# I created a 12 Step Group for Singles



## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Started about 10 years ago but I didn't do much with it. I go into why on the site, which is easy to find by a google search. 

I'm not sure if links are allowed so I'll just post some of the text.

I know this is a weird place to announce it but this is one of my online homes so thought I'd give it a shot. This is only part of the text at the site. 

Singles Anonymous -- The Program for Developing Long Term Romantic Relationships
A New Twelve Step Fellowship


At the time of this writing, the actual statistic is that there are 129 million singles in the United States. Other Western countries as well as elsewhere have the same problem. While we do not say being married is better than being single, often more marriage in a society is a sign of more stability and maturity in the people. SGA is often about people developing greater stability and maturity than many in the society, instead of people with character defects feeling like they are less than average. Many adults reach the age of fifty having only had a few short term relationships. To "the world," a group like Singles Anonymous seems like a group with a stigma. But it's actually the opposite. Recovery in this program could make a person have a better than average -- or at least better than many -- track record with a long term relationship. No one should promise that doing the 12 Steps in SGA will guarantee one a long term relationship. But it can help overcome the character defects which make interacting with the opposite sex so difficult in the modern age. SGA also aims at overcoming all bitterness and resentment that one may have developed for the opposite sex due to one's dysfunctional relationship patterns.

There seemed to be a "type" of person emerging from long term use of multiple 12 Step meetings. While everyone is of course unique, many people who used multiple 12 Step meetings became very good at creating "boundaries" with people, and often did not have many significant others in their lives. The "culture of recovery" has actually been in Western culture even before the big 12 Step Recovery boom of 1980's and 1990s. Many people in sex and love addiction type programs were actually there for "relationship anorexia" -- they actually had not been in a relationship for a decade or more.

At this point, the founder and his Higher Power believe that it's better that Singles Anonymous recovery remain a purely positive experience for everyone involved, than a situation that causes personalities to arise which become a major focus, instead of the principles. The need for a SGA group of some type is real, so that healing may come from discussion with others that have a similar problem. But we want it to be grounded on a spiritual foundation.

There is now a small group of people who are supporting this program and which has formed an unofficial "board" like every other 12 Step program utilized. We have official AA sanction for use of their 12 Steps. Although contributions are not tax deductible, we are accepting donations to expand this work. 

Note: Regarding telephone meetings. There are hundreds of telephone Twelve Step meetings which occur weekly. The information on them can be found at the individual website of the programs.

The development of family mindedness in the single may be one of the last pieces psychologically to get right. For some in recovery, it may be as important to focus on this as it is on money, overeating, or other issues.

One spiritualizes the romantic bond and one no longer sees it in terms of dirtiness, or stress. One instead sees it as a way where people can become "God with flesh on" to each other, temples of God's Spirit to give each other warmth and love. One sees the relationship as something God wants, and even what God has created for both people. The committed relationship furthers God's purposes in ways that short term, sex-based relationships do not. This isn't to say there isn't a good sex life in a committed long term relationship, but a relationship based on surface values cannot endure when deeper problems threaten.

The goal of Singles Anonymous for all its member is not necessarily to become married or have one long term commitment. Only we ourselves and our Higher Power can determine if marriage or any one relationship is right for us. The goal of Singles Anonymous for all its members is, however, to overcome our character defects and, by so doing, to be more able to be married or in a long term relationship. The goal of Singles Anonymous is also to have a more spiritual experience when courting someone or dating. Our goal is to overcome the resentment and the lies surrounding a gender, the lies against marriage, and to overcome these lies in ourselves and with those who need our help when we do our 12th Step work.


1

All Twelve Step programs have a way of knowing if someone is "getting the program." When people get the program in Alcoholics Anonymous, there are various principles that they understand which begin to give them the attitudes that make sobriety possible. When people get the program in Singles Anonymous, one way they show it is experiencing the positive family relationship aspect of one's partner. Growing up, compulsive singles were not taught enough to care for the person that they are in a relationship with. They fail to use the principle of bonding on the level of a new family member. For example, if a woman has children, and she develops a relationship with a man, she must eventually see the man as in a relationship with her like he was a new family member, in the same quality as a new brother, sister, father, mother or, in some sense, her child. We are not inventing something here, just describing how happy marriages function. This doesn't mean that he becomes, on some imaginary level, equal in neediness as her child, but that she infuses some aspect of the family quality to the man she is in a relationship with. This becomes the attitude she takes with him.

Sometimes people need to learn to take the time to take care of themselves, to prepare themselves for a life as an adult, which in some way they have not properly learned before. Sometimes people have not learned to treat their romantic relationships with long term respect, and are unable to see how serving and prolonging the relationship is a way of taking care of their needs.

Treating romantic relationships with respect is a skill that we learn in Singles Anonymous. By treating the romantic relationship with respect, one fully learns about all one gets from this relationship, and how, by valuing the relationship, they are valuing themselves. This is almost the exact opposite of what much of the world teaches today. People are taught that, by getting out of a relationship, they are taking care of themselves, but they are seldom taught that by taking care of the relationship, they can be valuing themselves, also.

When we think about an important person who is balanced and well-loved, and about the relationship with his or her mate, we do not think about the kind of petty squabbles that accompany short-term marriages. It is hard to think that a long-term marriage of an important and spiritual person could be accompanied by a spouse that bickers with them, puts them down, and treats them with a lack of respect. Such an important person would not tolerate that kind of life, because they must keep their focus on the things in life which bring them so much pleasure in mastering. This is the type of relationship members of SGA hope to achieve, because successful relationship patterns are able to be duplicated with spiritual help.

Singles Anonymous literature may be helpful for those who are married or in a relationship but who have a history of having problems in a relationship. Some of these traits may include posturing to get a type of self-esteem in which one's feeling of self comes from the experience of others when seeing one. This may not have been a problem when single but is not a healthy behavior when married. It could be seen as a type of emotional adultery, or flirtation.

We can see that as we live to please our partner, we can become healthier people. We can exercise more, eat better, groom ourselves better, and life opens up to us in better ways. This can be part of the focus of our spiritual life, to pray to our higher power for more help in exercising, eating better and so on.

"Money Twelve Step" programs, such as DA, BDA and UA, can help a religiously-addicted person to relate to money in healthy ways. They might say it's good to check your balance daily, it doesn't mean one is greedy. SGA helps people addicted to unhealthy "toxic religious" ideas to have a healthy way to look at their romantic interests, that is not lust or promiscuity.

2


*Making our Thoughts Whole by Linking Ourselves, Others, and God*

Where there was once coldness or lack of warmth from the trauma of cruelty, there is now love threefold:

Our Higher Power's love for us
Our love for our self
Other's love for us

It may be helpful if we view the necessity to see love coming from these three different areas. If we do not love ourselves, we may not be able to value ourselves enough to experience God's love for us, or trust in others when we sense they love us.

Before, we may have only tried to see God's love, or our own self-support, or perhaps mainly only others' love for us. We might see how we may have felt a lack of these loves at times. If we do not feel God's love for us, we may be failing to see the entire view of our lives in a spiritual way. Often a person focused only on material things cannot believe God loves him or her, because they fail to see God's support for them in other important issues in life.

3


*No Sex Before Marriage?*

There is no rule in Singles Anonymous that a member is required to wait until marriage before having sex. However, this has historically proven to help people develop the relationship skill to pick appropriate partners. It may prove to be a very valuable experiment for us to try.

It may be the first time for some of us to wait until marriage to have sex. This allows a whole new side of ourselves to develop. We will see ourselves and others in a new light. It is a perfect opportunity for growth into something more, something deeper, and someone more likely to find the right partner.

One member shares about this in the following way:

"I was thinking of the value of my Singles Anonymous recovery and how that can affect many new areas of my life that previously have not been affected for very long periods of time. How I now see a woman in a relationship is that I see her as how she would be as a potential family member with me. I see that kind of long range bonding. Before, I just looked at what was her dedication to the ideas I held important, what kind of intelligence I thought she had, and her looks. That kind of thinking got me nowhere. I now know if we can wait until marriage for sex, we can get to learn more about the core issues of our lives, and how each other responds to these things."

The sex act is a major act of "communication" - it involves communicating something about ourselves and receiving a communication about another. In a way, it is like a "brain download" with another person. The sex organs are the most sensitive parts of our body, and in order to be sensitive, this means they are made of many nerve cells. The brain is also made of many nerve cells and the sex organs connect to the brain through the spinal cord. When two people have sex, their bodies connect in this way and "communicate" much more than we can probably realize. People talk about the importance of body language and how it can communicate much to a person. Sex operates in the same way. All the other types of non-sexual communication are more related to how people exist together in a long-range relationship. If those things are correct, the chances are great that people will also be great together sexually. This is why people wait until marriage before having sex.

It may have seemed that nobody ever said a chronically single person was "worth it," that is, worth the journey of a marriage. But most likely, in reality, that is probably how such a person felt about him or herself. Do they feel worth it financially to have a standard of living of a couple - or to be able to provide for children? It seems this valuation starts by taking the sexual vows seriously. No sex before marriage can allow God to instill in us the other character assets that make us attractive to the type of partner we truly want. We see sex as the natural reward we will get for being ready for marriage. The pledge of no sex before marriage becomes the glue for the relationship that is needed for it to work.

The state of spiritual, social and psychological teaching on why we should learn to overcome differences, must be based on the benefit of the teamwork and togetherness that comes from the prolonged marriage or monogamous relationship. The reason why many cultures have had the rule about only having have sex in marriage comes from an understanding that is not easily communicated in a modern culture. It is, simply: _The relationship itself helps those who make it up_. Having two people living together gives one twice as much power for having a good life. It is not often good for a person to be alone. We are not interested in just a good sexual experience. We are interested in a life companion for everything.

The ultimate purpose for a marriage or committed relationship is to be like God in God's love to our partner. All else pales in comparison and that is why it was prohibited in earlier days. When one fully experiences true love, the consummating of these feelings sexually is not as important as knowing one has a deep commitment to another that goes beyond being satisfied sexually.

It has been hard to communicate the understanding that the committed married person has about their marriage. Others who cannot stay in romantic relationships for long, seem to put too much emphasis on looks, the ease in the relationship, the need to control their mate, or some other trait which those who have long-term relationships don't seem to be focused on. Why has it been so hard for those in long-term relationships to instruct those who cannot be in them? Perhaps there is a quality of loving someone that isn't as much understood today as it was in the past. The powers that be, the media, the advertisers, need to promote surface level values to sell their products. An emphasis on these surface level qualities makes it hard to value the deeper qualities. Our hearts are only capable of handling a certain amount of values, we often cannot cherish as much as we think we can or desire to.

If having someone who loves you, cares for you, has sex with you, and is there for you, year after year, is better than a life of romantic isolation, why isn't the map there better known? Why are there so many singles who want fulfilling relationships? It is uncanny why Singles Anonymous recovery has not happened earlier. It seems organized religion and psychology were not able to help many people develop the understanding to take care of their long-term romantic bonding issues. Instead they seemed just grateful that some people, almost mysteriously, did bond and stay married for decades. Some psychologists might state that people who are succeeding in some areas may unconsciously need others to fail so these people can feel secure when they seem better off. Why did it take an "Alcoholics Anonymous" so much time to form, and the other Twelve Step groups decades to form after AA did? Things sometimes take a long time to happen because of a lack of love and understanding.

How do we make a long-term relationship with a caring partner seem as beautiful as our relationship with God, music, art, poetry or even the attraction we have to the sexual? Maybe it is a different, more central and life-changing kind of beauty, the beauty of family, a spouse that is stable, loyal, helpful, and who charms us in many ways with their beauty.

In Twelve Step work and probably other support group work, the group ethic of being at one, having unity, makes some with unstable boundaries vulnerable to accepting as their own others' dysfunction which they may have previously overcome (with God's help). We don't want to go backwards on God, or for others, or for ourselves.

We recover the pure way of loving and accepting the natural joy of sexuality, bonding and family relationship. Most likely, when just coming out of puberty we had a strong view of our capability of long-term bonding in a more natural way, that the confused nature of modern life had not tainted.

We are interested in being made reasonably happy on a daily basis, by making our partner reasonably happy on a daily basis. But we realize that in a large part happiness is an inside job, that is, only our own willing to be happy can ultimately make us happy.

We are interested in building things and events together, organizing our living space together. making nutritious food together, exercising together, traveling together and so on.

There is a certain "no values" attitude that sometimes arises regarding certain things in compulsive singles. There must be a look-out for the aspect of lack of values in those who do not value commitment first. It goes into other areas of a person's life. No values in one area may mean no values in another.

A good society rewards those who value what is high in life. There is a great probability that if we consistently value what is high in life, we will have high self-esteem. This is because we will be reinforced by the good in society for valuing what they also value. If we value what is low in life, we will have low self-esteem for the same reason. Not only will we be criticized by those having high standards, we will see that it is others with low standards that are the ones who accept us as their own. This will lead to our own low self-esteem, perhaps in an unconscious way. Even if it may seem like pornography is accepted in popular culture, people still know that it is the artwork of prostitution, and they look at those unable to form relationships because of chronic masturbatory fantasies as sick people.

4


*Addressing the Issue of Money in a Relationship*

At one time, it was unthinkable that problems with money would lead to a divorce. Part of the marriage vow is to stay together "in richness or poverty." In the past, married people would frequently go into poverty together, seeing the bond of love to be more important than the idea of one person failing them financially. The pricelessness of a family relationship was understood, and even the couple without children saw each other as family.

It was sometimes even impossible to get a divorce because of problems with money because of strong values in the culture about the sanctity of marriage.

A commonly held idea is that people must be focused on earning money to be responsible enough for marriage. We can see how it is also important to be serious about goals and standards that don't require money. We do not have to be more selfish, or more mean to others, or less spiritual, to earn more money, and we don't always need more money to do more in life. We strive to balance the correct attitude about money with our sense of family commitment.

5


*The Relationship as a Garden of Positive Emotions*

One good analogy is to compare a relationship to the cultivation of a garden. The emotions that come up in the garden can be weeds, or good plants, like beautiful flowers. A good romantic relationship is made of people that have decided long before marriage to be committed to positive emotions. That way, they will naturally avoid letting arguments develop into the weeds of prolonged and harmful negative emotions. Science has proven the value of positive emotions and the harm that negative emotions can have on health. Those who are committed to positive emotions should seek each other out, because many people are not aware enough to stay focused on the positive in life.

Looking at the relationship between expressing negative emotions and self-esteem, one may ask, "does suppression of certain types of negative emotions make it impossible to gain self-esteem?" Is there a type of emotion that might seem like anger that can help a person out of a helpless mental or emotional condition? Often, anger is the focus of psychotherapy. Some spiritual teachings focus on the need for qualities that seem like anger, that help one shun the non-spiritual in oneself with a force that helps one gain freedom. But such manifestations, like manifestations of real grief or sadness, are not negative emotions but can turn into them if not watched.

We eventually have that sense of enlightening gratitude that we personally may not have been able to feel or understand how good God and others have been to us. Many human beings want us to measure things primarily in monetary ways when in fact that is a completely twisted and inaccurate system of valuing character. God can take care of us in other sufficient and even very abundant ways. We may not have gratitude for His care if we use the monetary system as our only guide.

It is said that people who have success in many areas of life are future-oriented. Future-oriented people are those who make exciting goals for themselves, have more structure in the days/weeks/months/years in the present than those who do not make strong goals. Why do some only associate this with money? We can see in this planning to do things in the future, freedom and also competence, of using will power in a positive way.

6


*The need for a new "romance" program.*

Singles Anonymous is not a new "sex" program, because the issue of compulsive singleness does not have as much to do with sexual acting out as one might imagine. It is more of an issue of bonding, communication, accepting our humanness, allowing intimacy, and how compulsive singles fit in with the community as a whole. In the Twelve Step meetings related to sexuality, one would see that there was a difference between people, namely, those who were able to be married or stay in committed relationships and those who would not allow themselves to. This is not to say one type of person is more psychologically or spiritually fit. Often singles for some reason, either consciously or unconsciously, feel they are somehow worse than married people. It must be remembered that sometimes even people who were found out to be dangerous criminals were able to sustain long-term marriages. Recovery from compulsive singleness has more to do with the levels of commitment, or empowerment one feels towards members of the opposite sex, than the complete moral or spiritual aspect of the person.

The Twelve Step programs that address sexual addiction do not seem to address the deeper abilities that help compulsive singles bond. A sex addict can be someone who has been married for over twenty years, or someone not even able to sustain a relationship that goes beyond the one year mark. Such people have some radically different personal psychologies and lifestyles that they've grown accustomed to. It seems like some people become more full of boundaries than perhaps they are conscious of having. Overcoming a state of singleness is actually about consciously losing some boundaries with one specific individual. One does not use the terms "addict" or "codependent" when describing positive long-term relationships.


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