For our first issue of the New Year, we chose relationships as our theme. We talked to some couples we knew who were in recovery and asked if they wanted to write a few paragraphs on what they believe recovery has meant to their union, and how it works in their relationship. We are extremely pleased with the results and know that you’ll enjoy reading the honest and open sharing of these friends of Together. And if you’re in a relationship or wondering if you’ll ever have one in recovery, perhaps you’ll find some inspiration here.

Here’s one hint as to how recovery works: every single couple responded, quickly and eloquently. Here’s another clue to what is miraculous in recovery relationships: in a country where one-in-two marriages fail, the couples who participated in this project have been together from 10 to 30 years. In our mind, that means something special is working. We asked each partner to write their piece without reading the other’s until they had both submitted them, and the harmony of the responses is fascinating. The names, which have been changed to protect anonymity, were chosen by each participant. A few of the aliases are as strange and wonderful as the relationships are. T: Chart Your Relationship Health

Create a Loving Place: Alfred and Annabelle, 10 Years 

Alfred: When writing about recovery and my marriage the question arises, whose recovery to talk about first? My wife’s sobriety of 23 years (we have been married for nine years) or my own recovery in Al-Anon these last six years? Who gets the credit for the happy and healthy marriage we have, her program or mine? The fact is that our mutual journeys in recovery have taught us respect for each other’s failings and honesty with our own feelings, even the ones we are not so proud of.

Recovery has led us to healthy disagreements and prompt amends. I have heard it said in Al-Anon that “this is a program of relationships” and my most important relationship is to my wife. Yes, I have a daughter and she is precious to me, but if I cannot show her an example of loving and mutual respect with my wife, even when the road is rough, I have taught her nothing as a father. How do you get through the rough spots as well as enjoy the blissful moments? One day at a time, my friends…one day at a time.

Annabelle: For all of my life, I wanted to get married. Just before turning fifty and after about 15 years of recovery, Alfred and I met and decided to marry after knowing each other less than a year. My friends who had tired of me saying, “When am I going to meet someone?” told my husband-to-be that the best thing about us getting together was that they would never have to hear that question again.

Our wedding was beautiful but it was downhill from there due to legal issues, problems about custody and negotiating the tricky pitfalls of relationships with exes and children. Needless to say, I was shocked and furious. My envisioned perfect life wasn’t turning out so nicely. Concurrently, I had left a career of 25 years and gone back to school for a graduate degree and my income was zero. After a year of marriage, we decided it was either couples counseling or divorce. We chose therapy. My program was almost non-existent during this time because I thought I was just too busy for meetings. To say that I was irritable, restless and discontent was an understatement as what I had really morphed into was a controlling, angry savage.

Alfred, on the other hand had started going to Al-Anon and began working the steps with a sponsor. I hadn’t had a sponsor in years and while I attended meetings sporadically they were more of a social engagement than anything else. But gradually I began to make my way out of the hell of a dry drunk when I started regularly attending 7 a.m. weekend meetings when I was upstate. Again, as in the early days, I got a sponsor, started back in on the steps and connected with a higher power of my understanding. I also began regularly attending a morning meditation meeting in the city and as a result of this work, my life began to change and my relationship with my husband and his child improved.

Early on, a therapist had told me that my job as a stepmother was to create a loving place for Alfred and his daughter to have a relationship. I am now able to happily create that space for them rather than to resent their shared experiences. It’s not to say that marriage or family relationships are easy for me. Every day, I have to think about the St. Francis prayer and remember to live it and to not focus on the “me, me, me” which, left to my own devices, is my theme song. I am so grateful for my marriage and all the blessings that it brings and I can attribute our happiness to what I learn from my fellow travelers in recovery – including my husband.

How to Be Angry in Love: Anais and Dwayne, 10 Years

Anais: I always wanted men, or at least my man of the moment, to adore me. Yet when they did I thought less of them and dumped them without so much as a thank you very much. When I got sober over 25 years ago and began to learn something about love and “normal” relationships, I tiptoed into the waters of adoring my partner and stopped asking him to do the same. Then, men began to leave me; the pain of it almost unbearable, my karma catching up to me.

Imbalance in both scenarios, swinging way out on that pendulum of love. I was miserable either way. But there was always someone else around the next corner – or so I thought – endless life, youth forever, immortality bullshit. When I turned 50 and woke up to my pathetic outlook on love and partnership I thought I was doomed to spend the rest of my life alone, which I wasn’t too awfully destroyed about. I liked my own company and it was definitely easier than trying to live with someone else.

When I finally reached a point in my sobriety where I was able to love myself, I made a decision that I was ready to venture back into the world of intimacy. Then I met Dwayne. He made me laugh, he adored me, I adored him, he moved in. What a ride! There have been times when I’ve wanted to walk away and almost did once, but knew I’d face the same wall that seemed insurmountable no matter what the face on the other side looked like, so I stayed and so did he.

We speak the same language and we’re learning new words together, the words of intimate communication. The anger from the lives we led before we met that rushes to the surface and collides is probably our biggest challenge in getting along. We got married in August, the second time for both of us, the first with our eyes wide open. We’re still learning how to disagree without taking it personally; we’re learning to love through the anger that is old and not about us together; we’re practicing the tools we’ve learned in various programs to help us nurture our love. We’re working our individual programs and then coming together and working a couples program – Chapter 9 Couples in Recovery Anonymous.

Dwayne still makes me laugh. I love him the most for that. He is also my greatest teacher. Best of all, with him I’m learning how to give love and, more important, how to receive it. Love; marriage; partnership; true and intimate sharing. What an adventure!

Dwayne: I was told, in my first daze of sobriety, not to get into a relationship for at least a year. Actually, a good friend of mine who was sober at the time for 15 years said, “YOU don’t get into a relationship for at least TWO years, don’t drink, and don’t kill yourself.” Then I heard that being in a relationship was like throwing gasoline on your character defects. I could relate to that, drinking or not. My sponsor said “Don’t pick up the first argument, and remember that whenever you’re fighting…you’re there.”

When I found the woman who became my wife, my second sponsor really nailed it when he said “Mind your own business, be grateful you are even in a relationship with someone who is willing to put up with you and your recovery (your bullshit). Would you rather be right, or happy?”

The other day I got so angry at my partner, that I wanted to leave, for at least two weeks to teach her a lesson, to show her how angry and hurt she had made me feel. She has been going to Al-Anon since almost it was invented so there was no hope that she’d agree that she made me feel anything. She’d tell me that feelings are MY feelings and that I would have to deal with them. True yes, but still after 24 hours of my typical suffering and mental anguish I felt I still needed to talk to her…again. We did, and despite my abandonment issues, the warmth of the relationship returned.

Thinking about what works about relating in recovery is fine when I’m feeling great, but it was even more revealing to think about it when I wanted to run from it.
It reminded me of what I heard an old timer in AA say when I first got sober. When asked “how do you become and old timer?” he replied, “don’t drink, and don’t die.” I have learned, I hope, so far, same goes for a happy and successful marriage…don’t quit and don’t leave.

Also, it helps to remember why we got married in the first place and to conduct ourselves with kindness and courtesy no matter how angry or apart we feel. Feelings may not be facts but when we’re feeling them and they seem so real it’s good to remember that my partner is my ally and that “This too shall pass…working through a disagreement one day at a time.”  Sometimes in the heat of it all it’s good to take an agreed-upon break and go to our separate corners to let the heat subside.

Courtesy, Communication, Commitment: Jack and Jill, 10 Years

Jack: When my partner and I first came to Chapter 9, I had doubts about whether there was anything useful for us, for me, there. I was then, and often still am, struggling with the difficulties in our relationship that have to do with physical intimacy. My partner had been a member of another 12-step program, and I had not. I think I believed that one of the reasons we were coming to Chapter 9 was so that my partner could find help with her difficult feelings surrounding this issue – that is, so she could change and, thus, our relationship could improve.

It makes me laugh, somewhat wryly, now, to read what I just wrote. It’s true, but I’m not sure I really would have admitted to the truth of it then. One of the most important things Chapter 9 has reinforced for me is the importance of keeping the focus on myself, because worrying about whether or not my partner changes is not helpful, certainly not to me. I might still find myself hoping for that – it’s not easy for me to let go of that – but at least I know I have no power over it. I can only really decide how I will behave or react, myself. I deeply love my partner and feel fully committed to our relationship. It is a very good relationship marked by compatibility in so many areas, and I feel glad about the way we, as a couple, seem to be able to live by the Chapter 9 slogan “Courtesy, Communication, and Commitment,” most of the time.

I tend to find myself somewhat more comfortable, overall, in the “Courtesy” and “Commitment” departments than in “Communication,” because I sometimes feel afraid anticipating my partner’s possible reaction if I bring up a topic that might be uncomfortable or were I to express my feelings of anger about something. Unfortunately, this sometimes results in my unwillingness to express my more troubling thoughts and feelings to my partner. I fear being judged or criticized or that she might feel judged or criticized by me, and I sometimes allow this irrational anticipation to get in the way of open communication.

Chapter 9 meetings provide an environment that makes it feel safer sometimes to say things in my partner’s presence that I would like to say, but might not feel safe enough to say elsewhere. With continued experience like this, and with useful tools like “meetings of two,” I feel that I do become willing to be more open with my partner, especially in communicating about difficult feelings. I think this is important for fostering intimacy of all kinds. I don’t know with certainty what the future holds for our relationship, but I do know that I have much to be grateful for in it. For me, this feeling of gratitude is amplified many fold as I listen to the other couples in Chapter 9 meetings, sense their struggles, and feel their hope and love.

Jill: For me, the two biggest things that help me to feel like we have a working relationship that is progressing in recovery are: Attending Chapter 9 meetings, and keeping the focus on myself by continuing to attend Al-Anon, and practicing the tools of both programs. Well, that sounds like more than two things! Really it’s using the tools of both programs.

If I keep the focus on myself, I can do a better job of staying out of my partner’s business and zip-the-lip. If I practice honesty and the 3 Cs of Chapter 9: Courtesy, Communication, and Commitment, then I have the courage to have “meetings of two” with my partner in which we time our shares and don’t crosstalk. If I remember that We Are Allies, I have less fear to express myself in a healthy, respectful way.

In my opinion, we both have our biggest issues around honestly and courageously communicating our feelings to each other, and it’s REALLY helpful to have the safety of either the Chapter 9 meeting (with couples whom we can identify with), or our couples’ counselor (who is also a member of 12-step fellowship) to guide and support us when we are struggling with having and expressing our feelings.

The safety of our meeting rooms is a great model for not taking each other’s inventories and for trying to live in the present moment.

We try to start each day with a verbal gratitude list, and sometimes we are able to meditate together. Recently we have started reading and discussing the Al-Anon daily readers out loud together too.

It’s important to me that we remember not only do we have individual Higher Powers, but our relationship also has a Higher Power, and the more we can improve our collective consciousness of OUR Higher Power, the easier it is to have intimacy with each other. We can work on being allies with our Higher Power’s help.

Marriage Works if You Work It: Jane and Rufus, 20 Years

Jane: Mixed marriage is tough. I’m recovering, he’s not. AA’s training that when something is wrong, there’s something wrong with me has kept us together. But, while I’m the admitted addict, I don’t accept the crazy notion that his disease is none of my business. His lifestyle profoundly affects his children and me. Abusing television, food and credit qualify him for various programs with seats he refuses to claim. A righteous wrath bubbles up in me. I’m fighting for my life. Occasionally, pride goeth before a slip. Seeking peace at any cost, I’ll use his “drugs,” deflating my ego and reinforcing my powerlessness to promote recovery. This is a good thing.

“Recovery is not for people who need it, but for people who want it.”

Surrendering the idea of a spiritual synchronicity shared by recovering couples, I can better see what we have. I’m learning to live with addiction; mine, then his. I recover, not in spite of, but because of his humanity. After years of habitually riding shotgun with dudes most dysfunctional and saying, “See? I’m not that bad!”,  then years of labeling my spouse un-teachable, I now find gratitude for what he teaches me…humility.

Rufus: One of the many things that first attracted me to my spouse was a willingness to look at her faults and a sincere desire to grow beyond them. It was through her that I first learned about recovery. Over the years, seeing how it’s been a consistent bedrock, a matrix for understanding and most importantly, a concrete plan for life-action, my respect for the steps and the people who work them has grown exponentially. Time away for meetings and meditations never bothered me, because, clearly, it worked for her.

On the dark side, as in any marriage, there’ve been those times when my wife was also willing to look at my faults and attempt to force me to grow beyond them, regardless of my inclinations at the time. The answer she offered to my foibles was most often, reasonably enough, the answer that worked for her. As a result, over the years, I’ve been asked to join a variety of organizations whose names end in Anonymous.

Much as I admire the program, and have enjoyed its benefits via my dear spouse, for a variety of reasons, I don’t consider it for me. For years, my efforts to explain that came across as a criticism of the program in general. Genuine as I am in my respect for it, I am equally genuine in my desire not to partake. But, fortunately, growth is growth, and I hear even Democrats and Republicans can have happy marriages. After a decade or so, I’ve learned to better express myself, and she’s come to better respect my beliefs – a fact which only makes me appreciate her, and the program, all the more.

Growing Old Together: Dean and Patrick, 23 Years

Dean: Patrick and I met in our mid-fifties and after being friends for five years decided to attempt a romantic union. We moved in together not long after and discovered that being in a relationship made all our character defects spin out of control.

We were on the verge of breaking up when we discovered Chapter 9 meetings. Working its recovery tools made us realize we were allies. Little by little we learned to solve problems in meetings of two, taking turns expressing our views, keeping the focus on ourselves, and above all not taking each other’s inventory.

Now in our seventies we’re almost always in harmony as we confront the pleasures and challenges of growing old together.

Patrick: Whoever said that an alcoholic is an egomaniac with an inferiority complex was describing me to perfection. Pursuing Dean was easy enough, but when he finally decided to accept me I fell apart.

We had a horrific first year, and no one believed our relationship could ever last. And then we stumbled across a brand-new 12-step program called Chapter 9, and things began getting better right away.

The biggest problems we’ve had to face over our twenty-three years together involve old demons left over from childhood, and our tendency in any conflict to see a partner as a domineering parent. But we deal with all that in our Sunday meetings, getting a spiritual makeover every single week.

Those demons are a lot better behaved these days, even if they throw an occasional tantrum, and the more our relationship ripens the richer it seems to get.

The Truth in Between: Norbert and Zazu P., 27 Years

Norbert: I saw her at a dance selling raffle tickets for a recovery program and was dumbstruck by her beauty. I managed to buy a few raffle tickets and bask in her aura. Soon I found out she was a newcomer and as a boy scout in recovery I was determined to let her get her year clean before asking her out. Well it’s over 27 years later and our daughter just turned 24. We often say the secret to our relationship has been the freedom we give each other to live our own separate lives. A cynic might say that we just don’t care to be committed and prefer to nurture our self-centeredness. The truth is somewhere in between and evolves along with my recovery.

Marc Chagall

In the early years I avoided intimacy (and parental duties) by repeating the mantra that “I am securing our future” by focusing on my career and paying the bills. I had trouble appreciating the beauty and open heart of my wife and put a priority on fiscal responsibility and orderliness. As wife and daughter became best friends and running buddies, I saw myself as the adult in the family. I stayed clean and survived those years. About eight years ago I got very ill and had a spiritual experience that sprung my heart from the protective vault it had been locked in throughout my life. Having been awakened, I now had the opportunity to look at my relationship from a different perspective. As a recovering addict though, I also got the rude awakening that I did not become a saint and still had to use the tools of recovery to nurture my relationship and counteract my self-centeredness.

Now when I find myself judging, I try to replace that with love. I find that if I try to be of service in our household, without any expectations, love comes back to me. Funny how that works. Simple, but not always easy to do. I feel more committed to the spiritual journey than ever and healthy relationships are a big part of that. Maybe it’s a bonus from surviving those early years and having the gift of our daughter to be the glue that kept us together. Maybe it’s just sticking around long enough for the miracle to happen. Maybe it’s the maturity of hard fought experience. Maybe recovery is progressive. Whatever it is, I am enjoying the ride.

Zazu P: Here’s the thing about my husband: life ain’t been no crystal staircase for him with me. This I know. His recovery has been continuous for 30 years; mine has had boards torn up and splinters: four pill slips, 2 rehabs, and one detox in my 28 years of struggling with addiction and the terrible depressions that always followed a manic-type period.

When I met my man, he was two years ahead of me in clean time, and light years in terms of therapy, working the program, and marching up those steps. He was the first sane, non-drug-abusing man I had ever dated. At first I missed the drama of the drunken, drug-fueled relationships, but I stayed with this mysterious, sane guy: maybe because he was kind, he loved me, and his boundaries were secure. There would be no messing with this man’s head or heart, and I decided that I was not going to be that love-addict or nightmare girl anymore.

After two years of clean time I fell pregnant and he said let’s have it. We were in recovery. We fit. I think that’s when I realized that real love does not cause pain, or start fights, or issue conditions, and that, through no doing of my own, I had stumbled onto my life partner, and we were going to do two things I had absolutely decided I would never do: we were going to have a baby and we were going to wed.

When our daughter was seven, we moved away from the U.S. I was clean for the next 14 years. I will not bore you with the epilogue of another round of operations, interferon treatment, moving back to the States and another opiate relapse (I haven’t had a drink since 1983, thank god), but here’s how recovery has worked in our marriage: even in relapse I went to meetings, he went to meetings, we traveled many spiritual paths together, and he stood by me when most would have walked away with the child. He understands the disease. My old friends call him Saint Bert. I call him my hero, my partner, my dearest friend and lover. His loyalty to recovery and his family, his unearthly patience with me, and the miracle of the amazing child who taught us so much, covered our homes with love, forgiveness, and manifestations of the Promises. But he has his recovery and I have mine – and except for supporting each other, we cannot and do not work each other’s program.

Progress and Hope to the End: Kate and Carl, 30 Years

Kate: For me, this was the first “suitable” relationship I’d ever been in, whether in recovery or not. I had a history of poor selections in the guys I was with, most of whom were much older than me, and I remember saying to a girlfriend of mine when we first got together, “And he’s even my own age!”

But mostly there was something very familiar about our histories, a parallel existence we shared, and we ended up pretty much on the same page about most things.

It sounds a bit negative, but we actually got involved in couples therapy before we were even married. You’d think that would be a bad sign, but it turned out to be a signal of our willingness to face hard times head on. At first, we went to deal with a pregnancy that was terminated and a subsequent one I had decided to go ahead with. But, over the years, it helped us find ways to keep the lines of communication open, especially when we were so stressed out we couldn’t really hear what the other person was saying.

We were aware of the “boy meets girl on AA campus” scenario and instinctively kept from blending our recovery programs too much. I have my own way of doing things and so does he.

I think having kids was where we really started coming together. It was a collaboration right from the start and we’ve shared the responsibilities ever since – the struggles, the joys and the rewards of raising three kids who’ve never seen either of us drunk.

And now? With the last of them out of the house and on to college? We still have our sobriety and our basic sense of partnership to fall back on.

There really isn’t just one thing that’s seen us through. It’s been a process. But, if I had to highlight one thing that has helped us through the years, I’d say it’s been our willingness, both individually and collectively, to get help when we need it – whether from the program and people of AA or elsewhere. Like with recovery, there’s no graduation, so I figure we’ll be reaching out right to the very end.

Carl: Like most of the things in my life that turned out quite differently than what I had planned, my marriage has lasted over 28 years. Definitely not what I expected when I sat across from my wife-to-be over coffee after a meeting of my home group one night in the early 1980s. She was a few years ahead of me in sobriety – a circumstance I’ve often joked about since, saying “While Kate has a few more years of sobriety, I have a few less character defects.” It’s a joke that always gets a good laugh, though time has clearly proven only the first half to be true.

Neither of us really had any idea what we were getting into. But we did the best we could and kept following our feet to meetings all over the neighborhood.

I had a lot of misgivings about marriage and I struggled with what my options might be. My first thought was outright flight, but I knew there were other more viable possibilities. The situation, of course, was complicated by the fact that Kate was pregnant and while it took me a while to sort through my feelings, I eventually did pop the question.

As usual, things didn’t go exactly as planned. The day we put the wedding invitations into the mail, the church we had selected for the service burned down. And of course, her wedding dress had to be altered to accommodate the pregnancy. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful January day when we got married; beautiful, that is, except for the blizzard.

But, things have turned out far better than we could have planned. Our kids have all grown up in and around AA, witnessing our struggles and our growth (you’ll recall those character defects I mentioned), and we’ve kept putting one foot in front of the other.

There have been plenty of slammed doors in our household over the years. Nevertheless, we’ve held firm to the principles of AA and have utilized the Tenth Step as often as possible, promptly admitting when – and how – we’ve been wrong.

Getting married is the second best thing I’ve ever done in my life, following closely on the heels of walking into a meeting one night drunk and walking out an hour or so later with something I didn’t have when I walked in: hope.