Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

What is a 10th Step Partnership?

The Twelve Step Recovery Workshop encourages people who have completed their fourth step to do a daily inventory according to the 10th Step guidelines in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. As we adopt this discipline, we have found it useful to partner up with someone to share what we have uncovered on a regular basis. Why do this?

Part of the 10th Step itself involves such honest communication. We are told to ask each night: "Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once?" (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 86). Moreover it is suggested that when we find selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear, "We discuss them with someone immediately" (A.A., p. 84). The 10th Step partnership facilitates this sharing.

In addition, it promotes accountability. We discuss with a partner the corrective measures and amends that are also a part of the daily inventory. Many of us have found this enhances our follow-through. Moreover, the partnership provides an opportunity for feedback and discussion that can help us through blind spots. This also happens through working with a sponsor. But the 10th Step partnership is a valuable supplement; it allows a "peer relation" in recovery, two individuals equally supporting one another. It can also be a great way to get to know others in the fellowship outside established friendships, to extend our circle of giving and receiving help. For such reasons, we encourage working with different partners over time.

Suggestions to Enhance the Effectiveness of Your Partnership

1. A commitment to talk to each other at least twice a week. Less regular communication undermines the depth of the partnership, as well as the notion of discussing problems "with someone immediately." Reschedule cancelled conversations whenever possible.

2. Speak with the partner's sponsor every once in a while, especially if the partner is having particular trouble with an issue. This provides information that can assist you and the sponsor to be maximally helpful.

3. Know where the partner is in the Steps. Encourage moving forward. Often problems or abstinence breaks may be related to stagnation in the Steps.

4. Promote both the sponsor relationship and the meeting fellowship as places to expose issues and receive feedback. Alert sponsors of significant problems the partner may not be sharing.

What a 10th Step Partnership is Not

It's not a sponsor relationship where one person guides the other without receiving guidance themselves, and/or tries to "fix" the other person. Each person must take responsibility for his/her own 10th Step.

It's not a buddy relationship where partners merely chat about how the day went. It's a focused enterprise.

It's not an exclusive relationship where secrets kept from sponsors or the fellowship are shared. It's designed to promote a spirit of honesty on all levels.

Questions to Ask About Your Partnership

These questions are designed to help you reflect on and enhance your partnership. We encourage you to ask them of yourselves and your partners at regular intervals.

1. Am I (and my partner) actually doing a Big Book inventory each day or am I relying on the 10th Step calls to be my inventory?

2. Do we have a regular and consistent time schedule for talking? Do we talk at least twice a week? If not, why?

3. Do my partner and I focus on corrective measures and make sure we follow through? Or, do we primarily focus just on problems?

4. Do my partner and I know where each other is in the Steps and recovery in general?

5. When we share what came up on the 10th Step do we delete things that might be important to expose? Do we ever look to be enabled, or have we figured out ways to "dupe" our partners? Are we overly comfortable?

6. Have we separated ourselves from reaching out to others in the fellowship, particularly people we don't know well? Do we feel an obligation to help newer people with the 10th Step?

7. Do we sometimes use our 10th Step relationship as a way to create "negative fellowship" against individuals or the broader fellowship vis-a-vis a particular issue?

8. More positively, have we seen benefits from our 10th Step relationship? What are some of its best attributes? And what are some aspects we could work on and improve?