The art of blaming situations, people, and events for the quality of our own lives is a skill we acquire as a child. Children however, do not start out lying and blaming others.  In fact, children generally begin by blaming themselves for the poor behavior of others.  A child will eventually learn to lie because it eases the pain of what he or she has done, or what he or she is experiencing.  (Lying is therefore a mood changing behavior and can become habit forming.)

For example, a child will break something and generally feel bad even though they might not look that way to others when the incident is first discovered.  The broken object is now of less value.  Even worse, the child may also feel like he or she are of less personal value as well, because he or she had failed to properly care for the object that is now broken.

This experience is painful enough for a child to endure without the hurtful consequences often imposed by adults.  The toy is no longer the same and the child feels bad that they were unable to take care of it in the way that he or she had imagined they could.  It can get even worse when others who have no knowledge of how the toy has broken discover the losses.  If the child who broke the toy is emotionally shut down or fragmented, he or she will fail to take responsibility for the broken object and the blame game will begin. It is most likely that others will want to assign the responsibility to someone.

Assigning responsibility usually comes in form of blame and generally is accompanied by shame.  You can see this for yourself in the following case example:

Mom: John, do not run when you are carrying that piggy bank!

John: Thinks to himself – what the heck, I can do it – I can do anything!

Sound: C  R  A  S  H

Mom: John!!!! How could you?  Your grandmother just brought you that piggy bank. You should …

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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 …

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 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 …

Memories are a powerful thing. Feeling memories of the pain and disappointment of holidays past can overwhelm us so much so that we have come to expect nothing different. Or perhaps, our feeling memories might be so wonderful that we again have expectations of exciting holiday experiences to be had.

If we are so sure that the pain of the past will revisit us, we automatically brace ourselves for it, and we are seldom disappointed; the pain returns because that is what we were dwelling on. In the same vein, if we are so sure that each holiday will bring the same joy of the past, we are bound to be disillusioned if the reality does not favorably compare with the memory.

Memories however, are nothing more than reminders of what was. They are not our present reality. If we keep that in mind, we can approach the holiday season with an open heart and hope for a positive experience.

What is your reaction inside when the holiday season is mentioned?  Do you immediately have warm thoughts of family, holiday meals, and merriment, or does your mind conjure up dark images of depression, chaos, and family arguments?

Many of us are so entrenched in the hurtful memories of past holidays that we have come to expect the same with each passing year. We grit our teeth and prepare for what’s coming because we know that it will be the same this year.

For many of us, holidays are something to be endured rather than enjoyed. The pain of past holidays is a constant reminder of the hurt that we suffered at this time of year. It can feel particularly difficult – if not impossible – to simply free ourselves of the associations we have of personal pain in relation to the holiday.

But it doesn’t have to be. Holidays are what we make of them. We can decide to follow old traditions or make up new ones of our own. If we choose to, we can spend the time with family or can do something completely different, if it …

If we truly love someone, it should never have strings attached.

Love can be confusing. Do we merely love someone or are we “in love” with them, and what do all of these terms mean anyway?

Many of us believe that loving someone means holding them dear, while being in love means passion, excitement, and true understanding of a person’s heart and soul. Being “in love” perhaps signifies a commitment that we wish to make to one person. What will happen, however, when the passion and excitement starts to fade; when we are steeped in the daily stress of living and life? Do we simply move on to the next person to find more passion and more excitement?

If we are to fully commit our lives to our romantic partner, we may want to entertain the notion that there is in fact no difference between loving and being in love. Love, as in all other things, has its ups and downs. A firm decision to face the inevitable challenges together with our partner will allow us to enjoy the rewards of romantic love as we go through life together.

When we find a partner, we initially “talk the talk” and say we love them and will always be there for them, but are we going into this relationship with an honest, open heart?

Often times we have been damaged by an important relationship at some point in our lives that leaves us vowing never to open ourselves to such hurt again. So we put up an isolating wall that does not allow anyone to get close to our deepest emotions. This grand scheme can backfire however, because while we are attempting to keep new pain out, we are also holding old pain in.

Our journey to healing does not have to be traveled alone. When we allow the isolating wall to come down and ask our partner to be part of our healing process, we are learning how to give and receive unconditional love.

If we truly love someone, it should never have strings attached. “Conditional …