Helping Your Spouse Overcome Alcohol Addiction

Most people in search of intervention or treatment for a loved one primarily focus on how to get their loved one help. Families of the intended patient rarely, if ever, consider why the alcoholic does not want help. An overlooked precursor to the treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction is that people with alcoholism and drug addiction, unfortunately, do not move past the second stage of change unless the consequences of the situation become greater than the benefits they believe they’re receiving. Another overlooked part rarely considered is that the problem is not only the substance use; it is the behaviors that drive the alcoholism, drug addiction, or mental disorders. When negative behaviors are validated by enabling, not confronting the problem, looking the other way, or families not being on the same page, the behaviors receive a positive consequence. When your loved one receives a positive consequence for negative behaviors, they will continue to do more of what they are doing. Many reading this are unaware that not addressing the problem equals providing comfort. The longer you allow yourself and the alcoholic, or loved one with drug addiction or mental disorders, to continue without consequences, the more comfort you allow your spouse or any other family member, and the longer you keep the problem alive. Not addressing the problem or addressing the problem without professional help minimizes the severity of the problem, and your spouse will be far less likely to address or change their behavior. Not addressing the behaviors prevents the person from addressing their alcoholism. 

Why You Wait To Help Yourself And Your Spouse

The first question we ask when working with someone living with an alcoholic spouse is, “Why do you stay with them, and what are you getting from staying”? We ask where they feel they stand in the relationship because when we break it down, it is a form of infidelity. Your spouse may not be in a relationship with another person, and they are in a relationship with themselves and alcohol, and they are choosing that over you. Please know your spouse’s addiction and alcoholism are not your fault. 

If your spouse is an alcoholic, you can help them overcome their alcohol addiction. Our manual has a payoff matrix exercise for our intervention program. A payoff matrix asks you to consider the advantages and disadvantages of something. 

Regarding your alcoholic spouse, you can answer the following four questions:

• What are the advantages of staying in the relationship
• What are the disadvantages of staying in the relationship
• What are the advantages of leaving the relationship
• What are the advantages of staying in the relationship

You could replace the action with anything else, such as asking about the advantages and disadvantages of not addressing the problem or continuing to enable. The chances are excellent that you will not have more pros than cons in favor of allowing the situation to continue or continuing to enable them. The payoff matrix will never encourage you to avoid the issue and stay in the relationship if things do not change. 

No matter what you try to tell yourself, the spouse who is receiving their spouse’s alcoholism inevitably becomes a martyr, and that is why you wait and do not address the problem. Before you find that comment offensive, please understand:

Being a martyr is not a diagnosis, nor is it your fault or defining who you are; it is a temporary coping mechanism as a result of living with an alcoholic spouse. 

When you are living with an alcoholic, you become a victim, and everything starts to revolve around what will happen to you if they do not get help. What is even more complicated is that the martyr spouse fights the solution because they are equally scared of what will happen to them if their spouse gets well. Yes, we said that correctly. When counseling a husband or wife with an alcoholic spouse, the conversation is more about how addressing the problem would be a bigger problem than not addressing the issue. The spouse rarely sees themselves doing this, and everyone else can see it, and if they can’t, we help point it out for you so you can recognize and address it. 

When working with a spouse, no matter what we say, the response is often “yeah, but this will happen,” followed by more excuses for their spouse. The spouse calling for help will make more excuses than the alcoholic spouse will make when we arrive for the intervention. When the excuses concern children, that should never be an excuse not to address the problem. Getting your spouse away from the children as fast as possible is all the more critical.

How Not Addressing Your Spouse’s Alcoholism Affects Children

A great fear of your spouse leaving for treatment will be how the kids will handle it, how you will handle the kids, and whether the children need their mom or dad to be away. Nobody would dispute that they need their mom or dad present, and that is why they must go to treatment for a little while. Every family tells how much their husband, wife, son, or daughter loves their children; we do not dispute that either. Let’s make something clear: 

“The children are still currently less important to the alcoholic than their selfishness and their alcohol.”

If children are involved, and you do not want to help your husband or wife, then please help your children and do this for them. Children see, hear, and feel everything. Brain development starts in the mother’s womb and is greatly affected by stress. The stress on the child from the alcoholic and non alcoholic parent significantly impacts brain development through early childhood and beyond. The effects of an alcoholic parent will substantially affect the children into adulthood. 

Every day you don’t address your loved one’s alcoholism or drug addiction, it’s taking a toll on the children, and it will significantly affect your children later in life. The alcoholism in the home is going to affect the children’s mental health, the possibility of them having addiction issues or alcoholism issues, having mental disorders, and it will affect who they love, how they love, and how they feel. It will affect how they form relationships, how they allow themselves to be treated in a relationship, and how they will treat others. In alcohol and drug prevention, children in an alcoholic household are often classified as high-risk youth. 

Alcoholism and drug addiction are, in part, caused by generational family-of-origin dysfunction. By doing an intervention and helping your loved one get treatment for their alcoholism, you can stop the generational family of origin dysfunction. If you do not address it, the chances of your children following in the footsteps of their alcoholic parent increase exponentially. 

What can you do to help your Spouse Overcome Alcohol Addiction?

The best way to help your loved one overcome alcohol addiction is to help yourself first so that you are in a better position to help them correctly and effectively. Your marriage can survive drug and alcohol addiction. Helping the affected spouse see through the lenses of codependency, enabling, and being a martyr is effective in holding your alcoholic spouse accountable. The first step towards effective solutions is to follow the science and hold them responsible for their actions. 

In the stages of change of addiction recovery, the alcoholic spouse must see the need for change in the contemplation stage. The change can and will occur when they are held accountable, and the consequences of their actions become greater than the benefits. If you or anyone else thinks this approach is harsh, that we must love them, you must respect them, that they are unwell people with a disease, and that they are victims, that you must respect the pain of their spouse’s alcoholism, you will be putting yourself through their pain for a long time. 

The CRAFT intervention model explicitly states that you do not reward negative behavior. The stages of change specifically state that until the alcoholic sees the benefits of change, driven by the fear of consequences, they do not move forward with change. 

Your spouse’s alcoholic behavior of selfishness and self-seeking behaviors affects you. So you have to ask yourself, why are you putting up with this, and when will you stop doing this? Why wait for your loved one to hit bottom when you’re family is at their bottom? How will they hit bottom when you prevent them from getting there? We are not saying not to love them, nor are we saying to give up on them. What we are saying is that if they do not get sober, you can’t love them into sobriety. The evidence-based CRAFT model of intervention states explicitly that you DO NOT reward negative behavior. 

“Please remember, when your spouse has alcohol use disorder, everything they do is transactional. There is no unselfishness in them. They will do nothing for you without a hidden agenda or wanting something in return. They will take advantage of you. We get the concept of being nice and loving them, and you can do that when they are sober because until then, they will use that as your weakness and continue to take from you at every opportunity.” 

The best way to help your spouse is to have professionals intervene and address the situation. You can also include other friends and family members as your support system. 

“You DO NOT need the permission of others to help your spouse; they are at the intervention for your alcoholic spouse and YOU! They are guests, not decision makers for your life and future.”

With a professional, you can address your spouse with respect, affirmation, and love, with consequences, boundaries, and accountability. If your spouse chooses not to accept help, if they say no and refuse to get sober, how much longer can you stay in this relationship? We understand that many reading this have kids, family on both sides, and a job holding the household together financially. These reasons can not be more important than the bigger problem. The most significant issue you will face in all of this is not helping the one with alcoholism or drug addiction; remember, it is you who is affected. Unfortunately, when the other spouse becomes a martyr, and they become a forever victim, not by choice, but by default, it will be significantly more challenging for the non alcoholic spouse to do an intervention than it will be for the alcoholic spouse to accept help at the intervention.