A Spiritual Path to a Healthy Relationship – A Practical Approach – Steve McCord, MFT, and Angie McCord, CC

In order to have a healthy relationship, you ‘ve got to be IN a relationship . . . with that in mind, Angie offers these Red Flags:

You may have to kiss a lot of frogs, but as soon as you KNOW they’re frogs, you’ve got to throw them back into the pond, that is, if you want to be available when the real Prince Charming comes along.  Here are a few early warning signs (imagine a tsunami-horn alert):

1. He wears a jail bracelet.  This is a true story.  I gently suggested to a friend that I didn’t think it was such a good idea for her to date a guy who was wearing a jail bracelet.  She said, “Oh, but kid, he is doing so much better!”  Shockingly, he ended up having advanced stalking skills along with a serious drinking problem.  So, not dating guys with jail bracelets seems like a good rule.
2. He sends you flowers and it bugs you.  You know you’ll have to call and thank him, but it’s uncomfortable because the feelings are not reciprocated.  Not a good sign.  If you liked him, you’d be thrilled.
3. His arm “accidentally” (?) touches your knee in the movie theater and you want to jump six feet.  Not knowing whether you are attracted to someone in the beginning is o.k.; being repulsed is not.
4. You start stretching your dates out to every other weekend, hoping you will start liking him.  This is not a good thing.  He’s good enough looking.  You even thought he was cute before you started dating.  He’s nice.  More importantly, he likes you.  He’s someone you think you should like, but you grit your teeth at the thought of another evening of strained conversation with him.  Give it up.  It ain’t gonna happen.  There’s someone out there who wants him.  Send him back to the pond.
5. You are out on a date and you think you’d rather be ironing a blouse.  This really happened to me, and I was alarmed at the thought floating through my mind.  I hate to iron.
6. You are out on a date and you start thinking you’d have a better time with your four-year old daughter because she has a better sense of humour.  (Really happened to me, too!)
7. He lives in Hawaii, you live in California, and neither of you will move or gets much vacation time.  Now this is embarrassing, so let’s just say it happened to a friend.  Took her a couple of years to wise up.
8. He’s married.  Not only bad karma, but dumb.  And without self respect, how can you be ready and feel worthy when the real Prince Charming comes along?
9. He’s a priest.   I did have a friend whose husband left the priesthood to marry her, but in general this situation is fraught with angst and best avoided unless you are doing personal research for high drama.
10. He has you pick him up from a recovery house on your first date.  True story.  Now, I have nothing against men in recovery from addictive substances.  However, it is not a good sign if they still live in a recovery house.  (And, if you yourself are in treatment, it’s best you wait before dating anyway.)
11. On your first date he paces back and forth asking why you would go out with him.  Another true story.  This guy said he was so sure that I would break the date that he almost called to beat me to it.  He quizzed me repeatedly about why I went out with him.  Nothing against men being shy or insecure, but clearly he was not emotionally equipped to date.
12. It’s Valentine’s Day on Monday, and your birthday falls on Thursday of the same week, and he does not make plans with you or acknowledge in advance.  This is true.  In addition, he had not made any attempt to see me for the previous two to three weeks.  Duh!
13. He’s gay.   Enough said.

Relationships can be hard, but the beginning should be easy.  Either you like a guy or you don’t. If you really like him, he can’t do anything wrong.  If you don’t, he can’t do anything right.

By Angie

Nestled in between happy New Year and spring is the mean old month of February and Valentine’s Day. We are bombarded with images of Cupid shooting love-dipped arrows as we sit with our hungry and mysterious hearts. It can be a time of simultaneous anticipation and reflection, longing and dread, excitement and disappointment.

Will it be boom or bust? Maybe you have a first date or singles event planned. Maybe this is your first Valentine’s day with your new love interest or maybe this is setting up to be the last Valentines’ Day in a relationship that is not working.

Why do so many breakups occur around, or ugh- on Valentine’s Day? Some describe a romantic pressure while in the process of deciding just how special to make it, how many karats can you afford? How elaborate the preparation? Is a trail of candles and rose petals to the bedroom premature or overdoing it? One might be struck with, “What the hell am I going through all this for? I’m not even sure I want to be with this person.” Or one might be feeling the ramping up of their significant other’s intensity level and realize, “Holy crap, I better bail now before this gets too serious or complicated and somebody gets hurt.” It can be a fish or cut-bait deadline.

You’ve had some time to reflect on how the December holiday season went down, anywhere from “better than you could have possibly dreamed” to “unqualified disaster.” Maybe you met his or her family or close friends for the first time or your partner met yours. The unsolicited scouting reports have been dribbling in and are validating suspicions that you have already taken note of. Maybe he or she is not the one and now is the time to face this fact. Maybe we don’t travel well together…through life, quite probably.

It could be that you realized your potential mate’s psycho family is a deal breaker or their gift-giving left you cold or clarified how “they just don’t get me.” Maybe you were inspired by a strong impulse to start fresh when you closed the door on the old year, letting go of all that accompanied Auld Lang Syne, and stood at the threshold of a brand New Year that hadn’t been used yet. Or maybe yours or your partner’s New Year’s promises to turn over a new leaf didn’t survive Super Bowl Sunday.

In any case Valentine’s Day is a pivotal time for many relationships: a maker or breaker and a perfect opportunity to watch where you’ve been and look where you are going. Maybe it’s time to reassess and/or renegotiate your “must have’s” and “deal breakers,” or to make critical decisions about moving on. Or, if you are one of the really lucky ones, it is a time for intense gratitude for your partnership.

“This is the most useful book I have read about relationships for people in 12-step recovery programs”

Right about this time of year, we like to reflect on how the last year went and to set a vision for what we would like to manifest in the upcoming new year. The question is: one year from now where would you like to see yourself? What is your dream? Maybe even “In what ways could you relate better to your partner?”

One of the things we have learned in recovery is to dare to dream. After all, haven’t we already experienced a life beyond “our wildest [drunken] dreams?” One of our dreams—the vision we shared when we wrote “A Spiritual Path to a Healthy Relationship,” was that someone (hopefully many) would find our book uniquely useful. We saw how our previous miserable relationship experiences could actually benefit others. After all, if people like us can experience the miracle of a healthy relationship, why can’t you?

We wanted to share our “experience, strength and hope” with as many people as possible. Is this ego-driven? We hope not, as we have prayed for God’s will each step of the way. Often, we felt inspired and the writing came easily. Sometimes, when we were not as centered, we had to remind ourselves that it was “God’s book,” which is how we felt when we were able to do the footwork and leave the results up to our higher power.

The favorable feedback we have received from friends, the rich variety of positive reviews on Amazon.com, and the people who have already said they have benefited from our book–these are so gratifying and all part of yet another “dream come true.”

“Is there anything in here for single people?”

This was the question asked by one of our friends when we first presented A Spiritual Path to a Healthy Relationship, “hot off the press,” to our coffee circle. Our response: definitely. There are:

• Offers of hope—evidence that even people like us, who had despaired of ever “getting it right,” can have a satisfying and fulfilling romantic partnership, despite prior failures, painful experiences, or long periods of loneliness. There are several inspiring stories from other couples.
• Lessons from our many years of experience being alone while getting ready to be in a relationship—working a program of recovery, reaching realizations such as the need to be alone to heal, to “become the right person” before we could “find the right person,” to achieve a full and meaningful life on our own instead of expecting another person to “fix” us, and then overcoming fear.
• Specific examples of personal affirmations, identification of qualities we want in a mate, and setting a vision to achieve the relationship of our dreams
• Discussion points for people who are dating—help for people to identify their “must haves” and “deal breakers” and to discuss them with a potential partner before making a commitment.

Check back for further discussion in more depth of these and other topics.

Steve and Angie McCord

Part of the reason that we wrote this book is that we found very little written about relationship issues specifically geared for people in recovery. That was our initial target audience. We then focused on expanding the book’s usefulness to people who are not in 12-step fellowships. After all, 12-step programs certainly do not have a corner on the market of spirituality or spiritual principles, and in fact the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (from which all other 12-step programs have been derived) were based on pre-existing spiritual principles, beliefs and practices of the co-founders.

Much of our book is about working the program in the area of relationships, yet we tried to use broad concepts, such as amends and forgiveness, to which anyone could relate. That is, until, we added a new Part IV, “Keeping the ‘I’ in Marriage,” where we introduce specific material about each individual working their own program in order to 1) maintain recovery and 2) stay “whole” within the partnership (as opposed to coming from a place of dominance or dependency). That is the point at which we also added some background, such as a brief overview of the twelve steps and discussion of spiritual principles, for the benefit of those who are not in 12-step fellowships. We thought that portion might also provide insight for therapists who work with individuals and couples in recovery.

In addition, there is also material “borrowed” from Steve’s clinical practice as a Marriage and Family Therapist that could be helpful for anyone. There are many positive suggestions, exercises and practices that might be beneficial to any couple or individual.

We have observed that many of us in recovery love it when people “talk our language” and we like to be able to relate in a special way because we still sometimes feel “different” from society at large. However, there are many people who could relate and benefit from the spiritual principles that have been adapted into the twelve steps, but those individuals may not happen to qualify for any twelve step program, or they practice another form of spirituality or religion. Much of what we have written can be used or adapted by those who are not in 12-step fellowships. We encourage everyone to “take what you need, and leave the rest.”

Inviting input: How do you keep the lightness or playfulness in your relationship while dealing with “life on life’s terms?”

We would love to hear how other couples handle this dilemma. We talked some in our book about how, when we are dating, just being together can give us a sense of lightness, or a certain kind of “high” if you will. It is often enough to take us away from the challenges of our daily lives. However, once we are living together, we become part of each other’s daily lives and the issues that go along with that.

We have noticed that certain topics can be joy killers, such as: plumbing problems, global and political concerns, the financial markets, and especially technological challenges. These are defined as anything that does not work and cannot be immediately fixed by us or by a single simple and fast phone call to a human being; examples include the remote control, internet access, our computers, phones, DVR’s etc.

Recently, Steve called home on a Sunday night, in a terrific mood from having spent the weekend at a writers’ workshop at Esalen Institute. I, on the other hand, had spent the day with technological challenges, including a new phone and no internet access for three days. We were on completely different wavelengths. I noticed that when I told him what had been going on, it seemed to dampen his great spirits. I brought it up later and we had an interesting discussion. I wanted to know how we could have more of that lightness that we had during our carefree dating days, understanding of course that we could not go back to that state of constant bliss. I especially wondered how we could do that without leaving town, when a vacation in “la la land” wasn’t an immediate option. (Don’t get me wrong, we do quite well, but are open to doing better.) Scheduling a specific, regular date night had not worked for us, so the question was how could we carve out a “care-free zone” for a couple of hours at different times during the week? (Steve has some great ideas, which we will share in our next blog.)

In the meantime, we would love to hear ideas from other couples. We are especially impressed with how challenging this question must be for couples who are raising children. So, if you would like to share your ideas with other couples, please respond!

Angie