Fourth Step, Part One---Inventories

Steps Four thru Ten are commonly called the "action steps" because they ask us to be active in making an effort to deal with the wreckage created by our addictions. Although they focus on individual behavior and actions, I believe they lend themselves quite well to dealing with the damage to our closest relationships caused by addictive drinking, drugging, or other compulsive behaviors. They provide us with several good tools for healing the hurt that exists in every relationship affected by addiction.

Step Four is about taking an individual inventory, but there is no reason that a couple in recovery cannot make two kinds of inventories---one about how their individual behaviors have impacted the relationship and another one about the relationship itself. The Blue Book of Recovering Couples Anonymous provides some excellent suggestions for both kinds of inventories.

In looking at their individual contributions to problems in the relationship, the Blue Book says, we both bring family-of-origin messages, abuse experiences, expectations, abilities, and individual coping mechanisms (including addictions) into the coupleship. We must take responsibility for that. The book goes on to suggest that couples might want to consider the following issues when making their individual relationship inventories:
Unfinished business with partner and the resentments that has created
Ways of looking for things to go wrong
Failure to take responsibility for mistakes or issues
Failure to share uncomfortable feelings
Ways of placating partner, not sharing true perceptions
Failure to communicate personal wants or needs
Use of shaming and blaming
Unwillingness to make clear choices and decisions
In addition, I suggest using the chapter on Step Four in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions to consider how "instincts run wild" have also contributed to the multitude of problems in the relationship.

The RCA Blue Book also suggests that it is helpful for partners to take an inventory of their relationship itself. They suggest answering the following questions:
1. In what ways have we let fears or resentments interfere with our coupleship?
2. In what ways have we fought that never accomplish anything?
3. In what ways have we neglected our relationship?
4. In what ways have we avoided being close?
5. In what ways have we pretended problems didn't exist?
6. In what ways have we isolated ourselves?
7. In what ways have we tolerated abuse of ourselves and our families?
8. What have been our losses?
9. What are our strengths as a couple?
10. What have we liked about our relationship?
11. What good things have we had?
12. In what ways have we grieved as a couple?
13. In what ways have we treasured each other and the coupleship?

Taking an inventory of the relationship itself helps us see that it is an entity separate from our individual identities. It helps us remember to think about whether our individual choices and decisions are supportive or disruptive of our closest relationships. And looking at the strengths as well as the weaknesses of our relationships helps us get through the many hard times of early recovery when we can easily convince ourselves that our relationship is doomed to failure and dissolution.

There is another type of inventory that several recovering alcoholic/addicts who are also active Buddhists have suggested. This is an inventory based of the Buddha's description of the 5 hindrances to freedom from suffering: desire, aversion, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt. The first two hindrances, desire and aversion, are especially pertinent to a relationship inventory. Desire is oriented toward wanting something, especially something else; and leads to dissatisfaction not only when we fail to get it, but also when we do get it because the satisfaction is so short-lived. And aversion, the quality of pushing away or resisting, is a hindrance that shows up over and over in addicted relationships, often in the forms of anger and resentment or contempt and blame. Thinking about how these 5 hindrances operate in your close relationships is a useful way of realizing what must be done to heal the pain.

Finally, just as 12-Step programs emphasize the importance of making a written inventory, so, too, it is important to write down these relationship inventories. Not only is this essential when it comes time to move on to Step Five, but it can also serve as a reference point for seeing how the relationship changes over the months and years of recovery. Although they require a lot of time and effort, they create a solid foundation for assessing strengths and weaknesses in the relationship and pointing the way to what needs to be done.