A Story of Recovery:

Time Will Tell

I was 22 years old when I came into FA and lost 150 pounds. After a life of crazy relationships when in the food, I broke up with the addict I was living with when I came into FA, and I was ready to get right into the healthy dating game. However, this area of recovery was a very slow one for me, and I had to learn how to date in a saner way. After several serious relationships that did not result in marriage, I moved from Boston to Washington, DC, single. I moved to Washington, D.C. for a job, and I had pretty much given up on dating. I thought that I needed to surrender, and although I really wanted to get married and have a family, I figured that if it had not happened in 10 years of recovery, maybe God had a different plan for my life. Maybe I was meant to be a career woman. D.C. would not be a bad place to explore that possibility. I was very reluctant to move to D.C., but I needed a job. People told me I would grow, and they said I could move back in six months if I was miserable. I knew in my heart it was the right thing, so I went.

When I arrived in D.C., I decided to remain on the online dating website I had been on in Boston, if for no other reason to meet new people who might be more familiar with the city. I had no expectations. I went on a few dates and decided it was no longer for me. The dates were terrible, and I was very sad and scared in a new city after leaving my entire family, my sponsor, and the fellowship I knew in Boston. When I made this decision, though, I had already committed to a coffee date with one more guy. I thought after that date, I was through. 

I met him for coffee, and to my surprise, I liked him. He seemed to like me too and several days later, he called to arrange a date. He was a very chivalrous kind of guy, and he had already made a plan. He had made a reservation for 8pm on Saturday night at a very trendy, downtown tapas bar. It would be nearly impossible to get an abstinent meal there, and certainly not simple. It was also at least thirty minutes from where I lived at the time, so we would be eating way past my dinner time. I wasn’t sure what to say, though, so I gave him an enthusiastic “sure!” and then hung up and panicked. I immediately called a good FA friend who had recently gone through a divorce. She told me in no uncertain terms that I had to be honest that the plan would not work for me. Her view was that it was important to be myself from the very beginning. 

I was not so sure. By then, I had a lot of experience with dating in FA, and I was always afraid of revealing too much too soon and scaring someone off, yet I was also afraid of holding back and having the other person feel like I was hiding something. What I had learned was to be honest, but to reveal personal details about my program and my addiction slowly, at the appropriate time and as we got to know one another. That had worked in the past. But, I thought she was right – I didn’t have a choice. I go to any lengths to protect my abstinence and I certainly wasn’t going to go to a tapas bar to have dinner at 9pm. 

So I called him back and said, “I hung up and realized I should have been straight with you that I have some food restrictions and that restaurant doesn’t really work for me.” He asked what my food restrictions were and if another restaurant he had in mind would work. I told him I didn’t eat sugar and flour, put him on hold to check the menu of his proposed restaurant, and told him it was fine. “Could we also make it a little earlier?” I asked.  “Sure, I’ll pick you up at 7pm,” he said. I would have preferred 5:30, but I didn’t want to push it, so I agreed.

We continued to date for several months. As we got to know each other, I told him some personal details about my life. On one date, when we talked about exercise, I told him I was overweight as a child. On another, I mentioned that I wake up very early in the morning. Over the next several dates, I told him I meditate, and that I talk to people on the phone in the morning. As time went on, I noticed he never asked questions I expected. He never said, “Why do you get up at 5am?” or, “Who do you talk to in the morning?” I even told him about my meetings, and he never asked for details. Once, about three months after we started dating, he called me to go to a movie on a Wednesday night. He said “I know Mondays and Thursdays are your meeting nights, so how about a movie on Wednesday?” Now, I thought this was very strange. He understood I had weeknight meetings every Monday and Thursday night, but he wasn’t curious what kind of meetings they were, or whether they were work-related? At this point, I had revealed enough about my history without explicitly telling him about FA or my addiction, and I was half hoping he would ask so I could tell him the whole story. But he didn’t.

We were getting serious at that point, so I decided I needed to tell him everything. I wasn’t as nervous about it as I had been in the past because I had already told him so much about myself, and he was a very accepting person who had also shared personal things with me. So one night at my apartment, I sat him down and said, “I need to tell you something.” I started with all the things I had told him about already, my previous weight problem, my phone calls, my daily meditation and meetings, and then revealed to him that I am a recovering food addict and a member of FA. 

He looked at me in that same kind, accepting way that he had when I talked with him over the previous three months, and said, “I know.” I was shocked. “Remember our first date when you told me you couldn’t go to the place I chose because you didn’t eat sugar and flour?” he asked.  I said I did. “Well,” he explained, “I knew then because I dated a woman before who was in a 12-step recovery program for food. She was very embarrassed about it, so I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.” I laughed, and we kissed, and that was it.

We have been married for 13 years.