Hopeful528

What is appropriate and what is inappropriate between opposite sexes in the first year.
I can't tell if someone was being inappropriate or just friendly. I'd rather avoid him and not have to take the chance but I also don't want to be rude.
I think I will just avoid him and learn a good lesson from it, not to be so naive. Nothing actually happened. He asked to walk with me and he wasn't inappropriate in his behaviour on the walk, but the fact that he asked me and walked away from everyone for a while made me think it was inappropriate, it happened so quickly. He gave me his number and said to come tomorrow to play tennis with him and another woman, was asking to go bike riding and other similar activities.

He seems friendly with lots of people. So that is what made me unsure if I'm just being crazy but I thought that men were suppose to leave newcomers alone in their first year, so when someone does that should you assume their intentions are not good

Hopeful528

I don't know him that well.
It happened at a meeting I go to occasionally. I think it really took me a back because I enjoyed seeing him as a friendly face and didn't get that vibe from him.
Sometimes I feel absolutely nuts I don't know what to think.
I didn't like the way it made me feel though and at the same time because I thought he was a nice guy it makes me feel bad saying it incase he was truly just being friendly.

Hopeful528

I think what bothers me the most, is not so much what happened, but how i handled it.
It felt like I was in a bad situation and I just stayed in it, and I thought my days of allowing myself to stay in a unsafe situation were gone.
I was confused about whether it was safe or not, and it seemed to happen so fast, but then i stood there frozen and went along with it instead of following my feelings.
It makes me feel mad at myself and scared because i like the way it feels when i protect myself and stand up for myself.

Hopeful528

I don't want to repeat those situations, or feelings, I want to make myself feel safe and that I am standing up for myself and protecting myself always

48heath

In my local area,it is strictly men for men,women for women.

The fact he asked you to go and play tennis rings alarm bells.

Wishing you well.

CAPTAINZING2000

We used to hear at my meetings, the first year buy a plant. If you keep the plant alive for a year, buy a pet.
Sobriety should be the number one priority the first year especially. I’ve seen relationships cause a lot of relapses early in recovery !!

VigilanceNow

Hopeful, don't beat yourself up about the way you handled it - just know now that you need to handle it differently next time. This has happened to me many, many times unfortunately. In the beginning, I felt very vulnerable and was just happy to have people around that knew I was an alcoholic and understood. Well, the sad truth is, a lo of people are more than happy to take advantage of that vulnerability.

I'm fine with maintaining friendly relationships with men at the meeting, but I find it necessary to establish boundaries early on if I feel someone is being inappropriate or has ulterior motives for being friendly. In general, I give out my number exclusively to other women and meet up with only women AA members. I understand your confusion though; when I first started going, it felt like I had to treat AA and the people in it as if we belonged to a different universe with different cultural norms and different ways of interacting. In some ways, AA is different from the outside world. In many ways, however, it is just like regular society - there will be good people, and there will be bad people. There will be those with good intentions, and those looking to take advantage of vulnerable, confused, scared alcoholics looking to get better by any means necessary.

If you get a weird feeling from someone, man or woman, treat them as you would any other person - establish boundaries and take action if they violate them. You'll be fine!

Maudcat

Do you have a sponsor, Hopeful?
Or even someone you are friendly with in group who might be able to provide insight.
I also think time will reveal his motives, friendliness or something more.

CaiHong

Hi hopeful,

I think it's great that you are being aware of potential harmful situations. If you feel it's inappropriate then it's inappropriate.
In the past, like you, I didn't want to be rude or hurt people's feelings, I had no boundaries whatsoever, at the same time something inside was screaming out that this is not right, it doesn't feel right. Today I listen to the voice, I know when something is not right. This is just one of the wonderful things about sobriety, I now trust myself.

CaiHong

Hopeful528

Thank you everyone for reading my long post and for your help.
I guess that is life, it just seems like right now is left foot right foot breathe somedays, and its hard to think clearly.
I didn't want another thing to worry about.

Hopeful528

I will try and not beat myself up but learn a better way to be on guard of that possibly occurring and handling it better if it happens in the future.

I definitely won't call him or hang out with him outside the meeting. I will tell my sponsor she has been away but I will see her soon.

I feel confused to whether he's just a nice friendly person but I think what this is showing me is that I need to care about myself more, work on that right now and my own values and needs and not what other people think.

I will stick to the only women outside of the meetings or exchange of phone numbers and I will make it a goal to write out an action plan this week/weekend for what I'm comfortable with and what to do to avoid situations like that going forward and what action plan to take if it does.

Thank you all so much

Hopeful528

Thank you, so much wisdom here, it's so nice to have your advice.

Thanks for your help.

Gottalife

You've handled it well so far. Like my sponsor said, people come to AA for all sorts of reasons. Some are actually real alcoholics there to recover. Overall, there is a general cross section of society, good and bad and you have to learn to navigate your way through all that.

The whole objective of AA is to help you rejoin the main stream of life. There is nothing in the program about isolating yourself from any particular part. The reason being that your drinking is not cause by the behaviour of others. It's an internal thing and as long as your sobriety remains the priority, there is no possible external event that can make you drink. This is my experience.

One of the things I am most grateful to the program for is that I am known as a safe male among the women in my groups. That is a big part of living up to my sex ideal as expressed in the big book. There are a lot of men like me. There are a few bad eggs too, and the best thing is to ask one of the other women or men, if this particular guy is safe or not.

There is a young people's group I love to visit. They do a lot of socialising, boys and girls together. There is good recovery, they look out for each other, there is no nonsense. Alcoholics of both sexes can and should get along together. If you can't do it in AA, how will you go in the real world.

When i was new, I was the willing victim of a 13 stepper. It was a great learning experience. It didn't make me drink because sobriety was always number one in my mind. I had tremendous help from all AA members, of both sexes. The women were wonderful and gracious, and showed wonderful generosity with no ulterior motives.

Thankfully we still have some women like that out in the mainstream of AA, where they can be of maximum help to the new woman, or man. We could use more of them. It is, IMO a mistake to hide away in special purpose groups.

PhoenixJ

I have seen both guys and gals get 13 stepped. I once- offered to a lady typew person if she wanted to talk- iterating she needed to be cognizant of 13th stepping, and we met in a public place and I told other lady type people from that meeting they needed to help the newie. I have been very careful and 18m later- are still friends..in public....
The lines are so often blurred when we first get sober. An example is the intense friendships people make when in rehab. Then 3m later- stuff changes.
All I can say is err on the side of caution, follow your instincts and stay safe. Some people may not even know they are being creepy-weird.
Support to you.

August252015

Yes!

I am a believer that it takes time to learn to navigate relationships in recovery. I had a couple of early incidents where I was confused and stuff like you mentioned. Deciding to stay away from those guys, and be friendly in meetings, at a distance, from the guys, was best for me. Truthfully, in early recovery I needed to do that left, right, breathe thing you describe!

Whatever took me further from a drink, not closer to it...made sobriety easier and not harder....those were habits I worked to build.

Berrybean

If he was just making you aware of group activities that are going on, maybe thank him and ask him to point you in the direction of some of the women involved in these so you can get to know THEM better and then decide if it's something you fancy getting involved in.

There is nothing wrong with stating your boundaries. The trick is to know what these are. For me, friendliness in meetings and in the company of a group is fine,but...

Going off alone to any place with a member of the opposite sex who I don't know / trust extremely well is not okay. (I have had lunch with an elderly gay chap who I sometimes approach for advise when my sponsor is out of town, as he is very wise. I would not have lunch with someone who I thought I might be attracted to, or might be attracted to me. That would just get complicated at worst, and be a distraction from recovery at best.

Sneaking around in secret from the fellowship is not okay (we're as sick as our secrets).

Taking a male members number for general contact ... nah. (I do have male members numbers on my phone. This goes back to when I was secretary for a year and took numbers of people coming to share so I could remind them in the lead up. Occasionally I'll need the number for fellowship business so haven't deleted them.)


In the last month I have seen lots of tears over relationships that started in the rooms. One that got pretty serious, and now both people are missing their usual meetings to avoid each other. Two less serious ones that ended up getting awkward / embarrassing. Again, people felt weird about going to meetings, and it just wasn't great for recovery.

Is he someone you woukd have liked to date or go for walks with if it WAS appropriate?

BB

Ken33xx

Agree 100%.

Ask who are the other women. He says, "talk with Carol and Jane. We all go bike riding twice a month. We have a great time,"

On the other hand... the fellow seems evasive that's really all you need to know about him.

Sad but it's not uncommon for men in AA go to hit up on women after meetings. It's easy to do given the structure of the fellowship. It should also be noted there are women who enjoy the attention.

Set your boundaries early in AA and all should work out.

CAPTAINZING2000

I believe you solved your problem by attending women’s meetings.

Men and women with a good program can date. What better way to meet people !
That said, it’s deplorable for men or women with long term sobriety preying on new comers. Occasionally we’ve had this problem where I attend meetings and we privately talk to the guys to cease.

AAPJ

I'm a happily married male. So at least for me personally this isn't an issue. Just providing this info for your reference.

I have seen some flirting etc. in my home group over the last couple of years. One guy who stands out has been coming to meetings for at least as long as I have. He's divorced with children. I often see him being friendly to the female members of our group after the meeting ends. Newcomers and old timers. Do I think he's an AA 13th step predator? No, I think he's lonely and looking for someone special. I feel a bit sorry for him. Do I think he would date someone with say 6 months of sobriety? Yes. Would I hold it against him? No. But that's me. I think he has good intentions.

I'm not arguing the don't date anyone for a year advice but IMO finding someone to date in AA even in early recovery is way better than waking up in a stranger's bed after a night of drinking wondering how you got there.

That said, if someone makes you feel uncomfortable in AA you have the absolute right to set your boundaries and the AA members/environment should be supportive of this feeling. In fact I recently inserted myself into a post AA meeting conversation where a different male with a fair amount of sober time was talking to a female newcomer in a way that made her uncomfortable. It was so obviously inappropriate that I inserted myself into the conversation and told him to pound sand. I think I even used four letter words in my rant at him. Looking back on it I kind of surprised myself.

Wholesome

Always trust your gut. If some guy is giving you the creeps, then listen to yourself.