Being married to an addict even a recovered addict is quite a journey. Although there are many aspects to this journey as the wife of an addict and alcoholic there is one especially important part of the that really disrupts and hurts our marriage and life entirely. I am talking about the stunt of the addict’s emotional growth, which is not something that is not commonly known, and I am surprised because it is almost common sense. This may be the first time you are hearing about this, and perhaps this is your “Ah Ha!” moment where everything about your addict spouse comes together and finally makes a whole lot of sense, as it did for me. I think the reason for this part of addiction not commonly knowing is that there is a large lack of understanding about addiction and it comes from the idea that drugs interfere in your behaviors, thoughts, actions, and choices and so it is assumed that it is the drugs and the alcoholism that is causing this lack of mature behavior. While it does impact you, that is not the root problem.
Recovered addicts who truly get recovery, growth, and healing are some of the most fascinating, wise, and resilient people I know. Overcoming addiction of any sort is an accomplishment that should not be taken lightly or underestimated. Today, my husband is one of the most loving, responsible, reliable, devoted, and amazing men I know. I believe that it is because of his experience and the incredibly hard obstacles of not just recovery, but having to re-imagine and reform himself that he now has amazing, strong traits that many of us could only wish we had. As hard as his struggle with addiction was, it also took part in making him the amazing husband and father he is today that I admire and love deeply.
Drug and alcohol addiction causes you to stop emotionally growing and maturing. To give you an example of how this works my husband was 14 when he started drinking and using drugs when he decided to finally get clean and I do not mean just for a small period I mean for the long haul he was emotionally at the level of a 14-year-old boy, yet he was a 37-year-old man. Do not get me wrong my husband was incredibly smart and has always had an incredibly high IQ, but your intelligence level does not correlate with your emotional intelligence level. It was quite disturbing to me to discover that I was married to a man that had the emotional maturity of a 14-year-old boy. I married a man, or at least by all accounts I thought I did. His birthday said he was a man. His physical appearance said that he was a man. But emotionally he was anything but.
This really helped explain a lot of the behaviors and troubles that we face in our marriage from porn addiction, attention-seeking behavior with other women, poor choices, how he treated me, our children, his responsibilities, decisions, and just life overall that seemed like common sense things! The procrastination, the lack of motivation, lack of determination, the lack of responsibility or even caring about responsibility even knowing what responsibility is for that matter. When I learned that this is an actual thing, that science has proven that this is true it all came together and made sense for me, for the first time I understood and even felt empathy for my husband, I finally was able to see it all so Cleary. My heart broke, for him, me, and our children. My husband was not just an addict struggling with an ugly and deadly force but he was emotionally immature and was incapable of being a husband, father, and successful in his career and in life. I thought “We are screwed!”.
The inability to rely on him, trust him, expect responsibility from him, expect fatherhood was not just from the stupid use of drugs and alcohol but the fact that he literally did not know how and could not be who a woman and family needed him to be. It was not a matter of he did not want to, though that does play some part in it, even if he wanted to, he would not know how to function as an adult man to his fullest ability. My whole world turned upside down. I did not marry a man to raise him and be his mother, that is what his mother was for. I married a man to be my partner, my soulmate, and my teammate in life as parents, lovers, finances, and in our home.
Nowhere in those marriage vows did it say anything about having to raise a grown man emotionally and teach him how to be a husband, a father, and a successful employee. Nowhere in my vows did I ever agree to this nor was I even willing to take on the responsibility, by this time in his life the chances of him learning how to be an adult, how to be a grown man were almost impossible. If my begging, my pleading and my attempts in the past just to get him to do what he needed to do each day -day in, and day out- fell on deaf ears then how in the hell was I ever going to make this boy into a man? The drugs did not push me away, the alcoholism did not push me away, the affairs did not push me away and all of his stupid inconceivable choices didn't push me away. What finally did it for me is that I was not willing to raise a boy to be a man.
The error in my thinking did not become clear until I started attending codependents Anonymous (CODA). It was then that I realized that I was putting more on my shoulders than I was responsible for. It was not my job to raise this man, it was not my job to make sure he stayed clean, and it wasn't my job to make sure that he did his duties as a husband, father, employee, and everything else in life because he was incapable of doing it himself. My job was to focus on me, my job was to make sure that I was a good mother, a good wife and that I took care of my family and my responsibilities as I set out to do. The error in my thinking was that I had to raise this man who was a boy to be a true man. None of what he does in life was any responsibility of mine, I could not change him, I could not raise him, and I could not make him be somebody that he is supposed to be. That was and is entirely his responsibility.
So, if not me then who is going to take on this huge task? Does this sound like a logical question? It does because how else do we learn how to be a fully functioning healthy adult if someone does not teach us. Unfortunately for addicts, they must teach themselves. They must learn, they must succeed, and they must fail, and they must do it all on their own. It is that struggle of having figured it out on their own that grows them to be some of the strongest, responsible, respected, and healthy adults I have ever met. Perhaps far beyond most of us who never experienced trauma in our childhood, addiction, or unhealthy behaviors. Somehow their faults and bad choices in life turned to be their greatest strengths but only if they do not have a codependent in their life holding their hand. The minute an addict has a codependent by their side they will only fail and take the cruch and never succeed. This brings not just the addict and their spouse down but the whole family causing one trial, tribulation, and trauma after another.
If anyone knows how hard it is to be the spouse of an addict, to watch them fall flat on their face repeatedly and be the one to take care of life on their own while watching them suffer, its me. To have to give your spouse tough love and seem like a cruel person, feel like a cruel person just to protect yourself and your child it will never, not once, be easy. I know what it is like to have to stand there and just be their supporter letting them know that you believe in them, that you love them and see what they are doing is wrong every step of the way and force yourself to stand back and watch them fall knowing that fall is going to hurt them. However, the minute you put your hand out there to stop or blunt their fall is the minute that you have given in the codependent behavior and you have set yourself, your spouse, and your family up for failure. It is not easy to do when the person you love the most is suffering and struggling more than they probably ever will in their entire life.
If I made one mistake in my life that was being codependent on my addict spouse. The best choice I made in my life was letting my addict spouse figure it out for themselves.
Allowing an addict to stand on their own and find their way - the way that works for them - either through religion or a 12-step program will allow them space and ability to become who they were intended to be. It will give them the space to grow, spread their wings and discover their amazingness in a way that can not be done with a codependent. If you step back, as hard as it is, you will see a strong, ambitious, amazing person develop before your eyes. They become someone that you never thought they could be and more. Let them grow because addicts in recovery have a lot to teach those who never experience that kind of struggle and success and quite often can put even a “healthy” person in their place.
Want more? Listen to the episode “Love, Marriage, and Addiction”