The Relationship with an Addict
Maintaining a relationship with an addict is not easy. The drink or drug they are hooked on becomes the center of their life, and their partner and family eventually take a back seat, along with anything other than the addiction.
As the addiction becomes more intense, the addict is no longer able to take care of their family, provide support, listen to their problems or attend to their needs.
As the addiction becomes more intense, the addict is no longer able to take care of their family, provide support, listen to their problems or attend to their needs.
If you have a relationship with an addict you surely feel alone, all the family burdens now fall only on your shoulders and it is you who must worry about everything and take care of meeting the needs of the rest of your family without the help of your partner. From booze to heroin, be aware all substances are the same although effects might appear to be different.
If you have a relationship with an addict you surely feel alone, all the family burdens now fall only on your shoulders and it is you who must worry about everything and take care of meeting the needs of the rest of your family without the help of your partner.
If you have grown up in a normal and healthy family, you will realize what is happening, but if you have grown up with an addict, you will surely see this situation as normal, familiar and familiar.
Even being harmful, it gives you some security because it is what you have known in your childhood. You may think that it is normal that the emotional needs of others are not taken into account, that you do not expect your partner to be there to support you when you feel bad, to think together about solving and dealing with problems that arise, or to comfort you when you need it, just like people who maintain a healthy relationship do. You may feel that something is missing, but you are not entirely clear what it is. What happens is that your partner is physically but not emotionally there for you or your children, and that is what is missing and what has surely always been missing in your life.
As the addict becomes more and more dependent on the drink or drug, they also becomes more dependent on you.
Since their main concern is to satisfy the addiction, they will not take care of basic things, such as taking care of the house, buying food, eating properly, paying bills, dealing with problems of daily life, taking the car to the workshop, etc. You will find yourself taking care of him or her, taking them to bed when you find them drunk on the couch, or making excuses to justify their behavior to others and comforting them when they feel depressed.
In this way, you can establish a relationship of codependency with your addicted partner, because the addict depends on you to survive with their addiction, and your unmet emotional needs find a kind of substitute in your dedication to caring for that person . That is, the dependence that they feel towards you makes you feel that they needs you, and therefore, that they love you. That way you satisfy your need for connection, intimacy, and attention.
But dependence is not love, it is just a false substitute that is destructive for both of you, because it makes the situation persist, that the addict continues to be an addict and continues to need you.
But dependence is not love, it is just a false substitute that is destructive for both of you, because it makes the situation persist, that the addict continues to be an addict and continues to need you. In turn, you continue to need their addiction, their need for you.
As time passes and you see that nothing changes, you feel anger and frustration. The addict does nothing to recover or their attempts fail again and again. You feel disappointed, cheated, tired of broken promises and false hopes. Your attempts to help them are not successful, as it is not easy to help an addict, but you may still feel guilty and helpless for not being able to change the situation. You may even end up depressed.
the addict may be aggressive or mistreat their partner
In some cases, the addict may be aggressive or mistreat their partner. If this is your case, you may also blame yourself for the abuse and feel ashamed. This happens because people often tend to think that if someone mistreats them it is because they are not able to prevent it and they feel weak or incompetent, or they may even think they deserve it, because they feel that they are worth very little as a person. But the truth is that any person at any time can be mistreated by another and there is no more responsible for that mistreatment than the one who carries it out.
In this way, the relationship with an addict can undermine your self-esteem and cause you to end up having psychological problems of depression or anxiety. The lower your self-esteem, the more you will get involved in this codependent relationship that perpetuates the situation. If this is what is happening to you, you should leave the relationship immediately, as it is a destructive relationship.
In these types of relationships it is also often the case that the addict’s partner tries to control the addict as a way to help them. You control the money, the alcohol that enters the house, you want to know where your partner is at all times, you distrust, etc. This makes the addict angry, frustrated and criticize you for being too controlling, for not trusting him or her, and blames you for your relationship going bad. It is not uncommon that sometimes this need for control spreads to other people in your life because the stressful and uncertain situation in which you find yourself makes any ambiguity in your life affect you especially and you need to control everything to increase your feeling of security and control over a life that seems to be out of control because of addiction.
In the end, the relationship can end up breaking down, especially when you realize that it has become too destructive and is hurting you. But all the damage caused, your low self-esteem, your sense of failure or guilt can continue with you, as well as your way of relating to others. For this reason, you may need the help of a psychologist to recover and because, if you have spent your childhood with an alcoholic parent, you may have learned a way of relating to others that predisposes you to relationships of codependency.
You will never be able to control their addiction
Even if the relationship is not particularly destructive and you want to stay with your partner, you may need help managing the effect the relationship has on you. You may need to learn to be assertive, to know how to get your emotional needs taken into account and satisfied, to identify your emotions correctly, to manage anger, and to manage that need for control that you may be feeling.
Remember, until this person is ready to help themselves there is nothing we can do. You will never be able to control their addiction. You must learn to focus on your life and your needs, that your life does not revolve around your partner’s addiction. It is advisable to keep a journal where you can write the thoughts and feelings related to your partner’s addiction as a form of relief. Seek professional help, both to help your partner and to help yourself to deal with all the feelings that the illness awakens in you.
