Can a Marriage Survive Drug or Alcohol Addiction?

When you’re married to a substance user, it can be devastating. Some of the spouses’ most significant challenges are realizing when you’re loved is using substances, they’re putting you second, and they’re making it all about them. Marriage and partnership are not about getting what you want exclusively; it’s about compromise. It is helpful to set boundaries, and there must be accountability. You have two choices when you’re in a relationship or married to somebody who is experiencing a substance use or mental disorder. You can be with them under stressful conditions or care for yourself and the children; you can’t have both. Those are your options, unless they get sober. If your loved one chooses not to address their problem, the question turns to why you are staying in the relationship.

What are you gaining by staying?

There is a benefit to living this way, or not addressing your loved one or yourself otherwise, you would do something different. Many people we have spoken with who are married to an alcoholic or addict have grown up in a dysfunctional household. It is very common that either the person with substance use or mental disorder or their spouse will follow in the path of the family of origin dysfunction. Addiction and mental health are believed to be mainly caused by generational patterns of behavior. There always exists some level of dysfunction as to why you allow yourself to remain in an emotionally abusive relationship. Some of them are even physical. Some of you have children, and your children are growing up in this type of environment. The question is not just how to help your spouse; it is equally, if not more important, to ask how you can help yourself and others affected by the behaviors of the alcoholic or addict.

How Will The Marriage Survive?

Can the marriage survive? It can, and how it survives is that the impaired spouse must get sober and address the behaviors causing the substance use or mental disorders. Surviving the marriage is not exclusively the responsibility of the spouse with an alcohol or drug addiction problem. The family and affected spouse must go through rigorous recovery, too. The family and affected spouse will significantly benefit from engaging in their recovery, whether or not the impaired spouse seeks help. Understanding the importance of family and spousal support and its impact on your loved one’s recovery, we offer our S.A.F.E. Family Recovery Coaching Program as part of our intervention program. Our curriculum helps families learn about their behaviors and how to detach while understanding how the intended patient with a substance use or mental disorder thinks and manipulates. Families will learn to communicate effectively, rather than end conversations feeling it is their fault, and understand boundaries and accountability for themselves and their loved ones. You will learn the word no, and you will learn the warning signs of relapse. Relapse doesn’t mean they picked up a drink or a drug; it starts much sooner than that behaviorally. Families and spouses may not always know when their loved one is using alcohol or drugs, and they will always know when they are not. 

What Happens If My Spouse Relapses?

Relapse starts with behavior. The word relapse means to return to a previous state. If your loved one never changed their behavior and managed to hold off alcohol or drugs on nothing but willpower for a while, they would be miserable while they were going through their dry spell. In the case of abstinence, your loved one would not be relapsing if they were to use alcohol or drugs again; they would be resuming drug or alcohol use. To relapse, you must change your behavior, become sober, and then revert to previous behaviors before using alcohol or drugs again. When this happens, the healthy spouse will see the transformation in their alcoholic or drug addicted spouse from impaired, to positive behavioral transformation, to sobriety, and then a reversion back to previous behaviors, then to substance use. The only thing worse than an active alcoholic spouse is a dry one. 

So, what happens if your spouse relapses? If you are in your recovery, you will see the behavioral warning signs way before they even do. A spouse not in recovery will not see it; if they do, they will question themselves and be afraid to say something. If you would like to survive this, you can. The first step is addressing early warning signs and saying something if necessary. It may involve setting boundaries, walking away for a minute, and taking the kids. Leaning on your support system can and will help, too. Many spouses believe that a quick trip to rehab, returning to work, finding a job, or attending an alcoholics anonymous meeting is enough to let their guard down. If your loved one relapses, then the suggestion would be to go back to setting boundaries and holding them accountable for their actions. If you can’t do this, you will have to ask yourself what you are receiving from your spouse that is a greater benefit than addressing the problem and living this way.

Why Isn’t Love Enough to Make Them Change?

Many spouses will ask, Why isn’t my love enough? Your husband or wife will not stop simply because you love them. People can not stay sober for someone else or something else. In the early stages of recovery, the consequences of losing your wife, children, home, job, etc, may be enough to get the process started and not enough to maintain sobriety on these alone. Consequences are essential, and there is more to it. Most people go to treatment and address a problem based on external forces such as their wife, husband, children, job, etc. The goal for sobriety, both short and long term, is to address the internal reasons for alcohol and drug use. If you go to treatment and attempt sobriety for some other person, place, or thing, and that something lets you down or doesn’t go your way, then relapse is highly likely. For sobriety to be sustainable, it must come from within. 

Addiction recovery would be easy if all you had to do were love somebody into rehab or sobriety. If having a child stopped people from struggling with their addiction or alcoholism, it would be easy. For a marriage to survive and make it through mental disorder struggles, alcoholism, and drug addiction, it is going to require a lot of work on both sides. Please do not believe your loved one will go to rehab for 30 days and return a shiny new penny because of your love and the children.

The Behavior of a Spouse Before, During, & After Addiction Treatment

The most common client who is pulled from treatment early or against medical advice is brought home by a wife or a husband. The spouse usually pulls their spouse out of treatment at or around 30 days. Spouses become martyrs and martyrs become victims, and victims are more worried about what’s going to happen to them than they are about their loved ones getting better. It’s not the spouse’s fault they have become martyrs as a result of their loved one’s substance use and mental disorder, and that’s what happens. The worry is more about what will happen to the affected spouse when their impaired spouse goes to rehab than if they don’t. The fears and concerns are often about getting sober and clear-headed, and whether they will still love you. What if they meet somebody in treatment? What if they come home and decide they want a divorce? How am I going to pay their bills when they’re gone? What’s going to happen to me while they are gone? The fears and anxiety are the same as to why you ask us, “What if they say no at the intervention?” Fears of your spouse going to treatment and fears of them saying no if you try to help them get to treatment are caused by being a martyr, the illusion of control, and anxiety. Anxiety is manufactured fears, and most of your anxiety has not happened and most likely won’t. Spouses and family members worry more about what will happen if they try to get their loved one’s help and say no than if they don’t try. 

“The spouse of a substance user is most likely to put up the most resistance with their spouse’s family regarding allowing an intervention to occur.”

Being a martyr and worrying more about the outcome than the fear and anxiety of staying the same doesn’t define you or diagnose you. It’s temporary, and that’s where you are right now. Can you survive alcoholism and drug addiction in your marriage? It all depends on whether or not you identify with why you are allowing things to continue. In many cases, we must encourage the family of their loved one to do the intervention without their loved one’s spouse, and include them at the last minute. Far too often, when you include the spouse too early, they will sabotage the intervention and tip their spouse off. 

How Marriage Survives Drug and Alcohol Addiction

First, realize you are a martyr and why, identify with your behaviors, and don’t pull them out of treatment early. Start doing the heavy lifting in your recovery, and you let them stay in treatment as long as it takes you to open the doors for successful recovery efforts. It is not about when they are ready, but about when you are ready. You must stop believing that your love and children are strong enough to get them sober. Setting healthy boundaries and holding your spouse accountable can significantly increase the likelihood of a successful outcome for your loved one’s sobriety and your marriage or relationship. If your spouse attends treatment and returns to the same unhealthy household and relationship, the chances of both their success and your marriage or relationship will be significantly compromised.