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"  You&amp;#039;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&amp;#039;re both at a local bar \u2014 a natural setting for a first date. You both just arrived, and you&amp;#039;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. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not in AA,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;And you should feel comfortable having whatever you want. But I&amp;#039;m off the booze for a while.&amp;quot;  Or maybe you&amp;#039;re the one who orders nothing but a club soda, on the rocks, explaining, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not much of a drinker.&amp;quot; But if one of you isn&amp;#039;t drinking, does that make things weird? If you&amp;#039;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&amp;#039;re the one who&amp;#039;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&amp;#039;s dating life \u2014 I found it interesting mainly because I myself quit drinking years and years ago, after one black-out too many. And dating \u2014 to say nothing of hooking up \u2014 was really hard and a bit awkward at first, without the social lubrication of liquor. (There were a few nights of recidivism.) But I&amp;#039;ve come to prefer getting-to-know-you sobreity, after years of practice. Nowadays, though, I do drink a little \u2014 a glass of wine, maybe once a month, during a nice dinner out \u2014 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&amp;#039;t say (or do) things I&amp;#039;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? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5813/sober-dating/>