Peter’s Story
Section Two - Episode Two
A romantic intelude....
Continuing on with the version of the story written in October-November 1998,
for self-therapy purposes.....
Looking back, I realize that, despite my progress, I was still very needy and was very keen to have a receptive female shoulder to cry on.....
I persuaded Phillipa that it would be a great idea for us to have a sexual relationship, and the very same day that I left the “training group”, I spent that night and the next in her bed. We spent a lovely weekend together in Christchurch. My fondest memory of this idyllic interlude is our visit to the Christchurch Botanical Gardens on the Sunday afternoon. We strolled through the gardens with arms around each other, and lay in the sun on the banks of the Avon River like two young lovers. I thought that I had finally found my “heaven-on-earth”.
We said good-bye on the Sunday evening, and I traveled back to Wellington already planning a return trip to Christchurch, and looking forward to Phillipa visiting Wellington on a regular basis. The idea of an at-a-distance, commuting-type relationship really appealed to me.
I traveled back to Christchurch three weeks later, to spend the weekend with Phillipa, in a state of very high expectation. But my dreams were shattered when Phillipa told me that she had changed her mind! She felt that she just was not ready for a “relationship” right now, she had too many “unresolved issues” of her own to sort out first. Nothing to do with me, she really liked me, etc, but that was just the way it was.
I was very, very disappointed, of course. I had spent the past three weeks constantly dreaming about this woman, fantasizing about the blissful times we would have together. A real big case of dashed expectations and thwarted agenda! And, my big “rejection issue” came up really strongly for me, triggered off by this experience.
We spent much of the weekend together talking about our feelings, etc, and this really helped. In fact, right through the whole episode we were quite functional, and very supportive of each other. I had come a long way from the totally crazy Cynthia times. At least, with Phillipa, we were able to talk rationally about our feelings. But, this was not the “final clearance” of all of my “relationship issues”, as will become clear as my story unfolds.....
I realize now that I was probably less ready back then for a really functional relationship than she was! Considering the many layers of issues that I have cleared since then, I must at this time of my life have been very needy and codependent. And if the relationship had continued, it would have been a major diversion for me away from what I really needed to experience next.
But I do not regret any of what happened, it was a lovely little interlude, and it was the first time that I had experienced the ending of a relationship in a relatively functional way, with the opportunity for us to talk through our feelings.
I saw Phillipa once since then, we had lunch together about eight or nine months later. We had both moved on somewhat by then. By then, I had done the series of workshops I describe below, and she was sorting herself out. There were a few letters and 'phone calls, which eventually tailed off, and we have had no contact since these. I heard later that she did eventually have a relationship with someone else, but I have no idea how this turned out for her.
I continued in my Al-Anon 12-Step program for another year or so, eventually coming to a gradual realization that I had finished this part of my journey. I hung around in the group longer that I needed to, mainly because I so much enjoyed the company and fellowship of the lovely people in the group. But eventually it became obvious to me that I needed to move on from there. For my final year in the group, I was group secretary.
A word in general about 12-Step groups. If you can find a really good group, it is a very effective method of “spiritual based therapy type work”; a truly spiritual form of therapy if done properly as laid down by Bill in the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is also a very inexpensive form of therapy. It certainly worked very well for me, and for many others in my group.
However, a really good 12-step group is hard to find, a rare gem indeed: many 12-Step groups are full of very dysfunctional people who are not progressing at all. One reason may be that many of the people who are best equipped to put something back into the group, once they have worked the steps and are ready to sponsor others in the group, need to leave the group (like I did), and move on to doing other things to continue on their own personal journey of healing. For me, at the time I left, I needed to move on: if I had stayed I would have stagnated, and my journey of recovery and healing had barely begun.
Anyway..... within a few weeks of leaving the “training group of the well-known American practitioner”, I attended a workshop that, eventually, truly did change me in many ways. The workshop was called “Breath Express”.....
Click here to continue on with the next episode of this section of this (1998 version) of the story......
“Breath Express”
