Step Eleven, Part One---Self-Forgetting

He (St. Francis) hoped, God willing, that he might be able to find some of these treasures, too. This he would try to do by what he called self-forgetting. What did he mean by "self-forgetting" and how did he propose to accomplish that?

He thought it better to give comfort than to receive it; better to understand than to be understood; better to forgive than to be forgiven.
12 Steps and 12 Traditions


Learning the way of self-forgetting is a key aspect of learning how to create a happy, delightful relationship in recovery. Mary has been learning that way this past year. When she first came to see me, she was four months clean and sober. She spent most of her time in the beginning talking about how awful her life was---her ex-husband seemed to go out of his way to make her life miserable, her teenage sons chose to live with her ex and seemed to side with him, her job as a teacher was exhausting and filled with petty annoyances, and she felt tired much of the time. Mary had remarried, but she was disappointed that her new husband wasn't able to fix her problems and make life better.

As Mary attended AA meetings, worked the steps with her sponsor, and began to awaken spiritually, she realized that her new husband was suffering from problems in his life. Approaching 50, he began to develop some serious health issues at the same time that his company was downsizing, leaving him increasingly anxious about being laid off and uncertain about finding another comparable job at his age if that happened. When Mary and her husband sat down to dinner, Mary began to inquire about how his day had been rather than launching into a long monologue about how dreadful her day had been. If her husband wasn't feeling well or had had a stressful day on the job, she moved to hug and comfort him. As she did this, she came to realize that she wasn't feeling quite so unhappy about her own life, which no longer seemed as awful as it had seemed when she was 120 days clean and sober.

At the same time, she came to realize that her teenage sons needed to be close to their dad, that this was a normal stage of their development. As she came to this realization, she was able to forgive them for their "abandonment" of her. Increasingly free of her resentment and anger toward them, she found herself developing a more positive relationship with them, enjoying whatever contact there was while also being grateful for having more time to spend with her new husband doing things they both enjoyed.

Mary also began to understand that her ex-husband was not intentionally trying to make her life miserable, but was trying to cope with feelings of being overwhelmed by being the custodial parent of 3 teenage boys who required much more parenting than he had realized when he was married to Mary and could leave much of the daily parenting tasks to her. With this new understanding, Mary no longer took her ex's behavior so personally, and could even feel some compassion for his struggle to learn how to be an effective hands-on parent. And as Mary conveyed her understanding of his difficulties to him, her ex began to express his appreciation and admiration for all the things she had done to parent her sons that he had always taken for granted.

In the end, following a spiritual path and developing the art of self-forgetting are what successful relationships in recovery are all about. As long as we focus on ourselves, on what we must have, on what we don't like, we are caught up in ego and unlikely to develop a satisfactory intimate relationship. It is when we forget the self, seek to comfort, forgive, and understand our partner, and think in terms of we rather than me that we begin to experience all the wondrous delights of joining our life with another human being in a relationship in recovery.