NEW NOTIFICATION. SOMEONE LIKES YOU.
You feel a rush and begin to wonder, ‘Will this be the one?’ Or, ‘Maybe we will have a real connection?’
You open the app, and that hit of dopamine is balanced out with a dose of reality. Disappointment is a fleeting feeling before you are onto the next one… and then the next one… and then the next one.
My recovery looks different from my colleagues’ here at The Sober Curator. I can’t exactly pour my addiction down the drain or toss it away. For the past twelve years, I have lived with the shame and stigma of being in recovery for a sex and love addiction. It is a daily struggle to combat this compulsive behavior, especially when re-entering the arena of online dating. Not to mention, I’ve been out of the dating game for a long time. I recently parted ways with my partner of the past decade, and it has been a time of profound reflection, growth, and pain. And navigating the world of dating while in recovery has been an eye-opening experience.
For those unaware, a sex and love addiction is a behavioral health disorder categorized by the compulsive and often destructive pursuit of sex or romantic connections. The media frequently portrays it as being solely about how much sex someone is having, or how many partners they’ve dated—it’s about the why and what happens next.
Does the behavior serve as a numbing agent for loneliness, shame, or trauma? (For me, it did. It seemed like a healthier alternative than self-harming and marking up my inner thighs.) Does it sabotage your career, finances, relationships, or self-worth? Are the consequences known—and repeated anyway? For those of us in recovery, the answer was and is, overwhelmingly, yes.
I entered recovery in my early twenties after a series of entanglements that left me feeling profoundly hollow. My relationships were intense but short-lived, or often felt one-sided. My sense of self was wrapped around whether someone texted me back or decided to define the relationship on the first date. I wasn’t falling in love—I was falling into obsession. And when those relationships inevitably collapsed under the weight of my unrealistic expectations, I found myself once again in withdrawal, aching for a fix.
Recovery forced me to confront not only my behavior, but also its origins. Childhood trauma. Abandonment. A fundamental confusion between being desired and being valued. Through therapy, I learned that intimacy isn’t performance. Its presence. And connection isn’t chemistry. It’s a choice.
But none of that prepared me for online dating in my thirties after being with a partner I thought I would be with for the rest of my life. Overwhelmingly, when the inevitable happened, I thought, ‘I don’t want this.’ I know I had often contemplated leaving the relationship since it didn’t seem to evolve beyond dating… and yet, I stayed. Because that is what you do when you love someone, right? ….Right?!
Unfortunately, it’s not. The relationship probably hadn’t been a healthy one for a long time, but we both held on due to our loyalty and guilt and because we had spent ten years together. So when it officially ended, I immediately downloaded every dating app under the sun—and I had a panic attack.
I was overwhelmed by how many options there were. And that voice in my head, ‘I don’t want this,’ felt like it was screaming. It reminded me of my favorite movie, (500) Days of Summer—expectations vs. Reality.
Expectations: I would find the perfect person to pick up where I left off. They would love cats, want to get married after having a perfect date, and we would live happily ever after. Reality: I was asked by like every other guy if I wanted to have a threesome because I am a bisexual woman, and that must mean that I wanted to have a threesome with them.
Yeah… no.
Modern dating apps are, in many ways, antithetical to recovery. They turn relationships into transactions. For someone in recovery from a sex and love addiction, they can quickly become a digital playground for a lapse or reoccurrence because they reward you for making fast, split-second decisions on who is hot and who is not.
And yet, here’s the paradox: dating apps can also be a tool for growth. The difference lies in how we use them—and why.
In recovery, I have learned not to date to fill a void. I date to explore compatibility. I don’t swipe to numb out or to feel worthy. I swipe with intention. I take breaks when it becomes compulsive. I write about my feelings (like I am now) or talk to my cat about them (she has LOTS of opinions).
When I feel triggered, I message my therapist or a trusted friend. I ask questions on dates that matter: “What does commitment mean to you?” “How do you navigate conflict?” “What does emotional availability look like in your life?”
This isn’t to say it’s easy. There are moments—plenty of them—when I’m tempted to fall into old patterns: the flood of euphoria when someone finds me attractive (I mean, OMG, thank you!), the pull to chase emotionally unavailable partners, the rush of being “chosen.” But long-term recovery means building a life where my worth isn’t contingent on someone else’s gaze. It means I don’t have to self-destruct to feel alive.
If we are going to deconstruct the stigma around sex and love addiction, we must also deconstruct the myths. This is not about people being “too horny” or “too needy.” It’s about people seeking relief in connection because, somewhere along the way, connection was what hurt them most. Sex and love addiction is an intimacy disorder rooted in pain, not pleasure. It’s the ache of never feeling like you are good enough. It’s the compulsion to perform romance rather than experience it.
For all its pitfalls, online dating can be navigated without compromising your recovery. But it requires boundaries. And it involves compassion for yourself and the person on the other side of the screen, who might also be searching not for a fantasy but something real.
In recovery, I’ve learned that love isn’t a fix. It’s a practice.
And I’m still practicing—one day, one swipe, and one conversation at a time.
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