Lots of people seem to have relationship problems. I did. I
don't now. At least not of any abiding or substantial nature. Touch wood. Yes,
there are challenges, sometimes substantial ones, but these are always entirely
dealable with. Problems are solutionless. Challenges can be overcome.
My problems stemmed from this: I would pick people without
the requisite virtues for a successful relationship, but who were exciting, or
fun, or special enough to make me feel special as an antidote to my
essential boring, nervous lostness, and then, once the initial fizz wore off, I
would find myself saddled to a schmuck or yearning for lost fizz.
I can't live on fizz. Rushing from fizz to fizz does not
produce any real satisfaction. It deepens the dearth of connection, because,
when I'm rushing after fizz, I'm not concentrating on the thing that I should be
concentrating on, namely living a satisfactory life of relying on God and
contributing constructively to the lives of the people around me.
The only thing which provides satisfaction is doing
just that. A relationship with a capital R (i.e. a marriage in substance,
whether or not in name) is a powerful vehicle for that, but that is
the purpose of such a relationship: not fizz. There will likely be fizz, as
part of the mix. But it's the welcome bonus not the substance. No one's saying
you can't have dessert. But dessert is not why you're at the table in the first
place, and most of the time you're full from the main course anyway.
My relationships before AA (and in a brief interregnum
between long relationships when I was sober a few years) were like bubble gum.
Very tasty at the beginning. Bland after a while, and really hard work on the
jaws. Eventually you're left wondering what's stuck to your beard or your shoe.
I can't help people with relationship problems, because I've
never solved any.
The only solution I've found is to develop the virtues of
emotional maturity, competence, unselfishness, boundariedness, and love, in all
of their forms, and I then found I attracted people with those same qualities.
Obviously these are ideals towards which one is willing to grow, and their
attainment is a matter of degree, but it's the quality of the ingredients in
the relationship that counts, which includes the willingness to admit defects
promptly and without defence or self-justification and the willingness to grow
where there is (sometimes disconcerting) room for growth.
The two most common problems people report, in my
experience, are loss of romantic/sexual flutter, and living with a highly
defective person, i.e. someone with the opposite of the above virtues:
emotional immaturity, incompetence, selfishness, enmeshment issues, and spite.
I've experienced both types of problem.
My answer to the first is that I needed to develop a taste
for real food instead of bubble gum. Romantic/sexual flutter was an initially
enticing but ultimately unsatisfying substitute for real love and connection.
The flavour is a facsimile of real flavour but with no nutritional content.
I've developed a taste for broccoli as well as blueberries. Both are better
than blueberry bubblegum. I didn't solve the problem per se. I was changed, and
the problem went away.
My answer to the second is: good luck; I've never
successfully modified another person. To the extent that the person I'm with
has character defects, they must be accepted at the emotional level and worked
around at the practical level. We both have plenty. It's just that they're
nowhere near mission critical level. If the person changes, it’s up to them,
and it’s on their schedule. We can deal with each other's defects, because
they're anomalies in systems that are basically functional. It's no good
picking someone out of the seven billion people on the planet who is
emotionally immature, incompetent, selfish, enmeshed, or spiteful and
complaining that that is what they are like. When I've been with people like
that, I picked them: the destination was printed clearly on the ticket; the
reason it was on my plate was because I had ordered it; the reason I was being
treated like a doormat was because I was printed with the word 'WELCOME'.
Why did I stay? The sex was good or 'I was in love' (not
with the reality but with the image. Really being in love, I've
found, means I stop seeing the other person's defects as defects and deftly
skirt them like I'm executing moves in a spiritual pasodoble. When I’ve been in
love and exasperated or disappointed, I’m split and therefore
confused. Love is indivisible. If I don’t love the whole person, I don’t love
them at all. I’m in love with the shopping list, not with the contents of the
basket.)
There are of course exceptions, and I've observed two in friends of mine: (1) both individuals are in a recovery process and, over many years, change internally, with the relationship thus transforming automatically and (2) the individual developing extraordinary levels of forbearance and detachment and treating the development of unconditional love as their life's project. In the first case, the relationship remains, but it undergoes a sea change. In the second case, one of the participants does not change but a new modus vivendi is arrived at, even though the drinking or using or other 'behaviour' continues. If you'd like guidance on either of these approaches, ask someone who has succeeded in adopting the approach in question.
I don't know how to have a successful relationship, but I have one. I know how to be sober, considerate, and helpful regardless of what the other person says or does, how to forgive, and how to get things done. The relationship then takes care of itself. I don't know how to solve the problems I had. I tried to, don't get me wrong, but it was like bumping around a dark land trying to discern where the landmines, crags, and precipices were so I could stop injuring myself, when what I needed to do was seek a light source, survey what I found, and go and live somewhere benign where the sun shone.
Be the right person and relationships and circumstances
largely take care of themselves, I've found. Then the problem disappears, and
there is nothing left to solve.
In 'relationships', as with everything else, I haven't actually solved my problems. I have woken up and gone somewhere else where the problem does not exist. So, one day at a time, I'm trying not to solve any more problems. Either my own or anyone else's.