Panel discussion advising single people in recovery about milestones to reach before dating. Key recommendations: be honest with yourself and at least one safe person about sexual history; participate in a safe group or recovery community; examine boundaries and trauma history; look for traction in recovery (periods of sobriety and positive momentum rather than unchanged relapse patterns); consider a heuristic of roughly six months of engaged recovery work as a possible readiness marker (not universal); avoid waiting for sexual ‘perfection’ and instead set practical guardrails; consult trusted friends and ensure you have healthy non-dating relationships as indicators of readiness.
Here's a good one, Tracy. That helps maybe single people process a little bit. What sort of milestones could we suggest for a single person to reach in recovery before they begin dating? Or just put another way, how does a single person who's working through their recovery, how do they know when they're ready to start dating? And we hear that question quite frequently.
Yeah, I think learning about ourselves when we're single and being fully honest with ourself and at least one other safe person, you know. So if you're talking about your sexuality, then your sexual history, positive or negative, not living with secrets means I've been honest with myself, I'm not in denial and I at least one other person that I'm fully honest with. And then I think another really important piece is to look for single people is just to look at the boundaries in our lives and what we know about safe people. So sometimes that means going backwards a little into our own trauma and our own or our own just history and wounds. Everybody has wounds and take a look at that. So definitely having a safe group that you do that in, whether it's around addiction or another type of healthy group where we're really being honest with each other.
Yeah, and I think too with that because in certain contexts I think it kind of brings up a different answer. Like if you're just trying harder and locking down your Internet and not in community, it's like, well, I don't know, I have more questions basically. But if you're someone who's in group that's been working a program with people in the same process with you, the six month mark is pretty good. You've got some self awareness under your belt. You've figured out maybe what's motivating the behavior, some of the traumas that are underlying and some of the triggers, your pattern, things like that, I think that that can be some awareness that you create in that six month period. Now that in no way is a standard across the board. Again, it depends on who you are. It depends on situation you're in, the trauma you've experienced. It could be a year, it could be a couple years. But I think that part of that is just how much of my story do I understand? How much have I been able to process and what kind of tools have been able to practice for? And again, that's kind of where that six month window in my mind makes sense because you've been practicing something for half a year at that point. Okay, maybe then I can start to have those conversations about what it Looks like to press in. But again, it's such a hard question to answer because there's really no exact answer.
Yeah, and I think some of it depends on has a dating pattern been part of your struggle in the past? Is acting out with people physically part of your story? Is sending inappropriate images to girlfriends, boyfriends been part of your story? If dating has been wrapped up in your sexual struggle, then there may need to be a longer time where you're experiencing sobriety and freedom so that you have a totally different mindset about dating now. For others, if they're asking the question out of more. I've struggled with lust and pornography, but not in dating relationships. The timeline could look differently. And I think that's when I would, if I were to answer for those people that would say, well, no, dating relationships weren't part of my pattern of struggle. I'm just concerned about bringing my history into it. I think you do want to look for some level of traction, like if you're stuck in the exact same pattern of binge purge with pornography or relapsing that you have been for years and you don't really see that anything's changed, it's too soon. I mean, I would say frankly about that, it's too soon to be thinking about dating if you're not getting any sort of handle on your recovery where you're starting to see periods of sobriety and even if they're still marked with you had a slip up or a fall, but then you get back and start a good track record like, hey, you're showing positive direction and momentum and I think that's a must. And then the other thing that comes to mind for me too is do you feel at least a level of confidence that you can begin to date someone and not immediately sexualize the relationship? And hopefully if you're going out with someone, you find them attractive and there may be thoughts of man, I really think this person is very someone I'd like to be with. And that's human nature to a degree. But if you realize, man, if I go out with someone, I'm just gonna spend the whole night in this cycle of what do they look like? And when can we cross these boundaries? You're probably not, as Tracy kind of mentioned there, you're not safe enough in your own skin to really feel like you can see a person for a person and not just as a future hope of someone I'm going to connect with sexually. So I kind of look at those things and then I would just say on the Flip side, I do encourage singles and young people to guard against this, what I would call perfectionism, basically, that I think can seep into our thinking of I need to be sexually perfect before I even think of dating. I need to. And by that, sometimes we think, like, I should have no lust in my life. I should have no desire. And it's almost becoming robotic in our emotions and our sexuality that I say part of it. We can't think I'm going to be at just some perfect place. Because you're still a sexual being and you still have desires and urges. And you may be experiencing some of that just as part of your humanness. And that, I believe, is what brings us to God. It makes us dependent on him in prayer. It helps us have wisdom in setting up guardrails and dating and being smart and thoughtful about what physical lines we think are appropriate in dating. Because we're aware that I'm still a human being. And I just have met some young single people that I think are waiting for this magic glory zone where I am totally above any kind of sexual temptation. And it's like, I think you might be waiting the rest of your life for that. So don't make perfection your aim. But I say that progress, that I'm seeing momentum, I'm seeing direction, I'm seeing other people through the lens of how God made them, then I think you could begin exploring dating and realize, just because I feel like you always say it forever, it's like, ask your friends.
Yeah.
You know, sometimes they know better than you do. Just say, hey, do you, do you think I'm ready to date? Like, would that be healthy for me? And if they're like, I don't see why not? Like, take some courage from that. If they're like, dude, maybe hit timeout for a little more here.
14 cats that you have in your house, that makes me really nervous. Yeah, right.
If you got people you trust, ask them.
What you're saying there indicates too that you have healthy, non dating relationships.
Yes, good point.
So if you're walking out healthy, non dating relationships, that's going to really help you gauge whether you're ready for a dating relationship. That would be a good indicator if you were walking out those and not in isolation and have some really healthy, good, healthy people around you.
