Love, Relationships, and Step 6 – Episode 248

What do love, relationships, and Step 6 have to do with each other? Maybe everything? Sometimes events come together in my life and form a message about a new step in my recovery. That happened for me this weekend. In order to tell this story, I’m going to have to talk about some books and concepts that are not part of the Al-Anon program, but that have meaning to me. Friday night, my wife and I went to a workshop at our church on the “5 Love Languages.” It’s based on a series of books with that title. The basic idea is that there are different ways in which we feel loved. That some ways are more important to us than others. That we most often express love in the ways that we want to receive it. That our partners way of feeling loved is probably not the same as ours. And finally that if we don’t understand the way in which our partner feels most loved, it may weaken or destroy our relationship. I had first encountered the 5 love languages several years ago when a friend in the program loaned me a copy of the book. At that time I was struggling with rebuilding my relationship with my wife, which had been severely damaged by her alcoholism. She had been sober for over 5 years, and I had been in Al-Anon about 10. As our book How Al-Anon Works says in the discussion of Step 1 (“We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable”), “Al-Anon does not promise … that sobriety will solve our problems or fix our relationships”. I read the book cover to cover, and came to a couple of realizations. I’m going to come at those realizations from the loss or pain that brought me to them specifically. As a friend said in the workshop on Friday, paraphrasing from the book, it can help to think about where you most feel loss or pain in your relationship(s), when you are trying to decide which love language is most important to you. And maybe I should talk about what those 5 languages are! Again, these are the ways in which you feel loved: According to the book, they are * Words of appreciation: these can include compliments; thanks and gratitude for things you do, say, or be; or maybe the 3 simple words “I love you.” * Acts of service: when someone does something for you. * Physical touch: a caress; a light touch on the shoulder; a pat on the back; a hug or kiss; or sexual intimacy. * Quality time: doing things together; simple conversation; sharing thoughts, plans, fears. * Receiving gifts. On to the realizations… Number one is small but important (to me): My wife would often ask me to do simple things, which I thought she could just as easily do for herself, such as picking up something from the drugstore. (And not because I was going there already.) I would feel annoyed that she didn’t just do it herself — why did she need to ask me? The book helped me to see that one of the important ways my wife feels love … as you probably already guessed … is through acts of service. When I saw that, my attitude and response to her simple requests changed “180”. I saw that she was really asking me “Do you love me?” After that, whenever she asked me to do an errand, I could hear “will you show me your love by doing this thing for me?” And I could lovingly respond, “Yes.” Thus healing a small emotional scar in me, and helping me to feel closer to her. The biggie, though, hit me hard. At this time I had developed a close friendship with another Al-Anon member. We would share long phone calls and emails, talking about program, but also just about our lives, thoughts, and feelings. Looking back on it from the perspective of several years, I can see that I became needy, that I placed a lot of my serenity in the hands of this other person. Of course,