I know few partners of addicts who (whatever they may think of 12 Step) don’t look forward with breathless anticipation to the glorious day when their addict reaches Step 9. Wonderful, special Step 9. Step 9: making amends to those who have been harmed. Step 9 where the focus is (for once, it feels) on all of us long-suffering codependents. I wanted my husband to start recovery at Step 9 and spend every day for the rest of his life working it. I wanted him to feel, deeply and in perpetuity, every little hurt of mine and to spend each day living a sincere “I’m sorry.” I wanted our lives to be one continuous orgy of amends. I stood around tapping my foot, waiting for him to finish all those useless other Steps, so that he could get on to the important business of apologizing to me, which I was pretty sure was going to fix what was ailing me.

At first, I tried to speed things up. I’d keep him up late at night, saying things like, “Didn’t you even think of the diseases you could bring home? You could have killed our children if you’d brought home something while I was pregnant! Doesn’t that make you feel bad? How would you feel if I went out and acted the same way you did? Wouldn’t you be hurt? Do you know what it feels like to have your heart ripped out? Do you? No? Fine, I’ll describe it in graphic detail for the next 3 hours. Don’t worry. I’ll poke you with a sharp stick if you start to doze off.” I was pretty sure he didn’t get it, because if he did get it, well, for one thing he wouldn’t have done all those awful things in the first place, and for another, he’d be groveling at my feet all day, every day, begging my forgiveness stopping only long enough to buy me a beach house. Yet here he was wasting valuable groveling time on useless activities like eating, sleeping and going to work. The nerve!

Eventually, I came to trust in his recovery and (more important) I began to focus on my own. I began to see how living his recovery was living in amends even before Step 9. And I started to work on mending my own broken heart rather than waiting for (or badgering) Mark to mend it for me.

Then, quietly and without fanfare, the day arrived. Mark and I hired a babysitter and went out. We sat, not in my fantasy “I’m sorry baby” beach house, but in our car in the parking lot of Target (a place we could speak in privacy without interruptions from children or waiters or service people or passersby). Mark apologized sincerely for the hurt he had caused and the vows he had broken. He discarded the vows he knows he can’t keep and made new vows, both more modest and in a way, more ambitious, than the old vows. And I cried a little, there in the Target parking lot, honoring where we have been, grateful for where we are and glad that the amends came now, when I was ready to receive them for what they were, rather than years ago when they would have been just another thing that didn’t magically fix my pain for me.