The Fifth C: Your Connection with Your Loved One Transcends Their Addiction

In this series of 7 posts, we are exploring the 7 C’s. Today our topic is The Fifth C: Your Connection with Your Loved One Transcends Their Addiction

Ever watch someone hear the story of an addict and cavalierly say, “Why on Earth is she/he married to that person?” or, if the conversation is about someone’s adult child, “If that were my child, I’d kick him out and never talk to him again.”

Easy to say. After all, sometimes an addict’s behavior is totally unbearable. Perhaps you’ve even had such thoughts yourself.

But, cutting oneself off from one’s addicted loved on is neither easy nor necessarily desirable to do.

The question this C strives to answer is basically: Why is it that family members stick by their addicts through Hell and back?

There’s been a lot of press about the family disease, how the family becomes sicker than the addict, and the family holds on because they are codependent.

At the same time, there’s lots of talk about how much harder it is for parents than for spouses, that a spouse can get a divorce but a parent is connected forever.

Well, every buzz has some truth to it. But why is it so darn hard for parents, spouses, siblings, fiances, and steady girlfriends and boyfriends to simply let go when things get out of hand with the addiction?

While theories of codependence and type of relationship do hold true to some extent, this C posits the obvious and makes it okay to admit without reference to illness.

When people bond, as parent and child, as sibling, as husband or wife, as friends, those bonds transcend what happens along the way. If one person has a heart attack, the other person doesn’t walk out. If one person is an addict, the other usually does not just walk out the door, though the behavior may injure the relationship, and sometimes the stress of the situation takes years to repair.

Meanwhile,society looks down as much on the family for staying as it does on the addict for using.

This C says, the bond is deeper than the addiction. This is not an excuse to interact with your loved one in an unhealthy manner. Quite the opposite.

Being A Loving Mirror (BALM®) work is here to teach family members how to take that bond and use it to energize yourself to do the family recovery work needed to make things better for yourself and hopefully for your loved one as well.

So, next time someone says, “if that were my child, spouse, sister, etc. I wouldn’t….,” all you have to say is, “But they’re not. They’re mine. And my love transcends their addiction.”

Stay tuned for the Sixth C: You Can Communicate in a Way that Can Make A Difference.

Until then,

Have A Loving Day!

Best,
Coach Bev

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