The Loveaholic and Step Two
I’m going to take a few liberties with some of A.A.’s literature…
From pages 32-33 in the 12&12;
“To clergymen, doctors, friends, and families, the loveaholic who means well and tries hard is a heartbreaking riddle. To most L.A.’s, he/she is not. There are too many of us who have been just like him/her, and have found the riddle’s answer. The answer has to do with the quality of faith rather than its quantity. This has been our blind spot. We supposed we had humility when we really hadn’t. We supposed we had been serious about religious practices when, upon honest appraisal, we found we had been only superficial. Or, going to the other extreme, we had wallowed in emotionalism and had mistaken it for true religious feeling. In both cases we had been asking something for nothing.”
Interested? Curious? Loveaholic?
“The fact was we really hadn’t cleaned house so that the grace of God could enter us and expel the obsession.”
Are you obsessed with another person?
“In no deep or meaningful sense had we ever taken stock of ourselves, made amends to those we had harmed, or freely given to any other human being without any demand for reward.”
Think about this. Are you interested in helping a member of the opposite gender? Are you “all about” helping that person you so deeply care for? Why? Once you’ve done a bit of digging, do you find that you’re helping with the hope of having your help “returned?” Or, can you honestly say that you’re helping strictly for the welfare of the other person, expecting nothing in return?
“Few indeed are the practicing loveaholics who have any idea how irrational they are, or seeing their irrationality, can bear to face it. Some will be willing to term themselves ‘problem loveaholics,” but cannot endure the suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill.”
Co-Dependents Anonymous is a wonderful fellowship. They even have a program of recovery!
“They are abetted in this blindness by a world which does not understand the difference between sane loving and loveaholism. ‘Sanity’ is defined as ’soundness of mind.’ Yet no loveaholic, soberly analyzing his/her destructive behavior, whether the destruction fell on the dining-room furniture or his/her own moral fiber, can claim ’soundness of mind’ for him/herself.”
“God will restore us to sanity if we rightly relate ourselves to Him.”
Tags: 2nd-step, Loveaholic, Romantic Obsession, sanity, Soundness of MindRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Personal, Second Step
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