Yesterday I was feeling sad, without really knowing why. When I traced it back, I found a piece of news from the day before: that a woman I find attractive and charming, and about whom I had entertained some fantasies of romance, said she had met someone.
At first, I felt happy for her. Later, as my self-centered fear returned to the fore, I began to feel sad. I dug inside my mind, and I found the image of her being with someone else, and there also I found all the old stories about how it’s never me she chooses, and if I had approached her and told her how I felt, she would have stuck with “not looking to meet someone,” and that here I was saying I shouldn’t try to date people in recovery, but this other guy had no such policy, apparently, so he is once again the guy who “gets the girl.”
I lingered in that sadness, wallowed even, until I began to wonder what this was all about. I’ve done enough work in the program to understand that her meeting someone didn’t cause my feelings. My feelings flow from my thoughts and beliefs. It’s like my sponsor used to say when I told him someone was pushing my buttons: “Let’s see about disconnecting those buttons.”
But here is what he also told me: to question my own thoughts. Not in the sense of believing they are wrong, but to literally question them, like I would a new person I am meeting and am curious to know more about. What is your story? What are trying to convince me of? Why should I accept it as truth, and where will doing so lead me?
Another thing he would ask, when we were on steps 6 and 7: How can you tell someone is willing to do something? The answer: that they are doing it. So I might say I wanted to work on my fourth step, without working on it. And he would say, “Right now, in this moment, are you willing to work on your fourth step? You’re willing to say you want to work on it, but are you currently, right now, willing to work on it?” In that case the answer was no, and the solution was to pray for the willingness – and also to be honest and stop saying I want to do it. The truth was, while I might recognize the benefit of a fourth step, I was not yet willing to do the work. And that was fine. Start where you are.
So do I, in fact, want to be in a relationship with a woman? Or a better question, easier to answer: Am I willing to take any action in that regard? Apparently not. I always come up with reasons to not do anything about it. I tell myself “She always says no,” or “Not here, not now,” or our ages don’t line up, or she isn’t sober, or I’m not ready, or I shouldn’t even be thinking about her that way, or whatever it is. All of those thoughts, which spring from my fear of rejection, lead me down a road of inaction.
So, do I really want what I say I want? Even if I do want connection, am I willing to do anything about it? Perhaps what I really want to sit in my dis-connection dreaming about connection. And then, again, with the inquiry: Why would I want to do that? Why tell myself, and others, that I want romance and intimacy without doing anything to experience either one?
It’s so hard figuring out what I want, much less whether it’s the “right” thing to want, and then what to do about it. Maybe, if I sit calmly and listen to what I am telling myself, listen to those stories constantly spinning in my head, and try to learn more about then, I can move towards some answers. And maybe, in acceptance and self-awareness, I can take proper action, grounded in reality rather than delusion.
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