Here's a couple of my experiences and findings:

In 1978, I got clean and sober. Clean and sober but I was a mess. Taking the drugs and alcohol out of my system didn't 'fix' me - I was still the same person who had concluded that putting poison into my system was a pretty nifty idea. The only thing that changed was that I wasn't using any longer. In fact, I was probably worse off in many ways because I had spent years solidifying dysfunctional ways of thinking and killed a few billion brain cells along the way.

It was recommended to me, through my sponsor in a twelve step program, to avoid relationships for the first year of my recovery. During that time, I worked diligently in fixing some of the dysfunctional thinking, destroying the old tapes that spoke of worthlessness, and learning how to live healthy. I used some of those perfectionist traits to drive myself and made a lot of great changes. Staying out of a relationship was hard because, well, we all want someone to love and be loved by - and it's so much easier to concentrate on someone else rather than yourself, but I did it. The truth is, while I had one girl in particular that I prayed wouldn't find someone before I reached my year and was going to be let off my leash, I was scared when the moment arrived.

I had worked really, really hard - but as the saying goes: twenty miles in, twenty miles out. I knew I was still messed up in a lot of ways. But I had plateaued in many ways. I found that there is only so much growth I could do on the inside, without experiencing it in reality. So much of the new behaviors and thoughts were theoretical - I didn't know what would happen when the rubber met the road. So, I set fear aside and stuck my toe in the water.

That first relationship was nowhere near perfect, but it was so much healthier and better than any relationship I had ever had before - and I learned so, so much. When it ended, I went back to the theoretical. I went to work on the issues I had that I had missed and the relationship revealed. I kept working on me until I hit another wall in my personal growth. Then I ventured into the relationship waters again. I repeated that pattern a few times before meeting the woman who was to become my wife...and then something amazing happened.

I fell in love. I thought I had been in love before but of course, it's notoriously difficult to identify love until you arrive. Character defects that I clung to fell away because seeing her suffer from them was more painful than letting go. I remember early in our relationship I was getting angry one day during a conversation I was having with her. I was feeling insecure and taking it out on her in some really petty, passive aggressive ways. She looked up at me and I saw the pain in her eyes and something broke. I excused myself and went to the bathroom returning ten minutes later and told her, "I just spent the last ten minutes in the bathroom growing up. I was scared, and I acted embarrassingly poorly. It will not happen again." And it didn't, not that particular character defect anyway.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I did most of the work on me outside of relationships and then brought my new talents to the table - but once I found the right person for me, love carried me the rest of the way. I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I've changed into a person who is perfect for my wife - and that is more than good enough.