Self-Hate and Relationships

When I saw that Ed was coming in this morning, I had to remind myself to sit with him from a place of compassion and equanimity. A recovering Valium addict, he suffers from so much self-doubt and self-hate that I have to remind myself not to fall into agreement with his negative views about himself and his life. Unfortunately it looks like Ed's wife is not having much success in maintaining a positive view about Ed and about their marriage. He reported that she had a "meltdown" recently in which she stormed out of the house saying, "I hate living here!"

It is very difficult to be in an intimate relationship with someone who is full of self-hate. Sometimes it feels as though all the oxygen in the room has been burned up by their self-doubt and self-contempt. This is particularly true when all efforts to be loving and supportive are met with statements about what a loser oneself is and how impossible it is to change one's negative outlook.

I label as self-hate that inner voice that calls us names ("You stupid idiot! How could you be so stupid?"), reminds us of our flaws ("you're not very outgoing, smart, careful, etc., etc."), tells us what others are thinking about us ("they think you're a failure"), instills fear in us ("something bad will happen if you don't finish this in time"), and makes a case against us ("you're never going to be successful because you are too afraid to take risks".) That voice is extraordinarily powerful and tenacious, willing to say anything to maintain its position of control.

This inner critical voice has its origins in the first years of childhood when our sense of who we are is being formed and we are utterly dependent on the care and support of others. It begins when our caretakers and other people important to our survival tell us that we are not living up to their expectations in some way. They may say it directly, "You're a bad girl for saying no." Or we may take it personally and believe we are not meeting their expectations when the people upon whom we depend for our survival seem not to notice or appreciate us. Whatever the actual experiences are, they create a feeling of shame, a feeling that who we are is not OK. The "inner critic" is born and grows stronger each time we listen to the hateful words it directs at us.

There is one thing to know about this voice of self-hate that is most important: IT IS NOT YOU! The best thing to do with that voice is to learn to recognize it, observe it, and NOT identify with it. The more we believe it or argue with it, the more energy we give to its nastiness and ugliness. When we bring our attention back to our breath and simply watch the voice without trying to resist or letting ourselves feel bad, the voice begins to lose its power because it can only gain energy by our participation in its hateful game.

On the other hand, when you hear your partner speaking with that voice about him- or herself, it is helpful to raise some objections. Challenge its unloving treatment of your partner---"It's not OK for you to be so mean to someone I love so much." Tell that voice that you know from firsthand experience that your partner is not the person that voice says he or she is. Learn ways to help your partner disidentify with what that cruel, unloving voice is saying. Most importantly, remember that the voice of self-hate, yours or your partner's, loses its power in the presence of loving-kindness.

Having to be right during an argument with a partner is a sure sign that the voice of self-hate is lurking in the background. Insisting on being right is a way of trying to deflect the inner critic's voice, of avoiding the painful feelings of shame and self-doubt. But demanding that our partner acknowledge we are right and he/she is wrong never works--it only promotes a defensive response by our partner.

Fortunately for those of us in recovery, Step 10 addresses this issue directly when it tells us "when (not if) we (are) wrong, we promptly admit it." Letting go of needing to be right and of projecting our own bad feelings onto our partner is an effective way of de-escalating conflicts. Taking responsibility for our behavior also often has the virtue of leading our partner to think about their part in the issue and admit where they have been unskillful.

It is important, however, not to let Step 10 become a tool for the voice of self-hate to beat us up. Admitting we made a mistake, that we were unskillful in some way, does not mean we are stupid, defective, or bad. It means that we are human, and is a good reminder that we work toward "spiritual progress, not perfection."

Equanimity and Compassion in Relationships

We talked about Step 12 in my step-study home group this morning. Much of the meeting focused on sponsorship and how to be a good sponsor when the person we are sponsoring doesn't stay clean and sober or doesn't follow suggestions. Bonnie, who has several years of sobriety, talked about feeling some regret as a sponsor since none of the people who had asked her to sponsor them had continued working with her. Rita, who has many years of sobriety, talked about gently letting someone go recently who continued to relapse and was unwilling to work the steps--Rita said her life is simply too busy right now to find the time to work with someone who isn't very motivated to stay sober and work the program.

Both Bonnie and Rita emphasized that they tried to view the "failings" of these newcomers from a place of compassion and equanimity. They made an effort not to see themselves as right and the newcomers as wrong. They recognized that the newcomers were simply not ready for whatever reasons to accept and work with them as sponsors.

Dan, who has more than 20 years of recovery, then went on to talk about how he had used sponsorship in the first decade of his recovery as a way to "collect AA trophies." He came to realize that by doing so he was elevating himself to someone who had a "superior" recovery program. As a result he lost sight of the reality that he and the people he sponsored are equals. Now he no longer formally sponsors people, but makes an effort to be open and available to talk as an equal to anyone who seeks him out to talk about their drinking and efforts to quit.

I see all of these people as bringing compassion and equanimity to their work with others. They experience compassion for the suffering the newcomer is experiencing and they see how the newcomers are just like themselves in wanting to be happy and avoid suffering. They understand how the deepest longings and fears of the newcomer are the same longings and fears they still experience no matter how many years of recovery they have.

Compassion and equanimity are essential for the health of all intimate relationships. My own experience in my relationship with S and my work with couples has thoroughly convinced me that it is the nature of close relationships to open old wounds over and over again. And it is not just my wounds; it is my partner's wounds as well. Practicing compassion and equanimity when dealing with these wounds keeps them from festering to the point where they contaminate the entire relationship and destroy it.

I recently read a wonderful article about compassion and equanimity in a Buddhist magazine, Shambhala Sun. In it, the author writes the following:
Everyone, just like me, wishes to have happiness, and everyone, just like me, wishes to avoid suffering. Just like me, everyone wants to be loved, to be safe and healthy, to be comfortable and at ease. And just like me, no one wants to feel afraid or inadequate, no one wants to be sick, lonely, or depressed.
When we are angry and dissatisfied with our partners, remembering how this quote is true for them can help us let go of the belief that our pain and unhappiness is somehow more important than theirs.

Remembering the fundamental humanity we share with our partner allows us to let go of our judgments and self-righteous complaints about their attitude and behavior. Keeping in mind that we and our partners are equals makes it much easier to let go of resentments about what they have or have not done. Bringing a compassionate attitude toward not only their unskillful behavior, but our own unskillful behavior as well, helps restore the love that brought us together in the first place. And expanding that compassionate stance to everyone in the world, everyone, further opens up the spiritual awakening that Step 12 talks about.

A Celebration

S and I celebrated 21 years of marriage yesterday. Being in recovery has been essential to being married that long, and being married that long has been essential to being in recovery. They are inextricably connected and cannot be separated from each other.

I got into recovery because of S. She taught me about the disease of addiction. She taught me about the need for abstinence from all addictive substances. She has always supported my recovery.

Our involvement in recovery made it possible for us to get married. It has enabled us to stay married. Staying clean and sober, being actively involved in 12-Step programs, and talking to each other about the recovery process has been a vital to our marriage. Time and again working the steps and going to meetings has enabled us to work through the inevitable difficulties of living in an intimate relationship with each other.

Being married has been central to my ongoing sobriety. I have turned to S rather than alcohol and pot for support, comfort, and understanding over and over again when I have been upset.
The importance of staying together has always brought me up short when I find myself thinking that I sure would like to find out what those microbrews taste like or how much fun it would be to get stoned and go on some adventure. The joy and the delight of being so close to S have replaced the miserableness and the unhappiness of being so isolated when I was drinking and using.

So on this second day of our 22nd year together, I am deeply grateful to S and our relationship for my ongoing recovery and deeply grateful to AA, my home group, my sponsor, and all the people practicing recovery for my ongoing marriage.

Control and Relationships

Even though you try to put people under some control, it is impossible. You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the best way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

This has been one of my favorite quotes since I first read it more than 30 years ago. It continues to form one of my core beliefs about healthy relationships---the more we try to control our partner in a relationship, the more unhealthy that relationship becomes. But, as the quote indicates, letting go of trying to control a partner does not mean ignoring him or her--that is the worst policy and usually leads to the demise of the relationship.

Control is about trying to force or manipulate a partner to speak or act in a certain way. It is about demanding or expecting a partner to be different than the way he or she is. It is about blaming a partner for our unhappiness. It is about criticizing a partner for being wrong, being stupid, not paying attention, etc. It is about threatening a partner with dire consequences if he or she doesn't do what we demand. It is not about love. What is more, it doesn't work. Instead it leads to an unhealthy relationship, filled with resentment and a desire to retaliate in kind.

Alanon has another phrase for what makes a relationship healthy in recovery---detaching with love. Detachment does not mean ignoring a partner. It does not mean letting go of awareness and concern about what and how a partner is feeling. It does not mean being silent when there is some dissatisfaction about the relationship. It does not mean becoming so separate that both partners are traveling down parallel tracks that never meet and never connect.

One of my early teachers said that he believed the essential feature of a healthy relationship was letting go of expectations while remaining connected. Detaching with love is another way of describing that. We give our partners a large, spacious emotional meadow where they can thrive and we watch them with affection and care. We accept them as they are, not as we think they ought to be or as we would wish them to be.

The word "watch" is tricky here. Alanon rightly emphasizes that playing detective, watching an alcoholic-addict partner's every move to see whether or not they are drinking/using or trying to head off any unwanted behavior, is not helpful to us or our partners. Alanon encourages members to place their focus on learning how to take care of themselves, since that has often gotten lost during the years of being partners with an actively using alcoholic or addict. Alanon also teaches us that focusing all our attention on our partner in an effort to fix him or her usually helps our partner avoid taking responsibility for actions and their consequences.

Sometimes watching a partner in the way I am describing leads to the conclusion that the partnership is not a healthy one and is unlikely to become healthy because of the partner's attitudes and behavior. When efforts to bring this observation to the partner's attention are continually met with denial, defensiveness, anger and blame, detaching with love in this kind of situation usually means letting go of the relationship. But this letting go is not a last-ditch attempt to control or force a partner to become what we want him/her to be---it is recognition that the time has come to detach completely from the relationship and to move on with our own life. We may continue to watch our partner, especially if there are children involved, but it will be from afar.

Step Eleven's emphasis on prayer and meditation is excellent advice for learning to watch a partner without ignoring or trying to control him/her. We learn to watch our thoughts and impulses to make our partners behave the way we think they should, and we find the space not to act on those thoughts. We learn to become more aware of the suffering our partners create for themselves and others without adding to their suffering or ours.

12-Step programs describe this process as one of letting go and letting God. Buddhism describes it as being mindful and practicing equanimity. Both of them recognize that trying to control our partner only makes matters worse.

The Illusion of "I" and the Reality of "We"

I was astonished by the endless, often contradictory thoughts which appeared when I first began meditating (they are still endless and often contradictory after many years of meditating, but that no longer astonishes me.) I soon began to wonder who "I" was. Was I the person making all kinds of internal comments and evaluations about everyone and everything around me? Was I the addict who loved getting high and going for a walk in the woods? Was I the the angry guy who felt resentful when others didn't drive the way I thought they should? Or was I the man sitting quietly on a cushion with nothing much going on in his mind?

From moment to moment, who I was shifted from thought to thought, never graspable and never observable. I was not my body; it could be hurting one day and feeling no pain the next. I was not my feelings; who I was when sad was not who I was when happy. I was not my thoughts; they appeared out of nowhere and then quickly disappeared only to be replaced by other thoughts that had nothing to do with the first ones. The more I tried to discover who or what "I" is, the more elusive it became.

The Buddhists say "I" is a delusion. Seeing the world through the eyes of "I", "me", and "mine" is the major source of our suffering. 12-Step programs say that "ego deflation" is essential to the path of recovery. It is the key to letting go of harmful behaviors and accepting the world as it is rather than demanding it be the way we want it to be. Even philosophers of computer technology talk about "I" being an illusion. Douglas Hofstadter says in his new book, I am a Strange Loop, The "I"--yours, mine, everyone's--is a tremendously effective illusion...

Relationships are not about "I". They are not about "me and you". They are about "we".
The first word in the 12 Steps is "we". "I" and "you" do not appear in any of the steps. Nor do "me", "mine", or "your" appear in those steps. That is because, as one of the many 12-Step slogans puts it, "We can do what I can't."

Every relationship has 3 elements: him, her, and the relationship itself (sometimes it might be him, him, and the relationship or her, her, and the relationship.) When I am working with a couple, my relationship is with the relationship rather than either partner. I have learned both in my marriage and in my work that the relationship and its needs are every bit as important as the needs of each partner. In fact, it is often as important to consider the relationship's needs first if it is to survive and prosper.

A session a few months ago provides a good example of how sometimes one or both partners must consider the well-being of their relationship when making an individual decision. Adam and Marie have been married a little more than a year. It is a second marriage for both of them, they each have children from prior marriages, and both are fairly new to recovery

Adam's ex-partner, who is not in recovery, does not fully accept Marie as his new primary partner. Recently, this ex-partner asked a favor from Adam that seemed innocuous to him, and he readily granted the favor. But Marie saw the ex-partner's request as a ploy to maintain favored status with Adam and was quite hurt and angry that he had granted the favor.

In almost every second marriage, there comes a moment when one or both partners need to demonstrate to an earlier partner (and sometimes to the children as well) that their primary loyalty is to the new relationship. At first, Adam couldn't see why Marie was making such a big deal about the favor. But as we worked our way through the session, he came to realize that this so-called minor favor had enormous implications for his relationship with Marie. Adam saw that it was time to draw an unmistakable boundary making it clear to everyone that his primary allegiance is to the "we" that was created when he married Marie.

When N and I married many years ago, I read a paragraph from a wonderful little book entitled Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. That paragraph is even more pertinent today after 20+ years of marriage, so I will close this post with that quote--
Now I would like to talk about our zazen (meditation) posture. When we cross our legs like this, even though we have a right leg and a left leg, they have become one. The position expresses the oneness of duality: not two, and not one. This is the most important teaching: not two, and not one. Our body and mind are not two and not one. If you think your body and mind are two, that is wrong; if you think they are one, that is also wrong. Our body and mind are both two and one. We usually think that if something is not one, it is more than one; if it is not singular, it is plural. But in actual experience, our life is not only plural, but also singular. Each one of us is both dependent and independent.
Substitute the word "relationship" for "life" in the next to last sentence, and this paragraph describes the reality of a healthy relationship.

Pain, the Conditioned Mind, and Awareness

D and K came to me for help with their relationship. D has been the identified alcoholic in the marriage. K has been the identified co-alcoholic. They have both identified themselves as a couple in recovery--each of them has been active in 12-Step programs for many years.

As so often happens, marriage counseling has brought a major unidentified issue to the fore. In this case, that unidentified issue is K's alcoholic drinking. After weeks of denying that reality, K agreed several days ago to go to treatment after K was fired for being drunk at work.

D is emotionally out of control, saying "How can I stay married to an alcoholic?" This seemingly outrageous statement (what about the reality that K is also married to an alcoholic?) makes sense in light of D's childhood. D's mother was an alcoholic who abandoned D and her other children. D is terrified that K's alcoholism means K will abandon D and their children.

Despite years of sobriety and recovery, D has no serenity at the moment. The activation of intense emotional pain stemming from D's childhood abandonment is overriding D's ability to think and act rationally. D wants to get a lawyer and file for divorce immediately, believing that will remove the pain.

D is totally caught up in what Buddhist's call the conditioned mind. The conditioned mind begins to form in childhood as a child develops beliefs about him/herself and the world. These beliefs combine with feelings and behaviors to create various subpersonalities, which allow the child to adapt and survive. When a situation arises that feels similar to the childhood experience which created a particular subpersonality, that subpersonality takes over, hijacks the ego, and demands immediate attention.

Both Buddhism and 12-Step programs suggest a practical tool for keeping this process from wreaking havoc in our lives. That tool is meditation. Meditation teaches us how to meet pain with awareness. Rather than trying to avoid the pain by distracting ourselves or trying to find something which will remove the pain, we meet the pain in meditation by paying close attention to it. We learn to observe it; and in doing so, learn about an accepting, conscious, compassionate part of ourselves. The Buddhists call this part Buddha nature, and 12-Step programs refer to it as our Higher Power.

As Jon Kabat-Sinn, founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program has written, if you move into pure awareness in the midst of pain, even for the tiniest moment, your relationship with your pain is going to shift right in that very moment. It is impossible for it not to change because the gesture of holding it, even if not sustained for long, even for a second or two, already reveals its larger dimensionality. And that shift in your relationship with the experience gives you more degrees of freedom in your attitude and in your actions in a given situation, whatever it is...even if you don't know what to do.

So right now I am encouraging D to spend a lot of time using Step Eleven's guidelines to help
D return to center. D doesn't have to make any decisions about the future of the marriage at this time. D doesn't have to try to figure out where the relationship is going. What D does need to do is to find an emotionally calm place and give K the space to come to terms with being an alcoholic and achieving sobriety. More will be revealed.

Mindfulness, Addiction, and Relationships

After meeting S in the early summer of 1983 and hearing her talk about the disease concept of addiction, I began to realize that my use of pot was addictive, not recreational. By mid-summer I had made the decision to stop using, but did not believe that I was actually an addict. I remained abstinent for about 60 days, got stoned, and then stayed abstinent for another 60 days.

In the meantime, S and I began a relationship. We were seeing each other almost daily by the early fall. One day in early November we were out on a Sunday drive when S casually mentioned that she believed recovery from addiction depended on ceasing use of all mind-altering substances. I was not ready to accept this. I was not ready to quit drinking. Instead, I ended our relationship within a month.

I was miserable through the holidays. I didn't feel much better in January and February. But I was determined not to give up my beer before bed every evening nor my bottle of good wine on the weekend. I did, however, continue to meditate every morning for 20 to 30 minutes.

I had several teeth pulled in mid-March. The dentist gave me half a dozen Tylenol 3 for use when the anesthetic wore off. He directed me to take 2 every four hours. I consumed all of them within an hour of getting home, went out to buy a 6-pack of beer, which I drank within a couple of hours, and then went out to buy some pot from a street dealer.

Upon awakening, I knew I was (and am) an alcoholic-addict. There was no doubt in my mind about the truth of that realization. And there was no doubt in my mind that abstinence from all mind-altering substances was the only way I was going to recover my sanity. And, finally, there was no doubt in my mind that I loved S deeply and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

At least, I had the wisdom to wait a few weeks before calling her to see if she would be willing to resume the relationship. During those few weeks, my heart would say yes each morning in meditation when I would check in to see if I still felt the same about her. Although I was ready to return to the relationship we had had 6 months earlier, S had the wisdom to suggest that we take it slowly. We did, and in doing so, we laid the foundation for a marriage built to last.

Meditation played a critical role in awakening to the reality of my addiction. Meditation is about bringing attention to the contents of our mind, about being mindful. As we sit looking at our thoughts and feelings with open, nonjudgmental attention, we begin to see truths about ourselves and the world about us which are obscured by our ceaseless judgments and evaluations. The mindfulness we cultivate by meditating creates the conditions for significant transformations.

Just as 12-Step programs use the acronym HALT* to help someone in recovery avoid relapse, Western mindfulness retreats use the acronym RAIN to remind meditators about the 4 basic principles of mindful transformation. R is for Recognition, of seeing what is happening in the moment. When I recognized the reality of my addiction, I stepped out of denial. When I recognized the truth of my love for S, I could no longer pretend I didn't want a close relationship with her.

A is for Acceptance. Acceptance makes it possible for us to open to and begin to work with the reality we have just recognized. Once I accepted the reality of being an alcoholic-addict, the source of many of the problems in my life was clear and I could work effectively to change them. Accepting my deep feelings for S gave me the courage to go back and ask for a chance to develop a healthy relationship with her.

I is for Investigation. I had begun investigating the nature of my addiction after my first meeting with S. I read several books about the disease concept of addiction. I answered yes to too many of the questions about my use of pot (but didn't want to ask those questions about my alcohol use.) Once I awoke to the reality of my addiction, I could investigate my feelings about S more clearly. They were strong, they were real, and they didn't go away.To this day, investigating the feelings that come up in relation to S has been critical to the health of our relationship.

And N is for Non-identification. An article in the New York Times several weeks ago described some research in which students were asked to recall a bad memory, whether an argument or a failed exam. Half the students were asked to recall it in the first person (e.g., "I failed my calculus exam.") The other half were asked to recall it in the third person, as if they were watching themselves in a movie. The researchers found that those recalling bad memories in the third person were significantly less upset by them, which gave them the ability to focus more on the why and how of what made them upset.

This is what happens during meditation. As we recognize, accept, and investigate our thoughts and feelings, we gain some distance from them. When I awoke to the reality of being an alcoholic-addict, I was not overwhelmed by feelings of shame and self-hate. Doctor A cannot drink or use pot without losing control, but that reality does not constitute the entire reality of who Doctor A is. When S and I get into an argument, the argument comes to an end when I am able to step back from my anger, disidentify with it, and remember how much I love her. Letting go of "I," "me" and "mine" always makes for a better relationship.

Meditation is about developing mindfulness. And mindfulness is about using recognition, acceptance, investigation, and non-identification to transform our difficulties. These are invaluable tools both for recovery from addiction and for relationships in recovery. They are universal tools, belonging to no particular religion or spiritual path. They do not conflict with the 12-Step emphasis on turning our will and our lives over to a Higher Power. Most importantly, they work.


*HALT stands for not getting too Hungry, too Angry, too Lonely, or too Tired

My Story Part II--Spiritual Beginnings

I grew up in the Fifties going to a quasi-fundamentalist church every Sunday with my parents. By the time I was 14, I wanted no part of that and stopped going. For the next 20 years, religion and spirituality played no part in my life. I felt no interest and saw no need for anything spiritual.

That began to change when I was in my mid-thirties after a series of experiences while I was stoned. One Saturday afternoon I fell into a trance out in the woods and felt at one with the universe. Several weeks later, I was sitting stoned in the park and felt the ground begin to shake--the next day I read that China and India had begun firing at each other in the Himalayas about the time I felt the ground shaking. A month later, stoned and drunk, I stood transfixed by the incredible beauty of the early morning sun shining through an old growth forest in a state park on the Oregon coast.

These experiences opened up a hunger for more of them. I spent five more years trying to recreate them with pot. That never happened. I had been given a glimpse of something, but I didn't understand what it was. It was a spiritual opening.

Six months later my emotional world collapsed. My girlfriend left, saying she no longer wanted to put up with my use of pot and alcohol. I was alone and in deep emotional pain. Soon I wasn't sleeping or eating as I slid into a major depression. By the end of three months I was beginning to feel suicidal.

And then one day I spotted a book in my supervisor's office--The Myth of Freedom written by a Tibetan Buddhist named Chogyam Trungpa. For some reason, I picked it up and began reading. In the midst of my insanity, his writing seemed the sanest thing I had read in some time. (I didn't know then that Trungpa was an unrecovered alcoholic-addict himself--so maybe that's why his writing seemed so sane to this alcoholic-addict.)

I started meditating every morning. Slowly I began to feel better, sleeping through the night and regaining my normal appetite. I read other Buddhist writings, finding a wisdom and understanding about life for which I hadn't even realized I was hungering. The spiritual opening from a year earlier began to grow.

But, of course, as I began to feel better, my denial about my addiction remained intact. I continued to get stoned and drunk, seeing no contradiction between my craving for substance-created altered states and the Buddha's teachings about craving as a major source of suffering. In fact, I often believed I understood the Buddha's teachings most profoundly when I was stoned.

Nonetheless, the seed of spirituality had been planted. I am still meditating more than 25 years later. I believe it was my meditating and reading Buddhist literature that prepared me for my awakening from denial one morning in 1984, understanding I was (and still am) an alcoholic-addict, and making a decision to turn my pot and alcohol-conditioned mind over to the power of the Buddha's teachings. And, I'm convinced, it has been this spiritual practice that led me to N and that has sustained our relationship over the years.

So over the next month or so I want to turn my attention in this blog to the topic of Buddhism and relationships in recovery.

A Distancer-Pursuer Relationship in Early Recovery

D and J came to see me when D had been clean and sober for six months. D had tried to quit drinking and drugging a number of times, but he had never gone without alcohol or drugs for more than a month until he finally surrendered and began attending AA regularly. D and J had been on the proverbial pink cloud for the first three months of his sobriety, believing they were well on the road to healing their relationship. But after that pink cloud dissipated, as it inevitably does, D and J found themselves falling back into the old unhappy pattern of their relationship. D began to spend more and more time either away from the house or holed up with his computer, while J angrily demanded that D be more involved with her and the household. By the time they got to my office, both of them were feeling hopeless about their relationship.
At first J had been thrilled about D's involvement in AA. She was happy he was attending meetings regularly and going out for coffee after the meeting with his new sober friends. She had not gotten involved in Alanon because she saw D as the one who had problems that needed fixing. She believed it was her job to make sure that D went to meetings regularly and stayed clean and sober.
J also expected D to be much more emotionally available and involved with her after he stopped getting drunk and loaded. When that didn't happen, her protest took the form of angry tears and statements that D was selfish and uncaring about her needs for love and support. Even when D brought her flowers to show he cared, she interpreted his effort as an effort to appease her, to "get me off his back."
D responded to J's distress and need for closeness with either pity or disdain. He had bought flowers for her when he was feeling sorry for her and wanting to show her he did love her, but that feeling changed to disdain when she failed to thank him properly. He self-righteously claimed he was doing all he could do just to stay clean and sober. Indeed, "her whining about how I don't pay attention to her gets me upset and just makes it necessary for me to go to more meetings!"
D and J were embroiled in a classic distancer-pursuer relationship. The more D was unavailable, the more J angrily pursued him. The more J pursued D, the more he made himself unavailable. So round and round they went, each blaming the other for all the problems in the relationship.
The foundation for this kind of relationship had been laid long before D and J met and got involved with each other. D had grown up in a family with a distant, alcoholic father and an angry unavailable mother. Early on he had learned to isolate as a way of coping and comforting himself. By the time he was a teenager he saw himself as a strong, self-reliant guy who didn't depend on others and didn't need close emotional ties. His use of alcohol and drugs only enhanced his denial of a need for closeness.
J had grown up in a family with an angry, verbally abusive addicted father and an unhappy mother, who alternated between intrusive involvement with J and bouts of depression when she was completely unavailable. J took on the role of being a compulsive caregiver in the family trying to keep her father from blowing up and her mother from falling into depression. J grew up believing that she could only find acceptance by gaining the romantic approval of others whom she valued more highly than she valued herself.
It was no surprise, then, when D and J fell back into their old pattern after several months of D's sobriety. My primary job as a marital counselor was to encourage J to get involved with Alanon, where she would learn how to detach from her pursuer role, and to support D getting a sponsor and working the steps as a way of learning how to be more dependent on others for help. My office became a safe holding environment for them to work through basic issues such as clearing up their financial chaos and working together as co-parents. Developing a more intimate emotional and sexual relationship would come later.

The Ninth Step and the Process of Healing Relationships

W used his time during a couples session today to do a Ninth Step with his wife. It was an excellent Ninth Step. He didn't just say something like, "I did a lot of bad things and I'm sorry." He had reviewed his Fourth Step and had given a lot of thought about the character defects that step revealed. He then thought about the specific ways in which he had acted out some of those character defects, recounted them to his wife without defending or rationalizing his behavior, apologized for his hurtful actions, and committed himself to cease continuing them in the future.

W has been clean and sober for more than a decade, so this Ninth Step was not about all the harmful things he had done to the marriage when he was drinking. Instead it was about the many ways in which he has not been present to his wife and children during his years of sobriety. He was clear about how this emotional distance has damaged his marriage and the relationship with his children. He recognized the need for significant changes and recommitted to continuing working toward those changes in the future.

When he was finished, he waited expectantly for his wife to accept his amends, forgive him, and signal a readiness to move forward. She did not meet his expectations. She thanked him for making the amends and acknowledged that he has begun making more of an effort to be present and involved. But then she went on to say that she anticipated feeling a lot of pressure from W to "get over it" and be done with her hurt and anger. She tearfully said she just isn't ready to do that.

This is such a common situation for couples in recovery. 12-Step programs stress the importance of "cleaning up the wreckage of the past" by doing an inventory, recognizing and changing character defects, and making amends. Unfortunately, many people in recovery expect that the wreckage will be cleaned up by the time they have completed making the amends. They are often frustrated and impatient with their partners and children who aren't miraculously freed of their hurt and anger as soon as sincere amends have been made.

During the session we talked about how healing relationships is a long process, not a specific event. Making amends and taking responsibility for one's hurtful behavior is an essential part of that process, but it is still only a part of it. Living the amends by becoming a more loving, caring, and available partner is also a vital aspect of repairing relationships in recovery. Another critical aspect of the healing process is recognizing, accepting and being willing to listen to a partner's need to talk about their pain and frustration, oftentimes repeatedly, until those feelings are resolved. So although the Ninth Step is the last of the six "action" steps in 12-Step programs, it is also usually just an early step in the long, complex process of restoring a relationship to sanity. It is important to keep that in mind when making or receiving a Ninth Step amends.

Step 8 and Repair Attempts

Hearing something new in one of the steps is one of the things that keeps me coming back to AA after being clean and sober for more than 20 years. This morning N, who was celebrating his 20th AA birthday, read the following words about Step 8 from the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions: our defective relations with other human beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes, including alcoholism... So more than 50 years ago, Bill W recognized what has become clear to people who study attachment---alcoholism and addiction are a form of attachment disorder, a response to our defective relationships with other human beings.

N went on to talk about how he sees Steps 8 and 9 as tools for repairing relationships, especially close relationships. He said that after 20 years of sobriety, he has learned how to avoid messing up relationships with coworkers, casual acquaintances, and other people he meets outside his home during the course of the day. But he still finds himself getting into quarrels often with his partner and his son. When that happens, he uses Step 8 as a way of a taking a look at his part in the quarrel and then taking responsibility for that part. Making amends for his role in the difficulty begins the process of repairing whatever damage has happened in the relationship.

N's experience of needing to use Steps 8 and 9 most often in his closest relationships is true of all of us. We are not saints. We are not going to be perfect in such relationships because our partners, our children, and our parents tend to evoke our strongest emotions, both positive and negative. As a result, we will find ourselves involved in conflict with those closest to us, especially our partners, over and over again. Thus we need tools for repairing and healing our intimate relationships.

Marital researcher, John Gottman, has found from studying thousands of couples that marital satisfaction does not depend on the absence of conflict, but on what couples do when conflict arises. Couples in satisfactory marriages do two things when they are quarreling. First, one of them will make an effort to deescalate the negative process that is developing and, second, the other partner accepts this bid in some kind of positive manner.

These behaviors, which Gottman labels repair attempts, are any statement or action that works to keep negative emotions from spiraling out of control. Acknowledging our responsibility for our piece of the argument and making an amends is certainly an example of this. But Gottman points out that there are all kinds of effective repair attempts. A smile, a friendly touch, a humorous (but not sarcastic!) comment are also ways to reduce tension and make things better.

Gottman goes on to say that all couples, even the most unhappy ones, use repair attempts. What is equally important is the response to a bid to repair the relationship. In happy marriages, couples not only make bids frequently and easily in order to dampen the negativity, but they also accept each other's bids. In unhappy marriages, however, partners do not accept the effort to move away from negativity. Instead, partner B responds negatively to Partner A's expression of dissatisfaction, and they are soon locked into escalating conflict. Both partners come away from such quarrels even more unhappy and more discouraged about their relationship.

Steps 8 and 9 represent a powerful attempt to make things better when we and our partner have become unhappy with each other. But it is also incumbent upon those of us in recovery to be on the lookout for our partner's repair attempts and to respond positively to them. When we do so, we will find that we are no longer caught up in the kind of defective relations that have been the cause of our woes. Instead we will find, as Bill W says at the end of his chapter on Step 8: this step is the beginning of the end of isolation from our fellows and from God.

A Miracle

Last night one of the members of my men's group celebrated his first year of recovery from sex addiction. He was also celebrating the survival of his marriage. Both his year of recovery and the survival of his marriage are miracles. A year ago none of us would have been willing to take a bet on either outcome.

P is a middle-aged professional with a lovely wife and two young adult children. He has been quite successful in his work and lives a luxurious life. Everyone saw him as a great guy--good husband, loving father, caring of others.

You can imagine the shock when he confessed to us about 18 months ago that he had been leading a secret life for several years. He had begun an affair several years earlier with a woman he had met on one of his business travels. They often traveled together. On several occasions she spent the night with him at his home when his wife was out of town.

P let us in on his secret after his wife found out about the other woman. He insisted to us and to his wife that he did not want to end the marriage and that he would end the affair immediately. Several weeks later, he confessed to us that he was still seeing his paramour because "I need to end it my way--I don't want to hurt her by leaving abruptly."

All of us knew he was headed for trouble, but P assured us he could bring the affair to an end without his wife being the wiser. He talked about how the secrecy and illicit nature of the relationship heightened his sexual excitement when he was with this woman. He knew he needed to end things with her if he really wanted to keep his marriage, but admitted how hard it was to let go of the relationship entirely.

Of course, everything blew up several months later when his wife found an article of clothing the other woman had left behind while she was out of town. His wife was livid, but said she wasn't ready to give up on the marriage even though their children and friends all advised her to throw him out immediately.

P surrendered. He called the other woman to tell her he would have no further contact with her. He has kept that promise. He entered therapy with a man well-versed in the power of sexual addiction. P acknowledged to this therapist that he had been leading a secret life for a long time, having been involved with a half dozen other women at various times in his past.
And, finally, P began attending Sexaholics Anonymous meetings on a regular basis. Through the program, he admitted how out of control his behavior had been and how unable he had been to control it.

P's wife is an extraordinary woman. She insisted that P tell her the truth about all his sexual acting out. And he did. Despite her enormous hurt and anger, she hung in there. There were several setbacks when P held back information out of fear of her reaction (it took P a while to understand that his wife was even more upset about his secrecy and dishonesty than about what he had done), but P and his wife were able to work through them. As P was celebrating his sexual sobriety anniversary last night he said that he feels closer and more deeply in love with his wife than he has at any time during their 25 years together.

So why has their marriage survived? How is it possible for P to feel that he and his wife are more deeply connected, emotionally and sexually, despite his compulsive sexual acting out?How can there be trust and openness in the face of such behavior?

I see a number of reasons. First, P totally surrendered to the reality of his addictive behavior and made a decision to do whatever it would take to recover from it. Second, both P and his wife did not try to deny, rationalize, minimize, or otherwise hide the truth of what had happened. Third, and most important, they turned toward each other again and again throughout this past year.

Although P's wife had to take a timeout from the relationship several times when she felt so overwhelmed by the knowledge of what P had done, she always turned back to him and the relationship. And P stayed present over and over again with his wife as she cried out in deep pain or lashed out in intense anger. Despite his strong feelings of guilt ("I know she's in such pain because of what I did") P did not become defensive nor did he try to shut down his wife's powerful emotions.

P has come to recognize that his sexual addiction was an attempt to fix "the hole in my soul." But no matter how exciting the affair was, the hole remained. It is only in the last year, as he has opened up entirely and let his wife all the way in, that the hole has begun to close. So long as he continues on this path of sexual sobriety, the hole will continue to heal.

King-Baby

My last treatment program supervisor once characterized himself as "King-Baby" before he got clean and sober. One moment he would behave in a grandiose manner, believing he was superior to everyone around him, demanding perfection from them, and acting as if he were entirely self-sufficient. But at another moment, filled with resentment and self-pity, he would be having a tantrum because he felt others were not responding positively to his demands.

Both the King and the Baby were defense mechanisms to cover up painful feelings of shame and low self-worth. The King and the Baby enabled him to deny his need for intimacy and attachment. As long as he continued to drink, his false self kept those painful feelings at bay.

Treatment and participation in AA provided a safe holding environment to manage such feelings when he no longer had alcohol to push them away. With the help of his sponsor and others in the program, he was able to contain the negative, destructive impulses which had done so much harm when he was drinking. But the feelings themselves did not go away.

That did not happen until he had been sober several years. Then he fell in love with a woman who was capable of being in a healthy and healing relationship. She admired and encouraged him. She valued his recovery. At the same time she was clear about her boundaries and her unwillingness to be treated badly by him.

This relationship was very healing for him. It gave him the opportunity to experience and internalize a positive sense of himself that had been lacking in his childhood. Although several fourth and fifth steps had given him an understanding of the reasons for his feelings of shame and inadequacy, this understanding did not change them. It was the emotional engagement with his wife that ultimately dissolved those feelings.

Over the years I have learned that insight is rarely, if ever, an agent of change. Indeed, I have come to conclude that insight is usually the result of change. And change comes only when a person is willing to take the risk of being emotionally engaged. When we are emotionally engaged with someone, our old patterns of attachment are activated. When that happens, we are presented with an opportunity for a new experience that can heal the old dysfunctional pattern. But we have to be willing to take the risk.

The Seventh Step, Listening, Feelings, and Relationships

I've just returned from a great meeting at my home group. It is a step study group, and today we were talking about Step 7. The person chairing the meeting is a guy who works for a major health care provider. He mans their emergency mental health phone five days a week.

He said he had found that what people most want when they call is to be heard without judgment. He has come to realize that nonjudgmental, fully present listening is the most helpful and healing thing he can do. I have found the same thing to be true in my relationship with S. When I listen with respect and acceptance to whatever she might be unhappy or upset about, we are able to deal with the issue in a positive manner. But when I interrupt, make judgments, give advice, or start talking about my own issues, we usually find ourselves falling into conflict and unhappiness with each other.

J also talked about applying that nonjudgmental listening to his own feelings. When he acknowledges them to himself and does not resist them, they usually pass within twenty to thirty minutes. But if he resists the feeling, telling himself it is unacceptable for whatever reason, or if he encourages the feeling by ruminating about it, then the feeling gets bigger and stays around much longer.

That sure hit home with me. Whenever I try to ignore or repress a feeling, I become increasingly less present to myself and others. This is especially true with S who always senses something is going on with me. I have learned over the years to take her seriously when she asks me, "What's going on?" Although my usual impulse is still to reply, "Nothing!", I know I need to start noticing and listening to what's going on inside and to talk to her about what I'm discovering. If I refuse to do that, our relationship goes downhill rapidly.

Indulging and wallowing in unhappy feelings doesn't lead to positive results, either. That only increases my internal critical voice which tells me how incompetent and wrong I am. When that happens, it's not long before I am withdrawn and hostile when S seeks contact with me.

So learning that my feelings and the thoughts that go with them are not character defects themselves has been essential both to my recovery and to a good relationship with S. Acknowledging the reality of whatever I'm feeling without holding S responsible for it and without beating myself up for having it leads to a good outcome. Denying what I'm feeling, blaming S for its existence, or telling myself I'm wrong and bad for having it are guaranteed to lead to a bad outcome. It is these behaviors that constitute some of the character defects I humbly ask my Higher Power to remove.

AA and Close Relationships

In my last post, I wrote that working the steps of AA was not enough to make it possible for me to be in a close relationship. I had to learn how to do that by being in a relationship with S.

But AA has been an essential part of that relationship. Without the program, S and I would not have been able to stay together long enough to learn how to achieve a mutually satisfactory marriage. Among other things, AA has served as a powerful holding environment for me. As I've struggled to learn how to be close, to handle conflict, to deal with uncomfortable feelings stirred up by the relationship, and to be a loving, caring partner, I have relied on my sponsors and members of my home group to support me. When I've felt out of control emotionally, going to meetings has always helped calm me down and regain some serenity. I've done the old ninety meetings in ninety days several times during the last twenty years when I felt like I couldn't handle things anymore.

Our neediness for unconditional love and acceptance often feels insatiable by the time we get to a 12-Step program. Most of us failed to get that in our families when we were young. As a result, most of us grew up with an inadequate capacity to form intimate attachments. The effect of our addictive behavior on others only made things worse. We come to sobriety desperately needing someone who will tell us to keep coming back no matter how crazy we act or feel.

Most of us are not capable of learning how to be emotionally close with a partner or significant other when we first get clean and sober. We feel so overwhelmed by our feelings that we often cannot even talk about them until we've got some months of sobriety. Our capacity to tolerate anxiety and/or depression is minimal. All of our energy and focus needs to go into staying sober.

So letting ourselves get attached to the program, experiencing the relief of being unconditionally accepted, of letting others love us until we can love ourselves is the best first step we can take in learning how to be in relationship while clean and sober. It can provide the secure base from which we can eventually learn how to make our intimate relationships work. And the program will always be there to encourage us to persevere when we screw up our partnerships as we inevitably will. Because making our relationships work is based on progress not perfection.

Models of Attachment and Relationships in Recovery

I started the process of becoming a marriage and family therapist thirty years ago. Went back to school to get a Masters in psych and did a marriage and family internship at a psychiatric hospital. There are no accidents about addiction because my internship was in an inpatient treatment program for drug addiction. But this place didn't believe that addiction is a primary disease which must be treated first before there's any hope of making positive changes in relationships. So we brought families and couples together and tried to treat the addictions that way. Surprise, surprise, no one ever made it into ongoing recovery and none of the relationship improvements survived more than a few months. The place did, however, bring my own addiction to pot and booze to full bloom---my dealer was a fellow staff member and getting high at staff parties was a given.

I got clean and sober when I finally accepted that my addiction to pot and booze was a disease. I accepted that I was powerless over the stuff and could readily see how unmanageable my life had become. My mom was addicted to opiate prescription drugs and both of her sisters drank alcoholically, so I could see where the genetic predisposition came from. With this new perspective I came to believe that relationship problems were a result of alcohol and drug addiction. Working the steps and clearing up the wreckage of the past would take care of those problems. Being restored to sanity would include being restored to satisfying relationships.

That's not what happened. Doing an inventory, seeing my character defects, and making amends were not enough. I had to learn how to be in a close relationship. I hadn't learned that in my family, and I hadn't learned that in my first marriage. In sobriety I realized my problems with relationships began long before my first drink.

I kept hearing the same thing at meetings. People talked about growing up in alcoholic families and never learning how to trust. A therapist who has worked with recovering women for years told me she has yet to meet one who was not sexually and/or physically abused as a child. Even the people who say they had a great childhood can't remember much of their childhood and are not able to provide much detail about what made life in their family so positive.

Our ability to form and maintain close relationships is impaired. Our problems began long before we picked up the first drink or smoked our first joint. The impairment began during the first few years of our lives when we failed to develop secure bonds with our parents. Some of us grew up anxiously preoccupied with our parent's availability and approval. Others of us came to believe that we were alright on on our own and didn't need our parents. And some of us wanted a connection with our parents but were afraid of negative consequences if we sought it. All of us developed an insecure model of attachment.

All human beings appear to be hard-wired to need the help of others to regulate their emotions during times of stress. People who grow up with parents who are attuned and appropriately responsive to them feel confident that their need for comfort and support will be available from people close to them when they are upset. As adults they expect their partners will be a safe haven when times are rough. They know they can rely on their partners as a secure base from which to go out and engage the world. They operate from a secure model of attachment.

We alcoholics and addicts lack that kind of attachment model. We don't feel confident we can always count on our partner for comfort and support. The relationship with our partner does not serve as a secure base from which we operate out in the world. We either deny we have such needs, constantly need reassurance from our partners that we are loved, or fear rejection if we reach out for support. No wonder we and our partners find it so difficult to make our relationships work in recovery.

Trauma, Insecure Attachment and Addiction

R's mother became so depressed when he was almost two that she was hospitalized for nearly a month (this was in the days before antidepressant medication was available.) His mother's prolonged absence severely traumatized R. He couldn't be comforted, he wouldn't smile, and he didn't eat, losing almost twenty-five percent of his body weight, until his uncle finally got him to open his mouth by making him laugh.

R had been a happy, outgoing toddler before this experience. He trusted the adults in his life to be a safe haven when he encountered difficulties. His secure attachment to his mother gave him confidence to explore the world around him and to interact with the people in it. Occasionally something might scare or anger him, but his mother was sufficiently attuned to him that his upsets were short-lived.

R became a different child after the trauma of his beloved mother's lengthly disappearance. He no longer trusted that his mother would be there when he needed her. His distrust only deepened as his mother had recurring bouts of depression and hospitalizations. He came to believe that he needed to be emotionally self-sufficient as much as possible. Because of this belief he learned to avoid letting himself get too close to anyone.

After he learned to read R discovered a way to minimize his feelings of loneliness. Books became his beloved companions, always there for him and never rejecting him. And his love of reading and learning earned him positive attention and praise from his teachers. School was R's refuge, the place where he felt most secure and connected.

But school didn't teach R about how to be close in a relationship. He didn't date until his last year of high school. When he did let himself get involved with someone, he would find a way to sabotage things. He lost one serious girlfriend when he replied to her question about whether he had missed her while she was away on vacation, "Out of sight, out of mind."

When R initially began drinking and using drugs, he found that being drunk and/or high made it possible for him to reach out and make connections with others. It gave him a self-confidence that he hadn't known before. He was delighted to find that women found him attractive.

Eventually he met a woman he wanted to marry. He was so happy when she said yes. But after the high of getting married wore off, he reverted back to his avoidant style of relating. More and more, he immersed himself in his books. His alcohol and drug use soon became a way of avoiding emotional intimacy with his wife. After a few years he divorced her, saying he no longer loved her. His drinking and drugging escalated dramatically after the divorce.

After R got clean and sober, he still didn't know how to be close in a relationship. He made a good beginning by finding a home group and a sponsor in AA. They taught him how to reach out for help when he was distressed instead of isolating. The steps showed him how to take an honest look at himself, identify his character defects, and repair old hurts by making amends.

But the program didn't teach him any more than school had about how to make an emotionally close relationship work. Although he made several fearless and thorough moral inventories during his first years of sobriety, none of them freed him of the distrust he felt about becoming open, vulnerable, and dependent in a relationship. He found it easier to avoid letting someone in. So today he remains unattached as he celebrates his fifth AA birthday.

A fragile capacity for attachment

My parents tried to send me to nursery school when I was four. My mother dropped me off and came back to get me several hours later. I told her I didn't want to go back and refused all her efforts to persuade me to return. But I wouldn't or couldn't tell her what had happened, why I was adamant about not returning. I know about this because she told me about it--I have no memory of that day myself.

I also have no memory of the first grade. I have visited my old grade school several times as an adult. When I walk into that room, I recall no memories of that time nor does that room evoke any feelings. It's as if my mind laid down no tracks of that experience.

In the seventh grade, I fell in love with J. Because our last names began with the same last letter, we were often sitting next to each other for the next five years. J and I talked and talked throughout our junior and senior high school years. But I never once asked her out, afraid that she would reject me and end our friendship if I did.

I met A during my sophomore year of college. We dated and became seriously involved within several months. But at the end of that year we separated as I went off to Holland to school for a year and she went to Japan where she remained for two years. I was lonely and miserable; she seemed to be just fine. Then she got a job with the airlines. We saw each other for a brief weekend as she was on her way to New York for training. After that weekend, we got together occasionally when she had a short layover in the area. Although we hardly knew each other, we got engaged and married the day I graduated from college.

Seven years later, after becoming a father and finally completing my PhD dissertation, I discovered the magic of pot. I loved getting high. Pot plus wine/beer gave me the warm, "connected" feeling that was missing in my marriage. I was divorced within two years, beginning a ten-year odyssey of deepening addiction and a series of failed relationships. But as long as I had my pot and booze to keep me warm, I was OK.

My story illustrates what one person has described as the alcoholic/addict's fragile capacity for establishing intimate, satisfactory relationships. It is true that our use of substances (or sex, food, or gambling) impair our ability to be good partners. It is also true, I believe, that our impaired ability to be good partners is one of the major factors that drives our addiction. Alcohol, drugs, sex, food, and gambling fill that emptiness many of us feel when we try to connect emotionally. And, as we often say in meetings, our addiction gives us the "courage" to be in a relationship. In other words, it isn't just our addiction that makes relationships so difficult for us in recovery; it's also our basic difficulty in making relationships work that fuels our addiction.