Coupleship Offices- These were written for the love of my life, my third wife. Sadly, we ended in divorce…Guess there is some more writing to be done.

Coupleship Prayer #1

Coupleship Prayer #10

Coupleship Prayer #20

Coupleship Prayer #30

Coupleship Prayer #40

Coupleship Prayer #50

Coupleship Prayer 1

I know God loves me…cause he gave me you
Steve D.

"The hardest thing in being in a relationship is to being true to yourself and faithful to the other"...and that is where the ultimate spiritual experience is, is in that struggle
Patrick Carnes on Carl Jung

Coupleship Prayer 2

In seeking to salvage a long term relationship we desperately ask for “Knowledge of your will for us and the power to carry it out”

Wouldn’t it be wiser to ask earlier, perhaps even before I begin to pursue a new relationship?

You know, just kinda ‘checkin’ in’ with God?

Just sayin’...

Coupleship Prayer 3

It is a spiritual axiom that anytime we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us.

"If someone hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also".
AA 12x12 p.90

How can this truth be used to help have a better relationship?

First, if you were abused by someone, as a child, this is not true.

This truth is true for adults, only, with free will.

If my partner hurts me, through her words, and I am sore, I am wrong.

Why? Because, unless someone is totally evil, they are wounded children themselves and acting in ways that they themselves learned as children.

When I am hurt by my partner’s behavior I need to do something contrary to good, healthy 12 step thought: …I need to “Take my partner’s inventory”.

Is she feeling hurt?

Is she acting from an adult place?

From that wizened perspective, I have the opportunity to act compassionately.

Without that, I just react to her childhood abuse with my own learned childhood behavior.

And we just lie there in the mud, throwing at each other, as hard as we can…until someone gets hurt enough to stop .

HP, give me the strength to act compassionately towards my partner.

HP, give me the strength to act compassionately towards other people.

HP, give me the strength to act compassionately towards myself.

Coupleship Prayer 4

I love to play with you,

to do nothing,

to lounge,

to carom,

to relax,

to carouse

to hang out,

to dally,

to hang together,

to visit,

to chat,

to talk nonsense,

to dilly dally,

to wander,

to waste time,

to fiddle while Rome burns,

to burn the candle at both ends and the middle with an acetylene torch…

Prayers

B Office

Coupleship Prayers 5

Lord, as a woman, am I worth less than a man? (I, as a woman earn 21% per hour less than a man).

Help me to understand.

Is Socrates right that “Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior”?

What are you boys afraid of...I mean exactly?

Coupleship Prayer 6

Higher power, what is your will about sex?

Is it only to be used to create children, and all else is an act of selfishness?

Or is it your will that sexual attractiveness should bring us closer to someone and therefore more likely to, at some point… act lovingly?

Thanks

Coupleship Prayer 7

I'll take you on bad day, before anyone else on a good day

While I much, much prefer lounging around wasting time with you,

I also like toiling in the digital fields with you five days a week

Even when one of us is 'edgy',

I'd rather be with you...than anyone else.

Besides it's always my fault anyway.

...at least that's what you say, LOL

Coupleship Prayer 8

“Nearly every sound human being experiences, at some time in life, a compelling desire to find a mate of the opposite (or same) sex with whom the fullest possible union can be made —spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical".
AA 12x12

How exactly do I do that?

I need to be honest if I want a healthy relationship.

Honest about my actions, thoughts, feelings, attitudes and beliefs.

So does my partner.

If we do, there is the possibility of trust being established.

From that base…we can build anything.

“It is nowhere evident, at least in this life, that our Creator expects us fully to eliminate our instinctual drives.

So far as we know, it is nowhere on the record that God has completely removed from any human being all his natural drives.”
AA 12x12

I have an instinctual drive to be sexual, so does my partner. God made us that way.

If we are honest, and trust each other…then we might choose to add the sexual component.

Coupleship Prayer 9

“And above all he is finally convinced that reckless romancing is not a way of life for him.”
AA 12x12

“If I am sexual with someone who is not a match…I may be using them.”
Mercy Offices

How do I know if someone is not a match?

First: Am I willing to introduce my sexual partner to:

My friends?

My family?

My coworkers?

My chosen faith community?

My social media community?

Coupleship Prayer 10

“True intimacy, we found, cannot exist independent of commitment.”
SLAA Primary Text

Intimacy - The ability to share feelings, desires, needs, thoughts, attitudes and beliefs honestly and openly with another person; with yourself; or with a Higher Power.
Mercy Offices

Commitment - a willingness to stay with a partner and work through pain and problems regardless of how you may feel. There is a limit to this commitment and that is when staying with a partner is clearly detrimental to oneself spiritually.
Mercy Offices

Have I asked  the person I am about to be sexual with if they are open and willing to partner with me?

Am I am able to share all my feelings with this man or woman?

Am I capable of staying connected to this person when I feel frightened?

Am I capable of staying connected to this person when I feel hurt?

Am I capable of staying connected to this person when I feel angry?

Perhaps, I am not capable of committing to anyone right now.

If that is true, perhaps choosing to be sexual might not be healthy for me, right now…or this other person, who is God’s child.

Coupleship Prayer 11

Is the person I am about to be sexual with in another a relationship?

Do I realize that they are using me?

If I understand this, why am I letting them use me?

What is it about me, that let people use me sexually?

Where did I learn to do that?

Am I capable of stopping that behavior on my own will power, or my own brainpower?

If not, am I simply able to be honest, if with no-one else, in the quietness of my soul, at least with myself, that I am powerless to stop this behavior?

Coupleship Prayer 12

If I fail at maintaining my sexual sobriety, as I am searching for healthy love, what am I to do?

The Big Book on page #58, in the very first paragraph of How It Works, the most trusted writing in all of 12 step, three times cries out…for honesty!

If I can tell the simple truth: No varnish, no discounting, no minimizing, no leaving things out, no spin doctoring, no English-on-the-ball, no dissembling, no telling’ yarns, and no fractured fairy tales…

If I tell can the truth, God can reach me…

If I don’t, He can’t.

…and I am lost

Totally lost…

Coupleship Prayer 13

HP,
Help me to remember that sex is your idea, not mine.

Help me to remember what the Big Book says on page 69, that sex is not to be used lightly or selfishly.

Help me to remember what the Big Book says on page 69, that sex is not to be despised or loathed.

Help me to remember what the Big Book says on page 69 , that I am to look for your will, for me, sexually, through meditation.

Help me to do your will…just for today…one day at a time.

Coupleship Prayer 14

Sometimes, HP, love is not a rabbit’s foot, a soft puffy cloud, or a rainbow colored unicorn.

Sometimes love can appear brutal, even though it is actually loving.

When a plane begins to go down the flight attendants have instructed all mothers and fathers to put on their oxygen masks first, before their children.

When a drowning man will not co-operate, rescuers are trained to knock the person unconscious.

“Love always protects”.
1st Corinthians 13

We pray this prayer daily.

What then is the proper use of force, that is loving, “To protect”?

Coupleship Prayer 15

HP,

In my slaughtered child’s mind I react to the emotional and physical abuse I saw my parents display towards each other.

My feeling is disgust, dread, despair, and depression when I remember, in my 12 year old mind, how they so called “loved” each other.

Shame, blame, control, manipulation, lying and yelling, yelling, yelling!

In my slaughtered child’s mind I reacted,

denying the real truth of that pain I felt when I watched them attempting to assassinate each other’s boundaries.

I lie to myself, hard, about the truth of this emotional pain I could not then feel.

Now from my “Warped lives of a blameless children’s ” mind , that the Big Book so perfectly describes,

I NEVER want to ‘fight’ with my current partner.

Unfortunately…that is not sane.

Please restore me to relational sanity Lord…

Please help me to be grateful for our pain, problems, and crises

Coupleship Prayer 16

When US President Bill Clinton had sex with a 22 year old page on his staff, America asked, in 1998, a very famous therapist “Why”

…I hired that very therapist for my own couples therapy.

The therapist worked with his wife full time and said to me “When you work with your spouse…you will have every feeling, everyday”

So…when I feel:

Frustrated

Impatient

Desperate

Irritated

or as my Mama used to say like I “Just want to slap somebody”

Help me to remember that I will also feel, in that very same day:

Love

Sexually attracted

Dazed at the beauty

Amazingly lucky

Connected

Admiring

Admired

Forgiven

Satisfied

Content

Proud

Respectful

And laughing like a hyena…

Help me to accept that, spiritually, I must accept that the pendulum not only swings both ways…

but it swings only to the “good feelings” to the exact degree….

that I will allow it to swing to the “bad feelings”…

Al-anon says “Take the bitter with the better”

Amen

Coupleship Prayer 17

Song of Songs

HP,

So often, the gift of love, has felt more like forbidden, stolen fruits than the divine blessing it can be.

Help me to respond to the gift of love with an attitude of gratitude, and to take the actions of service towards my beloved.

Amen

Coupleship Prayer 18

HP,

“There is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing”
Ecclesiastes 3:5

Now is the time to embrace…

Help me to:

Joyously embrace

Creatively commit

Humbly have

Riotously revel

Carnally create

Divinely devour

Amorously adore

Spiritually sexualize

Felicitously feel

Thankfully take

Gratefully give

Piously partake

Rapturously receive

The love you have you have honored me with…

Have mercy Lawd, have mercy!!!

Coupleship Prayer 19

The salient personality character feature of every single addict on the earth is…rebelliousness “Rebellion dogs our every step”.
(p.73, AA 12x12)

If you don’t think this is true…Try telling a sex, or food addict what to do…angrily!

Watch the ensuing total nuclear psychological breakdown of personality structure!!!

This is not the salient feature of a emotionally mature, spiritually developed man or woman, Lord, and you and I know that.

We are slaughtered children…and we just can’t hear being told what to do.

Please have mercy on us, as you speak…

Amen

Coupleship Prayer 20

I desire to have everyone be ‘nice’, under all circumstances, by  assuring myself and others there were never being any “fussing”.

That…is my character defect of me being “controlling”.

Lord, have mercy on me and please remove my character defect of “controlling”, just for today.

Amen

Coupleship Prayer 21

In Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony there as a Fourth Movement called  Thunder. Storm”

Listen to it. See if it is not exactly how you feel when you are fighting with your spouse.

The Fifth Movement of that same symphony is called  Cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm”

Listen to it. See if it is not exactly how you feel after you finish fighting with your spouse.

More Fifth Movement please…

Coupleship Prayer 22

Sometimes I am so struck by the  sudden beauty of my partner that I feel confounded, almost immobilized..not in a bad way

Kind of like when you are hiking for miles in the mountains through brush and canopies and suddenly you break out into a breathtaking vista.

Kinda cool…

Coupleship Prayer 23

HP,

I was almost destroyed as a child, but I endured.

I experienced such soul fright that I was unable to feel safe or protect myself when I felt unsafe.

You sent me your servant, a loving and tender man, who taught me how to feel my anger.

Not to be violent, not to be emotionally abusive through the use of shame, blame or control.

Not to be verbally abusive through the use of obscenity or profanity;

But to be honest that when I feel hurt, I feel angry. You built me that way.

You built me that way to protect myself, and others who cannot protect themselves, that I am responsible for.

That servant’s wisdom, courage and power freed me from the 'bondage of self'.

Now, I am no longer powerless over the effects of victimization that I once experienced.

I have the power to choose. I am strong. I am free. Free to choose...

I choose service.

I choose prayer.

I choose truth.

I choose love.

And if I live in love and truth, I live in you…and that is all I need.

Amen

Coupleship Prayer 24

Lord,

Have mercy on your children

As the Israelites cried out for their Exodus

Have mercy on your children.

We die, your children, 29,000 a day…under the age of five

Twenty one us fall a minute…

Listen…can you hear the sound of us falling?

Have mercy on your children, young and old.

Have mercy on us

Have mercy

Coupleship Prayer 25

HP,

I have learned to not to try control my children, if and when they use drugs or alcohol.

I model my behavior for them. That is the best thing I am capable of.

As Gandhi would say “Be the change you want to see in the world”

If I am doing something addictive around:

food,

cigarettes,

coffee,

busyness,

codependency,

debting,

underearning,

overspending

…or sex,

then help me to remember that my children “Don’t do what I say, they do what I do”.

Help me to accept some, not all, of the responsibility for my children’s disease, if I haven’t been utterly perfect in all these areas…and no one is.

Help me own my part, feel the anger at myself, forgive myself, and then, being armed with self-honesty, let me “Turn to” and serve my adult children, if and only if…they are willing to receive my help.

Coupleship Prayer 26

HP,

If I want to love or be loved by another person, my heart needs to be free of resentments.

Help me to be simply honest about the people who have hurt me in my life.

Do I feel loving, forgiving and compassionate towards those who have harmed me?

Or, if I am honest, am I feeling hurt, angry and or vengeful?

Can I express the anger healthily, or cry appropriately for the hurt, or am I shut down emotionally and need some kind of spiritual help to help me to let go of my resentments.

Coupleship Prayer 27

No one comes into a relationship perfectly healed.

I have character defects…We all do!

I could be obsessive, tending toward depression, suffering from early trauma, or leaning on food instead of God.

I could be workaholic, demanding, impatient and vicious.

Or, I could be cowardly and dishonest.

There is much, much good about me, way more healthy and successful than wounded…or I simply wouldn’t be alive at this moment.

But if I want to get better, a relationship is one of God’s great crucibles.

As AA would say “If you want to work on your character: Get into a relationship…It will put Miracle Grow on your character defects!"

Coupleship Prayer 28

If you think money doesn’t matter in SLRR recovery, know that:

Money is the number one cause of divorce in America 90 percent of the amends in the ninth step of Alcoholics Anonymous is about money.

Uh oh…

“The only problems an alcoholic has after he sobers up…is romance and finance.”
Old AA saying

… If (Work) still looked like a mere means of getting money rather than an opportunity for service, we were still the victims of unreasonable fears.

And these were fears would make a serene and useful existence, at any financial level, quite impossible.

“The best things in life are free. But you can give them to the birds and bees”.
Money by Barry Gordy

LOL

Coupleship Prayer 29

HP,

If I love someone, fraternally or erotically, and they do wrong, how do I love them?

How can I love me and love them simultaneously?

I can love me by doing right.

I can love them by accepting their choices  and “Non violently, non-cooperating” (Gandhi) in their choices.

That means, I don’t try to control them, I practice “Live and Let Live”, but I do not enable them.

So that I don’t get too “rigidly righteous”, I can mention, kindly, gently, as a friend, one time, what I see…

Then just Let Go and Let God…

Coupleship Prayer 30

HP,

Help me to love my partner today.

To be grateful for the gifts I receive from just being with her.

If she is challenged in her life, help me to be supportive.

If she is difficult, help me to detach with love.

Help me to see my part.

Help me to work on my own character defects, just for today

and to practice my Ninth step with any harm I may have caused her, little or large, conscious or unconscious, real or imagined.

And help me not take myself to damned seriously.

Amen

Coupleship Prayer 31

Help me to love those I love in the way would I want to be loved, if I were in relapse.

Help me Lord

Coupleship Prayer 32

Help me to detach with love, take care of myself, Live and let Live, Let Go and Let God and Lighten Up when those I love are in relapse

Coupleship Prayer 33

HP,

I will go back to Al-Anon to ask for help as I have a “friend or family member” who is an addict.

Coupleship Prayer 34

HP,

Help me to accept my beloved by consciously seeing the positive in her/him, just for today.

Amen

Coupleship Prayer 35

I was brought up spiritually in a very liberal, egalitarian, fraternal structure that believed that men and women were equally responsible for the relationship.

My partner believes something rather more conservative than that. She believes that the happiness to coupleship is 100% my responsibility…

I will open my mind to try that aesthetic belief today...

Have mercy on us all.

Coupleship Prayer 36

Help me to see the positive in my relationship as active loving on my part, as my way of accepting.

Amen

Coupleship Prayer 37

Help me to lighten up and make my parter laugh as we go to work together today.

Amen

Coupleship Prayer 38

HP,

As an act of love of my coupleship, help me to not abandon my highest goal in coupleship today, chastity, regardless of my challenges, just for today.

Amen

Coupleship Prayer 39

HP,

Help me, if it is your will, and I now believe it is, to accept someone‘s lying and teach me to be at peace with myself around it.

Amen

Coupleship Prayer 40

Help me to celebrate my partner’s willingness to be honest. With that as a basis , we can build anything.

Coupleship Prayer 41

On Love

A lot of people throughout history have believed in God because they saw the planets, sea, forests, lakes, mountains, sun and moon and concluded that since they were not capable of creating these things that there must me a Creator.

I have never bought that.

Nor have I believed that the presence of gravity, electricity, planetary movement, Newton’s laws of thermodynamics, or quantum mechanics are indicators that there is an anthropomorphic intelligence that consciously, purposefully, would like, for my own benefit and well being, for me to follow a prescribed set of rules.

But…for me:

The subject of sex, love, romance and relationship is so unfathomably labyrinthtially recondite, abstruse and complex that no man or woman on earth has ever fully understood it, whether Shakespeare or Freud.

That gives me pause…pause to consider something that does not come naturally to me (to be quite honest)…humility.

If there is any intelligence smarter than me, in the entirety of the Universe, I would like to engage it, by whatever means necessary…to not fuck this up.

Just sayin’…

Coupleship Prayer 42

Whew! Doing a Spending Plan today the first day of the month, for the coupleship…Whew!

Coupleship Prayer 43

Help me to take care of myself, mind my own business, keep my side of the street clean, keep my eyes on my own plate…just for today

Coupleship Prayer 44

Thank you for the tender mercies of when my beloved says she’s sorry...so tender, so tender...

Coupleship Prayer 45

I can accept that which I deplore and detest. I can feel hurt, I can feel angry, I can feel abandoned...but I must stay honest with myself

Coupleship Prayer 46

President Lyndon Johnson had some superb advice about getting along with his wife:

  1. My wife is always right.
  2. If my wife is wrong...see 1.

Coupleship Prayer 47

I sponsored a very successful man in his early 30's from AA.

He and his then fiancé would begin to bicker and then it would move to fisticuffs.

He always felt very ashamed afterward.

I asked him if he wanted to stop the fight before it got physical.

He said “Yes”.

I explained to him that he was taller, weighed more, was faster and stronger than his fiancée, and that the next time that they fought to simply stop and say "I was wrong. I am sorry".

He was utterly appalled, but did it.… It worked.

Coupleship Prayer 48

There’s an old joke:

Wife: “Do I look fat in this?.

Husband: “Do I look stupid?”

Coupleship Prayer 49

Probably the single most useful piece of information I have learned about getting along with women is this:
Women’s minds are like wires and men’s minds are like boxes.

What the hell does that even mean?

As a man, I can boundary whatever I’m doing into: work, playing the guitar, reading a book, having sex, working out, paying bills, etc.

As a woman, my wife connects everything to everything.

That’s why if I don’t like her second cousin’s kitty cat...she doesn’t want to have sex.

I am in my box, she is connecting her wires.

It is unjust to treat women unfairly. But, it is insane...to treat them the same.

Coupleship Prayer 50

I grew up military.

The reason the army did not allow women to carry rifles was not disrespect, but that they are too vicious when threatened.

Can you imagine a battalion made of the women’s boyfriend’s ex-girlfriends?

Coupleship Prayer 51

Have you ever noticed that every Bourne, 007, Mission Impossible, Clint Eastwood, Mad Max, Sylvester Stallone, Avengers, Terminator, Matrix, Die Hard, Indiana Jones, Schwarzenegger, Spider-Man, Batman and Liam Neeson movie have the same plot?

An evil genius threatens to destroy the world.

Dudley Do-right decides to save the world.

Evil genius kidnaps Ms. Do-right.

Dudley saves Ms. Do-right.

“If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.” ~Aristotle Onassis

Coupleship Prayer 52

“Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.”
_Socrates

I can’t top that...