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 6

We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character, communication and caring.

Step 6 has a clear message--get ready for some changes! This step emphasizes relationship building and improvement. Relationship building involved recognizing the wrongs, professing them and becoming willing to get rid of them.

Every recovering couple has a series of patterns in which they can lose their reality. These patterns usually occur at times of high stress or periods of overextension or depletion. Sometimes these dysfunctional patterns occur when there is an opportunity for intimacy. One or both partners elect to avoid closeness by going to the old patterns. Recovering couples need to recognize the patterns and the temporary insanity these patterns bring and how a couple can lose their reality together.

Here are some clues for thinking about your loss of reality--or--how do we know when we are crazy?

Repetitive arguments
Frequent periods of denial
Nonproductive communications
Extreme overextension or depletion
Making statements you do not mean
Taking actions you regret
Fighting about issues that are not important

Make these lists together and pick a time to talk when you are both feeling balanced. You are now ready. Enjoy the process. See the humor. Open up to healing in your relationship.

Always start by reading the Safety Guidelines aloud.

Take your piece of paper to make lists and gather more information for your coupleship by answering the following questions:

What had been our dysfunctional patterns of relating?
What had been our dysfunctional patterns of communicating?
What had been our dysfunctional patterns of caring?
What had been our dysfunctional patterns of nurturing each other?
What had been our dysfunctional patterns of being sexual?
How had we fought unfairly?

If as a couple we don't work on our relationship, the same issues will surface with different partners in the next relationship. This means that we must practice couple recovery with our partner. Our couple issues were the same when we got into this relationship as they were in previous relationships.

Proceed to Step Seven

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.)