Page 61 of All the Way to the River

But what if I do want a partner someday?

What does it mean, exactly, for a sex and love addict to pursue a healthy relationship?

Most of all, it means that you must work within the confines and limitations of a “sober dating plan,” which you and your sponsor have crafted together and which, ideally, will help you avoid your most dangerous behaviors.

My own sober dating plan is approximately three pages long, and it includes such items as “NO WEEKLONG FIRST DATES.” My plan also forbids me from texting obsessively between dates, dropping any existing plans or projects because of a new relationship, falling into fantasy with someone I have met in my travels (aka not in real life), moving virtual strangers into my home, trying to rescue unrecovered alcoholics or drug addicts, buying expensive gifts for new lovers, or sharing bank accounts with anyone, ever.

If all this sounds boring, or feels like it removes the spontaneity and intensity from romance, that is exactly the point . Spontaneity, for sex and love addicts, is exceedingly dangerous, and intensity is something I am wise to avoid.

Over the years, I have watched as many fellows in my recovery program have found healthy and long-lasting relationships by working with a sponsor and a sober dating plan.

Relationships are never easy for people like us, but I’ve seen people do it.

But I’ve also seen my fellows go out there and hurt themselves all over again—returning to their devastating old patterns, picking up new dramas, using people like drugs all over again, losing themselves to unavailable partners, and creating whole new cycles of karmic pain.

I have watched these people crawl back into the rooms, shattered and defeated—or, worse, I have watched them not come back at all.

It seems to me that the stakes are fairly high here.

I have no illusions about how powerful and destructive my addiction can be, so I’m not in a hurry to roll the dice and find out if I can survive another relationship.

I’m not out here looking for ways to make my life unmanageable, in other words.

Nor do I feel like pouring myself into someone again only to inevitably blame them later for leaving me feeling “empty.” I’m having too rich an experience exploring my freedom and my serenity to wish for any disturbances right now within my own energetic field.

Anyhow, whenever I ask the God of my understanding if it’s time for me to start dating again, the answer always comes back the same: Lol no .

Actually, the full and precise answer is If I ever want you to seek a relationship with anyone again, you will hear about it from me first. It won’t be your idea but mine.

And when and if that day comes, I will lead you through the process and show you the way and help to keep you safe.

But until and unless that day arrives, just keep taking care of yourself and trusting me in all things.

So until that answer changes, I’m just gonna keep my hands to myself, stay in my own lane, and play it cool.

In any case, my ultimate goal in recovery is not to end up in a healthy relationship with the perfect partner; my ultimate goal in recovery is to end up in a healthy relationship with myself— and I feel that I am only just beginning to reach that point.

As gratifying as this process has been, my path to sobriety has not always been easy.

Like all addicts in recovery, I live in a reality where temptations are everywhere.

The world will never arrange itself to keep an addict safe; we must learn to do that for ourselves.

Alcoholics are required to walk past bars and liquor stores without stopping in for a drink; drug addicts have to smell the sweet stank of weed being smoked on every street corner; compulsive gamblers must drive past casinos that are open twenty-four hours a day; porn addicts must resist the endless parade of videos that are available right there on their phones at all hours; food addicts can’t go anywhere without culinary offerings being laid before them, rich with irresistible fats and sugars …

And everywhere I look, I see beautiful, charismatic, compelling people—people whom my addiction tells me to dive right into.

A few years ago, I was teaching at a spiritual retreat center on a luxurious tropical island—a romantic place, far from what we might call “the world.” A handsome man was there, too, also teaching at this retreat.

I spotted him right away and felt the instant and ferocious attraction that, in my case, can only mean “Here comes somebody who could help me ruin my life again super hard .”

He seemed to notice me, too, although we didn’t have much direct interaction with each other.

But I was sharply, even painfully, aware of his presence at all times.

And I made damn sure that he became aware of my presence on the second night of the retreat, when I gave a speech that received a standing ovation from the audience.

That got his attention—as it was intended to.

I’m a good public speaker, and I can turn up my inner light very, very bright when I’m onstage.

That night, I performed at my absolute shiniest. There were several hundred other people in the audience, but it might as well have been just me and that handsome man alone in the auditorium, because I pitched everything I had at him.

(Other women might pull attention by the way they dress or walk or laugh or play with their hair; I pull attention with my words.)

And it worked: He saw a fantasy up there on that stage, and he got a little high off it.

I felt his notice, and I got a little high myself.

How did I “feel” his notice? you may wonder. Well, like all sex and love addicts, I can feel someone’s attention and attraction from a hundred yards away—hell, I can feel them from the other side of a continent—so this slight shift in the atomic structure of the room was quite easily detectable.

Around 11:00 p.m., when I was back in my hotel room and about to go to sleep, I received a text from the handsome man.

(All the teachers at the retreat were on a shared text strand, so he had no trouble finding my number.) It did not surprise me at all that he had reached out; I had sensed that I was going to hear from the man that night, because every synapse in my mind and body is attuned to knowing such things.

In his text, the handsome man invited me to meet him down at the beach for a “late-night drink.” The stars were out, he said, and it was a gorgeous night, and he wanted to get to know me better.

He really hoped I would say yes, he said, because otherwise he would be doomed to stay down there by the ocean all alone, thinking to himself, “Elizabeth Gilbert is beautiful and amazing.”

Instantly, upon reading those words, a bitch forgot she doesn’t drink.

I also forgot that I have a sober dating plan—and that this plan does not include accepting spontaneous invitations from unknown men to meet under the stars in ten minutes.

I also forgot that I have a higher power with whom I must stay connected at all times in order to keep safe from my most impulsive and potentially life-destroying urges.

I forgot about all these things as my mind emptied of everything but him .

Before I was consciously aware of what I was doing, I stood up from the bed like a sleepwalker and put on my sandals—fully ready to march down to that beach in my already-entranced state and detonate a love bomb in person.

But then something stopped me at the door.

Quite suddenly, I came back into my body, back into reality.

What brought me back home to myself was something I remembered hearing a woman share in a twelve-step meeting one evening several years earlier.

This woman said that when she got out of rehab for cocaine addiction, her sponsor told her this: “The day will come when you will find yourself in a room where cocaine is on the table. That moment will arrive—it’s only a matter of time.

And when that moment does arrive, you will have thirty seconds to save your life.

What you must immediately do in that situation is run.

Because after thirty seconds, your addiction will take control over your mind, and then you will no longer have any agency over what you do or what happens to your life after that. ”

So that’s what I heard as my hand touched the doorknob of my hotel room and as I was about to catapult myself into this man’s orbit.

I heard that woman’s voice saying: Run.

Reluctantly, even angrily, I backed away from the door.

I picked up my notebook and wrote this question to God: “What would you have me know right now, about this situation?”

The answer came immediately: This is not your man, honey. Turn off your phone and go to bed.

I was furious.

“WHY?!” I wrote back in jagged capital letters.

Just put it down, honey. This story will not end well for you. Please trust me. This is not your man.

Now I was livid—or, rather, my disease was livid.

Why don’t I ever get to do anything fun? my addiction demanded.

Because what if this man actually was my man, though?

Who’s to say he wasn’t? Anyway, I’d been so good lately—why couldn’t I just take one teensy little sip of excitement?

What if I was walking away from a lifetime of connection and bliss, just because some disembodied voice in a notebook was telling me to put it down?

Most of all, my mind was spinning around this inflaming and infuriating thought: Why can’t I be a normal person who does normal things like normal people?

That’s when I heard Rayya’s voice.

Because you aren’t normal, babe , she said. You’re an addict. And addicts can’t do normal things like normal people.

That did it.

I turned off my phone, kicked off my sandals, and went to bed—but I can assure you that I did not sleep well that night.

I tossed and turned with anger and desire as my addiction bit and fought.

I turned my phone back on and called my sponsor.

She told me to pray, which pissed me off.

I sulked. I took about four showers. I ate everything in the minibar.

But I did not respond to his text, and eventually the sun rose on another sober day.

I kept my distance from this man for the rest of the retreat, and then we all went about our lives—although I never stopped thinking about him.

I kept fantasizing about him and wondering if I had made the right call that night.

I kept remembering how handsome he was. How cool and charismatic!

How spiritual ! My mind wouldn’t stop telling me that I had missed the opportunity of a lifetime here, and my brain also wouldn’t stop insulting me for how boring my life of sobriety had become.

But here is evidence of my recovery: I did not keep these thoughts or desires to myself, as I used to do.

Nor did I act out upon my urges or resentments.

I did not info-seek on the guy, nor did I hurt myself by engaging in any acts of online stalking (otherwise known as “digital cutting”).

Instead, I worked the hell out of my program.

I turned over all my thoughts and desires and resentments at meetings, and I talked about them with my sponsor.

I doubled down on my service commitments and my top-line behaviors.

I prayed every day for release from my obsession—but goddamn it, I was not happy about any of this.

Three months passed.

He was never far from my mind.

Then one day I saw a message pop up on my phone from this very same handsome man, on our shared group text thread.

(True confession: I had not blocked him .) The man was sharing a photograph of his son—his beautiful newborn son, who had just arrived in the world that very day.

And holding this beautiful little baby was the man’s lovely young wife, who was glowing with happiness.

Turns out God had been right: This was not my man.

This was some other woman’s whole entire man .

Now, listen—I’m not here to judge this guy for trying to create some intrigue with me.

Who am I to judge? He wasn’t doing anything I’ve never done.

He’s very likely what we in the rooms call “one of us”—meaning he’s probably an unrecovered sex and love addict in his own right, and therefore powerless over his own impulses.

And that is almost certainly why I was so immediately and devastatingly attracted to him—because we very likely both share the same wound.

That kind of shared trauma is generally the only thing that can wake up such an intense and immediate attraction in me.

(“Our diseases wanted to come out and play with each other” is how I’ve heard it described in my program.)

But what if this man and I had decided to play?

What if we had both decided to unleash our unbridled and unquenchable need upon each other that night on the beach?

I can assure you that the story would not have ended on the island—because I, for one, can never stop the trajectory of such galloping attraction once it begins.

Can you imagine the disaster we could have launched ourselves into that evening?

Can you imagine how I could have upended my life, just when it was becoming stable and peaceful at last?

Can you imagine the pain we could have inflicted upon each other, upon that young wife, and, worst of all, upon that innocent newborn child?

I can certainly imagine it, because I’ve lived that story already, in some version or another—many, many times.

Thirty seconds.

That’s how much time I have to save my own life, and perhaps spare another human being, as well.

This is how close I walk to the precipice at all times.

This is why I need a dating plan.

This is why I need a sponsor, a loving fellowship of recovering addicts, and a daily program of recovery.

And most of all, this is why I need a God.