Breaking the Vicious Cycle of Addiction and Divorce
One thing divorce and substance abuse have in common is they are both bad solutions to ordinary problems.
In fact, neither substance abuse nor divorce are solutions. They are escapes. When people sign up for marriage, they sign up to be warriors of love, honoring, cherishing, making choices to seek wisdom to create a family together with somebody and bless that family with love.
Some people honor and love sincerely and courageously and stay in the battle. They pray. They serve. They seek what will bring the greatest good to the family. They care.
Some people see others as possessions for pleasure. Those “assets” or “possessions” who do not comply and bring instant gratification continually can be discarded at will. The promise of marriage to them are nothing but a means of acquisition of pleasure and comfort of marriage. When marriage and family become inconvenient, they run from the battle.
Substance abuse is another way of numbing pain. Sometimes people do this so they can gain strength to face a problem straight on and bring it to resolution. That is not a very good approach because it leads to dependency and addiction. They’re enslaved. When the difficulties of the responsibilities of the family and the world come upon them, they would rather escape through self medication than benefit from facing responsibilities head on and resolving problems.
In a marriage, any kind of addiction can lead to a vicious cycle where the addiction causes marital problems and marital problems cause pain that drives the addict to run to his or her addiction to numb the pain of marital problems.
The solution is so obvious. Break the cycle. But rather than taking positive action to bring this cycle to a close, the couple play ping pong with blame. We hear people use the phrase, “You drove me to drink” or “You are going to drive me to drink”. That would be a veiled threat if it were veiled. It’s a way of saying, “If you don’t stop doing what I hate and begin giving me what I want, I’m going to grab a bottle of whiskey and get snockered”.
Can you see that all of this is a struggle to manipulate and control and gain power over another person through misbehavior?
In a family, boundaries are vital to trust, love, happiness, and health. And, one element of love and courage is the willingness to put away all forms of abuse, dishonesty, and illegitimate control. First, we have to face the situations where we might be tempted to resort to those inappropriate ways and decide to refuse the temptation and deny that temptation any victory. We have to decide not to do anything except through honorable means even if it seems we are the only ones behaving honorably.
Second, we have to make a deliberate, conscious decision not to comply with this kind of controlling behavior no matter what the cost is. We have to refuse to have anything to do with revenge or teaching someone else a lesson and we need to learn to be happy with doing the right thing and lovingly refusing to bail the offender out of his or her consequences for bad behavior. If you have a spouse who escalates to infinity, you may have to separate. You may have to call the police and report a crime. If you have children, it may behoove you to refuse to allow any illegal drugs into your house and make it clear that any found will be reported to police, but you will be happy to stand by your spouse through a drug rehabilitation program.
I wish I could say courage has no costs, but like any precious jewel, courage usually costs, but the costs are nothing compared to the benefits of a courageous heart of love. Courage is a willingness to put up with present pain and danger for the sake of righteousness and a better long term result.
If you want to have a good marriage and a good family, courage is a must-have. Without it, family life degenerates.
