Can You Date

Without Drinking?

You're out for the first time with someone you met through OkCupid, or maybe while in line at your favorite coffee shop, the place where you grab a latte every morning. You're both at a local bar — a natural setting for a first date. You both just arrived, and you're both pulsating, clearly, with nerves and excitement. A good stiff drink should help to take the edge off, right? So when the bartender requests your order, you ask for a whiskey and coke ... while your date orders a ginger ale, plain and simple.

"I'm not in AA," he says. "And you should feel comfortable having whatever you want. But I'm off the booze for a while."

Or maybe you're the one who orders nothing but a club soda, on the rocks, explaining, "I'm not much of a drinker."

But if one of you isn't drinking, does that make things weird? If you're the drinker with a non-drinker, do you feel nervous about the possibility that you might start to get tipsy and seem kind of dopey in front of a sober guy? If you're the one who's alcohol-free, is it hard for you to relax without a cocktail? Or is it hard not to think the person across from you is babbling drunkenly after a round or two?

This line of questioning comes after reading a piece that ran in Salon last week about how teetotaling is negatively one guy's dating life — I found it interesting mainly because I myself quit drinking years and years ago, after one black-out too many. And dating — to say nothing of hooking up — was really hard and a bit awkward at first, without the social lubrication of liquor. (There were a few nights of recidivism.)

But I've come to prefer getting-to-know-you sobreity, after years of practice. Nowadays, though, I do drink a little — a glass of wine, maybe once a month, during a nice dinner out — but I still never drink on a first date. I used to think that I was at my best when I was liquored up, but now I prefer myself sober: I think better, I don't say (or do) things I'll regret later, and I handle myself with more sangfroid.

Do you drink on dates? Does it put you off or make you feel uncomfortable when the person across from you abstains? Or are you a proud (or struggling) non-drinker on dates?