Someone once asked me on Instagram: Would you look for a partner who’s also sober, or doesn’t drink a lot? Fellow sober sister, she called herself. And I answered honestly, because that’s the whole point of putting yourself out there like that: dating is a funny one.
I do find it easier to have more serious relationships with guys who have a clear head and don’t drink or take drugs as much. That’s just true. I’ve ended up with Andy, who’s a professional athlete. The night we met in one of those crazy fields in Glastonbury he was on his break and hammered, and in his own spiral. I made my own judgement of him from his tabloid reputation but found him fun and saw something deeper in him that that surface level life-of-the-party persona he embodied so loudly. Despite the bender he was in the middle of when he met me, he seemed inspired by my sobriety and I feel like as soon as I told him I didn’t drink something clicked for him too. I think, at first, that’s why he latched on to me. And then the falling in love came after.
There’s a story that says more about who he actually is than what you’ve read about him in the tabloids. Months before I met Andy, I was volunteering for Hackney Baby Bank, an initiative started by an Afghan nurse who, in lockdown, began connecting mums who needed things for their babies with mums who’d spent thousands on theirs and ended up throwing away, or passing on, things that were still practically new. Hackney is that kind of place, millionaires living on the same estate as young single mums in council flats who are completely alone and have nothing, and the baby bank grew out of that closeness, fast, into something genuinely huge.
One week they asked me to post something specific: we had four or five mums who needed prams, and we had none.
So I put it on my Instagram story, the way I always did, in the hope it would nudge someone local into dropping one off. A few days later the baby bank rang me. Lou, have you bought five brand new prams? I hadn’t. I had no idea who had. Five brand new prams, from John Lewis, no note, no name, just turned up. I assumed someone who followed me had felt generous and wanted it to stay anonymous, and I loved that. I still think about it sometimes, that kind of quiet, expects-nothing-back generosity. Fast forward two years. I’m a year into my relationship with Andy, and the baby bank comes up in conversation because I don’t volunteer with them anymore, and I say, a bit guiltily, that I should get back in touch with them. And he says, did you ever get some prams I bought for you? I don’t think I’ve ever felt as emotional over one sentence as I did in that moment. Andy has this thoughtful brain unlike anyone I’ve ever met. He wants to do good things around him, almost like he carries a quiet guilt about how well he’s done and needs somewhere to put it, and pass it forward. He never used it to get my attention, to impress me, or to flirt. He just did it, ages before we’d even met, and never mentioned it, not once, until it came up naturally. He knew, and now I know, that some mums who needed a pram got a brand new one, and that felt good on its own, with nothing attached to it.
That, it turns out, was our first piece of teamwork.
Neither of us knew it at the time. I believe we’re connected on a deeper level through things like that, far more than through any sexual attraction. He reached exactly what matters most to me, more than any “princess treatment” ever could, without even trying.
There’s a public perception of Andy that has very little to do with the man I actually live with. People think he’s an aggressor, a playboy, and years of a certain kind of tabloid coverage haven’t exactly done him any favours on that front. He says he doesn’t care what they write, that he knows who he is, but I find it really sad, because he is nice, and they’ve got him all wrong, and it affects us more than either of us likes to admit. We’ll be having a nice night out, we’ll make friends with a couple we’ve just met at a gig or something, and out of nowhere, a couple of drinks in, the bloke, who was the reason we started speaking and claimed to be a life-long admirer, will try and start on him. He’s not a fighter. He’s soft as anything. It happens more than you’d think, some stranger deciding he wants a piece of a reputation that was never really true in the first place.
It’s the same story every time I introduce him to a new friend, or take him to meet my family. Without fail, someone pulls me aside afterwards and says, “I didn’t think he’d be this nice.” Every single time. It’s such a harsh judgement to carry around, made by people who’ve never actually met him, and I think that’s partly why he means so much to me. He came into my life, and Lux’s, and just quietly killed us both with love and princess treatment. No fanfare, no persona. Just kind.
Also, every guy in London takes drugs; I’ve genuinely never met one that doesn’t. A footballer can’t touch drugs, so that at least eliminates one thing. I’ve always dated open-minded, because I like a sociable guy, someone who’s up for things, who enjoys the things I enjoy, and that tends to cancel the sobriety out. A good guy is a good guy. I wouldn’t choose or judge someone based on whether they drink, and I’d hope they wouldn’t choose or judge me based on the fact that I don’t.
Here’s the bit that actually surprised people when I posted it. A lot of guys who drink and party seem to want me to as well. I’ve had first dates get properly stressed out the moment they find out I don’t drink. Like it changes the shape of the evening for them. I think it makes some guys nervous, maybe they think it’ll be awkward, boring, no chat, no idea why, but it’s a common enough reaction that I’ve stopped being surprised by it.
What I’ve learned to actually look for now: a guy showing his cards early. If he clocks that I’m not drinking and just... respects it, doesn’t perform confusion about it, doesn’t try to talk me into “just one”, that’s a good start. That’s not a red flag test I set up on purpose. It’s just become the fastest, most honest filter I’ve got.
There’s something else worth naming plainly, and this isn’t only about women. A self-aware, intelligent person who holds a career and holds themselves confidently without a drink in their hand can be intimidating, whichever way round the dynamic runs. Not because they’ve done anything to the other person. Just because they don’t need the drink, the
validation, or the performance to feel steady in a room. That unsettles people more than they’d ever admit out loud.
That’s actually a brilliant position to be in. If your steadiness intimidates someone, you’re not the one with the problem, you’re holding all the power at that table. That’s exactly the energy I want to give off, and I’ve stopped seeing it as something to soften. Someone who can sit across from that, respect it, and treat you as their equal rather than something to manage, that’s a genuinely good first step on a date.
And speaking just for myself: if I were dating a man, and he told me he simply that he chooses not to drink because that’s who he is – no performance, no explanation needed – I’d find that seriously attractive. I’ve met thousands of men over the years, dated some high-achieving ones too, and I have never once had a man say that to me. Not once. If he did, it would be hot. Confidence that doesn’t need a drink to hold the room works both ways. Everyone else has just told me who they are before the starters even arrive.
Ten years of dating sober has taught me more about other people’s relationship with alcohol than my own, honestly. You find out a lot about someone by what they do when the one thing they assumed would be on the table isn’t.
There’s a pattern I’ve noticed in some of my unmarried friends over the years, the ones my age who still party hard: they end up dating younger. A twenty-five-year-old meets a forty-year-old woman who’s hot, fun, and out every weekend, and to him that’s the dream, no baggage, no judgement, just a good time. But put that same woman in front of a man her own age, doing exactly the same thing, and something shifts. He clocks the drinking and quietly files it under “problem”, not “party”. Same behaviour, completely different verdict, depending on who’s doing the looking. It works both ways, and neither version is really about her or who she is.
Being single doesn’t help. It hands you the invitation. You’re more social by default, more nights out, more “just one more” because there’s no one waiting up, no one to account to in the morning. And that’s when the spiral starts, quiet at first, easy to explain away, because on your own, there’s no one holding the mirror up.
This is where I’ll admit to having an actual opinion, not just an observation. I think the culture we’ve built around hyper-independence, the idea that needing no one is the healthiest, most evolved way to live, has quietly made it easier for problem drinking to hide in plain sight. Healthy dependency, the kind where you let another person actually see you and occasionally tell you the truth, has gone out of fashion. And I’ve watched it play out in real time with friends of mine who were spiralling: the thing that finally made them look at themselves wasn’t rock bottom in the way people expect. It was meeting someone. A partner who got close enough to see the pattern, and cared enough to say something. Not an intervention. Just someone in the room who wouldn’t let it slide.
You can absolutely hide a drinking problem from the world on your own. It’s much harder to hide it from someone living in a home with you 24/7.
If there’s one book I’d tell every person reading this to go and buy next, if you haven’t already read it, it’s Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. It properly rewired how I think about dependency and relationships. Before I read it, I thought needing someone was a weakness to manage. After it, I understood it’s just how we’re built.
The book’s whole foundation is attachment theory, and its big move is taking something that started as research on babies and caregivers and applying it, correctly, to adult relationships. And here’s the thing that changed everything for me: it’s a formula. A mindset. It’s normal, not personal. As humans, we get stuck in patterns, anxious, avoidant, secure, not because we’re broken, but because that’s just what attachment looks like when it’s working, or when it isn’t.
The bit that stuck with me most is the evolutionary case underneath it all. We’re wired to pair off. It’s not a modern romantic notion. It’s ancient. Long before relationships had labels, people paired up, formed a unit, whatever shape that took, and split the load of survival. That pairing wasn’t incidental to being human. It was part of the design. A secure base at home wasn’t a nice-to-have. It was the thing that let you go out into a genuinely dangerous world and actually cope with it.
And that’s still true now, just with different dangers. A healthy, secure partner creates a more capable, more stable human. The research backs this up too: people with a secure attachment style consistently report better mental health, more resilience under stress, and tend to perform better in other areas of life, work included, simply because they’re not burning energy managing relationship anxiety in the background of everything else they do.Here’s my connection to all of this, and it’s the same idea running underneath this whole book. A clear mind doesn’t just protect you. It protects the relationship you’re building too. You show up steadier, more present, more able to hear someone instead of reacting from whatever chemical state you’re in. That stability doesn’t stay contained to threlationship either, it ripples outward: into your work, your friendships, your own mental health, every part of your life that benefits from you having a secure base to operate from. Getting sober didn’t just change how I drink. It changed how securely I could attach to another person, and that, more than almost anything else, changed everything that came after it.
And this doesn’t stop once the relationship is stable. Once you have children, the most important thing shifts again, it becomes about keeping a healthy head for them, not just for yourself.
I see this clearly with someone very close to me, Lottie. She’s a young mum, she’s been through real trauma, and she’s done the actual work on herself, proper, deep, self-aware work. But even she still catches herself overthinking sometimes and that comes from everything she’s been through, and what she needs in those moments isn’t more analysis. It’s just one honest prompt: do I have a healthy head about this?
You can usually answer that question yourself, if you remember to ask it. Am I overthinking this? Am I making it a bit much, for the child, for myself, for my partner? Take something like taking your child to A&E more often than you probably need to. On the surface, that looks like being on top of it, a vigilant, switched-on caregiver doing right by their kid. But sometimes it isn’t that at all. Sometimes it’s fear wearing the costume of care. And if it’s fear driving it, you’re not just carrying that fear yourself, you’re handing a version of fear to your child, and to your partner too, whether you mean to or not.
That’s not a healthy head. It might look like devotion, but it’s anxiety in a caregiver’s uniform. And catching that difference, in yourself, honestly, is the same skill this whole book keeps circling back to.
How to Actually Date Sober
Say it early, and say it plainly. Not as a confession, not as an apology, just as a fact about you, the same as any other. “I don’t drink” needs precisely one sentence, not a backstory. The people who need an explanation before they can decide how they feel about you were never going to be the right match anyway.
Pick the activity, not the venue. A walk, a coffee, a gallery, a class, anything that isn’t built entirely around a bar gives you both something to actually do together, and takes the “what do I order” tension off the table completely. I
personally find sitting in a bar easy because I don’t worry about talking. I can talk for England, better than any drunk person. If you feel worried about that, avoid the face-to-face wine bar dates.
Something I do sometimes is just have a few questions ready, rehearsed, lined up. People love talking about themselves, where they’ve come from. What job they do. If their mum is nice. Just having a few simple questions ready helps with your confidence.
Let the apps do some of the filtering for you, if that’s your thing. Sober dating spaces exist now. Loosid is the biggest one, built specifically for people who don’t want to have the “why aren’t you drinking” conversation on every single first date. It’s not for me but it’s a genuinely useful option, and I’d rather you know it exists than not.
I’ll be honest, I don’t love sober-only spaces myself. The sober bars, the sober events, an entire separate dating world built for people who don’t drink, none of that ever appealed to me. And that’s sort of the whole point of this book. I don’t want you to feel like the only way to date, or socialise, or exist without alcohol is to retreat into a smaller, sober-only version of the world. The goal isn’t to build yourself a separate bubble. It’s to be able to stand in the regular one, the pubs, the parties, the ordinary first dates, and still be completely fine. Use the sober-specific stuff if it genuinely helps you. Just don’t mistake it for the only option.
Watch what they do, not just what they say. Anyone can say “oh that’s totally fine.” What tells you more is whether they then order a round anyway and push one your way twenty minutes later, or whether they just... don’t make it a thing. That’s the “shows his cards early” signal from earlier in this chapter, in practice.
Don’t over-explain, and don’t let anyone else make you. You don’t owe a recovery story, a health scare, or a dramatic rock-bottom to justify a personal choice. “I just feel better this way” is a complete sentence. My answer is the truth, when I had my baby I just never drank again. There is nothing more to it. I didn’t want to. You can tell them you read a book once and it inspired you to do the same 😊
Run your own healthy head check on it too. If a date left you overthinking whether you said the right thing, whether you should have just had one to keep it easy, ask yourself the same question from the parenting section: Is this a healthy head, or is this fear wearing a different outfit? Usually you already know the answer.