Relationships in Recovery
Covenant marriage and family relationships are perhaps the single most critical resource for recovery. With a little attention and some essential healing, with a little support and a little help, she will do far more to empower his recovery than any other person. She will work longer, harder, and more tirelessly. She will be there when no one else can, or will. Her assurances and reassurances, succor and support, faith and devotion, will mean more and do more.
Often, our first inclination is to jump right in to “solve the problem”—to get addiction stopped. Cognitive, emotional and behavioral interventions thus seem to be the first order of business.
However, beginning therapy with exclusive attention to ‘helping him with his addiction’ conveys an implicit message that recovery (and therapy) is or ought to be ‘all about him.’ The wife may feel that her experience—her hurt and heartache, her confusion and uncertainty, her loneliness and self-doubt—are less important than her husband’s recovery issues. The wife’s need for healing attention may be pushed aside. If the wife feels ‘no part in the process,’ a critical dimension of recovery will have been neglected and a powerful resource for recovery forfeit.
I suggest that ‘first things first’ in recovery and therapy means engaging and organizing covenant relationships to sponsor recovery.