Step Three, Part Two---Turning It Over

We made a decision to turn our wills and our life together over to the care of God as we understood God. Step Three, Recovering Couples Anonymous

For recovering alcoholics and addicts, Step Three completes the process of surrendering a life controlled by an addicted ego to a life guided by a power greater than the obsessed mind of addiction. The alcoholic-addict recognizes that his or her efforts to be self-sufficient have been disastrous. As Bill Wilson says in the chapter on Step Three in 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, The philosophy of self-sufficiency is not paying off. Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut whose final achievement is ruin.

It's not only the individual alcoholic/addict who tries to be totally independent. Families, too, live increasingly in isolation as they struggle to keep the disease of addiction hidden from others. The family tends to move to one of two extremes---either family members draw a tight shield around themselves so that no is allowed to develop a close relationship with anyone outside the family, or the family has virtually no boundary with everyone going his or her separate way.

Couples tend to become increasingly separated from each other as well. By the time the alcoholic or addict admits being addicted and makes a commitment to sobriety and recovery, most couples are pretty distant from each other emotionally. As the Blue Book of Recovering Couples Anonymous says, Trust is a major issue for many of us. That is putting it mildly. For most of the couples I have seen who are in the first few months of recovery and have moved beyond the "pink cloud" stage, the lack of trust in each other is as deep as the Grand Canyon.There is simply no way they could allow themselves to be emotionally vulnerable with each other or to depend on genuine compassion and understanding from each other.

But when a couple in recovery makes the decision to turn their relationship over to the care of a power greater than themselves, they start to find they can increasingly let go of their struggles over power and control. By following a guiding principle of one of my sponsors, "We are responsible for the effort; we are not responsible for the result," partners find it much easier to let go of trying to manage and control each other. As a result, couples begin to find they are fighting less and enjoying each other more. They also find, when using prayer and meditation to deal with their difficulties, that solutions often jump into our minds (RCA Blue Book.)

Just as Step Three is a vital prerequisite for individuals to go on to Steps 4-10, the action steps, so also is Step Three an essential prerequisite for couples to go on to do the necessary work for solving the many problems created by years of addiction. By turning over their relationship to a spiritual Higher Power, however they might define that power, couples create the basis for developing the kind of trust in each other that is needed for such work. As it says in the "promises" of the Big Book, We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.