The topic of step 12 at a Sponsorship through the 12 steps workshop in London, UK

To set the tone for the meeting, I will read an extract from chapter Working with Others age 96.

Do not discourage if your prospect does not respond at once, search out another alcoholic and try again. You are sure to find someone desperate enough to accept with eagerness what you offer and find it a waste of time to keep chasing a man who cannot or will not work with you. If you leave such a person alone him, he may soon become convinced that he cannot recover by himself. To spend too much time on anyone's situation is to deny some other alcoholic opportunity to live and be happy.

One of our fellowship felt entirely with his first half dozen prospects. He often says that if he had continued to work on them, he might have deprived many others who have since recovered of their chance. Tonight's meeting is part three of Working Stepped Well with the sponsor and Tim will share anything between 30 and 45 minutes on the topic, after which the floor will be opened for questions rather than typical check. I will now hand it over to them. Please them.

Thanks. So, Mark, can you all hear me? All right? OK. I think I'm coming. I think the voice is coming through my headset. If you have trouble hearing me, if it goes in and out, then there's something to let me know straight away so I can fix it because there are different ways I can connect the sound.

So

one topic which is very common in sponsorship, the the call starts something like this.

Someone calls and says, since 8:00 this morning I've been feeling very. And then they tell you how they've been feeling. And then they say maybe I ought to join. And then they name another fellowship,

you know, which is a life changing decision. You know, I'm going to spend the rest of my life going to at least one meeting a week and sponsoring people, you know, day in, day out for the rest of my Now

what I'd say first of all about this. I've, I've very often had sponsees

who unless they go to OA and get an OA sponsor and call to do their daily food plan and acquire some abstinence and, you know, do all of that, then I won't, there's no point in sponsoring them in a A they won't be able to do anything,

particularly if it's really kind of, you know, galloping bulimia or anorexia. It renders people, both of those will render people in a state where they're just unable to take anything in. So unless it, you know, they might as well be taking heroin. And frankly, as far as the a, A program is concerned,

So what I've learned with a a sponsees who, who also have a food thing going on, and I'm going to be really blunt here, if they look underweight, they're probably underweight. And if they're underweight, there's probably a food problem going on because very few people in society are like technically underweight as far as BMI is concerned. And I've met when I've when I've called it out, I've never been wrong.

In retrospect, they've always ended up in OA and admitted their anorexics. So you're not if you think it. If you think it, it's not. It's unlikely to be wrong and you'll go around in circles until the foodstuff is dealt with. And it's the same in my experience with

people who are like full blown sex addicts with really kind of,

you know, dangerously antisocial behaviour and all all that

undercover as well. But there's my experience with sponsors with problems in sex is a line in the big book

that everyone has problems with sex and is that there's, I think it's true with food as well. Everyone seems to have a, you know, very few people come into recovery with a completely ordered relationship with food. There's usually something going on. So there's a spectrum here and who knows where the line is. But I've had the same experience with people with sponsees who are kind of full blown sex addicts, you know, rushing around doing what they're doing. And the a A program doesn't take

until that's dealt with head on. And in particular, I don't put too fine a point on it, but crystal meth,

if this crystal meth in the mix, there are usually activities which involve other people. And we're not talking backgammon or Tango now unless, unless that whole cluster of drugs and other activities is dealt with.

There's someone else here

unless that's dealt with again, that the program won't take. And Jim Willis

says in his workbooks, he says unless you got a clear mind for this process, it won't work. You need a clear mind to do the process. If someones engaged in an active addiction, then it needs to stop now. I would draw a contrast between that and someone who's 18 months sober, has done half of their amends and has problems in their romantic relationship.

Someone who hasn't made amends

to any of their exes and is having problems in their romantic relationship. Well, you know, maybe I ought to do slaughter 18 * a week. Well, maybe. But The thing is about the there's a little bit of history here. The reason why multiple fellowships exist is because step one needs a rallying point. And if you've got a problem, if your alcohol isn't your problem, you can't be a member of a A. So why are those a those other fellowships developed is

give the 12 steps as an available option to people who who couldn't access them through a A because they don't qualify. Now, it doesn't mean that one can't benefit from these other

fellowship, but the fallacy is

because a fellowship exists for sex and relationships,

suddenly sex and relationships can't be dealt with in a A or CA or AL Anon because there's a specific fellowship for that. So one must sort of go over there

for that. And of course, when you go, you know, you say, right, I'm going to go to slaughter to solve my

relationship problems. You say, well, what have you got for me? And they say the 12 steps and say what? The ones I've just said don't work over there. Why are they going to work over here? Because it's the steps. It's the steps which do the business. Now, it doesn't mean, I mean, I want a huge amount of benefit from other fellowships. I say it's not to diss the notion of going to other fellowship. It's a multiple fellowship. So one's got to be clear what one's doing.

And I talked to the very night, a very, very nice person who I, I, I like a lot. He's been in recovery for 20 odd years who were talking about, we're discussing this and about how sometimes it can feel that you're taking your little shopping trolley to all of these different fellowships and loading up your shopping trolley with little tidbits from each one. And God is falling between the cracks. So one is trying to acquire tools and mechanisms and insights

to somehow do a jigsaw puzzle to produce a recovered person. And what you end up with is a sort of Frankenstein's monster with no life of its own. And I did, I did this myself. I the, you know, the combinations of different fellowships and psychotherapy and the, you know, adult children of Alcoholics books and the,

the codependency books and all of this and it and my

alcoholism,

it grew like weeds and the cracks between these because I was still in charge. There wasn't the notion of just letting go of everything, letting go of everything and saying, God, what do I do next? Give me the next right action. Give me the next right action. Give me the next right action.

Other phenomena. This is a little bit random. I haven't. This isn't a structured orderly thing, so I apologize for that. So it's going to come out as it comes out.

One danger is to not complete the AA program. Realize there's still some stuff that is not fixed and think the answer is another fellowship. And of course that puts you back at step one and delays the completion of the step 9. And your ego will love this. Oh goody, another step for another examination of myself when the immense haven't been completed from the first step. 4I I think a super helpful approach for the steps is

both systematic and simple.

So to if you decide you're going to do the steps in one fellowship, complete them, complete every last amend, do sane and sound ideals for all of the other problem areas, maybe get some input from people who've got experience in those areas, maybe from other fellowships. You know, I've got

really helpful, I'm not a member of SLAB, but I've got really helpful ideas from Slaughter about bottom lines and things like that in that areas. That was a big problem area for me. So what you know in a A1 can learn from other fellowships without going and becoming a fully fledged member, putting yourself back at step one and ending up in multiple step processes.

So complete the steps, do a bunch of same and sound ideals, start sponsoring people and give it a year and see whether things calm down. When I had, as Chris Raymond called a barn store making spiritual experience in, oh, I don't know, I was about 15 years sober.

It knocks you sideways. And all of the other problems were still there at the end of it in one way or another, often internally.

It took two or three years for all of that to calm down. It took two or three years for that spirit, that, that single spiritual experience. This was at 15 years sober. It took two or three years before the, the, the, the, it's like when a wave hits, you know, there's, it's, there's, it's going to knock everything all over the place. And it takes a while to reconstruct, to learn all the lessons there are to learn.

And I just, I just needed to

someone on here is going to laugh at this phrase.

What's that thing about time? Let time take time or let I can't, I can't remember the phrase, but let time do its work. And very often these things, they have a micro, they have these other problems. Most of them have a habit of just dissolving gradually over time, just through consistent application of steps 1011 and 12. Lots of service, lots of sponsorship, and you wake up a couple of years later

and a problem. Give time. Time that

they have a problem working themselves out without me having to hammer at something

I The point of the higher power is I don't solve my own problems by obsessive activity. I solve it by letting go, keeping out of my own way, and staying out of my own mind for long enough for it to literally physically heal, for the old neural pathways to dissolve, for the neurons, literally to the

chemicals in the neurons literally to be repurposed to build new neural pathways. I mean, this is not that, this is actual neuro. This is actually what happens in your brain. If certain neural pathways aren't used, your brain repurposes them. And that takes a lot of time. So I've saved myself a lot of grief by letting time get by, giving time time,

completing a set of steps once and then see and giving it time and then seeing what's left over.

And then you see what's important. Then I could see, OK, this is something that needs dealing with. That is something that needs dealing with.

The other thing as well, it can get very confusing to go to a whole bunch of different fellowships at once to be on in different steps on different fellowships, having multiple sponsors and different fellowships. I've seen people who are very adroit and skillful at maybe 20 years juggling having an Allen on sponsor and an A a sponsor and a this sponsor and a that sponsor, but it takes a lot of skill. It's just like when people are in therapy. If you have sponsors here in therapy, there's nothing wrong with therapy. If you haven't sponsors were in therapy, they'll often spend

a lot of time taking everything that you've said to the therapist, seeing what the therapist says about it and then taking everything that the therapist says, telling you about it. And then you feel as though you're having a conversation with the therapist via the Swansea. And then they're the centre of an awful lot of professional attention. So it can be people can end up playing systems off against each other. They're not being mean or malicious or difficult on purpose. It's just how people operate. I've I've done it,

I've seen other people do it.

So do one thing at a time, do it properly, let it settle. I'm sure Evan will be able to sort of correct me on this about when you're, when you're, when you're trying to fix code, you fix, you try one thing at a time and you fix that. And you see if you run it again, you see if it works. So it doesn't work. If you, if you think, if you change two things at once and then you rerun it, you don't know which thing fixed it. Regression

testing. There you go. So

it to try one thing at a time, try it really properly and give it time and let it work itself through.

As I said, the one, the big caveat there big caveat is if there is a, as they would say with liver disease, fulminating liver disease or galloping consumption, some addictive process which is just totally blocking you from even engaging in the process. And it can be. You get 10 people with dysfunctional relationships.

Nine can work the program and heal in that relationship. One out of 10 needs to be out of the relationship and block the number for six months before they can even start to thaw out from the

from the toxicity. I'm sorry I'm mixing metaphors. They're detoxify from the toxicity of that relationship and they can take a while to figure out which is going on. So, so you know, is it OK if your Swansea to do 3 fellowships?

With some people it's absolutely the right thing to do, with other people they won't make progress in any. So it's something that has to be played very much by ear and one's got to examine each situation, talk around, ask around one point about multiple fellowships as well.

It's very sense. It can be very sensible to escalate gradually. So first of all, one can read the books of a fellowship and listen to some tapes and go to a few meetings

almost. I've known people that have done that with some Al Anon stuff. They've read some books, they've gone to a few meetings, they've written down some tips and they in court, they bolt those materials onto their existing a, a program.

Other people need to go further and go to a meeting regularly. Other people need to go further and do the first three steps in that fellowship. That's a super helpful way because once you get to step four in most fellowships, things are pretty much the same.

So what I get people to do have got food or sex problems is to definitely do steps 123 in Slough or SA or or OA. And then kind of it's like tributaries to a river. You get to step four, you're doing Step 4 to 9 on your whole life, as long as you've examined the powerlessness and the insanity and you've surrendered that area. And you've got, if it's, you know,

essay or slide, you've got some bottom lines and some middle lines and some these lines and some those lines. And with OA, you've got your daily plans and whatever

you know, some people had little scales where they measure things, other people are much more intuitive about things, but you've got a plan in place and someone to be accountable to. And then you can combine multiple fellowships and doesn't cause a problem because you've basically got a single process with multiple tributaries in the first three steps and then the final,

the final stage. If that doesn't work, if you're still, if you're still screwed, you might need to, you know, become a fully fledged member of the other fellowship. And what I've seen work pretty well

for about 5 years,

Tom gave me this notion of when you're standing somewhere, like in a queue, you're usually leaning more on one leg rather than the other leg. So both legs are supporting you, but you're leaning primarily on the left leg or primarily on the right leg. And in my first eleven years of a a first eleven years of recovery, I, I was leaning

on my a a leg with a little bit of Alan on thrown in.

I then had all five years of leaning almost entirely on my Al Anon leg. I Alenon was the absolute core of my life. And but I was still doing a a as a fully fledged member. And then it switched again at 1516 years and I went back to a a as my main thing in the last couple of years, it's I'm leaning about 60%

a a 40% are non. So the, the, the, the weight can change.

I've seen people do that with, you know, UA and DA and Georgia, all sorts of other things. But to know which one, the, the, the primary weight, where the primary weight is, where home is, is very difficult to have a real home. My experience in more than one place, the loyalty always seems to gravity. There's always, in my case, maybe other people are different, there's a centre of gravity somewhere and that can shift

and I've had to let it shift where it needs to shift for me to be entirely at home. So years 11 to 1511 to 16, somewhere around there I was doing a lot of a a service.

And my problem was that I was in, I've been like an intergroup meeting and

someone would say something, my whole body would tense up and I would stop breathing. And then three. And basically I was reacting to some angry Alcoholics. I won't say which intergroup. I was reacting to some angry Alcoholics who are starting to get a bit tense and I needed I needed somewhere to go.

To examine my reaction to Alcoholics so I could continue to go to a A as I just, I did not want to carry on going. I was, I find it very difficult to be around. Alcoholics had the same thing because of sponsorship as well. You know, if you're called by 20 or 30 people a week, if you haven't got your wits about you, it can grind you down. If you're not. If you're not

triaging things correctly. So to cut a Long story short,

there isn't A1 size fits all approach with sponsees and other fellowships as a whole range of different experiences. And all you can do is give some advice and guidance and they get to follow their conscience. And there's a great line in the book where if he wants to try a different approach, he should follow his conscience. I think it says conscience. I may be wrong there. But anyway, it's not follow the latest idea that's come into his head. It's it's it's genuine

of conscience which requires deep contemplation.

Before I go on to the thorny topics of sex, food and dating. Does anyone have any questions about any of that?

Claire, just a quick question. And it's, it's more the logistics of it. So if you would be working with an alcoholic through the steps of a A and then halfway through the step work other problems start to show their face like dramatic weight loss and so forth. Would you pause the work and say,

suggest that they at least join other fellowship, make friends there rather than do this, rather than stop the step work?

I don't know, pause it or ask them to go to another fellowship, but carry on the work through to step 9.

I'll there's a sort of process of escalation.

It. It's very rare that you get halfway through the steps and then discover that there's a problem with food or there's a problem with sex. Yeah, usually find out pretty soon. You know, the bags under the eyes will tell you there's something going on

What you where it usually where it usually crops up is actually in the early stages where people is where people relapse on alcohol.

One of the first things I always find out is what else is what's going on with sex, what's going on with food. And very, very often if someone is doing a whole load of work in a a but then they're relapsing, it's almost always the case there is another addiction which hasn't been addressed. And it's so they've been kind of using the whole time on food or on sex. And that's why the the the the

defences are down with alcohol. If something comes up mid midstream, as it were, I shouldn't be really used

with midstream. With sex addiction,

if something comes up halfway through, you know, you go for the tests.

If something comes up halfway through the steps, I mean, first of all, you can, you can try basic, you know, turn the area over to the higher power. Talk to a friend in OA, get a plan in place for the food. Whatever doesn't stay away from the stay away from the sex clubs for can you stay away from the sex clubs for a week?

Very often people, if they got a, a strongish a a program, you discover that the abstinence side of things is actually not a big deal. If they're having trouble maintaining abstinence from, you know, really critically dangerous behaviours, then you know, it's it's they go to the Saturday morning OA meeting in Soho. Do not pass go, do not collect £200. Talk to XY and Z

and what I suggest people do is do steps 1-2 and three in that fellowship in a weekend.

Like they've already done steps 1-2 and three. They already know the big book. It's taking the information they know about how the, how the structure of addiction works and then immediately just applying it in that other area and committing to, you know, a few OA meetings a week, a few SA meetings a week. So you novel it straight away. You don't want to halt the step work and put someone into a great big introspective process because honestly,

if it's if, if, if it's been, you know, if they've got a sex

addiction or if they've got a food problem, it's been going on for years. It's not like they don't know about it. It's not like it's come up from nowhere. You know, are you willing, are you willing to do something about it?

And my observation, I've been amazed and hugely gratified. The people that are willing to go to the fellowship and deal with it and go to meetings are immensely relieved that there are other people with the same problem and they get instant hope. It's that thing of

that the shock of a A when you join a A is enough to overcome the resistance and fear of giving up the addiction. It's so overwhelmingly positive and with a bit of luck they'll have that experience with OA. If they go to some really strong OA, really strong SA meetings, they're bowled over by all the support and in the last couple of years when I'm sponsors of mine have done that, they've done really, really well. It's a mate. They've done amazingly well. So you catch it

away if it doesn't yield to just, you know, the basic corrective measures of the daily program immediately launched, you know, launched them to the strongest people you know, in that area. And that usually puts the kibosh on it.

Any other questions? Thank you, Tim, for the presentation. Omar Alcoholic. If I'm sponsoring someone and that sponsor is acting out in other forms of addiction, will I be able to detect that in his performance in the 12 Steps program?

You my experience, you usually you'll find what it comes out sideways. People always betray themselves one way or another.

I mean, not on this topic specifically, but when you listen to how people describe things, it's people's unconscious language which reveals what's going on.

And the daily plans

will usually reveal it and the daily review, because if there's an addiction going on, it's almost certainly causing trouble.

Occasionally people can keep. There are people who are very skilled at keeping things compartmentalized. I, I could do this for a while,

but only for a while. So usually it does, it comes out and you'll discover it one way or another. And it doesn't take many, if you're talking to them on a regular basis, it'll come out. So I I don't think you need to worry about that.

People are just not, most people are just not good enough at covering their tracks. Thanks.

So if there are no questions on that and of course, I mean The thing is with with the food and sex stuff and gambling whatever, send them to the expert. If you got any doubts, send them to the experts who are the members of SA who send the Allen ONS to people who are like 100% al Anon. Send the food people to people who are like mainly OA, who all for whom that's, you know, one of their two primary things.

So if if you fell out of your depth, maybe you are send them to someone who's got more experience. I've got lists of people. I just, you know, shoot them straight through to the OAP people on that because they're much better than me on that. I can deal with the sex stuff, but the food stuff is not really my area. So

I, I, I think food, we've kind of covered that

already

with, with the, with the sex stuff. I think it's I think we've covered that already actually.

You deal with with people who've got problems in that area. You deal with it within the home program, which is a a or California, whatever with the sane and sound ideal. So out of

on page 69 out of the sex inventory, you get to devise with the higher power assailant sound ideal towards which you're willing to grow. And then that can be applied to any of the other problems that are presenting. As I say, escalate to another fellowship if necessary, through the stages of visiting,

listening, reading, to becoming a regular member of the group, to doing the first three steps, to doing all of the steps. You know, so I've had sponsors that do the steps with me and then go to the other fellowship and do the steps from the beginning, but only once they've completed the steps with me. I, I don't think I've got anything else to say on food or sex. I don't know if people have questions about either of those two topics

with there's one aspect of sort of dating and relationships

and there is a fellowship for the dating relationship side of it. And it's it's as slower as the obvious is the obvious one.

But with this one,

my experience in AA is that almost every almost every hour that I was certain like this once every addict has a problematical relationship with dating and relationships for a couple of key reasons. And the first one is basic selfishness. And I think about myself here, basic selfishness. And the second one is the notion of the special relationship.

Let's do the selfishness.

I I'm trying to think of a way to come at this without being too rude about myself for other people. It's a delicate, it's a delicate topic. Tom

gives the example of, you know, those lizards. There's large lizards called Komodo Dragons that some people have as pets, he said. Your pet Komodo dragon does not love you. It loves heat and it loves flies. You're currently supplying both,

so it's performing love

and addicts can be a little bit like this. I'm going to read something out if I can find it, if you'll let me pause for a moment while I look for something. And Claire will be amused at the source of this. I'm sure it's from psychiatrist, from the, from the, I think, middle of the 20th century, called autofenical. I don't know if you've heard of him

and he writes this on love addiction.

A person who is fixed on the state, whereas self esteem is regulated by external supplies goes through this world in a in a condition of perpetual greediness. If his narcissistic needs are not satisfied, his self esteem diminishes to a danger point. He's ready to do anything to avoid this. On the one hand, the fixation of such persons manifests itself in a tendency to react to

with violence. On the other hand, their dependence impels them to try to get what they need by ingratiation and submissiveness.

The conflict between these contradictory devices is characteristic of persons with this predisposition. These persons. And this is where it gets particularly spicy. These persons and their continuous need of supplies that give satisfaction and heightened self esteem simultaneously

are love addicts. Unable to love actively, they passively need to feel loved. They're characterized by the dependents and their narcissistic type of object choice. And they tend to change objects frequently because no object is able to provide the necessary satisfaction. Without giving any consideration to the feelings of their fellow man, they demand of them

an understanding of their own feelings.

They are always bent upon establishing a good understanding with people, though they are unable to feel fulfill their own part of such an understanding. This need compels them to attempt to deny their ever present readiness to react hostile

cover more points.

The personality of the object is of no great importance. They need the supplies and it does not matter who provides them. Heat and flies. It does not necessarily have to be a person. It may be a drug or an obsessive hobby.

Some persons of this type fare worse than others. They not only need supplies but simultaneously fear getting them because they're unconsciously consider them dangerous. As in the case of drug addicts, love addicts too may become incapable of getting the desired satisfaction, which in turn increases their addiction. Now, I, I I'm sure you're much nicer than I am.

I identify with that in a rather painful, vivid way.

It characterizes a big chunk of my life. And I took that mindset into romantic relationships. And then I was terribly surprised when none of these relationships worked out because no one could ever satisfy the need inside now. So it's talking about you're, you're trying to, to,

to get an external source to fill an internal void

and society will support you in looking to romantic relationships to do to do this that you know, the films and the books and so on.

There's a song timeline. A slotted spoon doesn't hold much soup,

and as a slotted spoon it doesn't matter how much love was poured in, it was never enough and I couldn't keep it there and so I was constantly trying to get the other person to love me more or love me better.

They couldn't, so I became bitter and hostile towards them.

They say in old fashioned a A in your first year get a pot plant. If the pot plant survives in the second year get a hamster or a gerbil, not a higher life form something which doesn't require much. Or maybe a stick insect. If the stick insect doesn't doesn't

die at your hand.

Try some tropical fish when you're maybe five or six years sober. Consider a kitten. When you're seven or eight years sober, consider a puppy. When you're 10 years sober. Maybe go on a date or two.

Tom describes how in California, they'd have to get at the young people's meetings, the newcomers, to repeat them to themselves. If I don't get laid, I'm not going to die. If I don't get laid, I'm not going to die.

Dysfunctional relationships. Tom quotes a chat called Glenn, who is a member of 19 different 12 step fellowships who talks about his object for a good romantic relationship. The orphan with the big eyes and the broken wing,

he says I can sniff them out through lead. And Tom's advice in these situations? If you go into a room

and your eyes meet across the room at someone you know is the one, don't even say hello. Find someone you find dull and go for a walk in the park with them six times to see if there's someone you can develop the skill of having a conversation with

these toxic relationships. There was a, I'm sure I've said this one before that there was a video I saw on on Facebook. It was a girl doing one of those smudging ceremonies.

She wasn't Native American, but she was doing a Native American smudging ceremony with the spurning the sage and the incantations to to get rid of the toxic energy in the room. And the caption underneath was trying to using a Native American ceremony to get rid of the toxicity in the room when you are the toxicity in the room. So I would take my toxicity

into romantic relationships, which were just repeats of each other.

There were these attempts to mend my wounded self-esteem by extracting specialness from another person

because I felt I was giving up my I was surrendering my worthlessness in return for their specialness. I felt I was cheating the other person and so felt hostile towards them for falling for the falling for the ruse. I lost respect for anyone who was interested

if they were interested. If they weren't interested, they could see the truth. Therefore they had my respect. So I was after the people who are unavailable. As soon as someone was available, they sickened me because I could see they couldn't see through the the ruse. It was all very complicated and and it doomed me to years of extremely unsatisfactory relationships.

Now those that's a kind of collage of all sorts of different things. How does this work with Swansea's?

If your sponsee has a pattern of toxic relationships,

the way

frankly, if they're in one is probably not, as when I asked my friend, my sponsor Doug, once how to deal with a particularly difficult situation, he said hide on the basis that there's probably nothing you can say or do. If they're in a toxic relationship, there's probably nothing you can say or do. It's just like they're in an addiction. It will need to work itself through.

I needed to learn how to be in relationships, like intimate relationships, which work I've been with someone for for 17 years or so. I need to do that by learning how to how to be a friend, how to be a colleague, how to be a normal human being or a healthy human being, and all sorts of ordinary settings before I could work up to the very, very perilous.

Task of having an intimate relationship. I I couldn't go straight in with those and have them work. I needed to learn how to just be an ordinary person first.

You weren't about to answer the buzzer. Thing is that I think he's got keys anyway.

I needed to work up to it and I needed to. It talks in the big book. It's very, it's very clever If if the relationship is going to work, it has to be on an entirely new basis

and the entirely because the old basis didn't work.

I had a sequence of so I had a reasonably healthy relationship for a few as in a A and then that broke up and then I went back to crazy land. Basically, the old me got revived, the unprocessed sort of love addict relationship addict me got revived and the whole thing blew up again. And

what I, what I had to do was to learn how to have relationships with an entirely new type of person on an entirely new basis. I'm just going to close the door

and now the source for this.

There are several sources, Don Pritz, you can point them towards Don Pritz, who says I don't know how to have a healthy sick relationship. What's a sick relationship is is a relationship you want anything out of,

someone said to me a few years ago. The two reasons to have a long an intimate relationship is if you're lacking opportunities for forgiveness

and lacking opportunities for service. If you feel that you're just not useful enough, you're just doing, you know, you're getting your way too much of the time and you're just spending too much time doing fun stuff yourself. You you wanna just sacrifice some stuff and you're just getting on too well with everyone. There's just nothing to forgive. You're getting out of practice with forgiveness. Then I've got a great idea for you intimate relationship. It will solve these two problems instantly.

And the job Harold, Rabbi Harold Kushner talks about this about forgiveness and service

being the two main ingredients are Rabbi Manus Friedman is very good and there are lots and lots of other authors as well.

And so to, to treat the and this is the thing to to, to use the intimate relationship as basically an extension of the program. Generally it's not like a special carved out area. It's

it's

a venue for the two activities of forgiveness and service. And the way I learnt to have healthy relationships, the first stage was you where you got to stop having the toxic ones. And the chief way to stop having the toxic ones in my experience was to, as Tom suggested, not say hello to the toxic people. And you know, they're toxic because you're attracted to them if you have a toxic history.

So I had to be super careful and super bounded about who I went on dates with, who I was, who I showed interest in, and to look out for people with different qualities. And I've got loads of materials that I send sponsors. These are the qualities that if you want a healthy relationship, these are the qualities to look for in someone else, but the only way you're going to attract

those people is to become those things yourself.

So to learn how to develop the, you know, the qualities of, of, of emotional balance and maturity and selflessness and prudence and forethought and reasonableness and flexibility and all of those other, all of those other things that if one can, if one learns how to demonstrate those, one will automatically attract

different people. And the toxic people will run like a mile from you. You won't even have to avoid them anymore after a while

because they will. They will sniff that you're not up for the dance.

So the difficulty with so with Swansea's there are if there, as I said there, if they're in a toxic relationship, there's almost nothing you can do unless they're willing to take a break from it.

The ones who are not and are just re entering the dating game. I just pass on everything I've just said to you about

you can't

take that mindset of treating the relationship as a source of something to satisfy, to mend one's wounded self esteem or to give one identity or something like that and make it work. It has to be on an entirely new basis and if people are willing to work on that new basis, then it works very well.

And that's pretty much it on the, on the sort of dating and relationship side of things. Everything I know

comes from people who have been married for 10:20, 30-40 or fifty years and from books by mostly rabbis and some other people who are marriage guidance counsellors and so on. That's where I haven't devised anything myself. Everything I've got from other people also Al Anon really really al Anon principles really really help if people struggling in intimate relationships to recognize that you know the let it begin with me and all the detachment stuff.

Immensely helpful for a lot of people. Does anyone have any questions about the dating and relationship side of things?

James,

Thanks, Tim. Yeah, I've got a question about. So what's happened a couple of times when I've been sponsoring people is that The Who are Alcoholics, the

if the Alcoholics in a relation, a long term relationship, they they come into recovery and they get sober and it's all great for a while. But then the person I'm sponsoring starts to say that their partner raises issues about the sheer amount of time they're spending involved with a A. So for a while it's all great, but then as time goes on, there seems to be like,

I suppose possibly a resentment that's being that's happening in the relationship with the

with the non alcoholic. And what is, do you have suggestions about what might help a person who finds themselves in that situation? I'm not talking about a toxic relationship. I'm just talking about a relationship where this occurs. Yeah. So that's, that's that,

that's a rare problem, mostly because most people about their relationships to the ground by the time they get into a a I've had very few sponsors that have come in with an intact relationship, but that's always a problem when they have an intact relationship.

Unfortunately, the the the difficult thing is most ones that come in with an intact relationship, when they get well, the relationship breaks down because the the the the other person was as unwell as they were,