Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

STEP TWELVE

is ever going to be happy again. They may even begin to sus-
pect it had never been any good in the first place.

Compatibility, of course, can be so impossibly damaged
that a separation may be necessary. But those cases are the
unusual ones. The alcoholic, realizing what his wife has en-
dured, and now fully understanding how much he himself
did to damage her and his children, nearly always takes
up his marriage responsibilities with a willingness to repair
what he can and to accept what he can't. He persistently
tries all of A.A.'s Twelve Steps in his home, often with fine
results. At this point he firmly but lovingly commences to
behave like a partner instead of like a bad boy. And above
all he is finally convinced that reckless romancing is not a
way of life for him.

A.A. has many single alcoholics who wish to marry and
are in a position to do so. Some marry fellow A.A.'s. How
do they come out? On the whole these marriages are very
good ones. Their common suffering as drinkers, their com-
mon interest in A.A. and spiritual things, often enhance
such unions. It is only where "boy meets girl on A.A. cam-
pus," and love follows at first sight, that difficulties may de-
velop. The prospective partners need to be solid A.A.'s and
long enough acquainted to know that their compatibility
at spiritual, mental, and emotional levels is a fact and not
wishful thinking. They need to be as sure as possible that
no deep-lying emotional handicap in either will be likely to
rise up under later pressures to cripple them. The consid-
erations are equally true and important for the A.A.'s who
marry "outside" A.A. With clear understanding and right,
grown-up attitudes, very happy results do follow.