Can't Keep My Mouth Shut - Partners of Addictions - The 3rd Ugly Person in Your Relationship

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

Do you stay and help, or do you leave? When do you know it is time to go? Can they ever change?

This podcast contains strong language and discussions about relationships, sex, and love. It may not be suitable for younger listeners. This is the Sex in Singapore City podcast, and I am Nick Salina. Hi, it's Nick Salina. Welcome back to another episode of my podcast. Today, I'm talking about addictions, and namely, partners of addictions, the third ugly person in your relationship. I've had many discussions over the years with women and men who have been in relationships with a partner who is severely addicted to something.

When we talk about addictions, what do we mean? We mean alcohol, smoking. You can be addicted to coffee. We also mean illegal drugs, prescription drugs. You can be addicted to sex. You can be addicted to sex with strangers. You can be addicted to gambling. It seems to come from anything that gives that person a brief high, if you will.

And before I continue, I'd like to make it very clear, as always, I'm not a doctor. This kind of subject will need help from a professional. I'm merely talking about my experience of being in a relationship with someone who has an addiction and the effects it has. So you could be with a partner that has any one of those addictions or all of those addictions. And there are, of course, many more other addictions as well. But when it comes a problem, as in the word addict arises, is when it starts to have a negative impact on your day-to-day life. You know, I love to go to the casino. I'll go on staycations and have a week away and be like, ah, let's go casino and play some roulette. Fun,

right? If I was doing that every week, or more than once a week, if I was blowing all my rent money on gambling, if I was in casinos more than I'm not, that's when it becomes a problem. problem I love a drink I love bubbles the way to my heart people champagne um yeah I love it I love going out with girlfriends all that jazz when it becomes a problem is when you're drunk more than you're sober when you're finding reasons to open a beer on a Monday when alcohol comes into play and affects your work when alcohol comes into play and affects your family life when alcohol takes over and you make stupid decisions like you cheat on your partner, you go missing, you disappear all night, you end up in hotel rooms with whoever you picked up that night. It becomes a serious problem

when your addiction overtakes your actual daily normal life and how you function, your cognitive behavioral ways is affected by these addictions. What about being the partner? Hmm, okay. So this gets even harder and trickier because partners of people who have addictions, often they're unaware of these addictions until deep into the relationship. Sometimes it doesn't come out until a few years later sometimes the person actually isn't you know an addict maybe they do just you know love the odd cigarette maybe they do take I don't know a prescribed drug for a back pain or they take a prescribed drug for a mental thing you know like anxiety like ADHD and maybe that's how it starts or maybe they have an accident and they break their legs so then they're prescribed

to drug to a painkiller to help that, but then they get hooked on that. Or maybe there's a big incident in their life and then suddenly the alcohol creeps in. Whatever happens to how we get here, the person on the receiving end of being in a relationship with an addict is it's extremely painful and very difficult situation to be in. So if I look at my own past and my relationships where with someone that I personally believed had multiple addictions, it's hard. It's horrible because once you start noticing it, your first reaction is to call them out. You know, like, why are you opening a bottle on a Monday? You were drinking two days ago. You were drinking four days ago. And then it's like, hey, four times out of seven every week, I'm noticing you're

drunk. And it's kind of affecting my home life. And I don't want to do fun nights anymore with you drinking because it's kind of ruined alcohol for me because I'm so aware of how often you're drinking beyond those fun nights. And you start to, I guess, think if you pull them up on it, they'll stop. And I guess that that's probably the mistake I made at the beginning when I realized, fuck, there are serious addictions going on here, is I tried to point them out. I'm pretty sure most addicts deep down are aware of that certain addiction that they have. And you pointing it out is only going to make them resent you, make it worse. For me, I thought that if I opened the conversation and had an honest dialogue about it, and then was

there for support and help that perhaps my partner would then realize that like he's not on his own you know I'm here for you and I see you I see you and I still love you and I know you drink too much and I know you've got all this other stuff going on but I'm not gonna leave you I'm here for you however I won't live like this and there's two people in this house you know that was sort of my aim. I did probably nag about it in hindsight too much. I wasn't clever enough at the time to go in with like the support system route. I was like screaming like you fucking opened a bottle and it's only seven and it's a Monday and you've been drunk all weekend and you've nearly gone through the bottle already and I've only just got home from work like what the fuck you know and all I'd

get is excuses afterwards. Always excuses, always reasons, always reasons to be out drinking, always reasons to not come home, always reasons to end up in a hotel room. Yeah, sadly, this particular alcohol addiction led to me, I believe, being cheated on. And, you know, it sucks. But it seems very part and parcel with that lifestyle. So how do you deal with it with the partner? Okay, So going hardball doesn't work. Shouting and screaming doesn't work. It actually just pushes the person with addictions to drink more, to smoke more, to go out more. Like, you know, it's the adverse effect.

The other soft approach of being the person who's there to support, that's the kind of way you need to handle it. however don't discredit yourself and put yourself in such a vulnerable position where your needs aren't met because you're now purely focused on trying to help this person oftentimes people who who drink too much they then they can become very nasty there's the withdrawal symptoms when they're not drinking um you know the irritability there's a lack of sleep um they say things they forget they don't remember and then you get apologies the next morning and then it just goes around in circles so it ends up being quite a horrible home life for you trying to deal with this you can work through this with your partner you can and help them get the addiction but

this is the crux they have to want to help themselves okay they have to need the idea in their own mind that they don't want to live like this anymore. Because if they don't have that, and they're trying to change for you, or they pretended they're a different person at the beginning to get you, and then when they get you, they reveal who they really are. If they're playing a role of this wholesome, honorable family man for you, that won't last. If you go down the route of constantly arguing, saying, I'm not putting up with this shit, like you're drinking all the time, it's not right or you're out all the time it's not right or you wake up in the morning you know and it's 7am you're on the vodka which you know this is where addicts go right if you just go

down that route of consequences your home life is shit anyway it can be fixed but what you must understand is you cannot help them you can help guide them and you can help support them so I would suggest therapy I would go for long walks with him and I'd talk about hey like what if there's some you know we put some sort of rules in like once or twice a week you know if you know you're going out Thursday and you know you'll be out all day Saturday then you kind of stick to those as your drink days and the other days you know you've got nought percent beers I love a nought percent beer so I tried that angle and it would kind of work for maybe like one or two weeks and then just slips back. And then what happens is the addict will start lying to you to cover up

that they're not sticking to what they said. The addict will start lying about where they are. They'll lie about who they're with. You suddenly realize you don't know this person anymore. This is not the person that you fell in love with. What you must do if you are the partner with someone who has a severe addiction you must do what you can to help but only to a certain extent so you offer guidance you perhaps be there for him as listening ear perhaps try and talk about why like why why do you drink so much what are you covering up what are you hiding what are you insecure about? How did you get here? Have you always drunk this much? Like, it seems to come from a place of pain, right? In my personal opinion, and I could be wrong, people with

these severe addictions to substances that make them not present, they're trying to hide from something, from themselves. There's something inside that needs healing. And the sad thing is, with my previous partner in my past, who I believe was addicted to lots of things. I would have actually stayed, I really would have, and worked through this with him because I generally at the time thought that he was a good man. But sadly, because of these addictions, he did end up going off with another woman. And that for me kind of sealed the deal. Like, yeah, I will understand that you want to be at a bar all day because you want to drink. I started to understand he'd go to bars on his own. I would start to understand the level of addiction inside the

home and then when he's outside as well or at work or out with friends or whatever. I really got a grasp on how severe it was quite quickly. But because it led to me finding out he went off with another woman, that's my deal breaker. I'm not going to go through that. And I do know a lot of people that can't leave their partners of addiction because they genuinely believe there is no cheating. And sometimes there isn't. There is almost like there's not that big enough slap that they need to leave. And the person who is addicted will then have those lovely times, maybe those sober moments maybe they do go to rehab and they come back from rehab and you think wow this is it like I'm finally gonna get that person back you know and it might work but it

also might not work and if you see any moments where it's slipping back to the way they were before, you must leave. You must leave. You will waste your life being miserable if this person refuses to help themselves. So what I would suggest is put some personal boundaries down, write it down in a journal. You know I love my journal. So write down like, right, here's my time frame of when I'm prepared to stick around for. These are the things I'm going to do. I'm going to stay calm. I'm going to talk him through. I'm going to help him, you know, perhaps suggest therapy, perhaps look at rehab centers, perhaps go to therapy with them. You know, you can do couples counseling. I'm going to not nag or make him feel bad or guilty about his issues. I will

try and be there. And just put this all in place. Put this plan in place for yourself. Do not voice it to your partner. This is a personal process for yourself. And then write down things as well that is your deal breaker. Okay, so if he cheats on me, I'm done. If he goes out one more time and disappears for the weekend or disappears or turns his phone off and goes to another hotel room or turns his phone off and he's in a different country, I'm done. If he turns it around on me anymore. I'm done. And write down these issues and problems and pros and cons for yourself and a timeline on what you're willing to stick around to help him and your deal breakers on what they can do not and then stick to it. And if they put deal breaker, you fucking leave. And this is

another final issue that I want to raise with things like this as well is they will, they will gaslight you. They will victim blame you and they'll blame you. You got me so mad that I went and had a drink. You are the one that makes me feel so shit about myself that I went and had a drink. Any excuse to have to make you the villain, they're the victim and an excuse to go and fulfill their addictions. And you can't live like that. It will break you down. It gets to your soul and it changes you for the worse, not better. So you've got to really bear in mind, you aren't to blame. Arguments happen in relationships. Couples that say they don't argue are fucking bullshit or they're not even really connected together. Arguments happen. It's part of life, especially

if you live with someone. Those arguments doesn't then mean that person has a reason to go and fulfill their addictions. That argument doesn't mean because you expressed your own human emotions that you're to blame. And often what you'll be expressing is quite rational or logical or fair. Like this hurts me when you do this. I don't like this in my home life. And yet they'll turn it around to make you the problem and you're the reason they go off and drink or disappear or go to the casino, whatever it is they're up to, right? So then you end up not wanting to say anything because you don't, you think, well, if I kick off today or I voice how I feel or I explain this is hurting me, he'll disappear all night again, you know? So they kind of like manipulate you at the

same time. What you need to remember is it's never your fault. If someone has these severe addictions, it's not your fault, it's them, right? You can only do so much. You can only put up with so much. they can change and this doesn't have to be the end of your relationship if they are willing to put the work in and it won't be an easy ride and you will have to still get through tough times with them but if you love that person enough and you genuinely believe they're going to come through the other side then yes of course stay but if you're being gaslighted blamed manipulated and everything you try and express about your own life this is your home as well and the lifestyle that it gets turned around on you and if they make all these faithful promises like I'm going to

change or right this is my new routine or I'm going rehab and none of it ever materializes then they don't want to help themselves and the only thing left for you to do is walk away that is the end of this episode please stay tuned next week where i delve more into victim blaming and gaslighting which is what i've touched upon in this episode today so if that is something that you feel that you can relate to or you're interested in to know more about it then i will see you next week thanks for listening to the sex and singapore city podcast this episode was produced and hosted by me, Nick Zelina, and recorded at the Splice Car Studio in Singapore. I'm available to listen to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google, and all major podcast listening apps. Do subscribe to

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