Changing the Marriage Relationship After Addiction

We addicts don’t tend to be messed up in just one aspect of our lives. It’s not like we’re just perfectly healthy people in every way except for that one isolated problem. Rather, we tend to be fundamentally flawed people, with a crack at the base that fractures and compromises us all the way through.

One common failing for many addicts is in their relationships with other people, including the spouse. In what way the marriage relationship is flawed varies from addict to addict, but for me it came in the form of abdicating all authority to my wife.

As I think back to my old approach to marriage, I think I just didn’t want to be responsible if things went wrong. If I never had the final say in anything, then nothing could ever be my fault. And so, even in matters that I felt very strongly about, I would downplay any personal opinions and just defer to her judgment.

Of course, I dressed it up very nicely. I told myself that I was just a really nice, really agreeable guy. I was self-sacrificing, unfazed by disappointment, always making sure everyone else was getting what they wanted. In reality, though, I was building up resentments, putting undue stress on my wife, and undercutting my own power. It wasn’t a good way to be.

As I dove into addiction recovery, I started to recognize this unhealthy pattern for what it was, and I knew it had to change. I realized that I wanted to grow up. I wanted my opinions to be taken seriously. I wanted to have the deciding voice on the choices that rightfully belonged to me. I wanted enough space and grace to make and learn from my own mistakes.

Now I’d like to say that my wife and I made this transition immediately and there was no drama whatsoever…but that would be a lie.

Making this change was actually very difficult and conflicted. Since I was so inexperienced in sticking to my guns, there was a lot of trial and error in finding the right tone when I did so. I’d lurch from spineless simp to fire-and-damnation persecutor, creating a lot of unnecessary tension. Meanwhile, years of experience had taught my wife that I would back down on any disagreement if she just turned up the pressure, so things would escalate even further.

At first I blamed my wife for a lot of the difficulty in making this transition to a balanced relationship. As I thought about it, though, I realized that a large part of why she expected me to adapt to her whims was because I had conditioned her to do exactly that. From the very start of our relationship, I had demonstrated to her that I didn’t want her to take my feelings seriously. So now she was experiencing the whiplash of me being angry at her for doing the very things that I had been asking her to do for years!

When I realized that, I concluded that I carried at least half of the responsibility for what the relationship was, and for why we were having a hard time in changing it. Of course, none of that changed the fact that I still wanted to make that change, but it gave me greater empathy and patience as I took ownership for my part of the problem.

Gradually, my wife and I settled into a new dynamic. I learned that it was possible to hold my ground in a way that was calm and confident. By doing that consistently and peacefully, my wife and I naturally reoriented ourselves to one another.

Changing the relationship was like wading out into the middle of a riverbed. At first, your new presence seems to be an intolerable disturbance to the already established flow, with the water violently sloshing and trying to knock you down so that it can continue undisturbed. But if you find your place and stand still, the river will soon develop a new cadence that takes your presence into account. The trick is to not be so discouraged by the momentary chaos that you quit before peace reestablishes itself. You can have a better relationship than you’ve ever had before, just by consistently showing up as the new you.

By Abe, Writing Team