I’m 4 years into my work in S.L.A.A. I’ve always been hesitant to sponsor people because of my self-worth issues. I realize it’s part of service work. I already serve as a secretary chair and volunteer for readings and for timing shares. I realized that the next natural step for me was service work as a sponsor.

I prayed about it. Within a week, a woman asked me to sponsor her. I learned powerful lessons in my own recovery from the experience.

In my past, I had an issue with setting boundaries. Initially, my sponsee would want to call and talk for over an hour about all the ways people in her life were making her suffer. After three of these phone calls, I had to set boundaries. It was affecting my own serenity.

In my past, I wanted to people please. I would do whatever a man wanted to do. I wanted to be liked at all costs. I would silence myself and my needs. I couldn’t get a word in with my sponsee. More and more, it was feeling abusive—what she was doing and taking away my serenity.

In my past, I’d only voice concerns over text with a partner. This created tension in my relationships because texting is not the venue for serious topics. I still have a lot of work to do in this area.

I shifted my communication with my sponsee to only text messaging. This way I could get a word in.

My work with my sponsee helped me realize that in-person discussions and phone calls about serious topics are very hard for me. I am conflict avoidant. I fear rejection. I’m not confident. My worst fear is someone telling me I’m wrong or disagreeing.

My work with my sponsee helped me realize I have more work to do on the character defects of fear, pride, and also poor self-esteem. Pride and poor self-esteem are opposites, but addicts like me are often studies in contrast. I want to be the best and feel I’m the worst at the same time.

In my past, when I would notice discrepancies in a partner’s words and actions, I would be silent. I would never speak to mistruths they seemed to share with me.

My sponsee said she had done work in other fellowships for over a decade, but her shares were focused on other people and their program. It didn’t seem like she had done much work in any program.

I had no idea what sex and love addict obsessive compulsive behaviors she wanted to be sober from. She was on vacation and said she’d just pick up the step-work when she got back. There didn’t seem to be a real commitment to inner work or desire to work and understand the program.

My sponsee told stories that conflicted with each other. She said she’d been working the Steps for ten years, but she didn’t want to talk about program literature, step work, or be of service to meetings in any way. She wouldn’t set bottom lines.

My sponsee would only minimally attempt any prompts focused on the First Step. In speaking with her, it seemed she thought her life was manageable, she knew everything about the program, and it was just other people in her family causing her to suffer.

It seemed my sponsee’s actions and words did not align. She said she wanted a sponsor, but didn’t want to do much of the things sponsors focus on: program literature, step prompts, ways to be of service, bottom lines, and top lines.

In my past, men would say they wanted a committed relationship, but their actions all pointed to them wanting a sexual relationship with not many strings attached. They would say they had feelings for me, but their actions would show they only had sexual feelings for me.

In my past, I would allow partners to be ambiguous with me about what our relationship was. This caused me so much suffering.

I’d be with someone a year or more and the relationship would be undefined. It led to so much heartbreak.

I’d realize a year or more into dating that my partner was emotionally unavailable. He saw our relationship for over a year as casual when I saw it as a full-blown committed relationship. This was a pattern with me. I found myself allowing myself to be manipulated through a man’s purposeful ambiguity.

I felt it was a character defect to not be easy breezy about things, so I allowed the ambiguity at the cost of my serenity.

I white knuckled for a year or more hoping one day the partner would define what our relationship was about. I gave away my power and my voice in an attempt to earn approval and an official relationship.

I was confused why my sponsee sought me as a sponsor or what she wanted our relationship to be.

I had to have a talk defining what the purpose of this sponsee-sponsor relationship was.

In my past, defining the relationship was always so hard to do with a person I had been dating. I was afraid of not being nice, being seen as too rigid and focused, not having the same values, risking my connection to them, being abandoned and rejected if they disagreed with the definition of our relationship.

I prayed about things. I focused on what I could change and what I couldn’t.

Finally, I bravely said to my sponsee, “I’m about program literature, service work, self-focused character defects work, and solutions within one’s control. I’m not providing helpful Twelve-Step service for you when I listen to you vent about what you’re unhappy with about others in your life. It’s a self-improvement program for defects of one’s own character, not character defects in the other people in our lives.”

In my past, I let men come and go, pick me up and put me down, disappear for days and weeks, then pick things up with me again seamlessly. She wanted a casual temporary sponsor much like the men in my life wanted a casual temporary partner. My sponsee was noncommittal about the program much like my previous partners were noncommittal about relationships. I couldn’t let my sponsee come in and out of my life whenever it suited her at the expense of my serenity.

As with the Seventh Tradition, each of us needs to be self-sustaining. Like my previous partners, I felt she wasn’t contributing much to the sponsee-sponsor relationship because she didn’t want to really talk much about steps, program literature, or service work.

I told my sponsee that program literature, service work, meetings, prayer, meditation is an everyday thing. I can’t hop on and off from the program or my quality of life suffers.

I can only point to program literature, ways to be of service within the program, what I’ve done with working each Step.

I’m not sure what help she needed. I had to accept that my sponsee did not seem to want or need the kind of help I’m able to give.

I’m not providing helpful Twelve-Step service for my sponsee to listen to her vent about what she’s unhappy with about others in her life.

My understanding is that the Twelve Steps are a self-improvement program for defects of one’s own character, not defects of character in the other people in our lives.

I can’t hop on and off from the program or my quality of life suffers.

I can only point to program literature, ways to be of service within the program, and what I’ve done with working each Step. All I can do is offer my experience, strength, and hope.

In my past, I wanted a relationship just to have a relationship—even if it wasn’t healthy. I could have kept this sponsee-sponsor relationship if I abandoned my principles—just like I could have kept relationships with partners by abandoning myself at the expense of my serenity.

Endings have always been hard for me with previous partners. It brings up all my family of origin issues with feeling rejected, abandoned, not good enough.

My experience with this sponsee was another opportunity to work on areas with which I struggle. In that way it was a success. She may not have been ready or maybe I wasn’t the sponsor she needed. And that’s okay.

— Anonymous