Inside Bay Area
Healthy Together
RECOVERY: Long Beach couple share insights that helped them grow stronger.
By Pamela Hale-Burns, Staff Writerpresstelegram.com
Posted: 02/13/2012 10:03:15 PM PST
Belmont Shore married couple Angie and Steve McCord wrote a book entitled “The Spiritual Path to a Healthy Relationship,” which focuses on sound guidance and spiritual exercises to help build or begin harmonious partnerships and avoid common stumbling blocks. (Steve McCrank / Staff Photographer)
LONG BEACH – For years, Steve and Angie McCord dreaded Valentine’s Day – the day that for so many years brought each of them grief, despair and sadness.
“I was alone for many years, which was actually better than the two relationships where I was ignored on Valentine’s Day – so much more painful than being alone and a wake-up call that the relationship was not working,” said Angie, 64.
Steve, 54, readily admits to having a relationship addiction before meeting Angie.
“I would really long to be with someone and go out on the hunt – find someone before asking myself some really important questions and really knowing myself,” he said. “I was going in blindly and jumping in and going too fast, and the next thing you know, we’re in this intense relationship, and then what?”
But in 2001, after years of bad relationships, Steve and Angie met in a 12-step support program and began dating. They were married in 2003.
The Long Beach couple is now offering to share the wisdom they have gained through both bad and, finally, good relationships in their book, “A Spiritual Path to a Healthy Relationship,” which was published in October by Central Recovery Press.
Nestled together on the loveseat in their Long Beach home, the couple shared how they were led to write the book.
“Both of us had had a lot of painful relationships and long periods of being alone and being lonely and we had despaired of ever having a healthy
