You might wonder why we're interested in a client's personal relationships. What's the point of interfering with mother nature?
But experience has taught us that a quick path to relapse is a recovery romance. All of a sudden, instead of focusing on the nuances of staying sober, the client spends most of the day fantasizing about his or her sweetheart. Here's this wonderful creature who has led him out of the bleak landscape of recovery into the hormone-laced joy of a new romance. The world has come alive. Our self-esteem is boosted when we find that somebody, anybody, cares about us.
Some clients rush headlong into romances with little thought. The romance is a substitute for the drug they haven't been successful at using. They don't stop to think that 50% of most marriages end in divorce – and that's among so-called "normal" people. I've never read any statistics about the success of marriages between addicts or alcoholics. My guess would be that they fail at an even higher rate. And when the client is on psychiatric medications or suffers mental illness, the failure rate is likely even higher.
Over the last 25 years, we've seen many clients pair up and live together, or else get married. Many of them even have had children, but I can probably count on one hand TLC clients who have succeeded at long-term marriages or relationships.
Our recommendation to those who are head over heels in love with another alcoholic or addict is to give it a year and simply work on recovery. A year is nothing for people who are truly in love.
If they last that long and are solid into recovery, that's the time to get more serious.
They often accuse us of being mean because we don't understand what they're feeling. But all we're trying to do is protect them from themselves - to keep them from heading into another relapse.
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Click here to email John
