Content medically reviewed by Vicky Magobet, PMHNP-BC, on April 5, 2019.
Struggling with substance abuse is a difficult path to travel. It can interfere with your goals, career, health and happiness. It can take away your ambition and overshadow other aspects of your daily life. Worst of all, it can negatively affect the ones you love.
When you or your spouse suffers from substance addiction, life and love can seem almost impossible to navigate. From employment and financial problems to issues with intimacy and parenting, it might seem like alcohol or drug addiction is pushing your marriage — and your mental health — over the edge. If you're wondering what has gone wrong and if there's any chance of your marriage surviving a drug addiction, you're not alone.
Whether you're an addict or a sober spouse, here's how addiction can impact your marriage — and what you can do to save your relationship.
Drugs and alcohol are expensive habits. When you or your partner is feeding an addiction, a sizable amount of your income will be spent on the substance the addicted spouse needs to get their next fix. This issue does more damage than wasting money you'd otherwise spend on saving for, feeding or housing your family — it can also cause deep-seated resentment or conflict with the other spouse and even lead to legal issues.
Constant reliance on drugs or alcohol can also make you or your spouse unable to provide for the family and unable to hold a job.
If you think substance abuse won't affect your children, you're wrong. Even if you think you're protecting your kids by hiding the truth about you or your spouse's addiction, your children will feel the consequences.
Whether addiction brings the wrong kind of people into your children's lives, affects your ability to provide for them, makes you an absentee parent or affects the way you treat them, you or your spouse's substance addiction will have a negative impact. Even worse, it could expose your kids to substances early and lead them to develop their own addictions later in life.
Sometimes, drugs and alcohol can cause the addicted spouse to become abusive — either physically or psychologically. A marriage cannot be healthy or happy when violence or emotional abuse are involved, and these issues can permanently damage or end the marriage.
The worst way substance abuse can affect your marriage is by wearing down trust. When one partner is constantly lying, letting the other partner down or going back on promises to get a fix, the foundation of the relationship itself will suffer. The sober partner may not be able to trust the addicted partner's word or behavior when it comes to daily life, and these problems can even bleed into the quality of your relationships with friends and extended family.
An alcohol or drug addiction can be devastating for your marriage and your whole family — but it's possible for the relationship to survive if you or your spouse seeks treatment. See the road to recovery and start the healing process with Diamond House Detox today. Call today for same day admittance at (800) 205-6107.
