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 be ashamed of yourself.  You are going to be the death of me!

John: It dropped.  I did not do it. I don’t care about some dumb piggy bank anyway.  Where is the candy? I am hungry!  There is never any food in this house.

A child says, “It broke” and an adult, provided he or she has become an adult, says, “I broke it.” The child is failing to take responsibility. The adult is accepting responsibility. If however, we as adults continue to shirk responsibility for our own lives, our own feelings, and our own behaviors, we will inevitably need to assign the responsibility to someone. We look outside of ourselves. We blame.

If we are to grow in our romantic relationships we are going to need to avoid blaming, lying, and hurting. While the tendency to look outside ourselves for the cause of our own discomfort is a character defect that many of us acquired as children, unfortunately it has become as ineffective for us as adults as any other addictive behavior or drug of choice.

This is because we blame others when the perceived or real costs for appearing “wrong” are frighteningly high.  During these high-stakes moments in childhood, and then in adulthood as well, many of us discovered that lying would ease the pain of what we have done. The “drug like” behavior of deceiving others, and eventually ourselves, became a “first addiction” for those of us who have perfected the art of self-justification. Yes, blaming and diverting responsibility away from ourselves sometimes appears to be an addiction in its own right.

Intimacy is about openness, honesty, and vulnerability. An inadequately treated addiction however, will erode each one of those features of true intimacy. If we are to create and maintain a true lasting relationship with our partner, we will need to be free of our dependence on blaming others – especially our partner – for our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.  We need to break our habit of lying to ourselves and to others. We must take responsibility for our own lives and decisions so that we can bring our true selves to each other in open and vulnerable honesty.

This article was written by John & Elaine Leadem, senior supervisors of the Leadem Counseling & Consulting offices in Toms River, NJ and East Brunswick, NJ. The content of this article is based on the recently published book from Leadem Counseling: “Ounce of Prevention: A Course in Relapse Prevention.”

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 met if we are working to be of service to our partners or others.

Although we can understand this fear, our experience has confirmed the time-tested recovery wisdom: “you cannot keep it unless you give it away”. Once we understand this concept, we are able to give unselfishly of ourselves to others, to be of service, especially to our partner, and feel the joy of the recovery promise, “we will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows” being fulfilled.

This article was written by John & Elaine Leadem, senior supervisors of the Leadem Counseling & Consulting offices in Toms River, NJ and East Brunswick, NJ. The content of this article is based on their book: “One in the Spirit: Meditation Course for Recovering Couples”

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 sharing our own romantic journey with others, we remind you that we are one with you in the spirit of this journey, together.  Good luck!

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This article was written by John & Elaine Leadem, senior supervisors of the Leadem Counseling & Consulting offices in Toms River, NJ and East Brunswick, NJ. The content of this article is based on their book: “One in the Spirit: Meditation Course for Recovering Couples”

As kids we were intrigued by an honesty game that has been known by many other titles depending on where you grew up and in what generation you grew up in.  The game has many twists and turns but the goal is always the same – manipulate others to step out from behind their masks and take risks to expose the real you or expose you to a real challenge.  In our neighborhood the game usually ended with a good many hurt feelings.

The idea of dropping our facades that prevent others from really getting to know us is a good thing however, and while it often feels uncomfortable it is seldom a game. If we are to be true to ourselves and to our romantic partners, we must remove our masks.

We originally wear our masks to ensure our acceptance by others. We originally wear our masks to heighten other’s perception of our status. We originally wear our masks to ensure “his” or “her” interest in us.

We might have believed that these masks protected us from rejection and satisfied the profile that we believed others were looking for, but that was seldom the case.  We cannot pretend to be someone that we are not without real consequence.  The act of masquerading will eventually cut us off from the care of the Higher Power of our understanding that we committed to in our 3rd  Step.

Let others see you for who you truly are – the person you asked your Higher Power to care for – and you will be enough.

If you have ever had the opportunity to deliver or receive a 5th Step, you have experienced the acceptance that is possible when one person rightly aligns himself or herself with another.  The alignment is one of honesty, openness, and willingness.   During these 5th Step encounters we intuitively know that honesty and acceptance are vital elements of the healing experience.  We strive to be non-judgmental to those who choose us to receive their inventory.

But what do we do when our partner shares with us? Do we offer the same unconditional love and acceptance that we would offer a stranger? Too often our own fear gets in the way and we want to control or manipulate rather than merely listen. Pray for the patience and grace to be a listener rather than a “fixer.”

Allow those people that you care for to see you without your disguise. If you can do this, the acceptance and love you receive in return will be enduring.  You do not need to trick people into liking “who you want them to think that you are”.  Take off your masks and give them a chance to like you for who you really are.

You do not really have anything to loose because the games of deception we play as adults have the same outcome as our childhood game of “Truth, Dare, Consequences, Promise to Repeat” – there are no winners!

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This article was written by John & Elaine Leadem, senior supervisors of the Leadem Counseling & Consulting offices in Toms River, NJ and East Brunswick, NJ. The content of this article is based on their soon to be published book for couples from Leadem Counseling titled: Awakening To Your Soul Mate: A decision to be IN Love (Leadem & Leadem, 2013)

Sometimes, we enter relationships for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps we are looking for “real love,” or affirmation of our self-worth, or any one of a hundred different reasons. We might have felt that our personal recovery had progressed to the point that we could handle any problems that might arise in a romance. We may even have believed that exclusive devotion to our love relationship or over-valuing the importance of a romantic partnership in our lives would help us to retain our self-worth.

Recovery wisdom suggests that “we will lose whatever we place before our recovery.”  We are not suggesting therefore, that you place romantic happiness or a relationship ahead of your recovery or ahead of your pursuit of spiritual fulfillment.  Romantic success however, is meant to be a byproduct of sober living and not a replacement for or it or a guarantee of it.

We can easily lose ourselves in the process of idolizing our partner or elevating a romantic relationship to the position of a higher power. We must retain our sense of self and remain spiritually fit if we expect a romance to thrive.  It is a spiritual axiom that our romantic life will never be fuller than our spiritual life.  We can have sobriety, spiritual well being and love if we are first true to ourselves.

If we are interested in enhancing the quality of a current romantic relationship or working to avoid ending up in relationships that are emotionally lopsided or that do not fulfill your emotional needs there will need to be change.

Many of us have been guided by our support group and sponsors to follow the recovery wisdom that encourages that we “do the next right thing” when we find ourselves confused about how to avoid repeating mistakes from past failures.  Some of us have had such an unsuccessful history of romantic relationships we are hard-pressed to know what the “next right thing” is.

If you find yourself confused about what to do differently this time perhaps you will gain meaningful insights from a focused Fourth Step inventory.  A focused Fourth Step inventory that examines only the romantic relationships in your history can reveal much that you can change in yourself to avoid repeating the same old mistakes.

Consider working with a guide we have published, Clearing Away the Wreckage of the Past: A Task Oriented Guide for Completing Steps 4 through 7 (Leadem & Leadem, 2010), which will help you to expose the common patterns of behavior in past romantic relationships that have cause you or other harm.  It is a lot easier to do “the next right thing” when we understand what the wrongs things are.

This article was written by John & Elaine Leadem, senior supervisors of the Leadem Counseling & Consulting offices in Toms River, NJ and East Brunswick, NJ. The content of this article is based on their soon to be published book for couples from Leadem Counseling titled: Awakening To Your Soul Mate: A decision to be IN Love (Leadem & Leadem, 2013)

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 that way.

Couples who work together to identify, and balance, their financial obligations as well as financial recreation are working toward practicing the principles of recovery in all their affairs.

This article was written by John & Elaine Leadem, senior supervisors of the Leadem Counseling & Consulting offices in Toms River, NJ and East Brunswick, NJ. The content of this article is based on their book: “One in the Spirit: Meditation Course for Recovering Couples”

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 to maintain only one version of you.  There should not be a sober-at-the-meeting you who is different than the sober-at-home you.

This article was written by John & Elaine Leadem, senior supervisors of the Leadem Counseling & Consulting offices in Toms River, NJ and East Brunswick, NJ. The content of this article is based on their soon to be published book for couples from Leadem Counseling titled: Awakening To Your Soul Mate: A decision to be IN Love (Leadem & Leadem, 2013)

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 not mean we have to accept our parents’ skewed sense of the world.

With the honesty and intimacy that we are learning in recovery, we can reject what does not fit in our lives and continue to grow together in our romantic partnership.

This article was written by John & Elaine Leadem, senior supervisors of the Leadem Counseling & Consulting offices in Toms River, NJ and East Brunswick, NJ. The content of this article is based on their book: “One in the Spirit: Meditation Course for Recovering Couples”

When we are victims of trauma and/or abuse as children, we often carry the burden of those memories into our adulthood. Certain events or actions can trigger these memories without warning, as well as the fear that accompanies them. We have not found the belief that “time will heal all wounds” to be true at all. In fact, many who have spent considerable time and resources resolving conflict from their past are often surprised to find that the hurt can continue to show up when it is least welcome.

This is typical, and it is to be expected. Coming to peace with our past does not mean it will no longer hurt. Coming to peace with our past means we understand and accept the reality of what has occurred in our lives and we are willing to move forward with the understanding that our past has become part of who we are.

What a beautiful and healing experience it is when we can learn about how our respective pasts have contributed to who we are and we can then share it with our partner. If you are in a relationship with someone who has been through oppression or hurt, the effects of their trauma on our adult relationships are certainly significant. When a person endures oppression or has been abused, this often results in an inability to believe in anyone or anything. Self-worth evaporates and we must rely on others for a sense of security and well-being.

Your partner may have been emotionally damaged early in life and carry the scars. If they seem to overreact to a situation that seems normal to you, they may be reliving a childhood experience and suffering from the reopened wounds that were inflicted on them. Your role is to offer compassion, patience, and love at these times. When your partner knows that you identify with their struggles, you become part of their healing process.

It can be difficult to reach such a person spiritually, but it can be accomplished. If your romantic partner has suffered in this way, you may find them running from you because they believe that isolation is their only recourse. Exercise patience and be there when they return. Do not reproach them; instead, offer your strength. Become their light in the darkness of their fears.

This article was written by John & Elaine Leadem, senior supervisors of the Leadem Counseling & Consulting offices in Toms River, NJ and East Brunswick, NJ. The content of this article is based on their book “One in the Spirit: Meditation Course for Recovering Couples.”

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 be disturbing – but it is true.  Our Higher Power will help us to see that our emotions are neither right nor wrong, but they deserve to be heard.

We want authenticity and a spiritual connection in our partnership. To accomplish this, we must be true to both our partner and to ourselves. The excuses for not being completely honest are just that – excuses. They are not valid. Our relationship can survive the truly candid moments when we express our thoughts and fears. It is when we “shut down” to protect our partner or ourselves that we are doing them a disservice.

Your Higher Power will help you to become one in the spirit with your romantic partner. Only by sharing of yourselves will your romantic love survive.

This article was written by John & Elaine Leadem, senior supervisors of the Leadem Counseling & Consulting offices in Toms River, NJ and East Brunswick, NJ. The content of this article is based on their book “One in the Spirit: Meditation Course for Recovering Couples.”

Couple in love photo available from Shutterstock