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THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST

I’m a 38-year-old woman in a long-term, loving relationship with another woman. We live a pretty quiet life nowadays, but when we first were together I was anything but quiet. I lived pretty fast in my 20s, a lot of drugs (buying, selling, using) and drinking and lots of partners. I straightened out on my own, with the help and love of my partner, and I’m glad those days are gone. So is she, and there are a lot of sleeping dogs we’d like to leave alone.

Now a good friend of ours from those days has been working the 12 steps in AA to lift himself out of that life. I’m happy for him, but I’m worried, because he’s arrived at the dreaded step nine: making amends to those you hurt while using. I’m pretty sure both my partner and I are on his list, and that’s a visit I’m not looking forward to. He’s not one to hold back anything, and he and I are guilty of many trangressions. Sleeping together while I was already with my partner is just one of them. She doesn’t know about it and for the life of me I can’t see why she needs to learn about it now.

Maybe he won’t come totally clean with us. Maybe he won’t come to make amends to us at all. Worrying about it is killing me. What do I do?

—Scared Sober

The Gay Perspective: Discretion is the greater part of friendship. A preventative strike is in order. Contact your friend, offering praise and support. Explain that you are concerned about the dreaded ninth step, and remind your friend that a person does not have to be drunk in order to do damage to someone else’s life. Spilling the beans to your partner would be such an infraction, and forgiveness would certainly not be as forthcoming.

Ruthless says: Ah, the Ninth Step. A lot of people don’t make it that far. (Or so they’d have me believe. I’m still waiting on apologies from a number of ex-drinkers.) But it is an important part of the program and here’s why: It is crucial that the recovering addict admits to himself and another person the exact nature of his transgressions (see Step Five), but he needn’t do it directly to you or to your partner. That’s why the Ninth Step includes the following italicized clause: “Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” If your friend is serious about his recovery, he won’t do or say anything to hurt anyone else in the progress. If he does, then he’s violated the tenets of AA.

In such a case you would be justified in a counterstrike of some magnitude. You may want to develop a covert program of character assassination starting now, so that if and when the time comes you can take the advice of our former president and “deny, deny, deny.”

Let’s hope it works out better for you than it did for him…

Practically Speaking says: Stop worrying. What if your friend never comes to you for Step Nine, and you just end up with an ulcer. What if your friend does come to you and works through Step Nine in very ambiguous ways, not specifics? What if your friend needs to come clean and make good with you and your partner to have a clean life? You have one now. What if you just listen when the time comes? What if you take responsibility for the behaviors you shared? What if you wake the sleeping dogs and get through Step Nine yourself?

The Straight Perspective: Ruthless is correct, of course: AA, like the Hippocratic Oath, says that 12-steppers first must do no harm. But that and a quarter will buy you the preventative phone call Gay Perspective prescribes: Not all 12-steppers are ready to give up the self-indulgent behaviors that led them to do harm in the first place. Practically Speaking’s advice, though harshly put, is probably the best: Take this one day at a time. If your friend ditches AA’s rules and comes cleaner to your partner than you think he should, then maybe you’ll have to do the same. And maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing in the long run.

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