🎓 learning the 🎓
Posted: Tue, Sep 1, 2026 10:29:07 AM
difference between having a partner or taking or being taken as a hostage, was a big step for me. it is a recurring theme in my recovery. throughout my active addiction i formed romantic and sexual relationships with the most needy women i could find. in fact, i could sniff them out in any room and i perfected the ways and means to get into their pants. what was sexual for me, became romantic for them and in the end, i always had to “scrape” them off. i have said in the past, that my relationships in active addiction were always zero sum games. the exception to that notion was the taking of “hostages” when all i really desired was sex on demand. those women would give me anything i asked for, besides sex and never saw me for who i was, as i had the asshole boyfriend persona down pat. the crueler and more distant i was, the harder they tried to cling to me. i am not proud of that behavior, but i am no longer shamed by it either. it was how i was and i make no excuses, rationalizations or justifications for that behavior, it was flat out wrong.
in early recovery, i believed making amends to women consisted of two parts, the first being celibacy outside of a committed realtionship and the second, being the exact opposite of who i was. i would become the hostage. well that did not work, as it was not in my nature, but i did transform that into different directions. some of those less than equal relationships exists to this day and my FOURTH STEP writing is bringing them to my attention in a manner that i cannot ignore. my spouse and i have been through the various stages of my reconstruction on how to have an equal partner relationship, inside of a romantic and loving one. when i started seeing her, she was “broken” in the exact form with which i could work over. being just spiritual enough, after a few days clean, i recognized where i could go and made choices to go somewhere different. that was still a sick decision but it kept us together long enough for me to pull my head out of my ass and learn what a life partnership was all about. i guess one may say i was less sick than before. 😁
as i age in my recovery, i see that some relationships may never be equal and i have to decide whether or not i wish to do the one-sided work. someone i got clean with and counted as a friend from way back when, is a case in point. as i walked this morning, his name and our relationship came bubbling up to the surface. i know that is a result of the step work i am doing and now that contempt and condescension have been named and correctly placed in their proper perspectives, i am suddenly free to have new stuff pop up and take precedence. my friend and sponsee was one of those, the other is a homeowner with whom i with which have had more than one less than sanguine interaction. the former i texted this morning asking for a chat, as i am unwilling to pitch that relationship into the bit bucket. the latter i have asked another board member to respond to, as n matter how many time i run my response through AI tools, it will still come out wrong, echoing our history and being contemptuous of his self-classification as a victim of the HOA. neither of those decisions were easy or came out of the ether fully formed. both caused more than a minute of distress for me, as they both could be interpreted by internal judge, jury and executioner as being weak and feeble. i am, however, on this side of those decisions certain that for me, they were strong and rational moves, fitting the man i am becoming, just for today.
in early recovery, i believed making amends to women consisted of two parts, the first being celibacy outside of a committed realtionship and the second, being the exact opposite of who i was. i would become the hostage. well that did not work, as it was not in my nature, but i did transform that into different directions. some of those less than equal relationships exists to this day and my FOURTH STEP writing is bringing them to my attention in a manner that i cannot ignore. my spouse and i have been through the various stages of my reconstruction on how to have an equal partner relationship, inside of a romantic and loving one. when i started seeing her, she was “broken” in the exact form with which i could work over. being just spiritual enough, after a few days clean, i recognized where i could go and made choices to go somewhere different. that was still a sick decision but it kept us together long enough for me to pull my head out of my ass and learn what a life partnership was all about. i guess one may say i was less sick than before. 😁
as i age in my recovery, i see that some relationships may never be equal and i have to decide whether or not i wish to do the one-sided work. someone i got clean with and counted as a friend from way back when, is a case in point. as i walked this morning, his name and our relationship came bubbling up to the surface. i know that is a result of the step work i am doing and now that contempt and condescension have been named and correctly placed in their proper perspectives, i am suddenly free to have new stuff pop up and take precedence. my friend and sponsee was one of those, the other is a homeowner with whom i with which have had more than one less than sanguine interaction. the former i texted this morning asking for a chat, as i am unwilling to pitch that relationship into the bit bucket. the latter i have asked another board member to respond to, as n matter how many time i run my response through AI tools, it will still come out wrong, echoing our history and being contemptuous of his self-classification as a victim of the HOA. neither of those decisions were easy or came out of the ether fully formed. both caused more than a minute of distress for me, as they both could be interpreted by internal judge, jury and executioner as being weak and feeble. i am, however, on this side of those decisions certain that for me, they were strong and rational moves, fitting the man i am becoming, just for today.
∞ DT ∞