Q: Do I owe my sponsee unlimited patience, tolerance, kindness, and love?

When I was new, I gravitated towards old-timers. Strictly, the term should be 'long-timers'; 'old-timers', some say, should be rightly reserved for people there at AA's founding.

Anyway, these old-timers were certainly remarkably patient and tolerant. They were also kind and loving. But let's look at what these terms mean.

Let's start with kind and loving. To be kind and loving can be understood thus: acting in someone's interests, and, whilst doing so, sparing them any unnecessary suffering. By offering me a solution, they were acting in my interests. That solution involved facing a deluge of home truths, and there is no way of adopting the solution without that deluge, but they minimised, as far as possible, the collateral damage.

Kind and loving did not mean proceeding on my terms, entering into my world, or co-signing my dysfunction.

What is kind and loving will not, therefore, seem to be kind and loving, if what I'm after is validation of my failed perception and approach.

Patience and tolerance means putting up with the fact that a person is unwell. I was unwell. People were patient and tolerant.

To a point. What is the point?

People did not tolerate rudeness, reproach, rebellion, or refusal. Certainly, attacking the person who was trying to help me was a straightforward no-no. Rebellion against the ideas or refusal to take the actions suggested are quite understandable in an alcoholic, but here's the deal:

If I want what someone has, I will do what they suggest (see page 58 of the Big Book).

If I disagree with the ideas, the deal is off.

If I agree in principle but do not take the actions, then why are we talking?

When I was rude, reproachful, rebellious, or refusing to follow suggestions, old-timers signalled the fact, gave me an opportunity to adjust, but did not allow the opposition to turn into trench warfare. They retreated promptly, leaving me to fight not them but themselves.

When the only two available options are neutrality and trench warfare, the kindest, most loving, most patient, and most tolerant option is withdrawal. This will obviously appear to be rejection, but it is actually a loving response to rejection, and in fact the most loving response to rejection, given the alternative.