I was talking to a friend this week about marriage. In
recovery many of us have the opportunity to do relationships and marriage
differently. We also know that many of us do different marriages—some more than
once—or twice. For this reason many of
us in long-term recovery also read about relationships and we try counseling
and workshops and “couples work.”
I was saying to my friend that I wished for more time alone
at home. My husband is a teacher and he is off in the summer so I miss my
mornings alone in the house. My friend’s husband travels for work and so she
has lots of alone time but she misses those daily dinners they shared when his
previous job brought him home every night.
It is true that the grass is always greener, but its also
true that we each have a preference for how much autonomy and how much
dependency we like. It’s almost as if we each have a set point. That’s also why
many of us couldn’t be married to someone else’s spouse.
I remember in early recovery a therapist explaining to me
that the hardest work a couple has to do is learn their preferences and
negotiate the middle. I know that I was a “distancer”—always pushing away,
making space and when I was in the midst of addiction I was the one who left.
But I also learned that being a distancer gets challenged when I meet another
person who likes a lot of space too. What I learned over time was that my
distancing simply hid my own need for dependence. When a new guy stayed away,
or walked away first, then I got to feel that yucky, dependent, needy, caring
feeling.
That’s part of what we get when we are sober a long time. We
learn about ourselves and what is underneath our first or presumed reactions. I
was a distancer until a man took more distance, then I would I tip toe back
toward coupledom and closeness. It’s similar for my sober friend who says she
likes to be very close and have lots of time together. When her husband was
laid off for eight months and was waiting at the door each night she took longer
and longer to get home from work each day.
We contain all of it.
I have come to believe that when we say of any other
person’s behavior, “Can you imagine!” that in fact we actually can. And that’s
what upsets us. We all have it in us to be dependent and to run away.
Psychologists talk about “reaction formation” where we do the very opposite of
what we want or fear. My fear of being dependent, or having someone dependent
on me, is very likely some of the fuel in my “independence” and distancing.
The gift of long recovery is all this learning about
ourselves. And then, if we have the courage to face what we learn, we can
create or re-create great relationships with our partners.
