800-671-4304Should I Get a Divorce if I’m Married to an Addict?
Nearly 50 million Americans suffer from substance use disorder. It should come as no surprise that it’s a leading cause of divorce in the United States today. If you are married to someone who struggles with addiction, you may wonder if you should stay with your spouse or leave them. Can a marriage survive drug addiction? Before you can decide if divorce is the best choice for you and your family, read on. Today, we’re sharing more about divorce and addiction, questions you should ask yourself before deciding to end your marriage, factors that make it necessary to get a divorce, and how to help your spouse get addiction treatment.
Is Addiction Grounds for Divorce?
Treatment can save your spouse and your marriage.
Being married to someone with a substance use disorder inevitably leads to pain. It’s hard to watch someone you love suffer, and it’s painful to deal with the destruction that addiction causes in the life you share. For someone without a substance use disorder, it is also incredibly frustrating to know that even though your spouse loves you as much as you love them, they can’t or won’t stop using or drinking, even as their behavior wears away at the once-tight bond between you.
How can a marriage survive drug addiction when addiction not only causes an enormous amount of emotional pain, but also practical problems, such as arrests, DUIs, and lost employment? After all, any problems your spouse creates are equally yours to deal with, because your life is legally bound to theirs.
Divorce may seem inevitable when you consider the often-repeated fact that half of all marriages end in divorce—but wait, this “fact” actually isn’t true at all. In 1980, divorce rates peaked at 40%, but they have been falling ever since. Now, only around 7.1 marriages per 1,000 end in divorce.
Nevertheless, no matter what the national trends may be, deciding whether or not to end your marriage is an intensely personal choice and needs to be based on what is right for your own unique situation. When it comes down to it, addiction is a disease, and your spouse is not responsible for developing the disease. They are, however, responsible for dealing with the consequences of it and getting the professional addiction treatment they need.
Should I Get a Divorce If I’m Married to an Addict?
Before you can decide whether or not to end your marriage to someone with a substance use disorder, you should ask yourself the following questions:
Have you tried to get your spouse into addiction treatment?
Telling someone you love that they need help is rarely enough to make a difference. Even a sensitive, in-depth conversation about addiction may need to take place more than once before your spouse really hears what you are trying to say.
To help persuade your spouse into drug or alcohol rehab, start by learning about the disease of addiction, treatment options for your spouse’s primary substance of use, and what is needed for a successful recovery. This will allow you to communicate with them from a place of knowledge, while also preparing you for the kinds of changes you’ll need to make to be supportive of their drug and alcohol-free life.
Understanding addiction will also help you to deal with the anger and blame you may be feeling toward your spouse, so that you can speak to them without hostility or judgment. Think carefully about the things you want to say in advance, so you can communicate clearly and calmly when the time comes.
When you’re ready to have the big talk, try to pick a time when your spouse will not be using, and the two of you will be unlikely to be interrupted. If you feel unsafe when you think about this discussion, you may want to include a few other people who love your spouse and whom your spouse respects, so you can hold a formal intervention. Either way, go into the discussion prepared with a list of treatment centers to choose from, as well as information about insurance coverage, payment plans, sliding scale fees, or anything else that will make treatment practical and affordable for your family. You don’t want to give your spouse any easy excuses to delay or avoid seeking treatment.
Find the best treatment for your spouse by calling Detox.com today!
SponsoredAre you enabling their addiction?
When you are married to someone with an addiction, it’s natural to want to help them out of that trouble. However, sometimes help can be hurtful, and that’s what we call enabling. You are enabling your spouse’s addiction when you protect them from the consequences of their actions, ignore or deny their problem, or “help” in any way that actually makes it easier for them to keep using or drinking.
Of course, there is a fine line between helping and enabling. While you spouse is more likely to see the need for addiction treatment if you sit back and let them lose their job after they cause a scene at a work function, making excuses and smoothing things over with the boss right away so that your spouse stays employed may be the best thing for your family. Cleaning up your spouse’s messes for the sake of your children is understandable, but cleaning up messes to “protect” your spouse from confronting their own addiction is hurtful. When you do find yourself in these complicated situations, communicate with your spouse to make sure that they’re aware that their addiction directly led to the current mess, and push them to take on as much of the responsibility for clean-up as possible.
There is no fine line when it comes to some forms of enabling, however. Buying drugs or alcohol for your spouse, or drinking or using with them, are damaging actions, no matter what the motivations may be.
Are there other reasons you want a divorce?
Sometimes addiction is just one of many problems in a marriage. While addiction is a disease, cheating is not. Neither is abuse.
It can be easy to blame addiction for everything bad that is in your marriage, and many problems may indeed fade away if your spouse gets treatment and stays sober. You therefore need to figure out what issues between you are a byproduct of the addiction, and which issues may have always been there and will always be there, sobriety or no sobriety. Consider the kind of mistakes you are willing to live with, and the kind you feel are unforgivable. You also need to recognize that there are situations in which a divorce is always the best choice to make. Read on to find out when a divorce is automatically necessary.
When Is It Necessary to Get a Divorce?
Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse: If your spouse is abusing you with verbal cruelty, controlling behavior, violence, and/or sexual activity without your consent, you need to get out. If you aren’t ready to get divorced, you at least need to separate from your spouse and find a new place to live. After you are separated and safe, and your spouse is in treatment, you can work with professionals to determine your next steps forward. They’ll help you understand if you can build a healthy marriage together, or if you need to make a clean break and build a life separate from your ex.
Your children are in danger: If your children are being threatened or abused by your spouse, get out now, get divorced, and take steps to legally protect the children from further abuse. Do the same if your spouse puts your children in danger by driving them around while intoxicated, leaving drugs out where they can be easily found, carelessly smoking in ways that could cause a fire, or any other action that puts your children in danger of physical, emotional, or psychological harm. You need to put the well-being of your children before everything else. Children are helpless to change their own living situations; they rely on you to keep them safe and healthy.
Extreme financial issues: Drug and alcohol addiction can lead to unemployment, as well as many expensive problems, including legal trouble. In addition, supporting an active addiction costs money—possibly money your spouse doesn’t actually have. Being married to someone means being legally tied to their finances. If being married to someone with an addiction is threatening to empty your bank accounts or get you deep into debt, a divorce can protect you from the kinds of financial problems that could take decades to fix.
Your spouse is unwilling to seek treatment: If you’ve stopped enabling your spouse, you’ve tried to persuade them to seek treatment, and you’ve even provided them with practical treatment options, but they still refuse to get the help they need, then there may not be any room for your marriage to improve. Divorce can set you free to find your own health, healing, and happiness. It may also be the catalyst that finally encourages your spouse to recognize the severity of their problem.
Saving Your Marriage with Treatment
If your spouse has an addiction, addiction treatment is necessary. There are many ways to support your spouse through drug and alcohol rehab, many of which will help you as well. Attending couples counseling can help you heal wounds, resolve conflicts, improve communication, and figure out practical steps you can both take to create a healthy marriage that supports addiction recovery and your mutual well-being.
Addiction treatment begins with detox, then continues with a variety of therapies including individual, group, and family counseling sessions. These sessions allow you to work on the root causes of addiction and to help your spouse make the necessary changes to address the mental, emotional, social, and behavioral sides of their addiction behavior. As addiction impacts every aspect of your life, addiction treatment needs to touch on every aspect of your life.
Seeking out support groups for the families of addicts, such as Al-Anon or Nar-Anon, is always a good idea. These meetings are a safe place where you can openly discuss your feelings, receive insight and advice from people who intimately understand your experience, and connect with a community of people who can ensure that you never feel alone in your struggle.
Preparing for the Future
Before your spouse finishes treatment and returns home, you need to prepare yourself. Counseling sessions are an ideal place to work through the changes you’ll need to make and to carefully plan for your spouse’s return. Your home environment needs to be safe for both of you. You should not keep drugs or alcohol in the home, and you should continue to openly communicate with each other.
As your spouse continues to heal and to find new purpose in life, they may need to spend time away from you at counseling, vocational training, work, 12-step meetings, and more. Don’t feel threatened by this—especially since you and your marriage are a large part of why your spouse chose to transform their life in this way. You can use this time to work on your own wellbeing, so that the two of you can be strong both together and apart.
Need help finding a great detox center to help your spouse jumpstart their recovery journey? Browse our online directory now!