Things We Need to Talk About But Don’t Touch

Series Two: Blog Eighty-Eight

T.S. Eliot wrote, “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”

This is true about recovery. It is such a repetitive cyclical experience in so many ways. There are many portals to explore and understand about addictive behavior. Open one door and it seems to lead to the next. You learned how to end your addictive behavior and stop the out-of-control train going down the track. Desperation opened the door to a belief in a Higher Power that restored you to sanity. Yet, stubborn willfulness blocked the decision to turn your will over to the care of that Higher Power. It brought you back to where you started with your addictive mindset dominating your behavior, and you repeated the same experience as before. Each time you repeat the pattern becomes an opportunity to know yourself for the first time.

The recovery experience invites you to talk about things that you don’t touch. There are secrets. You are invited to open your deepest darkest hidden experience and expose it to the light of day. You are encouraged to get emotionally naked about reality, often in the presence of people you don’t know that well or for that long.

The exploration doesn’t stop with the addictive behavior. The challenge is to explore all of our behaviors and our relationships. Some 12-step groups insist that you only relate to one identified addiction during your check in. I have always found this limiting. Recovery is pervasive in its journey of research and examination. It requires that you turn over every stone and inquire, with curiosity, pathways you have not explored. Many in recovery choose to not open doors about intimacy and relationship. They limit their 12-step journey to remaining sober from their addiction. They know a lot about staying sober and less about intimacy and building relationships.

Addicts talk about things with their sponsor and others but never open their heart to their partner. They become good about sharing vulnerability with those who are distant. They give good advice about how to be emotionally open but remain closed and distant at home. There is so much that needs to be talked about that is never touched at home.

Feelings like stress, anxiety and fear build on the inside. An addict becomes lonely and seeks escape from discomfort. H/She sits with craving to escape through their drug of choice. It is powerful because it works for a while. The pain is so great and the relief is so powerful.

Your partner also has anxiety, stress, fear, and loneliness building within. They also want to escape. It could be through their own addiction. Many times it takes the form of a cocktail of other experiences like busyness, electronic games, children activities, running errands, or exercise. The emptiness in the relationship builds as both partners avoid what needs to be talked about but is never touched.

An addict may talk about the experience in a 12-step community. Yet, if it is never discussed with your partner, the 12-step group becomes a lifelong partner of triangulation. You can avoid opening your heart to the partner you should be talking with by sharing instead with a third party. The void between you and that person grows as you lament to your 12-step group. This becomes particularly sad when that person is your romantic partner. In order to stop the fantasy about your addiction you need to tell on yourself to your partner who, in turn, needs to talk to you about the way in which they try to escape from their discomfort. When partners do this with each other, the void between them shrinks and the feelings of discomfort give way to the richness of emotional intimacy.  No third-party relationship has ever been able to replace the richness of intimacy that is created when I touch what needs to be shared with my partner about the truth of who I am. Each time you talk about what you don’t want to touch in a relationship you will arrive where you began and know the place for the first time.