Being in a relationship with someone suffering from alcohol addiction comes with numerous challenges. Both partners deserve support in navigating the relationship while ensuring that the alcohol dependence of one doesn’t have the power to damage the connection irretrievably. How you deal with an alcoholic partner has a great deal to do with setting healthy boundaries while remaining open and compassionate. Professional addiction treatment in a women’s rehab center, such as Insight Recovery Centers, for your wife or partner is often the first and most important step in her recovery and your relationship’s survival.
What are the characteristics of an alcoholic in a relationship?
Nobody sets out to become addicted to alcohol, cause themselves physical harm, or challenge their relationships, career, and family. But because alcoholism is a disease that comes with physical dependence and compulsive behavior, the harm happens despite a lack of intent.
In your relationship, your alcohol addicted partner likely:
- Neglects responsibilities
- Behaves erratically, putting themselves, you, family, and career in danger
- Lies and behaves secretively to hide the extent of their alcohol abuse
- Creates chaos in the household that affects everyone
- Withdraws from you and others in their immediate circle
All of these behaviors erode trust, compromise intimacy, and damage the relationship. What does this mean? Can you have a successful relationship with an alcoholic or not? There are things you can do to protect the relationship for now as you support your partner to get help. Have patience because this is a process.
How to deal with an alcoholic partner
Your relationship with someone who has an alcohol use disorder (AUD) probably feels like a minefield. It’s hard to know from one day—or minute—to the next what you will encounter. Your loved one can exhibit behaviors that range from avoidance and isolation to rage and aggression. This unpredictable behavior is one reason why it’s difficult to have a relationship with an alcoholic. Because your loved one has a disease that dominates their thoughts at all times, true communication is profoundly difficult.
There are a number of things to keep in mind as you decide how to handle a relationship with an alcoholic.
Accountability, not enabling
There are natural consequences to addiction. As painful as it may seem for both of you—don’t intervene. Making excuses for their behavior is also damaging and unproductive. It’s merely an extension of your loved one’s dishonesty around alcohol. If you make excuses or try to get your partner out of the real-life outcomes of their alcohol addiction, they won’t perceive any reason to seek change or help.
Support, not control
While you can be supportive and loving in all your actions toward your alcoholic partner, you can’t control them. It’s common for people to want to force change on their loved one. You may think that if only you figured out the one way to make them stop drinking, lying, and self-isolating, you could fix everything. But that isn’t possible. Change must come from within, not from you.
Optimism, not magical thinking
Educating yourself about addiction will allow you to proceed with optimism based on realistic options, such as interventions and rehab. Manage your expectations. If you find yourself thinking you can solve the problem yourself, remind yourself that it’s not your problem to solve.
Self-help, not self-sacrifice
Unfortunately, it’s common for an alcoholic’s significant other to lose sight of their own well-being. Sacrificing yourself to your partner by trying to control or manage everything will wear you down, and you’ll become useless to them. You deserve professional support as much as your spouse does. Reach out to friends you trust. Take time for yourself.
Setting boundaries is an act of love for your partner and yourself. Your clear boundaries will ensure your mental and physical health while also sending a clear message that while you care deeply, you know that accountability lies with your partner. If they have come to depend on you to handle things and get them out of trouble, make it clear that you still love them, but things are going to change.
Join Insight Recovery Center’s women’s rehab center today
If your spouse or significant other is an alcoholic, both of you deserve support. With time and patience, you can heal—individually and together. Insight Recovery Center’s women’s addiction treatment program offers family therapy to help make that happen. Evidence-based modalities, numerous access points to support, and a trigger-free setting staffed by compassionate professionals are all part of our program.
Don’t wait. Call 828.826.1376 today or submit our online contact form so we can talk.