It's nearly impossible to be the friend or family member of an addict and not have heard Melody Beattie's name. Her books on codependency are widely read and recommended. My own 12 Step home group regularly uses Codependent No More, Codependents' Guide to the Twelve Steps and The Language of Letting Go as part of our meetings and Step work.

Beattie's latest book, Codependent No More Workbook, is something of a companion piece to Codependent No More, intended to move the description and understanding of codependency into the action of recovery. In the first chapter, Beattie compares the work of recovery to mountain climbing, and these are no idle words. Many of the activities in the Workbook are intense and demanding and require a firm commitment to doing the hard work of recovery.

Still, while the overall quality of the activities didn't disappoint me, I was surprised by how few there were. Beattie seemed to have chosen to focus on a few intense activities interspersed with what sometimes seemed like an unnecessary amount of expository text, especially given that each chapter starts with a suggestion for readings from Codependent No More. In particular, the first chapter contains quite a bit of background information on codependency, which seemed unlikely to either convince any skeptics or enhance recovery work. Despite these flaws, the activities and text are helpful and inspirational enough overall that I consider the Workbook a useful addition to my recovery library.

The Workbook is based strongly on the 12 Step model, so in working through the exercises, you will be working the Steps. As such, it will not be a method that everyone is comfortable with or that will work for everyone.

I believe this book will work best for people who:

• are already part of a 12 Step fellowship.
• already accept both the concept of codependency generally as well as their own codependency OR feel they will benefit from working a program like this and can do so without feeling threatened by the label.
• conceive of their Higher Power as a male deity with the power to directly intervene in their lives OR are comfortable enough with their own different conception of a Higher Power to be able to take what they can use and leave the rest.
• are ready to make a commitment to devote the time and energy necessary to work through the activities in the book over the course of many months.

The Workbook also pays special attention to "double winners," people who struggle with both addiction (particularly to drugs and alcohol) and codependency.

This book may not work well for people who:

• are not part of a 12 Step program, particularly those who have negative or hostile feelings about 12 Step.
• do not accept codependency, especially if they feel negative toward or threatened by the concept, either in general or for themselves.
• have negative, hostile or unresolved feelings about an all powerful male deity.
• aren't ready to commit to the necessary work.

Having read the book through over the course of the past few weeks, I've come away with a renewed commitment and inspiration to continue my own daily work on the 12 Steps, and I'm eager to try some of the more involved activities in the book.

And good news! I have an extra copy of the book to give away, so you can get an opportunity to work through it too.

Leave a comment on this post between now and Sunday, May 8, 2011 for a chance to win a free copy. The winner will be announced on Monday, May 9, 2011.

A quick post to let you all know that next week (Monday, May 2) I'll be posting a review of Melody Beattie's latest book Codependent No More Workbook, and I will have one free copy of the book to give away to some lucky reader, so be sure to stop by.

Harry: Do you ever think about death?
Sally: Yes.
Harry: Sure you do, a fleeting thought that jumps in and out of the transom of your mind.  I spend hours, I spend days...
Sally: And you think that makes you a better person?
Harry: Look, when the shit comes down, I'm gonna be prepared and you're not. That's all I'm saying.
Sally: And in the meantime you're going to ruin your whole life waiting for it.

~When Harry Met Sally

The caller ID read "Linton, Isabella." I didn't recognize the name or number, but I picked up anyway.

It was my husband calling from an old fashioned land line in the administrative building of the retreat center where he was spending the weekend with other members of his SAA group. His annual three days and two nights of 12 Step fellowship in a cluster of cabins tucked in the woods, out of range of cell phone towers.

Like any good wife of a recovering sex addict, I thanked him for letting me know he arrived safely, told him to have a wonderful weekend, hung up the phone and promptly googled "Isabella Linton."

Because, hey, he might call from the home phone of a sexual liaison rather than his cell. It doesn't make a lot of sense. But that's not important. What's important is that you never know.

Turns out Isabella Linton is the manager of the retreat center. Oh.

See. My husband is where he says he is, doing what he says he's doing.

Or not. Maybe there is no SAA retreat. Maybe for seven years he's been pretending to go on these retreats when he really has a romantic weekend away with someone else at this retreat center.

Or maybe the woman he's meeting is Isabella Linton, retreat center manager. And he met her at the retreat center. Where they get together every year. During a big SAA retreat? Right under the nose of his sponsor? Devious!

Or there is no conspiracy, no big lie. He really is where he says he is, doing what he's saying he's doing.

But all of that -- and the how-do-I-know that follows -- leads only one place. Can you hear it?

"Now boarding! Bus to Crazytown. Population: Me. Attractions include an obsessive search for 'truth' to the exclusion of all other activities."

But I'm not getting on that bus. True, I may still go to the station and hang out there googling Isabella Linton. But I'm not getting on that bus today.

Because here's my truth. I can't know what my husband is doing every moment of every day when he's out of my sight, even if I ruin my whole life trying. But I can choose to focus on what I do know and what I can see, which is that my life is good and I'm happy to be where I am right now. So I closed my computer, and asked my daughter if she wanted to help me make cupcakes. And they were delicious.

And the only thing that stands in the way of our enduring love is the fact that I'm not a cartoon character. (Oh, and he already has a thing for that cartoon reporter, Roxanne. Whatever. I'm sure the animators can just draw me as her. I mean, let's not get picky about it. I'm sure we can work through those little details in the name of true love.)

Yes, that's right. My new imaginary boyfriend is Megamind, the blue space alien evil genius with the soulful green eyes voiced by Will Ferrell (for whom I totally would not leave my husband). But to tell you why he's so hot, I'm going to have to include some (moderate) spoilers, so if you're the kind of person who likes to approach movies as a blank slate, go watch it now.

So, did you see it? Did you see how Megamind was alone in his dark prison cell as a child, working on his plans for a popcorn maker to get the other kids to like him? And how it didn't work? And how he sat alone at a table at school with the fish that was his only friend? Did you see how he said the only thing he was good at was being bad? And how guys like him never get the girl?

Did you see how everyone abandoned him his whole life long? Did you see how lonely he was? And how misunderstood? And how he pretended to be someone else? And he lied? (Favorite line in the movie: in response to the question of what he will do when the girl he loves finds out about his deception, he says, "She'll never find out! That's the whole point of lying!" If you were in the theater with me, I apologize for the fact that you couldn't hear the next five lines of dialogue over my howling laughter.)

That all is so. freaking. hot.

That's like a cartoon portrayal of my dream man, which I recognized, because I was sitting next to the man I've adored for twenty years now, who was lonely and never felt good enough to get the girl and pretended to be someone else and lied. And it ate my heart out that no one would love this poor space alien right. I was cheering so hard for him to get the girl, from the deepest reaches of my codie soul, I was yelling at Roxanne to recognize the goodness and fragility beneath his evil exterior. For crying out loud, couldn't she see it? She could save him, and he would love her forever. Sigh. So goes the fantasy.

Ok, I'm off to hang a picture of Megamind up by my bed, and wonder what our children will look like. Only not really, because please, I'm like 40-something, I've had my tubes tied and which makes me too old for the sad geekiness of cartoon romance. (You know, if I were 30, maybe...) And besides, who needs Megamind? I've already played out that fantasy with his real life counterpart, and I'm happy to hold hands with him as I walk out of the theater, smiling.

Occasionally, folks ask to interview me about my experiences in a relationship with a sex addict. And (provided that I'm able to maintain my anonymity and that I'm fairly certain the content won't be used inappropriately) I am always happy to oblige. The more information there is about sex addiction and recovery (both for addicts and those who love them), the better. As we say in my 12 Step meetings: "This disease thrives in darkness. We can bring it out into the light."

In that spirit, here is an interview I did recently for AllTreatment.com: The Wife of a Recovering Sex Addict Tells Her Story. Enjoy!

In my bedroom, buried in a pile of papers is a questionnaire labeled "The Marriage Expectation Inventory." Each question is answered in neatly printed block letters in purple ink. After nearly a decade and a half, the ink has started to bleed through the pages and on the reverse of each page are the blurry ghosts of letters in a screaming fuchsia.

On the line beneath "What is the greatest weakness you bring to your marriage?" I've printed, "Jealousy/insecurity," which is an interesting answer given what happened in our marriage in the years after I completed the questionnaire. At the time, I wouldn't allow myself to admit that I wasn't comfortable with my husband's behavior toward women, so I thought there must be something wrong with me for being uncomfortable about it. I wasn't worried that he might find himself involved with another woman because, oh, say, he was looking to get involved with other women, but because I was lacking in the confidence necessary to fully believe the fantasy that he wouldn't.

This weekend we were out at the park with our kids when a woman approached us and complimented Janie's curls, a compliment we hear, oh, roughly, once a minute every time Janie walks anywhere outside our home. Janie whispered "thank you" while looking at her toes and then ran off to play. Mark and I sat down on a bench and a few minutes later the same woman came over, sat down next to Mark and began chatting.

The odd thing was, unlike most moms at the park, she didn't chat about her children. She chatted briefly about her own physical attractiveness and her availability for a relationship. Then, a few awkward moments later, she left.

A decade ago, Mark would have had her number at the end of the conversation or would have given her his. She would be one of his new friends, someone to keep in flirtatious contact with and maybe have an affair with. And I would have gone home furiously angry at him and hating her, but most of all mad at myself for being so insecure that I couldn't trust the husband who clearly loved me. I would have tried to keep all that in until it exploded out at Mark. We would have fought about it. He would have assured me he loved me and it was just my jealous mind playing tricks on me.

This time around, I thought of that questionnaire and laughed. That woman's conversation crossed some invisible line of intimacy and it made both Mark and me uncomfortable. I can identify the exact words and the exact moments that brought up those feelings of discomfort for me. I can talk to my husband about it without contemptuously berating him for any part in it. And I can recognize that it's not helpful to dismiss my feelings as the delusions of an insanely jealous or insecure mind. But then again, it never was.

This, by the way, is the point at which blogging experts say you shouldn't blog. You should always put your best stuff out there and dazzle the Internet multitudes. But I say... Um... Ah, whatever. I don't have it in me to come up with a dazzling response to that either. So, here, my friends, are your bullet points:

• I was working on a guest post for a blog on disability and spirituality that I think many of you will love: Amy Julia Becker's Thin Places. The post won't be up for a week or two. I'll post a link when it is, but do feel free to poke around and get to know Amy Julia in the meantime.
• I've been working on my 1st Step, in depth this time, which has consisted of writing up a history of my life and relationships. I've used a lot of blog material, and it's about (gulp) 50 pages long, which is awful and fabulous. Awful, because I need to edit it down to about 8 in order to present it to my 12 Step group and fabulous because I started this blog with the idea of writing a memoir about my marriage and I've found I have a really solid foundation for that. When I read it to my cosponsor, she and I both cried.
• I have been celebrating! My husband and I have 7 years in recovery, and since many of you know that discovery and recovery happened when I was very pregnant with my daughter, you can probably guess that we've been preparing to celebrate the anniversary of Janie's birth. We've also been celebrating a sobriety anniversary for my husband, who has 4 years since his last major slip. Yay!

July 4th is Independence Day here in the United States. It is also Israeli Girl's birthday. My husband's relationship with Israeli Girl was his bottom: it was what finally caused him to admit his sexual behavior was out of control, that he was an addict. I began calling her Israeli Girl contemptuously: while not technically a girl, she was only 19 when my 30+ year old husband met her on a business trip abroad and began a several year long relationship with her. I don't feel the same contempt anymore, yet I still cannot quite bring myself to grace her with a name. Somehow, giving her a name gives her some humanness, some power, that I don't yet want her to have.

For years, Israeli Girl was one of the most worrisome splinters in my brain. I remember one year, on July 4th, Mark spent $70 of our money (I was furious when I saw the price) on a single international phone call to her, to say happy birthday. I listened to the entire call, jealously, edgily, because something seemed wrong, suspicious, off. I listened for any hint in his voice of anything beyond friendliness -- some trace of desire, seduction, attraction, deep caring, love -- but I didn't hear them, although I knew the sound of them well. And I settled back into a dissatisfied uneasiness, which persisted, until years later, everything fell apart, and made sense.

After my husband admitted his addiction, admitted that one April day he had finally hit bottom with Israeli Girl, July 4th was tainted. I imagined all of those beautiful fireworks going off to celebrate her birthday. I remembered the phone call, imagined what he must have written to her in those years e-mail messages they exchanged, and I couldn't stand to leave the house. This night four years ago, new in a black place of crushing, disbelieving pain, I cringed at each pop of a distant firework, each whistling rocket, and felt they were searing and exploding inside of me.

The next year, Mark and I were wondering aloud whether or not to go out and try to see fireworks. He was tired, and I was still angry and depressed. We both understood that subtext, although with the kids listening, we simply said to each other, "Should we go?" My son heard us talking and said, with verbal skills newly developed after a year of speech therapy, "I want to watch fireworks!" So, it was decided, and I declared it my Independence Day. I was not going to let a tyrannical past rule my present; I would not let the past cast a shadow that blotted the fireworks from the skies my children saw.

We didn't have a destination that year, we simply drove around until we saw some fireworks and parked the car by the side of the road to watch them. There is a Schoolhouse Rock song my son liked to listen to that contained a line, "Red, white and blue fireworks like diamonds in the sky..." As he gazed up into the sky, my son echoed it back, gasping, "They look like diamonds in the sky!" He was thrilled to see a smiley face in the sky, and to watch the blaze of fireworks that marked the end of the show.

As I was putting him to bed afterwards, I told him that he could go to sleep and dream about trains (which were his obsession at the time). When he said he didn't know what dreams were, I told him they were pictures in your head while you sleep. He looked thoughtful, and said, "We can go to sleep and see fireworks in the sky, and we can see that face and then lots and lots like diamonds in the sky."

See, I worried about Israeli Girl's birthday ruining the fireworks, when in fact, my son's joy, and the magic he saw in the sky, threw a light on that night that no dark memory could blot out. I wouldn't think of missing fireworks after that year.

Last year my daughter was awake and old enough to appreciate the fireworks for the first time. As she walked outside, she saw the moon, which was quite a new and exciting sight to her, since her bedtime was 7 p.m. She asked if the moon could come with us to see the fireworks, and I promised her it would. During our car ride, she looked out the car window, checking to make sure that the moon was following us to the fireworks display. When we arrived, she was thrilled to see the moon, still there, watching. She sat with her mouth open wide through the whole show and was too excited to fall asleep, even so long after her bedtime, on the way home.

She and her brother have been chattering all day about the fireworks, about sitting outside and eating cookies and having the moon there and seeing lots of them explode at the end of the show and waving our flags and singing love songs to our nation, like "America the Beautiful," which gives me goosebumps (truly) every time I hear it. My life may not always be perfect, and my country may not always be perfect, but both of us are free.

Happy Independence Day. Enjoy the fireworks.

A few months ago, Mark and I took the kids to a "sensory friendly" movie showing.  Autistic individuals, and others with sensory processing difficulties, can find a typical movie going experience overwhelming.  Movies are loud.  Theaters are dark and often crowded.  The screen is huge and the images on it are flickering and fast paced.  There are previews and commercials before the show that switch rapidly from one theme to another, while we wait impatiently for what we actually came to see.  Then when the movie does start, its story and situations are designed to evoke strong emotional responses: to scare or thrill or amaze us.  And did I mention they're LOUD?

Most of us go to the movies to be a little overwhelmed.  But for some people, all of that can be too much.  So, at sensory friendly showings, there are no previews.  The lights are dim, but the theater is not dark.  And the sound is turned down.  And not only that, it's ok to sing or talk or to get up and walk around, dance or jump if it all gets to be too much anyway.

At the showing we went to, some kids got up and paced the aisles.  Some rocked in their seats.  Some grunted or chirped.  My son commented on the movie at full voice.  (Whispering is only for secrets.)  And we all had a fun day out doing something different while nobody stared.  Nobody glared.  Nobody shifted uncomfortably in their seats and made little "hem" noises in their throats.  The air didn't buzz with electric hostility.  And nobody had to worry that, at any moment, it might.

I don't know about the other parents in that theater, but I felt like I'd been able to put down a hundred pound weight.  The kids and young adults in that theater could all be themselves, and we all understood.  No one said anything or did anything, but there was a palpable sense of acceptance in the air.  It hung there, invisible but enveloping, like the drowsy smell of honeysuckle on a warm afternoon.  What a relief.  Which made me realize just how guarded I am and how much weight, how much fear and tension and worry, I carry every day.

This past weekend, I went to a convention for my 12 Step group.  Hundreds of sex addicts and their partners or family members gathered in hotel conference rooms and ballrooms.  There were meetings and workshops and outings.  There were speakers who shared their experience, strength and hope.  At each banquet iced tea was served instead of alcohol.  No one gossiped about the latest infidelity scandal in the media.  People openly shared their pain and their weaknesses and their gratitude.  And all weekend long, I had nothing to do but connect with my Higher Power in a group of people who was supporting me in doing just that.  All weekend long, I felt I had nothing to worry about and nothing to fear.

Again that love and acceptance enveloped me.  Again that hundred pound weight dropped off my shoulders. Again the relief washed over me.  And again I realized just how guarded I am and how much weight, how much fear and tension and worry, I carry every day.

On the last day of the convention, I wept with gratitude for the gift of having been there.  (If you were one of the lovely ladies sitting around a hotel banquet table with me on Monday morning at breakfast, yes, that was me crying and smiling at you all crazy.) We were asked on that last day if we had picked up any burdens that we wanted to leave behind, and I couldn't think of any.  All I could think was that I needed to try not to reshoulder the burdens I'd set down when I entered.

I was going to write this post about Facebook.  And Privacy.  And Privacy's evil twin, Secrecy.  And how when we say Privacy, we often really mean Secrecy.  Because not only do well-intentioned but befuddled people confuse the two, but addicts and other evil-doers also (gasp!) use the sacred name of Privacy as a mask for the nasty, putrid character of Secrecy.

I was going to tell you to learn to recognize Secrecy. (It's the one with the goatee.  Oh, and also the one you've lied to someone about, explicitly or implicitly.)  And I was going to ask you to think carefully about whether you are really, really talking about nice, clean-shaven Privacy or if you are actually sporting evil facial hair and hiding from people for fear of being judged.  And that being worried about how it will look if people know that you are who you are is not Privacy, it's illness. And I was going to tell you to live well and without secrets.  And not be both so scared and so freaking judgmental.  And if you live with secrets anyway (you devious person!), then Deal With It if you are outed.  Because it's your fault for having them.

And as for Privacy online (or Secrecy online for that matter), I was going to inform you that it's an illusion.  Nothing on the Internet is really private; it's on millions of computers around the world, forever.  If it's truly private, don't put it out there or at least recognize the risks, because demanding Privacy online is the equivalent of yelling at people for walking into a public restroom while you're using it with all the doors wide open.  Good, honest, non-goatee wearing Privacy is what the confines of our own Real Life are about. (It's all the stuff I don't post on the Internet. Whatever that is.) *

And I was going to tell you all this as someone whose life and marriage has been marred by secrets, so that I can see the difference between Privacy and Secrecy in the big, ugly gash burned through the middle of my existence.  And as someone who has this secret blog with a secret identity.  And who litters the Internet with posts about whole bunches of stuff that, really, I'd rather people in my Real Life didn't know.  All of which makes me one of the World's Experts on Privacy, Secrecy and Stuff Not to Post on the Internet.

But as I was writing that post, being all opinionated and you'ing you about how to do stuff right, you whiny and incompetent Facebook users, I saw that all that stuff about you was (surprise!) really stuff about me.  And not just stuff about me, but putting all my worst fears and worst character defects right out there in your face.  I mean, really, that kind of bossy, judgmental, know-it-all-ism -- telling you about how you shouldn't be bossy or judgmental because it makes me have to deal with my uncomfortable feelings about Secrecy and Privacy and how they've gotten all mixed up in my life to the point where it makes me want to punch them both square in the nose -- that's me at my total worst.  And that is the very kind of secret I shouldn't post on the Internet.