How Divorce Impacts Your Addiction Recovery Journey

The past had come back for vengeance on the present, and the only way forward for my relationship was to fully resurrect the pain and tell my wife how sorry I was all over again. I put a burden on sobriety’s shoulders that it couldn’t possibly carry. After decades of drinking, I stopped, and I expected all the pain to—poof—just go away. There are so many things wrong with that declaration and question I shouted at my wife on several sober occasions before I relapsed and returned to active alcoholism. In Debbie’s case, she initiated the divorce  recognizing that it was a critical success factor in getting sober.

He’s Sober. Now What? A Spouse’s Guide to Alcoholism Recovery

• Soberlink is a tool that can help parents manage their alcohol abuse, while continuing to foster relationships with their children.
• Unfortunately, divorce is a reality for millions of Americans, and people struggling with addiction — as well as those currently in addiction recovery —  are far from exempt.
• We had survived alcoholism and faced the extreme likelihood of our marriage dissolving in sobriety.
• Though marriage can be a protective factor against substance use, substance use and addiction can be a severe risk factor for marriage troubles and ultimately lead to divorce.
• Understanding the nuances of alcohol misuse and its impact is vital for judges, lawyers, and all parties involved in custody disputes.

Regarding marital assets, substance abuse isn’t usually relevant. However, it can be if alcoholism harms assets or debt. For example, if the alcoholic partner collected significant debt on a joint credit card to fund their problem.

• In the context of a divorce, it is the alcohol misuse and its impact on the children and family that is of concern to the courts.
• The methods used within treatment may vary depending on the state of a person’s marriage.
• These are my best tips as you work through your divorce and sobriety.
• Those questions haunted me for a long time as Bill struggled to reconnect with his emotions.

Learn More About Soberlink

Twice I made it six months, and once I made it nine months sober. But every time until the last, I eventually started drinking again. I tried to solve my overdrinking problem on too many occasions to count. I came up with rules to limit my intake and keep me in line. I didn’t drink on weekdays, I stuck to beer and avoided hard liquor, I only allowed myself a certain preset quantity and I drank a glass of water between each alcoholic beverage.

Divorce And Addiction: The Impact On Children

If a court determines that safeguards are no longer necessary, it will relax them, either gradually or immediately, depending upon the circumstances. For many divorcing couples, resolving custody can often be the most protracted part of the process. Milestones could include supervised visits and divorce rates after sobriety phone calls after 10 days sober, public park visits after 30 days sober, and so on. It might feel punitive but it will give everyone confidence that you are serious about your sobriety and the safety (emotional and physical) of your kids. It will begin to rebuild trust with your ex and shift the narrative so that you can ultimately have a healthy co-parenting relationship.

• Faced with the stark reality of these issues, many couples may begin contemplating divorce.
• And I made the people around me just as miserable.
• Codependency keeps people from having healthy relationships, so unless this dynamic is changed, sobriety may not be enough to keep the cycle from continuing.
• I don’t want to think about the small mortgage we pissed away on alcohol and cigarettes.

The Center for Disease Control defines heavy drinking as eight or more drinks per week for women and fifteen or more drinks per week for men. We blew those CDC guidelines clean out of the water. A friend of my ex-husband’s was in town, so a group of us gathered on board under the setting sun and took turns swigging from a warm bottle of iced tea vodka, a la Jack Sparrow and crew. It was a special occasion that lasted eight years. Still, there was something old school and romantic in the way we mimicked real pirates—singing and swaying and getting drink, drank, drunk as the stars came out over our chain of barrier islands. Eventually, I left the industry and started over at a community college in my South Jersey hometown.

Why Can it Be Hard to Divorce an Alcoholic?

That question without an answer was paralyzing for a long time. I had to recover from addiction, and my wife had to recover from so many years spent in codependency and dysfunction. We both had an uphill battle, but on top of all of that—on top of what we thought were the greatest challenges of our lives—we had to try to recover our marriage. And we didn’t have a clue how to begin to do that. In a relationship, sobriety isn’t the end of anything.

If you’ve never learned how dramatically our adult lives are informed by our childhoods, then you probably haven’t battled trauma, asked questions and listened carefully to the answers. They say opposites attract, and that seems true in our case, but we seem to mix like oil and vinegar. We can hold it together for a while, but we spend a lot of time in mystifying separation. Substance use disorder doesn’t only affect the person who’s addicted to drugs and alcohol — it affects loved ones as well, especially the partner who’s living with the person experiencing addiction. Alcoholism destroys trust, intimacy and our ability to forgive. It leaves the collateral damage of resentment and the spouse’s defence mechanisms in its wake, and enough pain to last a lifetime.

I want to believe somehow that it won’t happen again. I want to know the unknowable.” Those are the answers I wish my wife had given when I asked her what more she wanted from me when I quit drinking. But she didn’t share that answer because she didn’t understand it, either.

Signs Of Substance Use Damage To A Relationship

I met my ex-husband working on a magic little sandbar off the North Carolina coast. If you’ve vacationed here, or on any beach in America, you’ve seen the signs to “Rent Jet Skis”, and hop aboard vessels with names like Fish’n Frenzy and Knot Today. Remember the movie Wedding Crashers, when Claire Cleary giggles at her sister’s cheesy, nautical wedding vows between captain and mate? Our lives were a lot like this—minus the cheese, plus the booze. We were two of the tanned, glistening twenty-somethings working in the wild world of commercial water sports. But underneath the Baywatch, beach body veneer lurked an increasingly casual relationship to alcohol that I began to question.

And I made the people around me just as miserable. We drank and chain-smoked in our respective lawn chairs. By the third or fourth drink, we’d settle into a rhythm. It was the most emotionally challenging thing I’d ever taken on and it sucked the life out of me. The culture shock, strains of a new marriage, being so far removed from family and familiarity, and the job… oh my God, the job.