4. Find your own joy.
There is so much suffering connected with addiction. Your partner is in pain, and you KNOW you are suffering.
It’s my firm belief that true pleasure is the best medicine for the disease of addiction. The active addict (one who is not in recovery) flails around with the drug of choice, trying desperately to find happiness.
YOU must choose to find a conscious awareness of what brings you real pleasure. There’s no reason the partner of an addict has to wait, even though the addiction remains a point of sorrow. If you can bring yourself to a place to believe (or at least suspend disbelief) that you are not the source of their problem, that you deserve to focus on what’s good for you independent of your partner’s struggles, that you can live with the limits you set for yourself, and that the pursuit of happiness is your right, you and your family will prosper no matter what your partner chooses to do.
Your entire family system — including your partner — will benefit. It’s like a mobile hanging from the ceiling: if there’s no breeze and it’s left alone, it just hangs there. But if you touch one piece, every part of it starts to move.
Anyone in the family system — including you — can be that moving piece.
And, while there’s no guarantee what choices an addict will make, the chances of a good outcome rise dramatically in a family no longer in lockstep with their disease.
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