How to “Dry Hump” Your Way To Better Dating, Relationships, and Sex
Feature Interview With Sober Sexpert Tawny Lara
Recently while engaged in a scrolling binge on the Substack network, I stumbled upon the work of New York city-based Tawny Lara, affectionately known as The Sober Sexpert. The author of Dry Humping: A Guide to Dating, Relating, and Hooking Up Without Booze, her book title immediately caught my attention.
My first thought was, this is not a book I would normally jump in bed with. But as I’m apt to do, I did a deeper dive into whether it might be a read that would capture my interest. Sufficiently intrigued, I began reading it with rapt attention.
For me, alcohol is synonymous with sociability, a lubricant that in loosening one up, allows you to freely express thoughts, feeling, and emotions in an unrestrained way. Problems can begin, however, when a person’s alcohol levels exceed a certain threshold of lets just say looseness.
In our imaginative minds, alcohol is often portrayed as a seductive, mood-enhancing elixir that can fuel romantic interludes and expansive sexual experience. In reality though, according to
, dating, sex, and romance can already be a pretty scary proposition. She asserts that when fear sets in, “many of us outsource our bravery to the inhibition-lowering power of a cocktail (or too many).”For me, reading her book brought back memories of a first date encounter I had many years ago with someone I’d initially met weeks prior. We agreed to reconnect at a sophisticated downtown cocktail bar in the city I was living in at the time. Once the wine started flowing the conversation proceeded with an effortless ease and playfulness. After a few hours of intimate sharing and light touching, we agreed to end the evening as the place was preparing to close.
As a gentleman and protector, I offered to ensure her safety back to her place. We locked arms for our wobbly walk to her place and after a few blocks we arrived at her door. “Would you like to come in for a few minutes?” she asked. “Sure,” I responded while thinking to myself, “what man in his right mind would say no to this.”
Fast forward to the next morning (sorry to spare you the intimate bedtime details), she fixed me breakfast as I showered and prepared to go. As I sat at her breakfast nook now fully dressed, we glanced at each other with a mutual look that begged the question “what the hell just happened?” While over time we developed some semblance of a friendship, things after that steamy, alcohol fueled evening were never the same.
“Dry Humping,” a sober lifestyle guide, the name of which elicits a chuckle from me every time I see that title refrain, delivers a lighthearted, sobering, and judgment-free handbook on how to have better sex, better dates, and better partnerships without relying on alcohol!
Throughout the pages, Tawny Lara shares alternative ways to have fun in and out of the bedroom, all without those annoying hangovers that often follow a drink filled encounter.
Believing that you don’t have to commit to complete abstinence to change the way alcohol operates in your life (AA might beg to differ with her on this point) author Tawny Lara instead gives readers a first-hand look at what removing alcohol partially or entirely from the dating equation looks like. This includes learning to love your most authentic and unfiltered self, getting out of the habit of having drunk sex (scientifically, sober sex is actually more pleasurable!), and building loving relationships that don’t revolve around drinking.
According to Lara, whose work has been featured in Playboy, Men’s Health,Huffington Post, and two essay collections: Sex and the Single Woman and The Addiction Diaries we often gravitate toward alcohol as an accessible, quick, often cheap option for avoiding our hang-ups, insecurities, and anxiety about dating and sex instead of channeling our inner bravery to overcome them.
She says that by putting in the work to replace liquid courage with real, inner courage, it is possible to shed this proverbial security blanket and have more fulfilling committed relationships and better sex—all achievable without the booze!
My “Great Books, Great Minds” Q&A With Tawny Lara
Q- Tawny, can you briefly describe the primary impetus behind your decision to write this book.
A- I wrote Dry Humping because this is the guidebook that I desperately needed in my own early recovery. I had no idea how to date, let alone have sex or communicate effectively without relying on liquid courage.
Q- So what was your biggest surprise discovery during the process of completing it?
A- I was surprised to learn that people who still drink alcohol are interested in the 'sober sex and dating conversation.' I write a weekly advice column about sober (curious) sex and dating, and I get a lot of questions from folks who drink such as, "I don't want to quit drinking but I'd love to no longer pregame before being intimate with my husband" or "what are some booze-free date ideas for this old married couple who drinks socially wants to spice things up?"
Q- What sort of trends are you seeing emerge as it relates to alcohol and today’s dating and hookup culture?
A- More and more people identify as what I call “sober curious” these days and we're seeing that curiosity spill into the dating scene, too. Hinge released a study in June of 2022 where they surveyed 3,000 Millennial and Gen Z folks from a popular dating app. A shocking 75% of the participants said they were looking for alcohol-free first dates.
By the way, these weren’t sober people, either! Just people active on the dating scene who are sick of the “let’s grab a drink” approach to dating. It seems like people are becoming more mindful of how they filter the new people they bring into their lives.
Q- Has there been in your view a post-pandemic effect on these activities?
A- The pandemic changed a lot of people’s relationships with alcohol. Lots of folks quit drinking or drastically cut back, while others drank significantly more. The pandemic also changed the dating scene. While folks were still heavily using dating apps during the early COVID days, we saw an influx of Zoom/FaceTime dates, virtual date activities, and people discussing their vaccination status before meeting up.
Q- How does your book offer direction to those individuals who are currently struggling through these patterns?
A- Alcohol abuse is rarely the problem; alcohol is usually someone’s solution to a larger problem (and those larger problems for me were undiagnosed mental health issues like anxiety, PTSD, or depression). Chapter one of my book encourages readers to date themselves, which means getting to know the real version of themselves (mental health diagnoses and all!) without hiding behind the façade of liquid courage. Once you learn how to fall in love with yourself, you’ll have a better time dating, hooking up, and having healthy, long-term relationships that don't center around booze.
Q- What is your greatest hope in terms of what readers of your book will walk away with?
A- I hope people feel empowered to date, have sex, and have difficult relationship conversations without relying on liquid courage. While I’m in recovery and fully abstinent from booze, I wrote Dry Humping with inclusivity in mind. Whether you’re participating in Dry January, you’re 20 years in recovery, or want to be more mindful about your alcohol consumption while dating, this book offers tangible tips that meet readers where they are on their sober (curious) journey.
The music I listened to while writing this feature interview:
Loving Touch by Deuter
Good morning my good brotha. I appreciate your thoughts here. Whatever way we cut it, aren’t the paradoxical twists of human nature such a beautiful thing? I’m sure that we could have a great philosophical dialogue about this over an Old Fashioned.
Maybe I am knee-jerking--as I am prone to do--but it seems to me that there have recently been a rash of "I don't drink anymore" posts on social media, and this book is simply the latest salvo in that apparent battle. I don't begrudge anyone their decisions, in either direction. Yet, it seems to me that a lot of Gen X, Gen Y, or Gen Z, or whatever designation I should use, spend a lot of time lamenting bullshit they should not have done anyway, and concluding that there is some larger picture they can launch onto society as a result. "You don't have to drink to have a good time" is but the latest. Who the hell doesn't know that? And who the hell doesn't appreciate a good Old Fashioned, despite that truth? Both can be true and no deeper analysis, or discovery that you can date and not get drunk, for instance, needs to be forthcoming. Then again, I am probably knee-jerking and displaying some deep-seated frailty that would go away if I put the tequila bottle down!