Step Seven, Part Two---Character-Building

But whenever we had to choose between character and comfort, the character-building was lost in the dust of our chase after what we thought was happiness. Seldom did we look at character-building as something desirable in itself....

Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and problems. We never wanted to deal with suffering. Character-building through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us.
12 Steps and 12 Tradition

In order for our shortcomings to be removed, we have to be willing to make major changes.
Kevin Griffin, One Breath at a Time


I saw an article this morning which said that less than half the people who married in the Seventies stayed married long enough to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. The article also showed how much this contrasted with people who married in the Fifties---almost 2/3 of them celebrated a Silver wedding anniversary. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll hasn't been a very good basis for long-term marriages in the Baby Boom generation.

This is not to say that the parents of the baby boomers had marriages that were all that wonderful. Many of those people were deeply unhappy in their partnerships, but they didn't believe they had the option of ending them. This was especially true for women, who knew they faced a very difficult life financially and emotionally if they decided to end an unhappy marriage. Their daughters made sure they would not be put in this position by entering and remaining in the work force in record numbers.

Since financial necessity is no longer a glue holding marriages together, most couples rely on the emotional bond between them to serve as the foundation for their relationship. But maintaining a strong emotional bond requires a good deal of work after the 12-18 month honeymoon ends as the neurotransmitter, oxyctocsin, begins to wane. Emotional pain and relationship problems are not easy things to deal with. As the 12x12 says, for most of us "our lives have been devoted to running from pain and problems."

When those of us who are addicted or are intimately involved with someone who is addicted recognize our powerlessness over the addiction and surrender to the process of recovery, we are setting ourselves up for a good deal of character-building behavior, whether we know it or not. Sobriety and recovery involves hard work and often frequent temporary setbacks. There are many times when we don't know how we're going to get through the day, but we find the way as we rely on our Higher Power and other people in the program to support us. Out of this process we gradually become people who learn to deal with life's problems on life's terms. And that, in turn, builds character.

I believe the same process is at work in our intimate relationships. That is where our character defects, our shortcomings, are most obvious and most frequently observed. Whether it's healing a long-term relationship severely disabled by years of addiction or it's creating and developing a new close relationship in recovery, we are going to have to make a sustained effort to become the kind of person who can be a caring, loving, responsible partner. We will not only have to recognize and take responsibility for the character defects which harm our partner and/or our relationship, we will also have to be ready and willing to let go of those character defects. As Kevin Griffin says in the quote above, we will have to be willing to make major changes with the help of our Higher Power if we are to let go of these character defects enough to sustain the viability of our relationships.

I have come to see being and remaining in a close relationship as probably the most powerful and most effective tool for building character we can find in sobriety. Although the many changes in our culture during the last forty years have made it much easier to end an unhappy marriage without dire financial or social consequences, learning how not only to stay in a long term relationship but also to thrive in it is a great source of positive self-esteem and contentment. When we do choose the character-building effort to make a relationship work over the short-term comfort of running away from pain and problems, we will indeed be more likely to find real happiness.