“Relationships, Inc.”

RELATIONSHIP: Really Exciting Love Affair Turns Into Outrageous Nightmare; Sobriety Hangs In Peril.

My sponsor told me about that acronym once when I was going through some severe pain. I had violated some highly-held suggestions of the program (no new relationships for a year, no thirteenth stepping, don’t date a newcomer…) and was paying the price. At the time, I couldn’t understand why I was in so much pain. I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. I had thought, “Just because I’m in Recovery doesn’t mean I’m going to stop living my life, right? RIGHT?!”

I gravitated towards those who told me what I wanted to hear, as we tend to do when we are letting our own will run things. I clung to the people who said it was okay to date someone from the groups, that it’s what happens—we have common understandings with each other and know where the other is coming from and can best relate to each other. I listened to the people who said that it was perfectly okay for me to date a newcomer since I was one, too.

Every comment was used as a rationalization to justify my doing what I wanted to instead of following the suggestions I didn’t want to follow. Instead of letting go and trusting my higher power to give me what I needed, I had my hands firmly on the steering wheel of my life. I knew what I wanted and I was damned and determined to make sure it came to pass. I ended up every bit as insane as I was before I started my Recovery without a shred of serenity in sight. It is nothing short of a miracle that I didn’t relapse.

Having put some time between then and now, having worked through the twelve steps (some of them more than once), and having gotten a lot more Recovery under my belt, I can see the wisdom of those suggestions much better now. I can also see the folly of my own actions much better.

You don’t date a newcomer because you have no right to put someone else’s sobriety at risk. My definition of a newcomer is different now, too. It isn’t so much about how much time someone has, whether they’ve hit that magical ‘1 year’ mark or not, but more about whether or not they’ve worked their steps. Someone who hasn’t worked their steps hasn’t been restored to sanity, as we say. Their thinking is still insane. If someone is insane, they aren’t capable of being in a healthy relationship or picking a healthy partner for themselves. They haven’t yet learned to truly love themselves and are incapable of truly loving others. Of course—and perhaps more importantly—all of this applies to our own selves when we are new to the program.

The meditation I received in my email this morning was about relationships. I must confess that it is just a little bit weird for me any time the ‘Just For Today’ meditation applies so specifically to what I’m going through in my life. Sometimes I’m grateful for it; sometimes I’m pissed off by it; sometimes it’s just plain creepy. This is definitely one of the creepy times. Anyway, the JFT talked about how we can work the program on the issue of unhealthy relationships, too. As we did with our addiction, we must first admit that we have a problem. Ultimately, we apply Step Twelve: practice these principles in all our affairs.

I just happen to be working a set of twelve specifically around my relationship issues, which is why it was a little creepy to see this particular ‘Just For Today’ this morning. Doing this new work was something I came to organically. I was feeling some pain (ah, that wonderful motivator) and just started writing. Page after page came out, and it occurred to me that I was doing step work without even realizing it. I talked with my sponsor about it. Then I went back and looked again at what I had written and realized that I hadn’t actually done step work, merely prepared myself to do so. I had done what some people call ‘Step Zero’—admitting I had a problem, surrendering to that reality, and admitting that I needed help. So I cracked open my step-working guide and dove into the actual work.

It’s been hard, maybe even harder than when I worked my steps on my addiction. Going over all my relationships has been an emotional ordeal, to put it mildly. But I’ve already hit on some powerful realizations. Though I’m still in the beginning of this work, I’m already gaining wisdom and even a bit of relief. By turning the spotlight on this issue, by writing it down in black and white, it’s all laid out there for me to see. And one thing is abundantly clear: when it comes to how I have done relationships in my life, I have been completely insane.

The women I’ve chosen to be with, I’ve chosen them not because I thought they could make good partners for me, but because I was desperate to have someone in my life. I can see how I’ve let guilt, shame, and fear motivate my choices. Time after time, I chose women who couldn’t possibly be good to me, because I was acting out of a place of fear—the fear that I would never find someone, that I’d always be alone. There are other things, too, like the idea that I need to have someone in my life in order to be happy. That is straight-up insanity, and it resembles my addiction in a not-coincidental way: I used to think I needed to be loaded in order to be happy, too.

I have (and still do) struggled with self-esteem issues, feelings of low self-worth. Sometimes they were at the forefront of my mind. At other times, they were buried beneath my consciousness. I kept them there, deep in my denial, because to recognize them would have interfered with my getting what I wanted. It’s tough to remember that I am a child of the Is. It’s tough to remember that the power greater than myself loves me so deeply, so powerfully, that no matter how much love I can possibly imagine, the actual amount of love the Is has for me is far, far greater.

When I have acted out of fear of being alone, or the sense that I am not worthy of having someone good in my life, I have made errors in judgment every bit as insane as those I made to feed my active addiction. I was incapable of examining a potential mate to see if she would be good for me. I made wild stabs in the dark out of desperation, hoping and praying that someone—anyone—would say ‘yes’ to me. If a woman came along who was interested, I said ‘yes’ without even bothering to think about whether or not she could possibly be a good partner to me in my life, or if I was even actually interested. The end results were always pain. For someone like myself, with a history of suicidal thoughts and behavior, I can see how my life truly does depend on finding another way.

And so I choose to do the work. I choose to honestly admit that I do indeed have a problem and am absolutely insane. I’m finding the hope that my higher power can restore me to sanity. I am having faith in the process. And I am putting my courage to use, examining what I have done, looking at my part and not others’. I do all of this not just in the hopes of being restored to sanity and becomming able to have a healthy relationship, but also with the hope that I may find peace and comfort in the knowledge that I don't have to be in one. My goal is to have Serenity whether I am in a relationship or not, and that's a damn fine goal to have.