What is selfishness? What is self-centeredness? How about selflessness and “other”-centeredness? The ability to define these and learn to move from selfish to selfless can prove to be the difference between frustration and fulfillment.

In 12-Step recovery circles there is the promise that:

“We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows”

As children, it was natural for us to be egocentric. We believed that the world revolved around us and for some of us, it did. We expected the adults around us to do what we wished, and our needs were catered to most of the time. If it did not make us feel good we were not interested in it. This is a partial description of a normal childhood. It is a selfishness of innocence.

Now that we are adults, we understand the world does not exist simply to do our bidding and satisfy our wants and needs. This can be difficult at times. When we allow our focus to remain on our own desires and wants, we begin to look very much like the toddler who is stumbling and colliding with things and people. If  we see ourselves as the center of the universe we are apt to end up “lost in space”.

But we are not toddlers. In order to find true peace and happiness, we must shift our perspective to others and find ways in which we can be of service to them and contribute to their success and fulfillment. This requires humility on our part and the acceptance that it is not “all about me.”

This is especially true of our romantic partners. How often do you remember to include your romantic partner when you think of being of service to others? Initially this is a difficult challenge for most of us. When we are attempting to be of service to our partner we may fear that our efforts may not be accepted. We may doubt how fulfilling an experience it may be for ourselves. We become blindsided by our fear that our needs may not get …

The health of your romantic relationship can either enhance or diminished the quality of the lives of those who come into contact with it.  Whether your relationship is strong and in good health or floundering and weakened by disease or dysfunction, it is sure to have an impact on others.

For example, your loving care of each other can envelop and soothe your children. Alternatively, your arguing and discord will frighten and generate insecurity and instability for them. Your family member can benefit from your happiness and they can be confused and hurt by the pain they see you endure or inflict on each other.

They may not know it, but the people that are closest to you, like your children or parents, are studying your relationship and at times making a decision about their worth and value based on how they see you and your partner treating each other. This is not only true of your children and close family members however. As a couple in recovery, you are affected by and have an affect on other recovering couples as well.

No man is an island …and neither is a couple in a romantic relationship. People need people. People need people regardless of our belief that we can have a successful life with only each other. When you are in a committed, successful romantic relationship, you affect many others and many others are able to affect you. Allow your romance to enjoy the give and take of support from others. Allow others to assist your coupleship to grow into the supportive unit you know it can be and allow yourselves to give freely of what you find in your loving romance.

When you are in a committed, successful romantic relationship, you affect many others. You will influence others to take risks in their own relationship because you have demonstrated how thankful you are that you were willing to take the same risks. Many couples in recovery will want to emulate your happiness.

So, as a recovering couple who continues to find the joy …

As kids we were intrigued by an honesty game that has been known by many other titles depending on where you grew up and in what generation you grew up in.  The game has many twists and turns but the goal is always the same – manipulate others to step out from behind their masks and take risks to expose the real you or expose you to a real challenge.  In our neighborhood the game usually ended with a good many hurt feelings.

The idea of dropping our facades that prevent others from really getting to know us is a good thing however, and while it often feels uncomfortable it is seldom a game. If we are to be true to ourselves and to our romantic partners, we must remove our masks.

We originally wear our masks to ensure our acceptance by others. We originally wear our masks to heighten other’s perception of our status. We originally wear our masks to ensure “his” or “her” interest in us.

We might have believed that these masks protected us from rejection and satisfied the profile that we believed others were looking for, but that was seldom the case.  We cannot pretend to be someone that we are not without real consequence.  The act of masquerading will eventually cut us off from the care of the Higher Power of our understanding that we committed to in our 3rd  Step.

Let others see you for who you truly are – the person you asked your Higher Power to care for – and you will be enough.

If you have ever had the opportunity to deliver or receive a 5th Step, you have experienced the acceptance that is possible when one person rightly aligns himself or herself with another.  The alignment is one of honesty, openness, and willingness.   During these 5th Step encounters we intuitively know that honesty and acceptance are vital elements of the healing experience.  We strive to be non-judgmental to those who choose …

Sometimes, we enter relationships for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps we are looking for “real love,” or affirmation of our self-worth, or any one of a hundred different reasons. We might have felt that our personal recovery had progressed to the point that we could handle any problems that might arise in a romance. We may even have believed that exclusive devotion to our love relationship or over-valuing the importance of a romantic partnership in our lives would help us to retain our self-worth.

Recovery wisdom suggests that “we will lose whatever we place before our recovery.”  We are not suggesting therefore, that you place romantic happiness or a relationship ahead of your recovery or ahead of your pursuit of spiritual fulfillment.  Romantic success however, is meant to be a byproduct of sober living and not a replacement for or it or a guarantee of it.

We can easily lose ourselves in the process of idolizing our partner or elevating a romantic relationship to the position of a higher power. We must retain our sense of self and remain spiritually fit if we expect a romance to thrive.  It is a spiritual axiom that our romantic life will never be fuller than our spiritual life.  We can have sobriety, spiritual well being and love if we are first true to ourselves.

If we are interested in enhancing the quality of a current romantic relationship or working to avoid ending up in relationships that are emotionally lopsided or that do not fulfill your emotional needs there will need to be change.

Many of us have been guided by our support group and sponsors to follow the recovery wisdom that encourages that we “do the next right thing” when we find ourselves confused about how to avoid repeating mistakes from past failures.  Some of us have had such an unsuccessful history of romantic relationships we are hard-pressed to know what the “next right thing” is.

If you find yourself confused about what to do differently this time perhaps you will gain meaningful insights from a focused Fourth Step …

In the recovery literature we are assured freedom from the fear of economic insecurity. The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous states that during the painstaking process of the 12 steps:

“Fear … of economic insecurity will leave us.”*

If we examine that statement closely, we will find that no promises of wealth were made. Rather, the promise is that we will not be afraid of never having enough, or of using our financial status as a yardstick for our worth.

The fears associated with economic insecurity will go a long way toward undermining the security and integrity of a romantic relationship depending upon how we cope with them. If the way one partner copes with the fear is by denying the need for any material possessions and there is “not enough” because every penny has to be saved, there are going to be problems.  Likewise if one partner spends money on financial “feel goods” which are usually short lived, there are going to be problems.

How many of us have made foolish purchases for the purpose of feeling better or different? We have bought things we did not need with money we did not have, only to find ourselves mired in credit card debt and feeling worse than before we walked into the store. Spending money to feel better and then feeling worse when the bill shocks us into reality is a trap that snags many a recovering couple.

Overspending can easily become another addiction with the same debts of powerlessness and unmanageability you will see in other addictive disorders.  Learning to live within our means is yet another byproduct of sober living if, in fact, we are willing to apply the same spiritual principles to our budget as we do to our abstinence from our primary “drug of choice”.

We are more than our possessions and we have more than that. If we practice the principles of recovery in all of our affairs, and rightly align ourselves to the God of our understanding, we will truly be richer and not just trying to appear …

Do you wear two faces? Are there two sets of behavior that you employ – one for the world and the other for the privacy of your home?

So many of us were taught, as children to wear a smile when going out in the world, even as the chaos in our home continued. We grew up thinking that this was acceptable behavior. We could be pleasant and personable at work and then come home and be discourteous and unkind to our mate.

Recovery wisdom suggests that it is a great deal easier to be sober at a 12 Step meeting than it is to be sober at home with family and in our romantic relationships.  Perhaps it is because people at meetings “really understand us” – but perhaps it is because we work to understand them more than we expect to be understood.

Time has taught us however, that no one will have quite the view of our behavior as will our romantic partners.  We sometimes think to ourselves that “if only my husband or wife understood me the way my sponsor did” then life would go a lot smoother.  It could also be argued that, perhaps, life would go a lot smoother if we behaved with our romantic partner the way that we do with our sponsor.  When is the last time you asked your spouse for input about how you are working your program – the way you might with your sponsor?  And when is the last time you sarcastically dismissed your sponsor who attempted to share a concern that he or she had for you – the way you might with your spouse?

The solution is simple (most good answers are!).  Let’s treat our romantic partners with the dignity and respect that we grant our sponsors, generally without them having earned it.  And let’s let our spouse answer our sponsor’s question about how we are doing when he or she calls us at home.

…Ok, so maybe that is a little too challenging for right now.  How about this: work every day …

It is so important to understand that how we react to emotional stimuli in the present moment is very much influenced by where we travel back to in our feeling-memories. How we cope (or do not cope) as adults with any given situation will also depend on the tools we have developed along our journeys.

Over the last few weeks we have been blogging about the important role our past experiences have played in the evolution of how we have become the people we are today. Here are two questions to ponder in your quest to become an expert at your own story: Where did your methods of coping with challenges come from? Who “taught” you how to behave as an adult?

In previous blogs we have mentioned that when we are children, we are, in effect, attending Marriage College. Our professors are the adults we grow up around – our parents, adult friends, and extended family members. The lessons we learn are related to how to behave in adult relationships, or more often than not, how not to behave.

If our education is a negative one, we swear we will never be like that, and we often blame our role models for what they have taught us. What we must understand though, is that they never realized they were “teaching” anything; they were simply living their lives the way they themselves had been taught when they were in Marriage College.

Rather than living that same life and blaming them for it, it would be better for us to study where they went wrong and learn how to get it right.

We are blessed with choices. We can emulate the things our parents taught us, the good and the bad, or we can choose to search through all those lessons and separate the useful ones from the ones that challenge the new-found values that we have learned in recovery. Our fathers may have told us that women will always hurt us or our mothers may have taught us that men are only good for bringing home a paycheck. That does …

When a person endures oppression or has been abused, his or her spirit can be crushed. Many who have experienced this sort of hurt are unaware that they are in fact survivors of trauma. Understanding what we have been through and how we have evolved into who we are in response to our traumatic pasts is important for both partners of a coupleship to learn and know about each other.

When we are victims of trauma and/or abuse as children, we often carry the burden of those memories into our adulthood. Certain events or actions can trigger these memories without warning, as well as the fear that accompanies them. We have not found the belief that “time will heal all wounds” to be true at all. In fact, many who have spent considerable time and resources resolving conflict from their past are often surprised to find that the hurt can continue to show up when it is least welcome.

This is typical, and it is to be expected. Coming to peace with our past does not mean it will no longer hurt. Coming to peace with our past means we understand and accept the reality of what has occurred in our lives and we are willing to move forward with the understanding that our past has become part of who we are.

What a beautiful and healing experience it is when we can learn about how our respective pasts have contributed to who we are and we can then share it with our partner. If you are in a relationship with someone who has been through oppression or hurt, the effects of their trauma on our adult relationships are certainly significant. When a person endures oppression or has been abused, this often results in an inability to believe in anyone or anything. Self-worth evaporates and we must rely on others for a sense of security and well-being.

Your partner may have been emotionally damaged early in life and carry the scars. If they seem to overreact to a situation that seems normal to …

When we are beginning a new relationship or attempting to rebuild a shattered one, we tend to wear our best face. As our romance progresses, we begin to reveal more and more of our inner selves. We reveal more of the good and the bad as we express our thoughts, beliefs, and judgments to each other.

Although it can be frightening at times to share our most intimate selves with our partner (will he or she accept me knowing who I really am?), still we must work to develop an honest, open relationship if we hope to grow in this partnership. If your partner turns away when you reveal something about yourself, remember that it is not “all about me.” Your partner may be distracted by something having nothing to do with you. Acknowledge that you have fear of being rejected, and let your Higher Power know that you trust in His care for you.

“You always hurt the one you love.”  Great, as a song title but not so great when it describes our behavior with loved ones.  It is no more an explanation for why we have mistreated a loved one then blaming our emotional irritability on having awaken on the “wrong side of the bed”.

We all say things in anger or fear that we cannot take back, and immediately regret saying them. Why do we wait so long to express our feelings that they become explosive and distorted when they are finally released?

What we easily share in a fellowship meeting seems too risky to reveal to our partner. This is because we think our romance might not survive the truth of our feelings. But we feel what we feel: there is no right or wrong to our feelings, and our partner should not have to be comfortable with everything we share.

“Partnership” implies a shared responsibility for how we cope with what we experience and how we feel.  You do not have to have proof for what you are feeling – a fact that is as relieving as the notion that our feelings are not facts and cannot be proven. For some partners this can …

Can you read your partner’s mind? Of course not! Neither can your partner read your mind.

But this is what you may have come to expect of each other if you grew up in a movie script hearing phrases like: “love is never having to say you are sorry” or if you learned as a child that “you should not have to tell someone what you are feeling or what you need if they love you.”

Feelings, expectations, fears, and dreams go unsaid because we believe our partner should know these things. Our partner cannot respond to or help us unless they know what we need. Honest and direct communication is vital to the recovery process and to the success of your partnership, even though it may bring pain.

Ask your Higher Power for the patience to move slowly through the learning process and the willingness to work with your partner in honest and genuine ways will promote change.  That change may seem slow when we compare it to the openness we feel with others.

We have all been there: sharing our story at a meeting, relating the details of our darkest moments, and feeling the empathy and support emanate from the listeners. Why, then, is it so difficult to share these same details with our loved ones?

What separates our partner from the rest of the world is the emotional tie we have with our partner based on our shared vulnerability. If I tell her my story, will she still love me? Am I at risk of losing him if he really knows who I am? Your past is a part of who you are, and you owe it to your partner to reveal all of who you are. Ask for God’s assistance to not let the fear block you from helping your partner to know all of you and for you to get to know him or her.

This article was written by John & Elaine Leadem, senior supervisors of the Leadem Counseling & Consulting …