Commitment. One Day at a Time (#twelvesteps #marriage #commitment)

He's a chic lit cliché: the guy who can't commit. He loves the heroine, truly he does, and they're clearly compatible, in bed and out, but somehow he can't quite take that step. He can't make himself pop the question and join his life with hers happily ever after, 'til death do us part.

Actually, it's not a literary myth. My sister's husband was like that. It took five years, two breakups and some therapy before they finally tied the knot. I'm not ridiculing him. It was a painful and difficult process for him to get to that point. Commitment often is.

However, if you don't commit, you go through life skimming the surface, flitting from one person or activity to another, never experiencing the depth and beauty that's available. Commitment brings emotional and spiritual rewards that are well worth the pain.

The general understanding is that “commitment” is a kind of transition, a phase change, a final stepping over some line. Before you make a commitment, you're in one place. After the act, you are someplace else altogether. You commit and then you breathe a sigh of relief. That's over.

That's not the way it works, in my experience.

As I've shared in other posts, I was anorexic in my late teens. After the acute phase was over and I returned to college, I still had anything but a normal relationship with food. I still weighed myself daily. I binged on calorie-free items like cantaloupe, cabbage and popcorn (without butter). I felt guilty whenever I ate a real meal.

To try and cope with these behaviors and feelings, I joined Overeaters Anonymous. OA is a twelve step program modeled on AA for people who have food-related disorders or addictions. I already knew something about how AA worked, as my mom was a recovered alcoholic. The first of the twelve steps, revised for the OA context, reads: “We admitted that we were powerless over food, that our lives had become unmanageable.” That was me. I wasn't overweight, but food was using up way too much of my mental and emotional energy.

In AA, you make a commitment to stay sober, to abstain from drinking alcohol. No one forces you to do this, by the way. You can come to AA forever and keep drinking; the heart of the program is that you, personally, must decide to become sober. Of course one can't abstain from food. The OA equivalent of sobriety, called “abstinence” is to eat three healthy meals a day with nothing in-between.

I made a commitment to abstinence. I tried to stop my bizarre food behaviors. I tried to release the fear of getting fat. It wasn't as easy as it might sound.

One motto of the twelve step approach is “Just for today”. The idea is that if you tried to commit to never drinking again, ever, that would seem totally impossible. You would sabotage yourself before you even began. So, wisely, the twelve step approach advises that you simply commit to being sober (or abstinent) today. Today is all you have anyway. You could be dead tomorrow. So don't worry about what you're going to do in the future, or how you're going to survive. Focus on where you are. Focus on now. Make a commitment for today and let tomorrow take care of itself.

Simplistic as it sounds, this approach seems to work.

I've come to believe that this is the essence of all commitment. For romance fans, “commitment” usually brings to mind marriage. I've been married more than 30 years now—even though I never expected that I'd marry at all. It's true that my marriage is a bit atypical: we have no children, we are professional colleagues as well as mates, in our younger days we were not sexually exclusive. I suspect my marriage is easier than those of many of my readers. Still, there are times when I get fed up with my DH and really want to walk out, slamming the door behind me. (I'm sure he feels the same about me every now and again.) Or I worry about the future, as we are both getting older (and he is eleven years older than I). How will I manage if I have to be his caretaker instead of his companion and co-conspirator (as we promised in our wedding vows)?

Then I stop myself. I remember that I've made a commitment to love him, share my life with him, take responsibility for him, as he does for me. But I don't need to think about forever. I only need to reassert my commitment now, today.

This is the way that all good marriages are built, in my opinion. One day at a time. Commitment is not a single act, but a process to be repeated each day. That makes it easier—and in realistically, making a commitment today is all we can ever do.

Commitment — One Day at a Time (#marriage #addiction #commitment)

He's a chic lit cliché: the guy who can't commit. He loves the heroine, truly he does, and they're clearly compatible, in bed and out, but somehow he can't quite take that step. He can't make himself pop the question and join his life with hers happily ever after, 'til death do us part.

Actually, it's not a literary myth. My sister's husband was like that. It took five years, two breakups and some therapy before they finally tied the knot. I'm not ridiculing him. It was a painful and difficult process for him to get to that point. Commitment often is.

However, if you don't commit, you go through life skimming the surface, flitting from one person or activity to another, never experiencing the depth and beauty that's available. Commitment brings emotional and spiritual rewards that are well worth the pain.

The general understanding is that “commitment” is a kind of transition, a phase change, a final stepping over some line. Before you make a commitment, you're in one place. After the act, you are someplace else altogether. You commit and then you breathe a sigh of relief. That's over.

That's not the way it works, in my experience.

As I've shared before on this blog, I was anorexic in my late teens. After the acute phase was over and I returned to college, I still had anything but a normal relationship with food. I still weighed myself daily. I binged on calorie-free items like cantaloupe, cabbage and popcorn (without butter). I felt guilty whenever I ate a real meal.

To try and cope with these behaviors and feelings, I joined OvereatersAnonymous. OA is a twelve step program modeled on AA for people who have food-related disorders or addictions. I already knew something about how AA worked, as my mom was a recovered alcoholic. The first of the twelve steps, revised for the OA context, reads: “We admitted that we were powerless over food, that our lives had become unmanageable.” That was me. I wasn't overweight, but food was using up way too much of my mental and emotional energy.

In AA, you make a commitment to stay sober, to abstain from drinking alcohol. No one forces you to do this, by the way. You can come to AA forever and keep drinking; the heart of the program is that you, personally, must decide to become sober. Of course one can't abstain from food. The OA equivalent of sobriety, called “abstinence” is to eat three healthy meals a day with nothing in-between.

I made a commitment to abstinence. I tried to stop my bizarre food behaviors. I tried to release the fear of getting fat. It wasn't as easy as it might sound.

One motto of the twelve step approach is “One day at a time”. The idea is that if you tried to commit to never drinking again, ever, that would seem totally impossible. You would sabotage yourself before you even began. So, wisely, the twelve step approach advises that you simply commit to being sober (or abstinent) today. Today is all you have anyway. You could be dead tomorrow. So don't worry about what you're going to do in the future, or how you're going to survive. Focus on where you are. Focus on now. Make a commitment for today and let tomorrow take care of itself.

Simplistic as it sounds, this approach seems to work.

I've come to believe that this is the essence of all commitment. I've been married more than 34 years now—even though I never expected that I'd marry at all. It's true that my marriage is a bit atypical: we have no children, we are professional colleagues as well as mates, in our younger days we were not sexually exclusive. I suspect my marriage is easier than those of many of my readers. Still, there are times when I get fed up with my DH and really want to walk out, slamming the door behind me. (I'm sure he feels the same about me every now and again.) Or I worry about the future, as we are both getting older (and he is eleven years older than I). How will I manage if I have to be his caretaker instead of his companion and co-conspirator (as we promised in our wedding vows)?

Then I stop myself. I remember that I've made a commitment to love him, share my life with him, take responsibility for him, as he does for me. But I don't need to think about forever. I only need to reassert my commitment now, today.

This is the way that all good marriages are built, in my opinion. One day at a time. Commitment is not a single act, but a process to be repeated each day. That makes it easier—and in realistically, making a commitment today is all we can ever do.

One Day

So I've been back from the hospital, after my hip replacement operation, for about a week, and trying hard to adjust.

I was euphoric the day they let me go home. I'd spent the absolute minimum time--five days--and the entire process had been far less difficult than I had feared. I was awake and coherent a few hours after the operation. The pain was far less extreme than I'd feared. My room had an extra bed so that my husband could spend the night and keep me company. The doctor sent me down to physical therapy on the third day to learn how to use a walker and crutches and that freed me from the nightmare of the bedpan. The hospital staff were all warm, friendly and supportive. I actually had a good time.

I immediately sent out emails to friends and family, colleagues and readers, waxing enthusiastic about how positive the experience had been. Surgery? Cool. A piece of cake.

It didn't take long for reality to set in. First, the pain has gotten worse rather than better. The doctor tells me not to worry, that this is normal and may last for several more weeks. I'm taking medication around the clock, something I hate to do. It helps, some, but it's still hard to sleep, especially since I can't lie in my favorite position.

Second, my poor husband is stuck doing all sorts of things that I can't manage because I'm on a walker. Going grocery shopping. Feeding the cats. Cleaning their litter. Fetching and carrying stuff that I can't. We're relying heavily on take-out, but occasionally he's had to do some cooking. Now don't get me wrong, he's a great cook, but he's almost completely unfamiliar with my kitchen--or my methods. It's difficult for both of us.

I have to avoid putting weight on the affected leg for another five weeks. And I'm really not very skilled yet with the crutches. I went to work for the first time yesterday and nearly fell. My husband and I were both terrified. The walker is easier, but it still takes a lot of effort. The palms of my hands are bruised from carrying my weight.

Five more weeks of this? How am I going to stand it? And of course that's just the minimum. If XRays show that the hip isn't healed yet, I may have a few more weeks as a cripple, driving myself and my husband crazy...

At this point, with all these complaints running around in my head, I just have to stop myself and take a deep breath. Where's all that patience I vowed to cultivate? Where's that positive attitude that I blogged about before the operation?

Okay. Enough. I'm not going to think about the five weeks stretching ahead. I just need to deal with today. And actually, today hasn't been all that bad. I finished a blog post for Oh Get A Grip. I got several guest blogs posted. I completed and submitted the conference paper that I've been working on, three days before the deadline. My husband made some delicious scrambled eggs for lunch and we're planning to collaborate on dinner. (I can cut things up and such, as long as I'm sitting down.)

I remind myself to take thing one day at a time. I've shared before that when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was anorexic. After I got past the crisis phase, I joined Overeaters Anonymous. Despite the name, this is a Twelve Step program (like AA) for anyone who has problems with food, including people like me.

One of the Twelve Step mantras is "one day at a time". If you try to tackle your entire life at once, you will become discouraged and fail. Focusing just on today makes things a lot easier. And really, all we have is today. Yesterday is gone; we can't change the past. Tomorrow is an unknown. It may bring the things we fear, but perhaps not. The only reality is "now". And it's up to me to decide just what kind of "now" it will be.

I can make myself miserable, fretting about the pain and my current limitations. Or I can move forward and do something positive, something to make myself or my husband or even a stranger feel better.

It has been quite a long time since I thought about OA and what I learned there. Just for today, I resolve to be cheerful, productive and patient.

Heck, I can bitch tomorrow, if I really want to. For now, though, I'm going to focus on appreciating the present.