Is it Possible to Love Someone too Much?
Discover more from Love Over Addiction
Is it Possible to Love Someone too Much?
If you feel exhausted from your relationship with someone suffering from addiction, this might be something you need to hear.
I am so thankful you’re sharing this newsletter with other people who need help. I don’t do any marketing, partnerships, or social media right now. Your referrals are how we are going to reach other women. Thanks for sharing:)
Falling in love with someone struggling with addiction can feel like falling in love with someone's potential. We recognize their goodness. And we believe if they get sober, we will be so happy together. Forever.
At the beginning of our relationship, we might not have understood the depths of their addiction, but if we were honest, most of us saw some red flags.
So why did we continue our relationships despite the warning signs? And why do we stay when we start to hear the whispers in our souls telling us it might be time to leave?
I have a theory…
Perhaps it's because we are hopeful romantics who believe love can cure all.
And maybe we secretly hope our love will "inspire" them to get sober for good.
The longer we are in our relationship, the more desperate our attempts to love them become.
We behave like their mothers, lovers, therapists, and best friends, hoping all our exhausting efforts and role-playing heal them back to healthy and sober.
And when our love "fails," and we are exhausted with nothing left to give - we are often left blaming ourselves.
Regardless of the origin of their addiction, we must stop considering ourselves as their Doctor, Therapist, Mother, or any other role that is leaving us depleted.
I am a fan of love, but unlike the movies or popular self-help authors have claimed, love does not always cure-all.
Let's keep some love for ourselves instead of trying to cure someone with our love and hurting ourselves in the process.
How are you feeling this week? What’s going on in your relationship? This is a safe place to ask questions, share little (or big) wins and encourage one another.
Is it Possible to Love Someone too Much?
Yes I do think it's possible to love someone too much !! I have in my head that if he really loves me he will get sober, and here I am 8yrs later and he is worse. Does he have to get drunk everyday to deal with me ?? Is he not happy with me ?? Why do I think it's me ??
I went to my first Al Anon meeting this week. Nothing happened in my relationship, and there was no major change in my husband's sobriety. But I've been running low on steam for the past few weeks between the demands of being a "good" wife and "good" daughter, and this felt like something for me to keep growing in my part of our family's addiction / sobriety journey. I heard something there that startled me in a good way. A woman checked in with the group about her own recovery, and owned that she has traits that made her relationship with an addict more challenging. I love my husband. I am also here to admit that I'm a caretaker. I'm in a helping profession - it's what I do, it's part of my persona. And when I married an addict, I became an expert in "helping" him (through things like pleading, monitoring, pushing to recovery avenues or even just in walking on eggshells to please him). I still find myself doing some of those things despite his sobriety. And I've noticed that I do these things for other people in my life, just to lesser degrees than when someone is in active addiction. He once said that the biggest downside of being married to me as an addict was that I thought I could cure him / he could be cured. I'm not sure about that, but I'm starting to recognize that caretaking is NOT equal to love and is not the action verb of a healthy relationship. Now continues my work to stop these patterns and to capitalize on his current sobriety to talk through those patterns together and try to build a different relationship.