of AA most nights. Both lives can be enhanced in the reinvention of self. In today's unhappy world, most people are living desperate, unhappy lives. My program works for non-former addicts as well. Your spouse can be included. Now, if we look at non-married people, my reconstruction of being will bring improved results as well. First, you're gonna be in better physical shape, hence more attractive to the opposite sex. And you'll be in far better mental shape with the emotional program as well at the two-year mark of cure. The past will be resolved and self-image will be greatly enhanced. When one improves all aspects of being, one will attract better people. This includes your non-dating social circle as well. I have said in previous works on self-improvement that you cannot associate with toxic and chaotic people if you wish to progress, for you will adopt their traits like osmosis. This also serves as truth in your dating life. It isn't a genius level concept to comprehend. You continually search for people who pursue excellence, and you will automatically find people to date in that caliber as well. There is no settling once you have recovered fully from alcoholism. I'm not saying to have ridiculously high standards, for no human being is perfect, whether addiction was a problem or not. But if you analyze your past relationships when you were chronically under the influence, you will see what you were associated with was nothing but chaos. You will lose friends in sobriety, maybe even of longstanding once you quit it with the liquid demon, because you will now see them as full of nothing but the drama and internal problems you once possessed. You will also find many potential dating prospects who you must turn away now as well. You must turn them away not because you think you're better than anyone, but because you will not allow your life to be lowered into turmoil. As you are progressing, you're being to climb the summits, not descend into the abyss. As far as the in-between, you have to wait it out until your mind regains clarity. As you have been looking through a haze for many years, you now have to allow yourself to adjust to your new clear glasses. And as you progress through the reinvention of planes, to improve every aspect of your life, you will eventually return to the relationship world. And this time with the lucidity that will serve you well. Now, if you want some other reasons why AA is destructive for you, check out my playlist card at the end of the video. And check out my own detailed book on the matter, The Small Book, How I Beat Alcoholism and Why Alcoholics Anonymous Doesn't Work. Link is on the video description as well as a channel page banner. And remember, keep your contract, be sober at sundown, and I will see you at the next sunrise.