A Story of Recovery:

Abstinent Dating

As a younger person, my two main addictions were food and any attention I could get from men.  It started with being a daddy’s girl and always acting like the princess of the family. This pattern continued with male teachers and later with boyfriends and dates. Then, each time a male’s attention to my problem or drama of the moment wasn’t “good enough” for me, I went to the best friend, the one I could always rely on: sugar, flour, and quantities. This disappointment in men happened quite a lot.

So whether I was predestined as a food addict or made myself one by eating too much, too often when men let me down, the habits of my addictive ways were ingrained in me very early on in life. I’d have an uncomfortable feeling, get mad, and eat. It was as simple as that; get angry and use a drug to cope with the reality of life.

I remember as a teenager talking with my mom about certain boyfriends. I wasn’t, in the moment, fully honest with her about most of my relationships, but I did try and go to her for help at times. Back then, when she would offer any loving relationship advice (which I was seeking), I couldn’t accept the truth she was sharing and would make her wrong (it was a suggestion I didn’t want to take).

After one of these conversations with my mother, I would typically storm to my room, cry for a while, and then go to the kitchen to get food. I would proceed to eat sleeves, bags, and boxes of sugar and flour products. We had a particular drawer of all these binge foods. Sometimes I would take the supply to my room or just eat at the counter, hoping no one would bother me. My mother and everyone else in my family knew not to bother me when I was in a binge. They could see “back-off” written all over my face. A conversation with the guy or my mother gone south, a binge, and then acting like nothing ever happened, was the story of my dating life before recovery.

I’m grateful today to have my sponsor as a guide to teach me how to follow directions and take different actions. Back then, in my disease of food addiction, I very much liked to sulk in my tent of self-pity and my many “problems,” rather than to change or take positive action (aka, love myself).

It isn’t hard to guess that I got nowhere in relationships. I followed the dictates of my sick self. In the past and present, there still are many first dates. However, I thank God that FA teaches me another way to deal when I need help with dating.

I have been abstinent for four years and in FA for 10. I came to Program at 140 pounds and now weigh 118. I have been 155, and was 113 at one point in my life before FA. When I came into Program I hadn’t dated for a while. There were two reasons.  I felt loathsome and ugly 100% of the time, and sugar, flour, fat, quantities, and negativity had poisoned my life so much that I literally couldn’t handle a, “Hi, how are you?” type of conversation. I either went too deep too fast or was so transparent that you would be able to see every emotion I had written on my face. My diseased way of thinking around a relationship was to try to make it work, even though I wasn’t interested in the guy.

I dated someone for 11 months who I knew was not right for me, but the thought of being loved and able to get married before I was 30 was mighty tempting. I was quite immature about it all. I used to obsess for days about whether or not to call him. I tried to make him okay, just like I used to make certain sugar-free items an acceptable part of my food plan.

The gift of my back-to-back abstinence has been to be able to see all of my dating choices with clear eyes and no food fog. With this gift, I have dated a handful of guys. I’ve needed to discuss the personalities of these men with my sponsor to see if my disease of food addiction is choosing to be with them, or if it is, in fact, my higher self.

Now I am interested in staying in my state of contented abstinence and getting to know men as people. I get my attention from God and am falling in love with myself. When I go on a first date with a man, I schedule an hour-long date between my meal times and the date lasts for an hour. I leave with my head held high and with the same confidence that I had coming to the date.

In the past, I used to do and feel whatever the guy felt or I thought he wanted me to do and feel. Those dates would last so much longer and were full of activities around food. I’d usually binge for hours when I got home.

I arrived home from my last two dates at 9 p.m. I’d had my last meal of the day hours before, and I could move on to the next wonderful action of my recovery-filled life…sleep.  Thank you, FA, for giving me the strength to change the way I eat and date.