The Opposite of Blackout Sex: How to Be a Sexual YOU Without Alcohol

When drinking, did you ever have sex in a blackout? Or, maybe you didn’t blackout, but drunk sex was your jam?

Or, in sobriety, perhaps there were times when part of you checked out during sex, but you didn’t know why. Or maybe you did know, but fear stopped you from exploring what was uncomfortable.

If you identify with any of the above, a fully present YOU was not having sex. The whole shebang may have felt fake.

Now sober, maybe you want something different or better in the bedroom.

Maybe you want to check-in, but you feel blocked. You want to blame your parents, or the church, but that doesn’t feel quite right.

It’s no secret that alcoholics have difficulty learning how to navigate all aspects of life sober, including (and maybe especially) the sex part.

Many an alcoholic has slipped back into drinking because of not knowing how to stay conscious around his/her/their sexuality — and not wanting to feel uncomfortable. Understandable. The sex part — for some — can be off the charts painful.

But from my experience, recovery from alcoholism is an ongoing cycle of Pain-Growth-Slide, no matter what the topic. This means: There’s going to be pain, for sure, but growth and slide round out the recovery experience. I like the growth, but I especially love the slide part.

To get to the slide, though, requires I do what might be uncomfortable, with my eyes oh-so-wide open. How about you?

Do you want to stay awake in your sobriety so you can be an authentic sexual YOU in your recovery? Are you ready to take some emotional risks and create the sex you desire?

If yes, let’s get started.

. . .

If you are in Twelve Step recovery, you must be acutely aware of the part you play in your sex relations. If not, might I suggest a sex inventory? (Or, if sober by other means, a good idea might be to review your past sexual relations, and come up with how you want to be in the future.)

If you’ve done said inventory, you know where you have been resentful, selfish, and afraid. Also, you’ve envisioned your future sex life, too, and came up with your ideal.

But, now, maybe pandemic lock-down time or something else has prevented you from being this new sexual you.

Or, perhaps you’ve been lounging around in sweatpants 24–7, finding yourself musing about how you can make your sober sex life different in some new way, or, just even a little better and not so rote, where you can freely show up as YOU.

If anything from the last two paragraphs rings true, the four tips below might help you live your ideal as you inch forward. This goes for whether you are new in sobriety or an old-timer.

NOTE BEFORE THE FOUR: Whether you’ve had childhood sexual trauma or not, the items below apply to all in sobriety who want to create a better, more human, sober sexual experience.

Enough foreplay, though! Let’s do it.

1. Rigorous honesty.

Getting rigorously honest for sober alcoholics is key to a thriving recovery and enjoyable sober sex life.

Without honesty, and in particular self-honesty, sex has a high chance of feeling prison-like, as if you are a slave to some unseen master—where you can’t be free to be YOU.

Maybe you have sex in ways you think you “should,” or feel guilty wanting more, better, or different. Or, possibly, you have secrets and shame around sex.

If you’re anything like me, you denied the sex trauma until a long overdue date. You shoved the shocking electric bill away in a drawer of your soul. Then one day, the lights went out inside your heart, and you had to reach out and ask for help…and get rigorously honest.

Rigorous honesty begins with you knowing what you want and don’t want. You’ve taken the time in sobriety to figure it out.

Owning up to your preferences, desires (and maybe your trauma) gives you freedom in sex — you get to be a sexual human your way (without hurting yourself or anyone else, of course).

You get to be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or whatever version on the spectrum you want. You can negotiate your wildest sexual fantasy, or abstain for a period of time. You can spontaneously do it in the kitchen on a weekday instead of every Sunday morning at 10. You can say “no” to what doesn’t feel good, and “yes” to what does.

As of now, consider your prison sentence over. You’ve done your time.

You get to be free being whoever you want to be sexually — but only if you get rigorously honest about it (and give yourself permission, too.)

The short of it? Before we can negotiate for a different sexual experience, we must get honest about who we are, and what we want and don’t want. Then, we must be willing to communicate it.

Seems this goes for everything in sobriety.

2. Non-threatening, clear communication.

It’s no secret that sober alcoholics have difficulty with clear communication. If we felt good about ourselves and could freely share our authentic selves with others, most of us might not have abused alcohol in the first place!

Needless to say, communicating with your partner(s) about what you want and don’t want around sex can get awkward. (Probably why so many avoid it.)

Fear around openly revealing oneself can get in the way of everything in sobriety, including a great sexual experience. But, without clear, kind, compassionate communication, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.

For example, let’s say you feel creeped out by that one dirty word that totally turns you off. If you don’t let your partner know, well, you might get resentment and/or feel like a squeamish victim. Thoughts that fuel a resentful victim’s libido?

He’ll never know what I want. Doesn’t she understand I don’t like that? They are so creepy. Compounded over time you suddenly find your inner victim getting off on, They’re always so creepy, I should dump them. But you don’t, because you’re too addicted to the cortisol producing resentment.

Being a resentful victim, in this case, sends you further away from getting the sex you want, and keeps your partner in the dark, and you get to keep your status as a victim. Your mate (as much as you’d like him/ her/them to be a mind reader), will keep doing the same thing, too, because you haven’t been clear.

Best to find a kind, soft yet clear way to let him/her/them know YOU around your sexual experience and see what comes from that. (Anything is better than feeling like a resentful victim, if you ask me.) And with this, you and your partner get to know YOU better.

Note the words above, “kind” and “soft.” Think compassionate, too.

Clear, compassionate communication doesn’t sound like you blurting out in a moment of passion, “I want you to kiss me with more thrust, while your eyes are half-open, and with your left hand on my right elbow.” Way too controlling and drill sergeant-like.

Further, kind and soft communication is not, “You kiss awful.”

As my mentor says: “Tactless honesty is cruel.”

Keep in mind, too, non-verbal compassionate communication rests in your hands.

Sometimes gently moving your partner’s hand away from what doesn’t feel good to a more desirable area can be the softest method of communication of all.

There’s so much more to this, but, in a super-sized nutshell:

If you don’t communicate about what turns you on and off, or anything else about your desires— e.g., Are we having casual or committed sex?, I’m afraid doing that will trigger me wanting a beer, I like dressing up as a nurse, etc. — you inhibit your sexuality.

3. Safety.

Think feeling safe enough.

Remember when you got sober? Did you feel totally safe and comfortable revealing yourself and your drinking problem? My bet is no. But, you probably felt safe enough.

This safe enough applies to having good, sober sex.

Depending on the relationship, do you feel safe enough to negotiate topics such as frequency, technique, or how past trauma might be affecting you in the bedroom? Does your partner have a trustworthy record?

This feeling safe enough matters because, if you remember, some fear is often at the core of why we don’t share our sexual selves with the other.

If we feel safe enough, though, our fear decreases — just enough, (which is usually just a tad) — for us to let a tiny bit of guard down.

For instance, perhaps your fear is, “He’ll take it the wrong way and think I’m criticizing him, then he’ll withdraw, and I’ll spend the week trying to win him back.”

But then, you remember you’ve been together two years and you’ve had other difficult conversations and made it through. He might feel criticized, but those are his feelings, not yours to control.

With this, you decide to have a conversation with him — outside the bedroom — to share a sexual fantasy you have. You’ve read a book on communication, know how to use “I” statements, and have discussed the situation with a sober mentor, too. At this point, you feel safe enough to reveal yourself.

The takeaway from this scenario?

Safety is not all about the other person making you safe, but you doing your part to feel safe enough.

Sobriety is so much about chipping away at the fear that keeps us in a self-constructed prison. This goes for everything in our sober lives, including sex.

To grow sexually in sobriety we must feel safe enough to stretch, which means, we will probably feel vulnerable.

4. Vulnerability

If you have any sexual challenges you want to address (and I assume you do, or you wouldn’t be reading this) and you are having difficulty negotiating your way to a different sexual experience in your sobriety, chances are something in you needs healing. And healing requires — you guessed it — vulnerability.

Vulnerability, a close cousin to feeling safe enough, involves you feeling exposed in a deep way. When this happens in safety, healing can transpire.

And I don’t know any sober alcoholic who can’t use some healing around sexuality. Most I know, though, do not like feeling vulnerable.

For those willing to “feel it to heal it,” they experience different— and better— sober sex.

One example is of a sober man who risked telling his sober wife he didn’t like the blow-by-blow directions he was getting (from his wife) while they were making love. His fear around speaking up? She would become explosively defensive and blame him for his poor lovemaking ability, and that he wasn’t a “good boy” and doing it right.

In spite of his fear, he committed to having the discussion with her anyway. He had never mentioned this to her before, again, because of a layered, paralyzing fear.

You see, this man had a mother who emotionally chastised him — and physically beat him — for expressing himself in any way. As a boy, he never felt he could please his mother enough. No matter what he did, or how he said it, he remembered it never being met with loving care.

In walking through the fear and talking to his wife in a compassionate, clear way, this man experienced vulnerability. He allowed himself to feel exposed, and feel all the feelings that came up in the conversation, like embarrassment.

Yes, the wife became defensive at first, but in time they had a frank discussion about their lovemaking, and how it could be better. Both acknowledged they were on the same team.

This sober couple felt closer because of this man‘s willingness to feel vulnerable, and both doing the personal work in their own individual recovery programs.

As a result of that willingness and work, this man got to heal another part of his childhood wound. This healing emboldened his manhood and recovery, too — and his sex life improved dramatically.

There’s just no getting around it. If you are sober and want a better or different sex life — and you want to heal in a deeper way — plan on feeling vulnerable.

The good news? This all leads to much better, more different sex, and a better, more authentic sober YOU.

Sex in sobriety — however long you are sober — can be downright messy and confusing, as with any other area of life for the sober person. I speak for myself here, too.

After 25 years of marriage, decades of sobriety and tons of therapy — and also becoming a marriage and family therapist because I thought I needed even more information about how to live on the planet — I‘m still discovering more about how to live happy, joyous and free in sobriety, and in my sexuality, too.

So what this means is, just for the record, I don’t write about stuff I don’t practice in my own life. This isn’t about me preaching from some orgasmic crest of intellectual knowledge. In other words, I still do it, too.

My hope for you? That you feel safe enough — like me and others I know— to shine sober and bright as you explore new vistas and depths in your sober sexuality. And always, that you stay sober doing it!