Is Your Marriage Being Destroyed By Addiction?

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entertainment and information only so let's keep it in that light all right have a good time learn something and then get the real help that you need from a professional oh boy how do you screw up your marriage you know there's a lot of a lot of stuff on the internet about marriage and lifestyle and And how we navigate through relationships. But one of the things that's for sure that will screw up a marriage faster than anything on this planet.

Outside of infidelity or abandonment is drug and alcohol usage. Being an addict. If you're an addict in your marriage, you need to listen up. Because as sure as you're hearing this, you will screw up your marriage in a quick fashion. if you let drugs and alcohol destroy it. There are many couples that suffer from the onslaught and the abuse of addiction within the marriage, and it creates a huge divide. If you are the spouse of somebody who is an addict, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

You're kind of lost in what to do or how to do it. And at the same time, if you're an addict, You have no idea the destruction that you're doing to your marriage. It is destroying your marriage. And I talked about in a podcast that I did on the XO Marriage podcast, The Naked Marriage with Dave and Ashley Willis.

I talked extensively about the impact of drugs and alcohol on a marriage and the problem that can arise from it and systematically destroying your marriage and how do you stop it from happening. One of the things that I tried to get across in that podcast, that video, was the understanding that the enemy is what's trying to kill your marriage. The enemy being a crafty and worthy adversary who wants to destroy everything in your marriage that's good and then... ultimately end your marriage.

And I think left unchecked will ultimately end your life. And, you know, the enemy creeping in finds ways of getting to you, the tools that are used. And the enemy uses things like deception, gaslighting, manipulation. And it comes across as something that's very similar to like a personality disorder, perhaps. But the enemy wants to divide. And the way the enemy does that is it pits you against your spouse.

because as I said in that video the enemy of my enemy is my friend and so if I can get if I'm trying to attack somebody and I can get that person to attack my enemy I don't have to do anything I just have to sit back and watch it happen and whatever is left of the two that are attacking each other I can swoop in at the last minute and finish them off. And that's what happens. So if you're an addict, you have to understand, you're blinded. Truly, you're just blinded by what you're doing.

You don't understand what's happening. to your marriage. You don't understand if your spouse is the one that is being subjected to things. You really have no understanding of it because you're the one person that's doing it. And you think in your arrogance and your short-sightedness that what you're doing is not affecting the other person.

And so all the arrogant behaviors that creep in because addicts are chock-a-block full of arrogance, they do not understand that what they're doing is happening, so they just keep doing it. And they have convinced themselves that they are correct in their actions. So the collateral damage in that marriage destruction is, of course, your children. And your children are the ones that have no choice but to be there.

I grew up in a house with alcoholic parents, and I was subjected to all kinds of craziness, who I'm sure, if my mother was still alive, which she is not, but my father is, I'm sure if someone were to ask him, he would have no idea what I was talking about. He may even just completely reject the idea that what he was doing was addiction, was alcoholism. However, Be that as it may, you're subjected to all kinds of craziness that you have no control over.

So if you are a married couple and you have children, and you are a drug addict or an alcoholic, the one person in that room, if there are three of you, a husband, a wife, and a child, the one person in that room that cannot go anywhere, cannot do anything, is powerless, is your child. And so if you understand that your children get damaged severely by having addicted parents, you might become a little more self-aware and understand that what you're doing is very destructive. Perhaps not.

Your arrogance may get in the way. But that is the case. You are creating a huge amount of damage with those children. Your spouse, on the other hand, can make a choice about staying, going, they can take the children, all those kinds of things. But your children have no options. So the enemy creeps in and starts to seduce you by saying you can have one, you can have two, you can have three. Coming home high, getting high, shooting up, snorting, smoking, whatever, dabbing.

Eh, it's not a big deal. And perhaps it's not initially. Certainly with alcoholism, that's a very slow ramp up into full-blown alcoholic. That could take 15 years, 20 years. Other drugs, not so much. It's pretty quick. So you can get there initially and not realize it's a problem because perhaps it's not. Everybody adapts around you and your craziness and then the usage goes up. And the times when you're using is now not being hidden from people. It's not at times when you're by yourself.

It's not at times when the kids are out of the house or the wife is gone for the weekend. Now you're sneaking it. And then the bottles start getting hidden. Or your drugs get hidden in the drawer sock or wherever. And the getting high or the getting drunk creeps into the weekday. And so on and so on and so on. You know the story. But... What happens is there's a decline in communication, in positive communication.

The turning towards behaviors, as John Gottman talks about in the Gottman method of marriage counseling. The turning away behavior, turning towards behaviors. You're not turning towards each other anymore. It's you against me. It's my wife against me because I'm the alcoholic or I'm the coke addict or I'm the heroin addict.

And so that turning away behavior happens and the criticism and the attacking and the yelling and the friction and then you stupidly in your own addiction in your own addicted mind convince yourself that you are correct and the other person is wrong and you could not be more inaccurate in a description than that because you are actually not correct you are incorrect you are wrong you are high You are drunk. There's something going on. And it's destroying your relationship.

So when you turn away from somebody, what you're doing is you're telling them that I don't want to be around you or I don't care what you think. It doesn't matter. It's not my problem. It's your problem. You have to accept me as I am. And you become blinded by what you've become. Those of us who have had drinking or drug problems, you understand that you want to just be left alone so you can get high or drunk. Your spouse, on the other hand, they want to have a relationship with you.

And it's hard to have a relationship with somebody who's high or drunk all the time. Then you start drifting out of the house. And sometimes it's for hours, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks. I've heard all those stories. In my practice, there are times when people are... very definitely not together a majority of the time, perhaps the person ends up moving out. Or you get thrown out. Your spouse can't take it anymore. And that's where the seriousness of the divide occurs.

If you find yourself in that position, and you are no longer in the house, what do you do? Well, if you're an addict, it's party time. So, What do you do when you get to that point where you're starting to have a deteriorated relationship? Well, what I find is my clients tend to play, they lean into that. They play into it. So it's like trying to, I don't know, wrestle a wild feral cat.

No matter how you grab them, no matter which way that you touch them, they somehow are able to claw you, bite you.

it's like a snapping turtle you know the same thing no matter where you grab its neck is so long it's going to take your fingers off so this feral cat like you know move that just claw and scratch and get away get away get away for the spouse who is being subjected to that many times it's just throwing up the arms and not knowing what to do if you are the addict And you can find yourself in that place and you're clawing and scratching at your spouse as they're trying to love you and care about

you. It is very destructive, absolutely. And you've got to find ways to protect your marriage. If you... If you understand how we see marriage, at least in this country, I'm not sure about my listeners in Germany or in South Africa or Italy, you're viewing marriage perhaps a little differently than we do here in North America. But we see marriage as something that's a union.

Or we're supposed to see it, but today's definition of a marriage is shifting because people are not engaging in them as much and they're not successful. But It's a partnership. It's a partnership between two people. Two people who are trying to figure out how to cooperatively live their lives together. To raise children. To have a union of two people who are working through problems together. As we say in marriage vows in Western society that it's in sickness and health, for richer for poorer.

till death do you part and those vows of sickness and health richer poorer sometimes they get strained and you can't take it so the enemy is taking over one side of the equation and pitting that person against the other. And all the gaslighting, all the attacks, all the things that occur are meant to drive you away if you are being subjected to the addict because they simply want to get high. And that's, it's a hard thing to swallow.

If your spouse is behaving in a way where the only thing they're interested in is getting high and you were really struggling to try to understand what in the world, don't they want to be with me? I mean, why would you do this to us? Why are you doing this to me? Don't you care about the marriage? Don't you care about us? Understand, addicts only want to get high. That's it. In that moment where they are in the throes of addiction, the only thing they're interested in is getting high.

And if you can accept the idea that that's what they're thinking is, that they're only interested in getting high, they're not interested in anything else. Food, relationships, caring, their job, money, security, safety. It doesn't matter. When they're at the deepest, deepest part of addiction, that's all they care about. And that's what happens to us. We just don't care. We don't care about anything. We just want to get high.

So if you can understand that that is it, then you can depersonalize that. If you're an addict and you're feeling that way, that's why we want people to get into a communal experience in recovery because isolation is addiction's best friend. If you're isolating, the enemy has a foothold into your life. And so your spouse is the person who you should be turning towards. But what they're doing is they're attacking you. They're telling you, I don't like what you're doing. I don't like that.

I don't like you being high. You must stop. Maybe they've partnered with you and they're kind of accepting the fact that you're going to be high and they just want you to be with them. So they're willing to put up with it. You should hear the stories that I hear in my practice of the nonsense of people engaging in behaviors of acceptance of the most outrageous types and kinds and extremes of the other person the addict as they're working in their addiction.

The drugs that get left around on nightstands and you have young children running around and the person who is the spouse is looking at that and just saying, I don't know what to do, but I have to put up with it. Women in particular are subjected to a sense of helplessness in this because, as I've said in many other podcasts, women only want one thing in a marriage. They want safety.

And if a guy is subjecting them to crazy chaotic behavior, they'll figure out ways to get the crazy chaotic behavior to end by covering it up, by compensating for it. And they just turn a blind eye to it. And ladies, I'm telling you... You just can't do that. It's got to be a zero tolerance. I have a ton of empathy for people and care about people who have addiction. I really do. That's my career. My career is bringing those people back from the dead. But I have a zero tolerance for usage.

There is just nothing about usage that's okay. So I approach it that way. I have zero tolerance for usage. I have 100% empathy for the person that is subjecting themselves to addiction. I would do anything for them, but I will not tolerate their usage. And as a spouse of a person who is subjected to that kind of thing, you've got to have that same thinking. Zero tolerance for their usage. Absolute zero. So it's whatever it takes to get them to a point where they can get sober or clean.

So you have to do whatever you have to do. You have to kick them out. You have to call the police on them. You have to take them to the hospital. You have to do whatever you have to do because you cannot tolerate their usage. And there is one thing I will absolutely tell you about addiction. It's a really funny thing. You're doing things where you're basically killing yourself, but really it's just you're in pain.

So you're using and destroying everything around you, but it's really just about the pain that you're feeling. And you don't want to feel the pain. So you would do anything to make it go away. And doing some opiate drugs or dabbing constantly and drinking, getting high in any way, is just trying to get rid of the pain. Pain is your suffering. And nobody really understands it. So most really successful addicts, they do it by isolation first and foremost. And they just want the pain to go away.

And so, you know, me as a therapist, I understand that. That's where I have the empathy. I know you're in extreme pain. Extreme pain. And you don't think anybody's really listening. And so you've got to give a voice to it so that you can, you know, get through the suffering and the pain and the trauma. So if you are an addict who is suffering, understand that you are in pain. You've been probably traumatized. That's been my experience in therapy. It's 100% of people are traumatized.

And you need healing from that trauma. If you are in the extremes of addiction or even just moderate usage to not the extreme end of addiction, but in the moderate usage category, it's very difficult to express what that pain is. And as a male, we're allowed two emotions, anger and humor. And so we're either going to get very angry or we're going to laugh it off. For women, they have a broad range of emotions that they're allowed. But it's the talking about it.

And then the talking about it, if you're talking to your spouse, if you're a female and you have an addiction problem, you start talking about what's bothering you, a man is going to want to fix it. So he's going to start making suggestions about what you need to do differently. Women don't want to hear that. They don't want solutions. They want to be able to put a voice to it. Men, they're all oriented towards what's the solution. And so you look for those answers.

And if you're not getting those answers, somebody's just seemingly endlessly talking about it. Your spouse, if your wife is wanting to talk about your addiction, talk about your problems, talk about things. And the guy, you don't want to talk about it. So there's a stalemate and you shut down. And that's where conflict usually occurs.

If the husband is the addict and the wife wants to know what's going on, what's wrong, why are you doing this, and your spouse is trying to respond and they're not responding appropriately to you as to what your needs are, you're not going to get the answers you want, then an argument ensues. So it's kind of like the old saying, I'm kind of old, so I have the old days of renting VCR tapes from Blockbuster. You know, there was a sign on the register that said, be kind, rewind.

And that's kind of what we have to do in our attempt at recovery, is be kind and rewind. Go back, go back a bit to... more productive communication. If you can't do it because you're so dysregulated, because every addict is very dysregulated, emotional dysregulation, if you're very dysregulated, maybe you can't do it as a couple without help. And so that's why I'm always urging people who have addiction to get into counseling. Couples counseling is part of that. So it's a...

Maybe it needs to be a supervised conversation to be able to work through these things. And especially if you've gotten to the point where you're not in the house anymore. If you're out of the home, you're going to need some assistance in working through relationship issues. You're certainly going to need assistance in working through your addiction issues, most certainly, but relational issues too.

If you're contemplating going to rehab, Pick one that has some kind of family work involved in your rehab. Ask that question of the rehab that you're considering. Do they do family sessions? Do they have family sessions? Some, unfortunately, do not. They just go right at the addict and that's it. And you just kind of discharge and release with a handful of papers on discharge and good luck to you. Not going to get very good outcomes that way.

If you're a married couple and one of you is going to rehab, there needs to be family work and it needs to be involved because as your spouse, you know, in the Christian world, it's God above all else, then your recovery, then your spouse. And that's, you know, it's like spouse is below recovery. And now that may offend some people who listen to this, but understand the thinking. If you lose your addiction, I'm sorry, if you lose your recovery, you lose everything else.

So you must maintain your sobriety. Sobriety first. Being clean first. If you go back to your addiction in your marriage, you will lose your marriage. You will lose that wife. So if you put your spouse in front of your recovery, they're probably going to end up being gone. And the same is true for the spouse who is being subjected to the addiction. Not the addict, but the other spouse. The spouse who's receiving everything that the addict is dishing out.

If you don't put your recovery above your spouse, you're going to lose your spouse. So I see this many times in my practice. The enabling spouse who does not know what to do has been going through this for years. and is at wit's end, they do not know what to do. And so they just surrender all power over to the addict who now is in control. And that addict who's in control is going to be super chaotic and manipulative because they're under the control of the enemy.

So trying to figure out how to do it when you're in rehab and you're doing it alone is so ill-advised. It just doesn't work. So I would suggest that you find a rehab that definitely has a good family counseling component to it and has your spouse coming and doing those family sessions, that family work. If you're not in a relationship, of course, that's a different thing. But in a relationship, that's a vital part of it because, as I've said many, many times, Recovery is not a solo event.

It's a group effort. Individuals don't get sober and clean. Groups do. And in this case, a marriage is the one that union of two people and you have to engage in that recovery together. Both people have to recover. Both people have to change. And in order to do that, you have to be able to turn and face the enemy together. And I want to make sure you hear this very clearly. Your spouse that's an addict is not the enemy. The enemy is addiction.

And so the two of you together as a unified front, as a unified front to take on addiction will succeed in helping overcome and getting into recovery. But if you're trying to do it on your own, you're not going to do it. So don't even try doing it on your own. It's a waste of time.

And I hope that the other part of it is that when you do get into recovery that you continue to do the work as a couple on restoring and enhancing your relationship because isn't that why you got into recovery in the first place? To live your life? And if you're in a marriage isn't it to share your life with the other person? So get into recovery with that thought and you'll probably be much more successful. So don't let the enemy win. Don't let addiction take you over.

Don't fail in your recovery. And most certainly don't let your marriage fail. I hate the statistical analysis of the 48 to 51% failure rate on marriages. It's just so disheartening. Marriage is work. It's hard work. But it is a union that will last a lifetime. And I hope that... All of you who are listening to this can at least try to put some effort into that as part of your recovery together. Well, as always, I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Doc Jacques, Your Addiction Lifeguard.

If you have questions about recovery or your relationships with recovery or anything else related to addiction and recovery, please reach out to me, Dr. Jacques DeBruker. I am your addiction lifeguard hoping to resuscitate Bye. Bye. Bye.