Personal Narrative: Dating And Celiac Disease

It’s kind of ironic that on a day where I had been thinking up ideas concerning celiac disease, gluten, and kissing, that something would jump out of nowhere and slap me in the face. But, that’s exactly what happened when I stumbled across the name Ellen Allard.

Dating and Celiac Disease
She was featured in an article in Jewish Boston after responding to a tweet by Mimi Arbeit, soliciting summer date stories. Allard turned her focus to dating with celiac disease, and hit directly on the topic I have become all too familiar with – kissing. She writes:

Let’s just say you met someone you wanted to date; maybe they even knocked your socks off. And let’s just say that said person, at some point, told you there could be no kissing unless you brushed your teeth, flossed, and then rinsed with mouthwash. No matter that your

There wasn’t any gentle, prior discussions on dating with celiac disease. I remember more of a playful reminder to “Go brush and rinse, in case there is any gluten.” From that moment on, I trained myself to take the extra steps. After all, when it comes to my girlfriend’s kisses, I would gladly jump through as many hoops as necessary.

Ellen Allard went on to describe herself this way:

But now I am that person, the one who cannot be kissed unless the above-mentioned “kissing prescription” is followed to the letter of the law. You see, if I encounter even a crumb of gluten on my lips or in my mouth, the damage to my small intestine will begin anew. And after everything I went through to heal, I won’t take that risk again.

Gluten Free Kissing Prescription
For Allard’s personal life, she describes how after her celiac disease diagnosis, it was a dietician from Beth Israel Medical Center who delivered the “kissing prescription” to her then-husband. She says that after a few months of following the rules, he went completely gluten free to avoid the need to brush, floss, rinse,