As Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, chances are that many of your clients will be coming to you with burning concerns focusing on relationship issues and other matters of the heart. Accordingly, I would like to devote this column to exploring special issues that often confront single people in the process of recovery. I consider myself to be blessed in the area of relationships, as I have been married to a truly wonderful woman for over 20 years. By the same token, I am intimately familiar with the many challenges confronting single people, by virtue of having spent over a decade jumping from one dysfunctional relationship to another following the breakup of my first marriage at age 29.

Cultivating a healthy approach to relationships
Early in recovery, we tend to be particularly shaky and vulnerable, as our bodies and psyches are undergoing a major readjustment that takes many months — often years — to work things out. In recognition of the vulnerable status of alcoholics and addicts during the early stages of recovery, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and other 12-step programs wisely discourage forming sponsorship relationships with persons of the opposite sex, and also caution against emotional entanglements early on in recovery.

Later, in recovery, forming and maintaining wholesome relationships can still be challenging. This tends to be accentuated by the fact that most people in recovery come from rather dysfunctional family backgrounds. As a counselor, you are undoubtedly familiar with the propensity of clients to keep attracting the wrong partners into their lives, until basic underlying family of origin issues have been addressed. Women in recovery, in particular, often find themselves linking up with highly abusive partners. While this is clearly unhealthy, it can be a difficult pattern to break, as it is so familiar.

Tips for singles
The following are offered as practical suggestions for helping your clients learn how to master the delicate art of surviving and thriving as a single person in recovery. Please feel free share these tips with any of your clients who can benefit.

• Recognize that although you are single, you do not need to be alone. Becoming actively involved in your 12-step program, going to meetings, working with your sponsor and eventually offering to sponsor someone else when you are ready, all provide excellent opportunities for reaching out socially to others in recovery and fending off loneliness and isolation. Over and beyond your recovery support group, seek out additional social outlets that will bring you into contact with other people with both feet on the ground who share your basic values and interests.
• Nurture a sincere appreciation of the importance of forming wholesome relationships with persons of both sexes — again, seeking out people who validate your core values and basic interests. Actively seek out ways of connecting with others who share your interest in a health conducive lifestyle. Joining a hiking club or biking club, or any group effort concerned with promoting a cause that you believe in, all provide excellent opportunities for connecting with other like-minded spirits.
• Be on guard against the traps and pitfalls associated with addictive relationships. When we perceive ourselves as being incomplete, it is easy to fall into the trap of desperately searching for a partner who will validate us and make us feel whole. Another common pitfall is becoming addicted to the sexual intensity that frequently accompanies the early stages of relationships — and then finding a reason to “bail out” as soon as the initial sexual intensity starts to wind down.

If you find yourself falling into these patterns, you need to make a conscious effort to get off the relationship roller coaster and TAKE IT SLOW. In any new relationship, we need to focus first and foremost on nurturing trust and friendship, while exploring the potential for affinity with the other person based on a foundation of mutual respect, shared values and common interests. The other aspects of the relationship will unfold in due time, if that is meant to be.

Your most important relationship
In truth, our most important relationship is with ourselves, and we need to get that one down first. Too many people tend to hold up a front in their pursuit of relationships, in the hope of attracting a desirable partner. It is far better to honor yourself first, and focus your energy on becoming the person whom you truly want to be. Sharing a bit of personal history, I learned this the hard way back when I was single, where I became enmeshed in a self-destructive pattern of addictive relationships — constantly searching for someone who would make me feel complete.

As the saying goes, to thine own self be true. Once you have reached a level of growth where you are truly comfortable with yourself as a whole person, then — and only then — will you be ready to attract into your life a truly meaningful, mutually nourishing relationship with long-term potential. In the meantime, don’t rush the process, and enjoy the journey. Until next time — to your health!

John Newport, PhD, is a freelance writer, wellness counselor, speaker and consultant based in Port Townsend, Washington. He is author of The Wellness — Recovery Connection: Charting Your Pathway to Optimal Health While Recovering from Alcoholism and Drug Addiction. To contact him or obtain more information on wellness and recovery, visit his website at www.wellnessandrecovery.com.

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