{"id":20317,"date":"2025-01-17T15:00:04","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T16:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20317"},"modified":"2025-01-17T16:41:32","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T16:41:32","slug":"the-joy-and-awkwardness-of-sober-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20317","title":{"rendered":"The Joy \u2014 and Awkwardness \u2014 of Sober Sex"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For those who rely on alcohol to loosen up, getting intimate without it can be tricky.<\/p>\n

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The first time Steve Bennet-Martin was sober while having sex with his husband, the couple had already been together for eight years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that every time I was wasted, or every time I was stoned out of my mind,\u201d Mr. Bennet-Martin, 38, said. \u201cBut there was always a little bit of something to help ease the insecurities, the fear, the shame that I had associated with sex.\u201d<\/p>\n

After years of trying and failing to moderate his drinking, he began attending 12-step meetings in 2021 and has been sober since.<\/p>\n

But in those early days of recovery, sex felt \u201cawkward and uncomfortable,\u201d Mr. Bennet-Martin said \u2014 even with his trusted, longtime partner. \u201cIt was very much like I was a virgin again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As researchers and health officials sound the alarm about the negative health effects of even moderate drinking<\/a>, many people are dabbling in sober curiosity<\/a> or abstaining from alcohol altogether. Cutting back affects not only traditional markers of health like blood pressure or cancer risk. Experts say it can alter people\u2019s sex lives, leading to changes that may take some time to get used to \u2014 even for moderate drinkers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re not numbing out with substances and suddenly you\u2019re face to face with somebody you want to be sexual with, that can be really scary at first,\u201d said Laura Rademacher, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Minneapolis who offers a class on sober sex in her practice.<\/p>\n

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For those who rely on alcohol to loosen up, getting intimate without it can be tricky.The first time Steve Bennet-Martin was sober while having sex with his husband, the couple had already been together for eight years.\u201cIt\u2019s not that every time I was wasted, or every time I was stoned out of my mind,\u201d Mr. Bennet-Martin, 38, said. \u201cBut there was always a little bit of something to help ease the insecurities, the fear, the shame that I had associated with sex.\u201dAfter years of trying and failing to moderate his drinking, he began attending 12-step meetings in 2021 and has been sober since.But in those early days of recovery, sex felt \u201cawkward and uncomfortable,\u201d Mr. Bennet-Martin said \u2014 even with his trusted, longtime partner. \u201cIt was very much like I was a virgin again.\u201dAs researchers and health officials sound the alarm about the negative health effects of even moderate drinking, many people are dabbling in sober curiosity or abstaining from alcohol altogether. Cutting back affects not only traditional markers of health like blood pressure or cancer risk. Experts say it can alter people\u2019s sex lives, leading to changes that may take some time to get used to \u2014 even for moderate drinkers.\u201cWhen you\u2019re not numbing out with substances and suddenly you\u2019re face to face with somebody you want to be sexual with, that can be really scary at first,\u201d said Laura Rademacher, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Minneapolis who offers a class on sober sex in her practice.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20319,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20317"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20320,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20317\/revisions\/20320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}