Maybe you are one of those lucky men or women who arrived at adulthood emotionally and spiritually ready to step into and maintain a satisfying relationship with a life partner. Perhaps you grew up with two parents who were sufficiently healed from their own wounds, who could cope with the challenges of life, and who were physically and emotionally available for you. Maybe you feel that they had the intuitive ability to deliver what you needed throughout your upbringing. So, you searched for your life’s partner with confidence and a sense of joy and anticipation, and now you are living happily ever after.
However, if this has not been your experience, this book was written for you, especially if you:
- Have ever felt you were absent on the day they issued the instruction manual for how to have a relationship that is satisfying and successful (according to your personal definition).
- Have hungered for a life partner but don’t know where to begin.
- Have had the courage and faith to risk stepping into one or more relationships that didn’t turn out the way you had hoped.
- Are currently in a relationship that could be enhanced or taken to the next level, though you don’t know how.
We ourselves had each concluded that perhaps we could not have a healthy partnership with a member of the opposite sex. We had both experienced pain, failure, loneliness, and yearning around our desire for a committed love relationship. For many years, we each worked individually on a spiritual program of recovery from addiction. We each achieved full and useful lives as single people. We came together later in life (at ages fifty-four and forty-four) in a way that we see as divinely guided, first as friends with growing respect and admiration for one another. A strong attraction developed, and we eventually began exploring the intimidating possibility of having a committed relationship with each other.
We then entered a couples community and were inspired by the stories of amazing people (some of which are included in Part V of this book). In some of these marriages, one or both spouses had abused substances or engaged in other destructive behavior for many years prior to recovery. We saw marriages that survived despite addiction, infidelity, death of children, and other seemingly insurmountable obstacles. We thought, here are our healthy role models; these people must really know something about forgiveness. If they could do it, we could do it. We felt hope for achieving what we wanted from a relationship. We took our place in that community, first in our dating stage, and then as a married couple. After a period of time, we began to see how our experience could also benefit others.
We take great joy in sharing our story and offering hope to single people, especially those who are just beginning the recovery journey. Often substance abuse has destroyed relationships, and people enter into recovery with baggage based on their past diseased actions. We offer encouragement that one can move into a position to have a successful relationship by putting the spiritual program of recovery first, praying for God’s will, trusting a higher power, practicing spiritual principles, and being of service.
We also love working with other couples and sharing how we have used tools and spiritual principles to achieve and maintain a happy and contented marriage. That is why we wrote this book–to share our experience in order to help others and to pass along what has been freely given to us.
