May
19
How strict are the AA rules about dating?
ByI just started dating someone about a month ago that has been sober for 2 1/2 months. He currently lives in a sober house. He has been getting a lot of shit by the man in charge of the sober house about us dating. He says you shouldn’t date for at least a year. I’ve heard this before, but is this really a big deal. I don’t drink and have been nothing but supportive of his sobriety. Does this matter?
2 Comments
May 19th, 2011 at 8:24 pm
I dont know but Im not crazy about AA. They take advantage of people at rock bottom to push a religious agenda.
May 19th, 2011 at 8:34 pm
Yes, one of the “unwritten rules” in AA is that newcomers should not date for at least a year. As someone who went to AA for many years, though, I’ve always suspected that this rule is intended to keep the newcomers away from each other so that the oldtimers can get first crack at them.
You’ve also just run across a tiny bit of AA culture that a lot of people don’t know about….because it’s not, trust me, NOT just that he is dating too soon, it’s that he is dating an outsider. In AA they teach that “only an alcoholic can understand an alcoholic” and often people are very negative about dating outside the program. They will refer to non-alcoholics as “normies” and insist that they don’t understand….unless, of course, they join Al-Anon so that they too can have a “disease” to recover from.
If you want to be a good friend to this person, support him by encouraging him to think for himself, and make sure he knows that AA is not the only way to get sober.