Ending Relationships Carefully & Constructively
Here are some tips on how to effectively and gently end a relationship with someone who has a drug addiction:
Theyre Not Themselves Anymore
Probably the most difficult thing to admit when youre stuck in a relationship with an addict is that youre dating someone who isnt really themselves half the time. *Drugs affect thoughts, behaviors, and emotions.
The person you fell in love with is somewhere behind the person who needs drugs or alcohol to function. The fun, happy times you shared are now masked by betrayal, rage, and their daily stupor. This isnt the person you agreed to experience life with.
*Addiction does not mean a person is a terrible human. Everyone, even those caught in the worst addictions, has feelings, life experiences, and significance.
Im not saying addicts are evil or cruel people who you should always stay away from.
But the truth is, living with someone whos not willing to receive help for addictive behavior is no way to continue a healthy relationship. It can be damaging to both people involved.
You Enable The Addict
Many people who choose to stay in a romantic relationship with a drug addict become enablers. An enabler is a person that supports negative and self-destructive behavior in another person. Often, an enabler is someone that is close to the person with the problem that he or she is enabling. So, its not uncommon for romantic partners of drug addicts to become enablers. Unfortunately, though, enabling a drug addict is harmful to both the drug addict and the enabler.
Individuals who suffer from addiction while also having an enabler dont have to feel uncomfortable or face the full consequences of their actions. This is because the enabler is often taking care of the person who has an addiction. Enablers also fix any problems that the drug addict creates due to his or her addiction.
As long as an addict is able to remain comfortable in life and be taken care of, he or she will never have a desire to change and get better. Therefore, oftentimes the most loving thing that a significant other can do for his or her romantic partner who is suffering from addiction is end the relationship.
In doing this, people force their loved ones with an addiction to feel the consequences of their actions. This also holds the addicted individual accountable for those actions. This will, in turn, force the addict to get help to fix his or her own problems by attending rehab.
Also Check: How Long Does It Take To Stop Nicotine Addiction
The Relationship Between Drugs And Love
Even if drug addicts loves their partner, their addiction allows them to crave the drug even more. This is one of the most significant effects of addiction and relationships. A article on PsychCentral lays out the sobering facts, stating that being in a relationship with a person who consumes drugs is unhealthy and dysfunctional by design.
According to the author, the drug addicts will not choose opioids over the partner on purpose rather, her addiction drives her to go in search of chemical fulfillment, which no height of expression of love, sex, or companionship, can fill. As addiction and relationship coexist, the relationship becomes a means of control, and the users every rational and irrational decision about the relationship will inevitably be to achieve her next intoxication.
Dating An Addict: Should I Stay Or Should I Go
Like the song says, breaking up is hard to do. A breakup can be even harder when youre leaving a relationship because your partner cant shake off the long shadow cast by past addiction. If you are dating an addict, or married to one who is still caught up in a relapse cycle, it can be hard. It also hurts if they choose their addiction over you. You want to support them through their illness, but you also know their addiction is taking a toll on you. How do you know whether to stay or go?
Recommended Reading: How To Control Your Addiction
Tips To Cope With An Addicts Manipulation
When you recognize that the addict in your life is manipulating you, its important to remember that you have every right to protect yourself from harm, physically, emotionally, and mentally. You are entitled to voice your own opinions and needs, and you deserve to be treated with respect. Although the person attempting to manipulate you will not like to hear these things, its essential that you start by setting boundaries.
You can still love your addicted friend or family member without sacrificing your own happiness or giving in to their manipulative ways. In fact, by standing up for yourself and refusing to be manipulated, you may even help them realize that they need to change and should seek help for their addiction.
Here are a few different ways you can immobilize the manipulation of an addict:
You Arent The Solution Either
Its easy to enter into a relationship with someone who has problems feeling as though, through your own tenacity and strong will, you can whip them into shape and have them living the good life in no time at all. But the truth is, the desire to change can be helped along by outside forces but ultimately has to come from within. In the same way you arent the problem, you also arent the solution. Your relationship with them wont be what cures them.
Recommended Reading: How Long Does It Take To Get Addicted To Benzos
A Breakup With An Addict Can Leave A Person Feeling Particularly Bitter Here Are Four Lessons One Man Learned From A Split With His Alcoholic Girlfriend
Breakups arent easy. Theyre even harder when the reason why it all fell apart escapes you. Being able to identify the reason for a breakup offers at least some semblance of comfort, even if the world seems like a cold, sad place. However, sometimes the reason is there, but its difficult to understand. In my case, I didnt understand how someone could choose alcohol over me.
In what felt like seconds, seven years of my life were gone. She hung up the phone on me like I was a telemarketer. She told me that because I didnt agree with her lifestyle, I wasnt going to be a part of it.
The voice on the other end didnt sound like the person I had fallen in love with the joy and quiet kindness were gone, and had been replaced with a cold, slurring pragmatism. The click of the phone and the dial tone that followed were the only closure I had. How could I make sense of something like this? The fact was, for a long time, I couldnt. I couldnt see from her perspective, and since Im not an alcoholic, I probably never will. The most I could do was try my best to understand, find meaning in my own life, and pick up the pieces one by one to create something new out of what was left.
1. Dont blame anyone.
2. Reflect
3. Let go.
4. Forgive
My breakup had no closure. I was stuck on that for a long time. I felt as though I had so much left to say, but I could never tell her how I felt. Thats okay. While closure can come from the outside, it can also come from within.
About the Author
Find Yourself A Support System
Getting out of an unhealthy relationship without a support system could be very difficult. Find a support system such as a support group, therapist, or family and friends, to talk about your situation. This way, the breakup wont have to be dealt with internally all by yourself.
For a lot of people, having a support system after dating a drug addict can be a turning point. Others are able to understand your situation and help you get through tough times. A support system can help the individual by reminding them to put themselves as a priority to stay sane. Seeking therapy for your struggles and attending support groups can be beneficial to coping with a breakup.
Don’t Miss: How To Conquer Sugar Addiction
What Will Happen If You Stay Together
A clear sign that its time to end the relationship with a drug addict is if staying with the drug addict will likely lead to his or her condition getting worse. If you feel that nothing will change for the better if you stay with your addicted loved one, youll need to end your romantic relationship.
When Someone You Love Is An Addict
Youre dealing with someone different now.
When an addiction takes hold, the person you love disappears, at least until the addiction loosens its grip. The person you love is still in there somewhere, but thats not who youre dealing with. The person you remember may have been warm, funny, generous, wise, strong so many wonderful things but addiction changes people. It takes a while to adjust to this reality and its very normal to respond to the addicted person as though he or she is the person you remember. This is what makes it so easy to fall for the manipulations, the lies and the betrayal over and over. Youre responding to the person you remember but this is not that person. The sooner youre able to accept this, the sooner you can start working for the person you love and remember, which will mean doing what sometimes feels cruel, and always heartbreaking, so the addiction is starved of the power to keep that person away. The person you love is in there support that person, not the addict in front of you. The sooner youre able to stop falling for the manipulations, lies, shame and guilt that feeds their addiction, the more likely it will be that the person you remember will be able to find the way back to you.
Be patient.
Go for progress, not perfection. There will be forward steps and plenty of backward ones too. Dont see a backward step as failure. Its not. Recovery never happens in a neat forward line and backward steps are all part of the process.
Also Check: What Is The Most Addictive Drug
Addictions Effect In Ones Relationship Psychologically And Economically
The Issue of How Families Are Affected by Drug Addicts Is Not Recent.
SAMHSA analyzed pre-existing research in 2004 on addiction and relationship concerning drug addicts, and discovered that addiction affects different relationship systems differently. To cover or compensate a parents who are drug addicts, children can be pushed into awkward or unfamiliar positions. If their relationship with the addicts including their behavior is discovered, members of the extended family can be subjected to traumatic feelings of guilt and embarrassment.
When coping with a spouse that is a drug addicts, the effects of a drug abuse issue are usually divided into economical and psychological . When addiction and relationship is involved, money may be diverted from investments and mutual interests to fund a habit. Mood swings, lack of commitment from the person they love, decreased sexual desire and functioning, and other emotional neglect types could be experienced by the partners of drug addicts psychologically .
They may even be forced into being accomplices in their partners drug addicts actions, tricked into covering up their actions on their behalf, or going as far as even supplying them with narcotics, all in the name of love and trying to maintain both addiction and relationship.
> > > READ THIS NEXT: Ways to Impel a Loved One to Seek Treatment
Drug & Alcohol Use Statistics
Drug and alcohol abuse affect millions of adults ages 18 and older in the United States. The results of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health provide the following data on drug and alcohol use:
- In 2005, 7.7 million Americans, age 12 and older, reported current use of illicit drugs.
- In 2015, an estimated 27.1 million Americans, age 12 or older, were currently using illicit drug.
- There were 138.3 million Americans aged 12 or older, in 2015, who reported current use of alcohol. Out of this group, 66.7 million people reported binge drinking in the past month..
- In American, 22.2 million people, aged 12 or older, in 2015 were current users of . Out of this group 8.3% reported using marijuana in the past month.
- About 1.6 million adults ages 18-25 and 4.3 million adults age 26 and older, in 2015, reported use of psychotherapeutic drugs, which included prescription pain relievers, tranquilizers, and stimulants, for non-medical reasons.
Many of these adults are involved in some type of cohabiting relationship, and these partners are feeling the painful repercussions of alcohol or drug abuse. Whether this relationship involves marriage, a domestic partnership, or a more informal living arrangement, substance abuse affects everyone in the home, not just the individual who is addicted. Effective therapeutic interventions involve both partners as well as their children.
Recommended Reading: How Do I Help An Addict
How To Break Free Of Fear Addiction
How to Break Free of Fear Addiction by Dr. Joseph Mercola
- In his book United States of Fear, psychiatrist Mark McDonald diagnoses the U.S. as suffering from mass delusional psychosis, driven by an irrational fear of what is now a rather innocuous virus
- The fearful overreaction didnt have its origin in what happened in 2020. Government, corporations and powerful individuals have engaged in a systematic grooming effort toward irrational fear addiction for decades
- Without fear, they cannot rob us of our freedoms
- The underlying motivation of this psychological campaign has been an attack on the core structures, foundations and institutions of society in order to nurture a sense of dependency on government
- To overcome their addiction to fear, a person must still have a sense of curiosity and be willing to look at new information. If theyre not, theyre not treatable and cannot be stopped from trading their freedom for a false sense of security. So, the key is finding those who are still open and receptive to new information, so that we can reach a tipping point where there are more fearless people than fear addicted ones
I noticed that there was something bigger than just politics at play with the whole rise of the pandemic. About 10 to 20% of my patients, they either left abruptly without saying anything or they argued with me. Some of them actually attacked me personally and condemned me.
Sometimes People Are Not Able To Change
In a picture-perfect world, someone you love suffering from addiction can beat their addiction and carry on as though it never happened. But addiction isnt that simple, and life isnt always that nice.
Becoming not addicted sometimes just isnt possible, and some people simply wont be able to change. Each year, there were more than 70,000 overdose fatalities in the United States alone.
You May Like: Why Do People Become Addicted
Recognize That You Cannot Force Change
An addict is not going to give up his or her habit by being pressured by loved ones. Ultimately, addicts will get help when they are good and ready for help often, pressure from friends and family that mean well can lead to the addict isolating themselves from the very people who love them the most, simply to avoid feeling “nagged.” If they are not ready, they are not ready.
The Correlation Between Addiction Abuse And Relationship
Among the multiple aspects of relationships is sexuality, and how this sexuality is affected by drug abuse can have an effect on how all of the other elements of their relationship work out in the drug addicts life. Increased chances of emotional and physical abuse among partners as trust levels and intimacy are affected by decreasing sexual ability, escalated periods of being depressed, and wild mood swings . This is a very important aspect while considering addiction and relationship in drug addicts.
Researchers interviewed a total number of 106 fathers in 2011 who were undergoing methadone addiction care and discovered that these men who had become opioids drug addicts were mentally, emotionally, and psychologically abusive to their partners more than men in control groups. These researchers publishing in American Journal of Orthopsychiatry came to this conclusion concerning addiction and relationship in drug addicts.
- Partners may be raped , tricked into carrying out sexual favors, humiliated physically, or denied of sex.
- Fear and intimidation may be used to intimidate and monitor partners of drug addicts who do not engage in substance addiction or even part of being high on drugs.
- Partners maybe be screamed at, mocked, called derogatory names, and dismissed
Read Also: Can Cheating Be An Addiction
S To Break Your Addiction To A Person
In his book, How to Break Your Addiction to a Person, Howard Halpern first explains what an addictive relationship is, then gives guidelines for recognizing if youre involved in one. Then, he offers several techniques on how to end an unhealthy relationship .
Ive compiled and adapted all of his suggestions into the following dozen techniques, excerpting what I found to be the most important passages for each.
1. Keep a Relationship Log
Keep track of the events and happenings of the relationship, but above all, and in as honest detail as you can, set down your feelings about the contacts with your partner. The reasons this can be extraordinarily helpful are It compels you to notice what is going on and how you feel about it, It can help you to look back through it and see the shape of the relationship, what it has really been like and felt like, what have been its patterns over time, and It can curb your tendencies to distort the relationship by either twisting events, repainting your feeling and forgetting either the unpleasant or the pleasant.
2. Find the Patterns
It can be eye-opening to see if there is a pattern in the people you have tended to get involved with and the types of relationships you have formed, so unless your current partner is the only love relationship you have had, I suggest you do a Relationship Review.
3. Write Memos to Yourself
4. Make Connections.
5. Foster a Supportive Network
7. Be Aware of Your Body
