Giving the Program Time to Work

When I first started coming to meetings, I just wanted to leave the marriage and all the problems behind. But I heard a lot of people talking about giving the program some time, so I decided that I would do just that: I would give it six months and see what happened. When six months passed I thought, “I’m not ready to leave, but I’m not sure I want to stay either.” By that time my spouse and I were attending a lot of recovery meetings and working our respective programs. I decided to give it another six months, and that’s the way I got through my first year. After a year I was able to start looking at it “one day at a time.” For me it was important to address my attitudes and behavior with the help of S-Anon while in the relationship and not to simply run.

Reprinted from Working the S-Anon Program, 2nd Edition, page 71.