Thread: My Story
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Old 12-17-2013, 08:16 PM
  # 9 (permalink)  
EnglishGarden
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Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: new moon road
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Couples therapy with someone in active addiction just does not work.

It does not work because the addict mind is threatened and will not participate in the process of couples counseling because the addict mind knows that the goal in that counseling is to coerce sobriety. The addict mind will have no part of that.

I recommend long-term individual counseling for you alone in order to dig deep into the pattern you have of manager, rescuer, and martyr. Codependency entails all those behaviors and none of them do anyone any good. Those behaviors make the codependent obsessive and controlling. They make the addict resentful and dependent. Those behaviors create distance from friends and from family because the codependent is so wrapped into the addict's existence she can see no one else and can be present to no one else.

He is not the problem, ultimately. What we learn in recovery is that the problem is us. What we are doing, what we are thinking, the chaos and the insanity of the way we are living when we continue in a destructive relationship....it is all on us. We project onto the addict our interpretation of his problems and what we think are his solutions, while remaining in total denial of our own. Denial as in the inability even to see what our own problems are. This is where the professional insight of a counselor makes a difference. Our friends are not qualified. Meetings are helpful but very general, though deep work with a sponsor can bring real change over the long term.

Anyone who has lived with an active addict knows and understands how distorted the partner's thinking becomes. Rational thought and effective action are gone.

One to one counseling over the long term, with the adjunct of Al-Anon or Nar-Anon meetings, is what is best for you or for anyone who is very codependent and tightly involved with an addict. Then later, when you have your head together, and if he has found sobriety and has his head together, marriage counseling is the next step.

Saving the marriage is not the top priority. He has a fatal condition if it is not arrested. And in your obsession with him, you as well will become very sick, both mentally and physically.

The only way is individual recovery. And only you can work yours. Only he can work his.
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