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Your spouse’s drug and alcohol addiction is not your fault. However, their addiction will affect you and the other members of your family because addiction is duplicitous in every way imaginable. The goal of our addiction treatment track is to stabilize clients so that they are treatment-ready. Some women choose abusive partners in early recovery because they lack discernment or grew accustomed to being treated poorly in childhood. The dissatisfaction they feel in their relationships is often the stressor that led to their drug abuse in the first place. However, if your partner’s drinking habits become unhealthy, the relationship may become more complex. You may want to try couples therapy or encourage your partner to access professional support to help maintain a healthy relationship.
Couples therapy aims to intervene and turn the destructive cycle into a constructive one, where supportive relationships lead to increased abstinence and so on. Unhealthy drinking habits can take a toll on any relationship, especially marriages. Research has found that drug and alcohol abuse may lead to relationship dissatisfaction, instability, and verbal and physical aggression between you and your partner. From the JourneyPure team where we get to explore a wide variety of substance abuse- and mental health-related topics. It will take time for your family and friends to learn to trust you again. Trust will develop over time as you and your family and friends navigate situations where you can deal with them honestly and directly. There is always hope to fix strained or damaged relationships, however.
Our marriage is happier than ever because of the alcoholism
According to the NIDA, addiction is highly complex and the recovery process can be just as complicated. Recovery can bring a lot of changes to a marriage in an already difficult time. If your relationship survived the addiction, there is a possibility marriage changes after sobriety that it may survive treatment. The non-addict spouse may have high expectations for long been missed intimacy and disappointed when it doesn’t materialize. This may be compounded by the addict’s commitment to put sobriety first.
We both had our own way of dealing with the chasm that was growing in our marriage; it was not a happy home life. However, it was important to us to show others that we had a happy marriage. We wore a mask of having all the external trapping of a happy family. We had the mommy van, big house, a child, nice vacations and did all the things that happy couples do. Even though recovery can be great, it can also be like a roller coaster with a lot of ups and downs.
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You’ll find ways to support, encourage and help your partner stay clean and sober. Divorce or separation among couples struggling with addiction issues may be common, but it’s not inevitable. If your partner suffers from an addiction, there are specific do’s and don’ts experts recommend you put into place to help your addicted spouse. Typically, addiction recovery works best when both the person with the addiction and the partner work on caring for themselves as a top priority. Only when that happens can a relationship be reconstructed with two healthy partners.
A recovering addict should expect to come clean about everything they have been holding back from their spouse or partner as a starting point. From there, the spouse or partner will be the one to set some ground rules about gaining trust back. Addiction is an equal-opportunity damager and destroyer of relationships.
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We offer treatment for chemical dependencies such as cocaine addiction, drug addiction and alcoholism. It is extremely important to us that you receive the highest quality medical care from our qualified staff during your stay. The decision to pursue sobriety is major and life-changing, both for the addict and for the spouse. It can take a toll physically, as the person in recovery is going through withdrawal https://ecosoberhouse.com/ symptoms that can be very intense. It may be impossible for a spouse to care for a partner who is experiencing nausea and vomiting, fatigue, lethargy, lack of appetite, and excessive sweating and bodily shaking. The only method for getting sober in an unhealthy marriage, that has so far been absolutely proven to work, is when this addict or alcoholic WHOLEHEARTEDLY works a 12 step program.
- With each article and resource, she hopes to save other families from experiencing the anguish of a loved one’s passing due to drinking or drugs.
- My expectations were consistently exceeded by the expertise of the staff, the content of the program, and the overall respect and care I was treated with.
- According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, about 21.5 million Americans age 12 and older have a substance abuse disorder.
- As their partner, understand that you need to give yourself time to heal; patience with yourself and your spouse is key.