Are You Enabling Your Partner's Substance Use?
There are about 12.5 million spouses suffering from addiction in the United States, leaving another 12.5 million spouses wondering how to save their partner’s life and their relationship.
Realizing that your partner has a substance use disorder can be a long and trying journey. Depending on the substance and your lifestyle, the signs may be overwhelming clear or seemingly non-existent. Deciding how to address your partner’s substance use can also be a trying matter. You may have brought this issue up before or are apprehensive about creating chaos in the home. Unfortunately, your attempts to keep the peace, maintain the status quo, and be helpful, may be doing more harm than good.
Enabling is “removing the natural consequences to the addict of his or her behavior.” This can be extremely detrimental to both the addict and the family. In fact, research shows that addicts experiencing the negative consequences of their behavior often leads to change.
Some acts of enabling are extremely obvious, like buying the person substances or giving them money, while others are easy to rationalize or dismiss.
Do you think you may be enabling your significant other? Ask yourself these ten questions:
Do you constantly take on responsibilities for them?
Do you find yourself making excuses for them?
Have you purchased substances for your partner?
Are you providing financial support?
Are you always covering up their mistakes?
Do you use substances with them?
Are you constantly saving them from failure?
Do you refuse to acknowledge or discuss their substance use problems?
Do you find yourself blaming their behavior on outside factors like work or family stress?
Do you prioritize their needs before your own?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may be enabling your partner.
It is time to get help. Addiction treatment is important and necessary for the entire family, not just the individual abusing substances. Let’s work together on your patterns of enabling. It could help save you, your partner, and your relationship.