Step Twelve, Part Three---13th Stepping

It is only where "boy meets girl on A.A. campus," and love follows at first sight, that difficulties may develop. The prospective partners need to be solid A.A's and long enough acquainted to know that their compatibility at spiritual, mental, and emotional levels is a fact and not wishful thinking. They need to be sure as possible that no deep-lying emotional handicap in either will be likely to rise up under pressures to cripple them.
12 Steps and 12 Traditions

This is such important advice, and any good sponsor will be familiar with it. The 12-Step emphasis on avoiding any major changes in one's life during the first year as much as possible is particularly apropos when it comes to relationships---neither entering into a romantic relationship nor ending an ongoing relationship for the first year of recovery. Beginning or ending a relationship is highly stressful (although it doesn't feel that way at first when we have fallen in love and life seems so beautiful), and successful early recovery depends on keeping the stresses in one's life to a minimum. All of us with some time in the program have watched newcomers disregard this advice and the results have usually been poor if not disastrous.

And yet, and yet. My own experience flies in the face of this advice. Soon after I met S, realized I was (and am) an alcoholic/addict, and got clean and sober through Alcoholics Anonymous, S and I started dating seriously. We began living together when I had less than six months sobriety. 23 years later, we are still together, quite happily married, and our relationship is a cornerstone of my sobriety.


There are several reasons, it seems to me, why we were able to form a close relationship so early in my recovery that didn't threaten my sobriety. First, S had been involved in Alanon for many years before she met me and had learned how to detach with love when I would start to be a little squirrely. Second, I had been divorced for 8 years and had been celibate for almost a year before S and I met, so I was ready and emotionally available for a serious relationship once I got clean and sober. Finally, S told me she decided to take a chance on me despite my lack of time in the program because "you do your work." By that she meant that my willingness not only to get deeply involved in recovery, but also my willingness to use any other tools (personal therapy, couples counseling, reading, and talking with S) that would enhance both my recovery and my ability to be a responsible partner in our relationship.

It was not all smooth sailing by any means. I acted out in a dry drunk manner far too many times during the first year of our relationship. Several times I was convinced we weren't going to make it. But S's steadfastness and love for me, my deep love and admiration for her, and my willingness to take responsibility for my crazy behavior and seek to change it kept us together through the difficult times. Looking back, I have come to believe that my recovery has occurred because of our relationship during my early sobriety, not in spite of it.

In his wonderful long-term study of alcoholic men (The Natural History of Alcoholism: Causes, Patterns, and Paths to Recovery), George Vaillant found that AA was by far the most frequent reason that the men in his study were able to get sober and remain sober. But he also found that "a new love relationship---unscarred by the mixture of guilt and multiple psychic wounds that alcoholics inflict upon those whom they love--becomes valuable in maintaining abstinence."

That has certainly been true for me. Although S knows all about my drinking and using and the many problems it caused me and others close to me, she has never experienced me being drunk and/or loaded. There is no guilt for me to carry because of multiple psychic wounds inflicted on S before I got clean and sober. As a result, it has been much easier for our relationship to remain "current," so long as I practice the 10th Step, consciously taking my inventory and making prompt amends when I am wrong.

So I can't say that getting involved in a new love relationship in early recovery is always a mistake, is always a serious threat to continued sobriety. Most of the time, staying out of new relationships until a solid foundation of recovery has been built is excellent advice. This is especially true about relationships formed between two people new to recovery. Both of them lack the emotional stability and the relationship skills to make a partnership work. The odds of being able to achieve a good relationship are very low, while the odds of one or both of them going back out to drinking and using are very high. But if we meet someone who loves us, sees the person we can become provided we take our recovery seriously and work very hard to change, and can stay fairly balanced and detached whenever we momentarily fall down in our efforts, then I agree with Vaillant's findings that a new love interest can be a core part of our successful path to recovery.