One of the things I have found is that I really enjoyed being nice to my wife.

It's one of those things where I can be nasty and I could be, I could be unhappy and I could be ungrateful, and I could be whiny and feel entitled.

My wife became really totally dependent on me doing everything. Like I have to do

every single thing in the house, every meal, every load of laundry. I'm Matt. Hey, I'm Steve. Hey,

I'm John. This is the sober friends podcast. We're here for The Sober Curious, the new guy, and the

old timer. We're here to talk about the stuff anyone looking to live, alcohol-free has to face day-to-day,

and we overcame those struggles. We speak for no 12-step group, but we do try to remain anonymous.

You're not alone. This is the Sober Friends podcast.

Steve, kindness is something that is in short supply these days,

and it feels like it's something incredibly out of fashion, so to speak.

I think that kindness in recovery is also something that's very important. I was going through a list of podcasts that Mark at Recovered does because he's got like thousands, literally thousands of episodes. So it's easy to go through and see, you know, that's a good topic for us to go over. And so I thought today, kindness,

and there's kindness as a lot of things. It's a recovery tool. I mean, for some people, it's easy,

right? Like everything in this world, some people, kindness is a natural way they behave. I think for a lot

of alcoholics, that's not the case. Right?

That is, you know, the reason why many of us are drinking is to cover up so much pain,

is to cope, you know, so much trauma that we don't have to deal with.

So under those circumstances, it's really hard to be kind, right?

It's really hard to be kind.

And we talk about it all the time.

The people most affected and the people I treated most poorly and, you know, during my worst years of either drinking or on my dry drunk, if you were, but the people I loved most, right?

I mean, it was impossible to be kind to those people. And it's something that life has just

given me the opportunity that really, really work on. It's interesting that you brought up this topic

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