They called me the next afternoon.
"I wanted to follow up on your offer to talk more. I feel like I need to talk to someone who understands. Is this a good time?"
"Sure, in fact I just finished making some tea, your timing couldn't be better." I grabbed my mug and the pot and sat on the sofa. "I'll help any way I can."
"Thank you." They sounded like they might have been crying before they called, or it could have been the cell connection. In the 21st Century we can talk anywhere we are, just not very well sometimes. "You know the South American was honest with me from the very beginning."
"Oh? In what way?" I asked.
"Well, they told me that after the cruise they were going to try to work things out with their ex."
I was silent for a bit. I took a deep breath and said to myself, "Gentle tone. Remember, gentle tone." The cat jumped up on the sofa and gave me a long look. "What?" I mouthed at her. "I said gentle tone!" She began washing a paw, dismissing me entirely.
"Are you still there?" he asked.
"Yes! Sorry, just ... taking a deep breath. I'm so sorry, I understand just how much this hurts, because my history and yours are even closer than ... look, the greatest emotional pain I've had in sobriety is when I willfully, adamantly refuse to deal in reality. And that's what you did from the beginning of this. From the very first, this relationship was based wholly in fantasy."
"No! That's not true! We had something really intense and ..."
I jumped in (gently) "Hey, I'm sorry, but ... intensity does not equal reality."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I am not saying you didn't have an intense connection. I'm just saying you were in fantasy the whole time. Daydreaming. Wishing. Even plotting and scheming. The South American said that there was an expiration date on your relationship, and somewhere along the way you decided that you would just make that not true. I've done that, and it's a horrible place to be. To just ignore all the evidence that disproves what you want reality to be. To 'unhear' things. To sweep what we don't want to be true away with a tidal wave of words and rationalizations. It's just the advanced version of the 'self will run riot' the Big Book describes us as when we were practicing ... wait, maybe advanced is not the right word, since it's sicker, actually..." I trailed off.
"Okay, I ... I can accept that I guess. But now we're going to be friends -- just friends. But ..."
There was genuine anguish in their voice, and that, I assure you, was not the cell connection.
"But what?" I asked, with no need to remind myself to be gentle this time.
"But I'm getting ... I mean I'm going... I mean I don't even know what I ... we're both on [popular internet service provider], so I can see when they're on and they can see me and I just log on in the morning and wait for them to log on and then I send them messages like, all day, and then just sit and wait for them to respond and ... I don't know what to do."
"Well," I sighed (I once had a sponsee tell me that whenever I started a sentence with "well" he knew he wasn't going to like whatever came after it. I don't seem to be able to break the habit though) "I have a suggestion, but I it will be difficult."
Guardedly he asked, "Okay, what's the suggestion?"
"Get rid of [popular internet service provider]. Just remove it entirely from your computer. They're not the only ISP out there by a long shot. And ..."
"Okay, and what?"
"And tell the South American that you need a year of no contact."
"WHAT?!?"
"I said..."
"I heard you that's ... too extreme. I said to them that we could still be friends and I meant it."
"And how's that workin' for you?" I asked.
"Hey now, don't be flip." They shot back.
"I'm not. I'm asking you seriously. How. Is. That. Working. For. You. Ask yourself that and give an honest answer, because it's obviously not working for you and ... well, if you give yourself an honest answer to that question it will be the first honest answer you've given yourself about this painful mess in a while."
"What do you meant by that?"
The cat had moved on to the other paw and stopped for a moment, giving me another look. I checked my tone and volume.
"I mean" I said, taking a breath "that you are not being honest with yourself with this 'want to be friends' business. Because you don't want to be friends. You want to be together. Romantically. You want to be joined at the hip, living and sleeping together. You want a relationship, not a friendship."
"So you're saying I should cut them out of my life?"
"I'm saying you should tell them you made a mistake, that you can't handle being friends, that it's killing you, and you need a year of no contact. Then change ISP's and..."
He jumped in, passionately explaining how what I was suggesting was crazy, too much, too extreme, wrong, rude ... a thousand other angles. It became a rant, and I poured more tea and let them go on, hearing underneath it the addict's terror of losing their fix. The cat, having lost interest in ignoring me from the sofa, stretched and yawned and then jumped down and ignored me from the floor.
Finally I interrupted, "So, you're saying you can still be friends with them because it's not that you're attached to them, it's that being with them awakened in you the desire for a significant relationship, but not with them, so the friendship's okay they're just some sort of symbol."
"Yes."
"Oh bullshit." I said. My rope for being on the receiving end of rants has gotten considerably shorter over the past few years. "Utter bullshit."
"How do you know?" They challenged. "I can step back, create a safe boundary, process everything with..."
"Ohmygod, please stop." I had to interrupt. "You are smart, and you are articulate, and all that's happening here is you are using all that to one more time try to shape reality to fit you, rather than adjust yourself to reality. All that verbal ability is very dangerous, because you can spin and sell yourself -- and others, I'm sure -- on whatever you like."
Silence on the line. "You still there?" I asked.
"Yeah." He said.
"Okay, look, really, all that's happening here is that you feel like there's a hole in your gut, as alcoholics" without a program, I thought to myself "often do. And you have decided, on some level, that it's a relationship-shaped hole. And if you just find, or create, the right relationship you will be able to fill the hole and feel complete. But what we learn in AA is that we don't have a relationship-shaped hole, or a job-shaped, or a money-shaped, or any-other-of-those-things-shaped hole. What we have is a God-shaped hole. And to feel complete, in other words, to fill the hole, we have to bring God, as each of us understand God, into our lives. Ironically of course, the only way to fill a God-shaped hole is to give, not to get. To reverse the flow, and give of ourselves. That's how you fill a God-shaped hole. And then, weirdly, wonderfully, the more you give the more you get, and the smaller the hole becomes, until eventually there are whole days where you feel complete. That's why I asked you the other night if you had service commitments, or sponsees. That's the only way I made it through what you're going through now."
More silence. "You still there?" I asked again.
"Yeah." He answered.
Still more silence. "Okay then, I ... I guess that's all I can suggest. That's ... I hope that helped."
"Yeah." He answered, but to be honest it sounded a little perfunctory.
Doesn't matter though, because while I don't know if he truly heard what I said, I sure did.
And so, so often, that's really how it works.