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    Stage II Relationships: Love Beyond Addiction
    Stage II Relationships: Love Beyond Addiction
    Stage II Relationships: Love Beyond Addiction
    Ebook140 pages2 hours

    Stage II Relationships: Love Beyond Addiction

    By Earnie Larsen

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Offers clear and practical techniques for couples and families who have faced the issue of addiction and are now striving to bring health and vitality to their relationships.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateFeb 26, 2013
    ISBN9780062283481
    Stage II Relationships: Love Beyond Addiction
    Author

    Earnie Larsen

    Earnie Larsen has been intimately invloved with people in Twelve Step programs for twenty years. He has degrees in counceling, education, and theology, and he lectures, counsels, and conducts workshops and seminars nationally on improving interpersonal relationships. He is the author of thirty books.

    Read more from Earnie Larsen

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      Book preview

      Stage II Relationships - Earnie Larsen

      INTRODUCTION

      Shortly after the publication of Stage II Recovery: Life Beyond Addiction, I became convinced of the need for a sequel on Stage II relationships. One of the messages of my previous book was that intimacy and relationships are the core of the whole recovery process. That book ended with a chapter on relationships, but I knew the subject deserved extended treatment.

      If ever I had any doubts about the importance of intimacy, letters like this one convinced me of the need for this new book:

      Dear Earnie:

      I feel like I want and need to take some time and give you feedback on my personal journey of recovery. So much has been happening and I have made a commitment to keep in touch with the people who have been part of my journey.

      After seven years of sobriety and God knows how many meetings, therapy sessions, and programs, I have come to the astounding conclusion that mostly I am lonely. All of my life there’s been a glass wall between me and just about everyone I have ever had a relationship with. In a way, I have lots of friends—but they only go so far. The bottom line is, I end up alone, feeling alone, and thinking I deserve to be alone.

      In a word, my relational skills have been zilch, whether the relationship is with God (who I know is unhappy with me), with men (who I know will leave me once they find out the truth), with my kids (who play my sense of guilt like a guitar), with my coworkers (who always take advantage of me), or just with life in general (it is never fair). More troublesome than any of these, of course, is my relationship with myself. I just never liked me very well and therefore never figured I deserved the really good things in life.

      Treatment taught me how not to drink. It did not teach me how to live. And you know what? In the past seven years, I became a double winner and started going to Al-Anon; and then a triple winner by taking in quite a few Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings. I found that we may come from slightly different places, but we are all the same. The same living issues—exactly the same issues—keep surfacing in all these different kinds of meetings. We are all lonely. We are all stopped by the glass wall. We are all deficient in the skills we need to have healthy relationships.

      So now my effort and energy in recovery are much more focused on getting rid of the glass wall. Slowly, because it is so scary, I am learning what I need to do to connect with others. Mostly it has to do with changing my own attitudes and perceptions. But I am learning, and my life is so much warmer, so to speak, because I am getting closer to people.

      Thanks for all your help. Your Stage II concepts are right on. At least they are for me where I am at. Thanks. If I ever meet you, I am counting on the glass wall not being there.

      Jenny A.

      What Is Recovery?

      Stage II Recovery proposed that if we are ever to experience the fullness of our recovery potential, we need first to define what recovery means to us. Each individual’s definition of recovery sets him or her on a clearly defined path. Although recovery is certainly a process or journey, rather than a destination, it is vitally important that we map out the direction our recovery will take.

      I’ve asked thousands of recovering people what recovery means to them. Strangely enough, few people have a clear idea. Overwhelmingly, their definitions include vague and general terms such as feeling better, getting control of my life, and even never allowing anyone ever to hurt me again. Sometimes they give me an utterly mystified look, as though any idiot knew the answer: Recovery means being sober. What else could it mean?

      Stage I and Stage II

      In dealing with recovery, I have found it important to distinguish clearly between Stage I recovery (breaking the primary addiction) and Stage II recovery (rebuilding the life that was saved in Stage I). They are sequential. One follows the other; or, in other words, one is necessary before the other. It is not that one is good and the other better. The fact is that many people reach a dead end or plateau in their personal recovery; and if they do not understand what is occurring, they frequently feel they’re losing their recovery. Everything that used to be so meaningful no longer is, and their new-found excitement and health no longer feel terrific. Not knowing how to handle this experience, they tend to get angry or depressed, or they slide into some form of switched addiction to compensate for their feelings of loss.

      I’ve concluded that what may actually be happening is that they have simply reached the end of Stage I recovery. They have broken the power of the main addiction. Although they could slip back (we all can), for now they’ve quieted the old demons, dealt with the old issues fairly well, and achieved freedom from addiction.

      I have often seen recovering people stall somewhere between the second and the sixth year of their program, and the effect can be devastating. They think, I always believed that once I climbed this mountain, I’d be home free. How come I don’t feel free? The question I am asking is, "How could they feel free?" They have defined recovery as breaking the primary addiction; but once they do that, freedom still eludes them.

      What they don’t understand is that they are now facing the real mountain—the basic, fundamental issues that have been there all along, that were there before the addiction, that grew stronger as the addiction took control, and that still remain once Stage I freedom has been achieved.

      Dealing with the mountain of living is what Stage II recovery is all about. It is about getting on with life by facing those patterns, habits, and attitudes that control your life and which, for perhaps the first time, you are clearheaded, sober, or emotionally sound enough to face. Stage I recovery is what makes it possible for a pilgrim to undertake the journey of Stage II recovery.

      Defining Stage II

      Because recovery needs to be specifically defined in order to be effective, and because Stage I recovery is defined as breaking the primary addiction, I have further defined Stage II recovery as learning to love. That definition may appear to be simplistic, but it should not be taken lightly. What’s more, it is important to understand that Stage II recovery is not an issue only for addicted persons. If Stage II means learning to love, we are all on that journey, and we all need to face the same issues of personal and spiritual growth.

      All of us were made for love, and every movement of our hearts is an attempt to meet and fill that need in some way. Research has proven many times that we need intimacy in order to lead successful and happy lives. Babies who are denied physical contact with other people will die, even if their basic needs are met. Babies who sleep in hospital nurseries where the constant steady sound of a heartbeat is played over the intercom are far more calm and relaxed than babies in ordinary nurseries. At the other end of the life cycle, senility is not necessarily inevitable: It is often the result of a loss of meaning and purpose in life, a feeling that no one cares about us or considers us important. At all ages we need intimacy and love. Thus, a journey towards learning to love is important to everyone, not just those who have traveled through Stage I.

      If the first principle of Stage II recovery is learning to love, then the second is that love exists only in relationships. No one simply has love. Martin Buber has written that love exists between two poles creating at both ends—that is, in relationships; to achieve a satisfying degree of intimacy in those relationships, each individual must possess adequate skills. Many people love, but they are still not capable of making their relationships work.

      At seminars I often ask, Do you think a nonrecovering alcoholic can love? After some hesitation and mumbling, someone generally says, Yeah, I guess so. But those who are recovering alcoholics are never slow to answer. They always boom out, Of course, and go on to explain that they stayed drunk most of the time because when they were sober they had to feel the pain of hurting those they loved so much.

      Then I ask another question. Maybe they can love, but what can’t they do? The answer, of course, is that they can’t make relationships work; and because they can’t, they stay locked forever behind the glass wall that Jenny A. wrote about, wondering why they are so lonely.

      But the nonrecovering alcoholic (sober or not) is not the only one who lacks the skills necessary to function in a healthy relationship. It is also the nonrecovering anyone who has not learned the skills necessary. Lacking these skills does not make us evil or bad; it simply prevents us from reaping the same benefits from our relationships that skilled people can.

      The Core of Recovery

      If Stage II recovery is learning to love, and if love exists only in relationships, then at the core of recovery is becoming a person increasingly capable of functioning in a healthy relationship. As you read this book, you will discover that you need to begin to understand and be willing to deal with yourself, not the other person. You’ll discover that who I am has everything to do with the kind of relationship you enter into. Who I am affects what happens in your relationships and ultimately how you repeat the same pattern of your relationships throughout your life, unless you change something. No one has power or responsibility to change anyone else. The only person you can change is yourself.

      Codependency Redefined

      The term codependency gets bandied about a lot these days. Let the battle continue to rage over whether or not the term should apply only to those who have alcoholism in their background. For

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