When most couples come together and commit to sharing their lives, the goal is to “stick.” You hope to face the world together. You agree to have each others back when times are tough. But addiction can challenge any couple’s commitment.
When dependency becomes an everyday reality, your desire for each other is threatened by the craving for some thing or some activity that could ruin everything.
Sticking together quickly begins to feel like being stuck in a downward spiral.
It doesn’t matter whether both partners are struggling with addiction or just one person is facing it; the more intrusive and damaging the addictive habit becomes, the more words like “leaving,” “separation,” and “divorce” may start to creep into your conversations.
This can be scary and hurtful.
But don’t give up, despite how you feel right now, there is another way.
If you and your partner can hold on to each other and reach out for help individually and together, you might just come through this stronger, maybe even better.
Now is the time.
Reach out for compassionate, qualified help from an experienced couple’s counselor.
Your own emotions, the struggles of your partner, productive communication, boundaries, and setting reachable goals as a couple are just a few of the things for which you’ll appreciate a counselor’s guidance.
Couples who face addiction with the tools and empowerment of quality couples and individual counseling have been shown to have much better odds of recovering their love and their lives than those who try to go it alone.
You don’t have to experience the terrible losses and loneliness so many couples endure–only to lose each other permanently. Instead, reach out for help. Get support in the following ways:
Couples counseling acknowledges and supports the partners who are not addicted.
Watching your partner succumb to addiction can be torture. Trying to keep your life going, getting your personal needs met, becoming an unwilling victim of the consequences of your partner’s addiction…all of that can feel unfair and frightening. It can also feel like the threat of addiction is the only thing happening in your life together.
Working with a couple’s counselor can help honor those feelings and help you recognize how your partner’s addiction is affecting you. You’ll be buoyed by coping tools and productive ways to communicate and support your partner.
Couples counseling provides perspective and an atmosphere of support.
How many times have you and your partner put your other concerns or problems on the back burner to focus on the threat of the addiction? You know the issues are there, simmering, but you just feel too exhausted, ill-equipped, or unsupported to face them.
Though it is crucial to face the threat of addiction, your relationship must still function as a place where your lives have balance, perspective, mutual support, clear boundaries, and a productive means for resolving problems. A couple’s counselor can help navigate these things with you and objectively provide a nurturing, helpful, growth-oriented atmosphere for both of you.
Couples counseling uncovers enabling behaviors.
It’s easy to believe that addiction is the addict’s problem. In a relationship, that is rarely the case. If you were to look at your interactions with your partner in couples counseling you may discover ways you both behave that make it difficult for one or both of you to stop the addictive behavior. Often these behaviors are inadvertent. The level of awareness counseling can bring is vital.
Couples counseling offers a path to actual healing in your relationship
Through couple’s counseling, you have the opportunity to repair and resolve both pre-existing relationship problems and addiction-induced relationship damage.
Isn’t that what you really want? Working through your relationship now will help foster healthy connection, healthy choices, and healthy coping methods when life gets tough.
Addiction doesn’t have to ruin your relationship. The patterns, secrets, abuse, and shame don’t have to take your relationship down.
Seek help soon. With help, you can recover, reconnect, and rebuild.