Recovering Couples Anonymous World Service Organization

Recovering Couples Anonymous
Official World Service Organization Website

The Twelve Steps of RCA

Step One	Step Two	Step Three	Step Four	Step Five	Step Six
Step Seven	Step Eight	Step Nine	Step Ten	Step Eleven	Step Twelve

Step 8

We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step 8 is about those people, including ourselves individually, who were harmed by our coupleship dysfunction: family members, children, friends, fellow workers, etc. This step helps us to interact with other people in a new way. This step calls for a change in our behavior. There is a logical sequence for us to follow. First we make a list again--discover how we had harmed ourselves first in the coupleship (i.e., venting rage or holding resentments). What was this harm like? Next, we asked ourselves about our thoughts and feelings about having done that harm. If our relationship has been as crazy as we know it to have been, then there has been harm to others.

Begin to list the "others."

We became willing to make amends by admitting this harm to ourselves and each other and by having changed the nature of our relationship with each other.

It helps to categorize the wrong doings into 3 groups:

Material Wrongs

Money--borrowing, spending, withholding
Contracts--cheating, not abiding by terms
Personal Abuse--physical, sexual

Moral Wrongs

Setting bad examples to anyone who looked to you for guidance
Excessive preoccupation or obsessions with people or projects in order to be unavailable to others
Sexual infidelity, broken promises, lying, verbal abuse

Spiritual Wrongs

Neglect of obligations to yourself, family, support group, community
Avoiding self-development
Lack of gratitude
Neglect of spiritual quest

Now we have a better idea about what dysfunctional and diseased behaviors have exsisted in our coupleship.

Now we take a look at the facts and list our fears. What is our resistance to making amends? Are we willing to accept the consequences of our behavior?

How had we intended to make our amends?

In this step, we continue to take our own inventory--as a couple. We check our own progress from time to time.

We reviewed our amends lists with our sponsors. Care was taken to not make amends which would hurt or injure others. When direct amends were not appropriate for couples or individuals we had harmed, we devised to make amends in other ways (i.e., prayed for the well being of these people, etc.)

We discovered that, as we become willing to look at our own behavior, we become more tolerant and forgiving, less rigid and judgmental of other couples. Our viewpoints, attitudes and beliefs are beginning to change as a result of our own participation in this process.

We became ready to move on to Step Nine.

Step One

Step Two

Step Three

Step Four

Step Five

Step Six

Step Seven

Step Eight

Step Nine

Step Ten

Step Eleven

Step Twelve

THE TWELVE STEPS OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. (Used with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.)