Getting Past the Third Step

Several years ago I had reason to go into a twelve-step program. I'm not an addict, and they're isn't an addict in my family, but there were some very stressful family situations that I needed help with, so I started attending Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) meetings. When I started I made the commitment to myself to attend the weekly meetings for a year. The meetings were gay-oriented and had an added bonus of being tailored to gay addicts. It was a veritable bonanza of dysfunction.

The concept behind ACOA is that children of addicts never really grow up. Because of the dysfunctional environment in which they get their start, these people can become highly functioning, intelligent and successful, but socially they remain stunted, victims. What's more, they tend to seek out those environments and relationships because they are the most comfortable to them.

I don't remember the ACOA twelve steps. I never really worked them. They all seemed reasonable enough, but from the start I got the sense that ACOA people, or at least the people in my meetings, tended to enjoy their status as a victim. I spent endless hours listening to men complain about things that had happened to them when they were children. I heard the same stories over and over again. The men in these meetings just never seemed to move on. After about eight months I was ready to go, but I'd made the personal commitment to stick with it for a year. And a year to the day was my last meeting.

If I remember, there were also ten or twelve characteristics that sort of summed up whether you were an ACOA or not. I always sort of view those lists in the same light as a Cosmo quiz to determine whether your man is cheating on you. Interesting little generic guideposts, but I'm hardly willing to let myself be defined by some random list of predetermined characteristics.

That said, there was one characteristic that I do remember because it really annoyed me. I think it was third on the list and no matter how hard I tried to argue against it or deny it, I had to come to accept that it really was one of my characteristics. It went something like this:

Adult Children of Alcoholics tend to confuse love and pity.

I hated that one. But over the course of the year I had to come to accept it. I realized that my social skills were such that I needed to portray myself as a victim -- that was how I saw myself -- and as a result the people in my life began to view me in that way too. Loving a victim is hard, but pitying them is what being a victim is all about. Pity is so much easier to achieve than love. By definition, pity makes no demands upon the receiver, whereas love carries an implied responsibility of worthiness. In a perfect world unconditional love would flow like a Wonka chocolate river, but the truth is that sustained love is earned. God may provide everlasting, unconditional love, and that may be the ideal that mankind is striving for (allegedly). It was a hard realization to make, but once made I had to really stop and analyze the relationships I had. I ended the ones that I decided were based on pity. No more, ever.

That doesn't mean that I still didn't see myself as a victim. Correcting that thinking took nearly another decade.

I've come to believe, however that sustained love and all of its forms (I think respect is a form of love.) is earned. Even a helpless baby earns love by cooing when his needs are met. There are few simple truths in the world, but that human love is earned is one of them.

I just finished reading You Can If You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale. It's an easy, uplifting read, but there was one point that sticks with me. Peale says that once something is finished we should leave it in the past. Not to dwell on mistakes. Postmortems are a waste of time.

It's that last one that bothers me. Listen, I'm the first to recognize that I hold on to things way, way too long. There have been relationships that I've mourned for three, five years or more. That's not productive.

But I do think that there is a use for postmortems. Whenever a situation ends, I try to look at it and define what I could have done better, so that next time I don't make the same mistakes. I think that's wise.

The problem for me then becomes that once I've done that, I do a postmortem of the postmortem. And then I review that. And then I start to review my review methods. Then I do it all over again, just be see if I made any omissions of examples of errors and guilt. I sometimes cherish those tangible examples of my inferiority to the human race. They are what make me special.

But, no more. NVP says they're a waste, and so I'm going to try to modify that sentiment. One postmortem. Then move on. If that means I doomed to repeating mistakes, then that's what it means. But I'm a reasonably intelligent person and highly skilled at seeking opportunities for self recrimination. If I miss a detail in my first go through, it's probably not important enough for the weeks, months, years of painful self doubt.

You see, I always have to be the best, even if it's at being the worst. But I'm becoming comfortable with being a mediocre screw up.

Acceptance is the first step.