November 9th, 2009

ROB AND JANELL'S 12 STEPS

Over the last decade, a few Soapboxes have garnered tremendous responses. Last week’s has assumed its place in the top 5 of all-time. If you missed it, it’s best you read it before moving on.

The overwhelming majority of the comments were positive and supportive; a very few were non-believing and dismissive (and I thank Arnie for writing in).  Some of you had an identical question; why did I compare love to a 12 step program? After all, in a traditional recovery program the 12 steps are designed to keep you away from your addiction. In the case of alcoholics, they admit they are powerless over the booze and then do everything they can to stay away from it.

Some of you even went so far as to suggest I was sending a secret hidden meaning in last week’s article as a way to slowly break the news to you that my wife and I are getting a divorce. Ummmm…no.

The criticism of the 12 step model is fair; you are correct. The traditional 12 step program is, most literally defined, designed to keep you away from your addiction. I like to look at it a little differently in the context of true love’s 12 steps; this 12 step program is meant to help you manage and contain your addiction; it hopefully allows you to harness all of the positive notions that come from deep love and eschew all or most of the bad.

Further, it is step one that made me gravitate towards using the 12 steps as a model. It seems to me that most of us are completely unwilling to actually give ourselves to someone else. We spend so much time fighting the natural human desire to completely turn ourselves over to someone else that we miss out on so much of love’s grandeur. We are all so caught up in the notion that admitting that someone else has become so important to us will lead to them having power over us to ruin our lives that we’re afraid to even take the first step.

The truth is that deep, true love does give the other person the power to destroy you.

That’s why it’s a leap of faith. If you haven’t given someone else the ability to take your heart and crush it before your eyes, then you haven’t truly allowed yourself to love. The only way to know all of the benefits and glory of deep love is to find that person and say “This is me; I am good at a few things and terrible at most. You have to love me during all of those things. This is how I look and act now and I will not always look and act this way. I am asking you to accept me regardless.”

That is why, once you have truly found someone that you know you can’t live without, you must perform step one; you must admit their power over you and embrace it, not fight it. You must give yourself to the love and the person. Once that step is complete, you are able to move forward, together, and fight the world rather than each other.

Those of you who fear “changing” are too immature to truly love. Love should change you. What the hell is the point of something so revered if it doesn’t take you to new heights and change things about your life in ways you never imagined? That change doesn’t mean that men have to give up sports and ladies have to like his friends. Remember that love is not a compromise or a competition; it’s a war on the world with you and your lover as a team. True love would never take away his golf or her career. True love will, however, change you in ways you cannot even comprehend; it will strengthen you and soften you. It will make you more adaptable yet more resolved. It will bring you euphoric highs you never dreamed of and depressed lows you never thought possible. Enjoy the ride…you can’t control it.

The following 12 step program was taken directly from the website of Alcoholics Anonymous and then changed by Janell and me to fit into our experience of deep, true love.

STEP 1: Admit that you are powerless over your love for one another; that your individual lives would be far less satisfying without each other.

STEP 2: Resolve together that there is a power greater than your individual selves that will always be the foundation of your sanity; the team of the two of you, based in your love for one another, is that power.

STEP 3: Make a decision to turn your will and your lives but not your individual selves over to the power of the team.

STEP 4: Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself and your partner

STEP 5: Admit to each other that you are both imperfect and always shall be. Demand from one another that neither of you will ever allow your imperfections to be used as a justification for not being a team player.

STEP 6: Acknowledge that there are things each of you wants to improve about yourselves and commit to doing so.

STEP 7: Humbly ask each other to accept one another’s shortcomings.

STEP 8: Make a list together of all of the persons you hate for their toxicity and become willing to get them out of your lives.

STEP 9: Make direct contact with the toxic people in your lives and begin the process of eliminating them from your inner circle. Regardless of their relation to each of you, if they are toxic, they have no place on the team.

STEP 10: Constantly re-evaluate yourselves and your inner circle; search for progress in some and regressions in others. Maintain your resolve to being the best you, making for the best team.

STEP 11: Through vices, pets, material possessions, trips, individual and group hobbies, favorite TV shows (both individual and team), long afternoon naps, fast cars, hours of zoning out at the computer, and an obsession with the holiday season;  live and play your ass off.

STEP 12: Having had an awakening as the result of these steps, proudly display your love to one another every single day; whether through a loving text, a diamond bracelet or a deviant sex act. Share your “secret” with those who ask, but leave those who don’t alone. Never forget that the true love was formed long ago and is a given and a constant, it is true and everlasting happiness together that requires work; work that never ends, never relents, never gives up (even when all appears hopeless) and work that never, ever hurts.