Fear is the great enemy of intimacy.  Fear makes us run away from each other or
cling to each other but does not create true intimacy.
Henri Nouwen 

Intimacy is one of the greatest human needs — those longing for someone to truly deeply know and accept us for who we truly are. We all have a primal human desire to connect with another person on a deep spiritual and emotional level, a yearning to be known and understood. We want to know we matter, that our presence on this planet has a purpose.

Before I got sober, I had the false expectation that this yearning for intimacy was fulfilled through having sex. As my friend Diane said, “We go to bed with a man, and the next morning he’s planning golf while we’re shopping for the wedding dress.”

Another fallacy I believed was that if I had a man in my life, it would mean I did matter; I would never feel afraid, lost, or unsettled. I knew nothing about healthy emotional closeness. I was afraid that if a man really knew me, he wouldn’t accept...

LOVE ADDICTION – A MOTHER REVEALS HER SHOCKING STORY

My fear of abandonment is exceeded only by my terror of intimacy.  

Ethlie Ann Vare

When I got sober in 1999 – I put down the alcohol and picked up another addiction – Men!

I was a serial dater. I don’t know how many men I dated nor do I remember many of their names. I would spot a man, beeline to him, flirt up a storm, and if he gave me even the slightest bit of attention I was hooked. The shelf lives of these relationships were one to three months. One day I’d be saying, “I love you,” and the next day, out of the blue, I was saying goodbye. I was going from man to man with an empty, bottomless cup, begging for love and attention. It was never enough because I didn’t feel enough.

What makes me cringe the most is how my serial dating affected my children. They witnessed the revolving door. I’d spend hours on the phone with the man of the moment. My five-year-old son would try to pull me away from the phone, and I’d tell him to w...

5 Tips to Overcome Loneliness

An excerpt from my book “A Sober Mom’s Guide to Recovery” (Hazelden Publishing, 2015)

"When we cannot bear to be alone,
 it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death—ourselves.
"— EDA LESHAN

Loneliness is one of the most difficult human emotions. It can feel like a hole in the bottom of your gut, or a deep, aching longing in the heart, or both. The addict runs from loneliness in many ways: through drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, bingeing, purging, overeating, gambling, busyness, and overworking. These quick fixes do the trick at first, but as with all addictive behaviors, the high or distraction quickly wears off, and we’re back to feeling lonely and isolated. We pick it up “just one more time”—the drug, the alcohol, the lover, the credit card, the carton of ice cream— and then we’re left with that deeper hole of self-loathing and demoralization.

Loneliness is the deep spiritual longing to connect with a Higher P...

(An excerpt from my book, A Sober Mom's Guide to Recovery (Hazelden 2015)

HAVE YOU EVER REACHED THE POINT OF COMPLETE EXHAUSTION?
Of course you have—you’re a woman.  And as a mother you are an expert in the exhaustion department.  Add to that being a mother trying to recover from addiction, and exhaustion becomes a way of life.

One day when I was newly sober and working full time, going through a divorce, and raising three kids, I was complaining to my therapist about how tired I was.  He suggested I take a twenty-minute nap in the afternoon, between work and picking up the kids.  I truly thought this man was from Mars: he might as well suggest I fly to the moon.

I rarely took time to go to the doctor because I always said I didn’t have enough time.  I had been feeling ill for about two weeks but I had promised my boys I’d take them to the Giants game that night.  I told myself I’d go to the doctor tomorrow; tonight I’d just grin and bear the pain.

“AT FIVE IN THE MORNING I WOKE UP ...

Money Money Money

By Rosemary O’Connor

Edited excerpt from A Sober Mom’s Guide to Recovery (Hazelden 2015)

A woman’s best protection is a little money of her own.

—  CLARE BOOTHE LCCE

Two of the most prominent relapse triggers I see with my clients are romance and finance. As addicts and alcoholics, most of us have money issues. Just as we learn to have healthy relationships with people, we also need to learn to have a healthy relationship with money. Most people would rather tell you their deepest, darkest secrets or about their sex life than tell you about their dysfunctional relationship with money. 

My relationship with money was definitely dysfunctional! I went mindlessly shopping for clothes, shoes, cars; you name it. I often padded the grocery bill, and I even stole money from the kids’ piggy banks.

When I was about five years sober, I hit my bottom with money. I was $60,000 in debt, and I could hardly breathe. I was a single mom trying to raise three children. I always m...

She stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted her sails.
Elizabeth Edwards

Most days, I wake up feeling happy. Nothing out of the ordinary is happening, things are no different than usual, but for some reason, I am excited about life; I feel bright and cheery, and can’t wait to get out of bed. I am grateful for the simple things in life, like the rain outside, the green trees and the smell of coffee brewing in the kitchen. Then there are those other days when I am irritable, discontent, and impatient with everyone, but I have learned how to be happy and coped with those things that might not contribute to that happiness. My days use to start out in a much different way, where I would wake up with a head full of horrible thoughts. “Oh my God is today the day the IRS will show up at my door?” My house was such a mess I was sure someone was going to report me to the show, Hoarders. My kids would be fighting so loud I often thought the neighbors would call Ch...

All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else.
MAE WEST

For the alcoholic/addict woman, the dos and don’ts of dating are convoluted and complex. Dating for anyone today is like a minefield, but for recovering women who already have a history of disastrous relationships, the dangers are even more significant. My friend Diane told me, “I’ve dated every dysfunctional man in Arizona, so I had to move to California.” 

You may feel like your Prize Picker is broken after so many failed attempts, or maybe you had no relationships and just slept around, looking for love in all the wrong places. You may be the woman who never dated and had given up on ever finding love. It was suggested I refrain from dating for the first year of sobriety, which I thought was absurd. I put down the drink and picked up the men (plural). The first one was thirty days sober, and I was ninety days sober. It was love at first sight: my dysfunction was attracted to his dysfunction— a pe...