Suggested Meeting Topics Issues For Recovering Couples We have developed 12 presuppositions about couples who are in recovery. The following is a brief outline: Couples are a oneness. Together two people who are in a committed relationship form a coupleship, a oneness, a distinct and separate entity. This coupleship has a life of its own and needs to be nurtured appropriately. Couple recovery depends on this nurturance. Both partners in a relationship need individual recovery: meetings, sponsors, therapy, a support group, spirituality, recreation, vocation, and other individual interests. A coupleship needs these same elements for couple recovery. There are, then, three elements of couple recovery. Our individual recoveries are the two basic components. Our coupleship's recovery is the third component. One of the symbols of RCA is the three-legged stool. Each leg represents one of these components. If one leg is missing, the stool will fall. If one component is missing, the relationship will fail. This is why, for example, many of us know how hard it is for one partner to be identified as the addict and in recovery while the other partner has no individual recovery. One partner grows and the other doesn't. Individual recovery for only one partner will, therefore, produce more distance in the relationship. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In addictive relationships, the partner of a primary addict is referred to as the co-addict. Addiction theory suggests that this person is often a co-dependent and/or an enabler. Some co-addicts have assumed that if the addict gets sober they will no longer be co-addicts. This is not true. Co-addiction is a disease in and of itself. Co-addicts grow up in families where they learn to cope with addictions of all kinds on the part of other family members. They may find that throughout their lives they related to a series of addicts. Their current partner is just another in a long list. They make a choice to be with their current partner for good reasons. They will not get well just because their partner is recovering. Being in relationship with an addict is normal for them. Co-addicts should, therefore, be in recovery for themselves. Sobriety becomes learning healthy self-nurture, boundaries, and individuality. Co-addicts may have their own primary addiction(s). It is not uncommon that two addicts are in relationship and are co-addicted to each other. Each one might historically claim that his or her addiction is fueled by trying to cope with his or her partner. This is not true. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Both partners must accept responsibility for the health or disease of their relationship. Each of us brings our own addictions, personalities, family-of-origin messages, and various individual dysfunctions into the relationship. The relationship doesn't create them. The elements brought by both partners contribute to the nature of the relationship. This does not mean that we are responsible for any addictive or dysfunctional behavior on our partner's part. Those behaviors are his/her responsibility and reflect choices that he/she makes in order to cope with feelings (including the feelings generated by the state of the relationship). Both of us are responsible for the presence or absence of intimacy between us. As soon as each of us accepts mutual responsibility, we are ready for the First Step of RCA: "We admitted that we were powerless over our relationship and that our life together had become unmanageable." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Both partners may be co-dependent. This factor may be an aspect of our co-addiction with each other. Partner codependency is really based on profound fear of abandonment, deep shame, and a strong need for approval. Enmeshed partner attachments may result and we may seek to control our partner and prevent him/her from leaving. There can be two basic styles of this control. In one style, we seek to manipulate our partner by always doing what we think he/she needs or wants. As this kind of co-dependent, we would almost literally die for our partner. This style might also include a victim stance which projects an image of being such a poor, wretched, mistreated person that no one would ever leave us. The other style is a more directly manipulative one. In this style, we use anger, orders, argumentation, and/or the suggestion (in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle ways) that we are superior and should control the behavior of our partner. This is still codependency in that it is based on the deep fear of our partner leaving. Addictive relationships are codependent ones. Each of us fears the other leaving, and we both use our own personal co-dependent style to seek to prevent this from happening. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Both partners probably suffer from intimacy disorder. Intimacy disorder is based on the individual feeling of shame that says, "If you really knew me, you would hate me." Intimacy disorder produces a fear of intimacy and an inability to be honest and vulnerable with our partner. One of the maxims of intimacy disorder is that we will be least honest with the person we are most afraid of losing. Many of us experience great resentment because our partner seems to be able to be totally honest with relative strangers but not with us. We need to realize that we may be the last one to know, not because our partner is willingly trying to deceive us or because he/she doesn't care, but because he/she is deathly afraid of losing us. Ultimately, intimacy is a matter of practice. We must learn to take great risks to tell the truth about ourselves, the truth about old behaviors, feelings, attitudes, preferences, and needs. As we take these risks we will find that our partners usually don't leave, but that they are grateful for our honesty. Practicing like this will build trust and intimacy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Both partners usually have significant family-of-origin issues. The limited amount of research that has been conducted with addicted couples would suggest that each of us is a victim of some kind of abuse. Addicted couples learn unhealthy styles of relationship in their families. We don't receive healthy modeling of intimacy and nurturing. Each of us may be the victim of invasive abuse in which our personal boundaries have been violated emotionally, physically, sexually, or spiritually. Such abuse creates suppressed anger and rage, and profound fear and anxiety. Addictions may develop as ways of coping with these feelings. Each of us may also be the victim of abandonment abuse, in which our needs for nurturing were not met by one or both of our parents (or primary caretakers). This form of abuse leaves deep holes which are full of great loneliness. We may suppress memories of and feelings about invasive abuse. The feelings, however, can be provoked without the memories becoming con scious. Our partner may say or do something that reminds us of our abuse. This may produce the old but buried feelings. The reactions, such as anger, that occur may seem out of proportion to the current event. Many couples, for example, fight over trivial matters. Our rage or sadness may seem totally inappropriate. We may get mad at our partner for over-reacting. Unsolved arguments and "mysterious" emotional reactions can often be traced to family-of-origin issues. We can learn to be patient with each other and help each other trace back to the roots of these feelings. Abandonment abuse creates the codependency that is described in point four. It is based on fear of current abandonment. Often one of us hopes that our partner will solve the feeling of abandonment. We may think that our partner will be the nurturing parent we never had. We may hear ourselves saying, "I'm not your mother (or father)." No partner can ever take the place of a parent. When we realize this fact, pressure is taken off our partner to be someone he/she can never be. True partner intimacy can then proceed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In order to stay together, one partner or both partners may need to divorce their parents. This assumes that one or both of our parents is/are the abusers. If the abuse has been invasive, we will need to create boundaries around the abusive parent. This can mean a variety of things, from not being able to see or talk to that parent, to limits on the frequency or nature of visits. This will be particularly true if there is fear that the parent will continue the pattern of abuse with grandchildren. If the abuse has been abandonment, we will need to grieve the loss. This might involve significant amounts of counseling and/or group support. Grief work must be verbalized. When this happens over time, pressure will be taken off the our partner to be the perfect nurturer. If we can divorce our abusive parents, we won't need to divorce each other. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Addicted couples are full of illusions about ideal relationships. We will have a list of characteristics of what makes an ideal couple. For example, we may think that an ideal couple never violates vows, has a certain amount of money, perfect kids, etc. Sometimes this list is fueled by religious values. For example, a couple might think that "The sun should never set on our anger." Such a couple might argue well into the night trying to get it right. A couple should make a list of these ideals. Some of them will be totally unrealistic. Perhaps, for example, we will never obtain the money we thought we would have, or our kids will never be perfect. We must let go of these ideals and perhaps grieve over them. Some of the list can be reclaimed. Wedding or commitment vows can be rededicated. Perhaps other ideals are also realistic but require work to obtain. Some of the ideals may require help to achieve. Perhaps it is realistic to have a certain amount of money, but our coupleship will need help to set budgets, balance the checkbook, or make wise investments. This help can even take the form of specific sponsors for these goals, such as a financial sponsor- couple. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just as an individual addict has slips, so will a couple. An individual in recovery knows that he/she must maintain his/her program, that addiction is a lifetime disease. Likewise as a recovering couple, we must maintain our program for life. If we don't, old patterns of dysfunction will return. Slips happen to couples when our communication breaks down, when old fights and patterns of interaction take place again, and when we start distancing from each other. As couples in recovery, we have a sense of this- that our intimacy is breaking down. If we can listen to ourselves at these times we will recognize that an old and familiar loneliness returns to us, angers and resentments are resurrected, and fear of abandonment is elevated. When we start to distance, old individual patterns of addiction may be the way in which we do so. A symptom of the distancing may be that one of us criticizes some of these old addictive patterns, which in turn may cause our partner to further distance. This creates a couple addictive cycle and causes us to further distance from each other. At these times we need to remember to practice the tools of recovery. The aid of our sponsoring couple should be enlisted, meetings should be attended, and our contracts resurrected and re-examined. If the slip has become really deep, we can see a counselor. Slips may mean that old family-of-origin issues have surfaced. If this is true, we can seek individual counseling. If our individual addictions have also surfaced as a method of coping, then our individual recovery tools must be employed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There will be little social support for the relationship. We have found that when a couple gets into recovery, the social system around them may not understand the changes or support them. Certainly families which are not in recovery will have an investment in maintaining the old ways of interaction. They might discourage any changes. For example, one couple changed their anniversary date after having recommitted their vows. Their parents and other family members could not grasp this change and refused to recognize it. Many of us also receive passive-aggressive comments or questions about our recovery. This dynamic may include our children. If they have grown used to their relationship to us in dysfunction, then recovery changes, which bring us closer together and cause us to spend more time together, might be hard for them. Some of us, in our loneliness, might have spent more time with a child. The need for this might stop in recovery. Children can demonstrate behaviors which indicate their fear of abandonment when their parents get into recovery. Obviously, we need to assure our children that they are still loved and give them special time and attention. Old friendships, formed during our addictive days, also may not understand the changes in us. Conversations with them become like speaking Greek. They seem superficial. These friendships might also lead toward old addictive patterns. We don't want necessarily to do away with old friends, but we may need to be careful. We will find that new recovering friends will be the ones we gravitate toward. Social and economic conditions may not be supportive of couple recovery. For example, we may face a situation in which both partners need to work. Time for the relationship may be at a premium. If we are trying to share responsibilities around the home or the care of the children, employers may not understand a need for creative scheduling. Old debts or economic concerns may threaten us and raise old issues. Ultimately a recovering couple must be ready to go to any length to recover. This could mean a willingness to make any lifestyle changes we need in order to survive. We might also need to grieve the loss of family support, friendships, and even jobs, houses, or communities. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If a couple doesn't work on their relationship, the same issues will surface with different partners in the next relationship. This means that we must practice couple recovery with our partner. Many of us had many years of individual recovery in place when we met our partner. Our couple issues were the same when we got into the relationship as the ones we experienced in previous relationships. Divorce or separation and individual recovery are not answers to couple problems. We may be the strongest person possible, but our relationship issues will be the same until they encounter healing in relationship. This does not mean that we should stay in a relationship at all costs. If our partner can't participate mutually in recovery and if the relationship is destructive, it might be a matter of emotional and/or physical safety to get out. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Couples will experience shame just as individuals do. This is called "coupleshame." We must be aware that our individual shame gets doubled in relationship when we become convinced that we are a terrible couple. We are terrible friends, parents, sexual partners, managers of money, communicators, etc. We can think that we are in the worst relationship imaginable. The only solution seems to be to end the relationship. The answer for coupleshame is the same as for individual shame. We must tell our story to other couples and experience that we are not alone in our problems. In this way we also can experience affirmation for ourselves as couples. Gradually over time our relationship will heal and we will experience gifts of intimacy that few other couples know. In these ways our shame will heal. If we understand these principles of addictive couples, we can also reduce our shame. Since we come from dysfunctional families, is it any wonder that we have had imperfect relation- ships? We learn to give ourselves a break. We have done the best that we could. Greater gifts of loving are possible, but only as we practice the Steps and grow together in our recovery.