So you have been discovered or have disclosed your acting out and double life and are faced now with the consequences in a relationship. Maybe you are living separate now, either in or outside the house. Maybe you are in a new relationship or one of many decades with the same partner.
Everything is “up in the air” with uncertainty. Welcome to recovery. Get used to that
uncertainty! Just know that many others have been in the same hole, both with your addiction and with the shattering of relationships. Maybe you have been on this learning curve for a while too; in which case, I would love to hear your tips and responses.
Here is my current list of tips I have learned for how to strengthen recovery while in a
relationship with someone who has been hurt by my actions. These are primarily aimed at
couples relationships, though I think they are generally all-purpose. The bottom line: just as in recovery you first have to stop digging yourself into a deeper and deeper hole with your actions and attitudes and get yourself to a meeting and then to another one and begin working the program, so with our relationships we have to stop digging the hole deeper between ourselves and our partners. That in fact may be the harder hole to stop digging.
1. Build on what you are probably already doing or you wouldn’t be visiting this site and
others: Find others who can help you in your particular situation and relationship.
The group meeting, the therapist or counselor, the spiritual leader, the sponsor, a friend or
even family member if need be, someone you trust. Build on the honesty you are now
discovering and that allows you, compels you, to become vulnerable about your life to
others. 12 step meetings are also relationship meetings as you sit with others who are
showing the strength of vulnerability. One avenue may lead to another until you are able
to draw on the experienced wisdom of many others who know you well and also have
their own steps to share for how to stop making things perpetually worse in a
relationship.
You can’t manage this part all on your own either. You are in a new world now. Don’t
expect the old world customs of your relationship life to work anymore in this new
environment. You have to get outside of your old self, to get over your old self, that old
self that tried to keep secrets, to go it alone, to put on the false image, to believe
everything can be managed so everything will work out okay in the end. That self never
truly worked no matter how functional you appeared and how high your reputation was,
and now it definitely won’t work.
2. Your Recovery Comes First. Do it for yourself; Not For Your Relationship. The
paradox is if you are in recovery only to save a relationship, you are on a slippery road to
lose your recovery because you aren’t putting it first, and of course by doing that it will
make your relationship worse, or end it. The Serenity Prayer is the guide. There is so
much you can’t control. A relationship is a mutual covenant between, at least, two
people; that means that no matter what you do, apologies and amends, or how much you
recover or how fast you become sober, the ultimate truth and future of the relationship is
out of your control because it involves the freedom of the other person. Accept that truth
so that you can find the courage to control the only thing you can, your commitment to
recovery.
Relationships may indeed end, and early on that might be something that seems
impossible to face, just as impossible as recovery seems. To others this might seem
bizarre. How could you not expect your relationship to end completely, given what you
have been doing? And it is a sign of that addiction insanity, the extreme wishful thinking,
the “stinkin thinkin”, but the addiction and our character flaws have been blinding us to
the truth about ourselves and the effects of our actions. We have been trying to “have it
all” and that too is a hard habit to break. The more sober we get the more we too will be
able to grasp the miracle it is that we might have any relationship at all still able to be
worked on, and gratitude stemming from that is a door to walk through no matter what
comes next.
3. There Is No End Point of Ultimate Reconciliation or Returning To The Beginning.
There is no time stage when we can stop being intentional about either recovery or
working to make amends in our relationship. No “I’ve paid my dues, done my time in the
doghouse, gotten better, now we can move on as if nothing ever happened.” Even if we
begin a brand new relationship, we bring our past actions and relationships and recovery
into it. The rigorous honesty with our new partner, required by recovery as well as
integrity in love, will still always be “a thing” testing trust. It will vary, of course, in
intensity, and the life of sobriety will bring its own rewards to a relationship probably as
never known before. But there is no blank slate. No time when “the past truly becomes
the past and is not part of the present” in some way.
In fact, I don’t think a good relationship would want it that way, built on the easier way.
It might seem an easier life in the moment, but just as “out of sight, out of mind” doesn’t
work, so “out of mind, out of life” won’t last either. I believe this is something like grief
in a relationship too, after many kinds of deep losses. Grief is a big part of the relationship work to be done after betrayals of all kinds. The aftershock of betrayal and the addiction will come in waves in irregular intervals, and some will be ripples and some tsunamis, but the waves will come, and we can even learn to use them. Right now, just knowing this will help.
4. Learn to Be Still, Silent, and Listen To The Pain of Another, Especially When It is
Pain You Have Caused. I know this is often the very opposite of our acting out our addictions, and also often counter to the basic personality types for many of us. But we are helped in learning to do this. In fact, learning these skills is another benefit of attending frequent 12 step meetings. The rules and boundaries and routines of the meeting reinforce the practices we need in recovery and in relationships. It is possible, and healthy sometimes, to not share in a meeting, to be silent the whole time except for the unison responses, brief introductory check-ins or maybe doing a reading. The meeting is still working for us more than ever because we are learning to not put ourselves at the center of attention, and to listen to the stories and struggles of others because they have something important to teach us.
So it is with our partners. It is harder with partners because they are speaking pain in large
part coming directly from our actions and attitudes. And this may be something we are engaging in with them really for the first time because we have been conflict averse and ultra-defensive and have created a pattern of denying pain, ours and others. We physically could not remain in a room during such moments when asked to “don’t do something, just sit there” and be present to the words, and the silence, of another upset at us. There are probably deep-seated reasons for this from our own childhood family dynamics or other early traumas. But we can learn to not be held hostage by our past. Just like in recovery, we grow in this ability; we seek progress, not perfection. You will know this is working as one of the first fruits of real recovery, one of the first effects of sober-making life, when you can
actually feel yourself becoming less defensive and calmer with each encounter.
5. In many ways these first five tips are preparing a healthy soil for the growth of the
relationship. Healthy soil is a necessity for producing healthy plants. There is much
relationship growth work still to come, but we need to keep returning to the cultivation of
this kind of soul/soil work or else nothing else will work. The final fifth tip of 101 is
something that is being done underneath and throughout each of the other four tips.
Being Self-Assertive, that is to reveal and strengthen your true and authentic Self. This
might first seem counter to the vital tips of stepping back, being silent, receiving, letting
down one’s guard. This might seem dangerous advice to those of us whose addiction was
rooted in too much selfishness, too much regard for our own wants and not enough for
the needs of others. But that was the stunted, false self that we were. That was often
either the aggressive self or the passive-aggressive self or the co-dependent self sponging
up the unhealthy selves and culture around us.
When we engage in the first four tips we are subtly asserting our true self. But to help us
to be able to let this self out and to grow it in our life, we have to intentionally and visibly
Daily Keep An Emotional Scorecard as a way to emerge and observe and process our
emotions by and for ourselves and with our sponsor or therapist or partner if possible.
These emotions once were hidden and denied and because of that were shaping and
running our default life in tangent with the dopamine and cortisol and other brain
chemistry. As homework for ourselves and sponsor and therapist and partner, we need to
have this outlet of the scorecard, to learn this language, so that we can learn how to better
Respond to these emotions instead of Reacting to them. In doing so, we are daily helping
to create the New Self that begins to talk back to the Old Self and then take over from it.
We do this Self Work so that we are better equipped to do the listening and exploring
work with another in a relationship.
The emotional scorecards will vary and change over time. My mistake was not seeing
how vital they were to becoming abstinent where sobriety could kick in. I tried to fit them
into my daily life instead of, like the other tools of recovery, putting them before all else
in my daily life. At first with the help of my spsonsor I listed out the following emotions
and each day scored them 0-10 on their intensity that day in my life: Joy, Love, Passion,
Pain, Shame, Guilt, Fear, and Anger. Over time, I added Purpose, Grief, Anxiety, and
Resentment. At times I then used the scorecard to journal that day about what had caused
me to score them the way I had, especially when there were changes from before. At first
this was another discipline that I tried to “half-measure” my way through. It felt awkward
and I did not realize that very awkwardness or fear about it was the very reason it was so
vital to recovery. But when the real Rock Bottom was hit, this became the air I had to
breathe to live.
While this then is a basic tool of recovery for everyone, even those not in a partnered or
other close relationship, it is vital for those working on relationships at the same time as
recovery because it helps us come into our relationship encounters and conversations
with more capacities for the vulnerability and trust work needed, having processed and
named our emotions coursing through us that day. We aren’t fighting some hidden part of
ourselves seeking to keep us back and withdrawn into our own selves at the very time
when we need to be able to bring our full selves into our daily life encounters and
conversations, especially with a partner. With time, we will probably be able to roll it into
the ways we do Step 10 daily self-inventory work. But it can always be rolled back out
and stressed again whenever the stresses of life, which are so often relationship-oriented,
hit us again too.
These first reminders for relationship work are ultimately part of our healthy Outer Circle
to return to and structure our day around. The more we focus on all the healthy behaviors
the easier and more normal it will be to practice these relationship tips which are, again,
not magic bullets. They may not save a relationship the way we want it to be saved.
Again, that isn’t the point. Creating a better person better capable of being in a
relationship is the point.
From Grace
Your partner neglected you as the addiction took all their attention. Now you hope to finally make it to the top of their list but instead they seem obsessed with 12 step meetings and therapy and are texting with recovery buddies. Give it time. Who do you want to be with in the long run? Someone who is only in recovery to keep you around? This is manipulation, as always, just like the swooping in to save the relationship when you had enough of the addictive behavior. As recovery progresses the real person will start to show up. Maybe you remember this person from before the addiction consumed them or saw them off and on during the worst of the addiction or maybe you have never met. Don't settle for a relationship with a false front. Wait in the wings to see who emerges if you think they will be worth the wait, but do not settle for less than real. When true sobriety kicks in you can ask them to miss a meeting for an important date with you but you really won't want to, when you see what recovery can do for a person only the most important scheduling conflicts will have you considering a missed meeting. And remind yourself as often as you need to, this is their job to do, you do your own reflection and getting real, you can't do it for anyone else.