Relationships in Early Recovery

Announcer: Welcome to Addiction and the Family, “Episode 4: Relationships in Early Recovery.”

Casey Arrillaga: How has addiction affected your family?

Female Speaker: It robbed me of my father.

Female Speaker: Addiction's affected my family in absolutely every way.

Male Speaker: It has caused a lot of turmoil.

Female Speaker: It goes back to what I understand is at least three generations.

Female Speaker: It robbed my daughter of her mother. It robbed my mother of her daughter.

Female Speaker: Addiction has made our family quite challenging.

Male Speaker: Addiction has affected my family tremendously.

Male Speaker: It's affected my relationship with my sister where I wouldn't – I'd go for months without talking to her. It's a very difficult thing for everybody involved. It doesn't just affect the one individual. It's a disease that affects the whole family.

Male Speaker: Addiction is spread not only genetically through some of my relatives and I assume ancestors.

Female Speaker: It's generational.

Female Speaker: I think of him every day.

Casey Arrillaga: Welcome to Addiction in the Family, a podcast by and for family members of anyone with an addiction. My name is Casey Arrillaga, and I'm a social worker and addiction counselor at both Windmill Wellness Ranch and InMindOut Emotional Wellness Centers in Texas. I've led hundreds of family workshops, but I've also lived the experience of being family to addiction as both a child and adult. My wife, Kira, and I were in our addictions together for over a decade and now have been in recovery together for almost 20 years. Join us as we offer experience, strength, and realistic hope about how you and your family can find recovery together.

Kira Arrillaga: Today we begin our “Spotlight on Recovery” series. In each of these episodes, we explore issues of addiction and the family through the lens of a particular family's story. In this episode, we will examine the many facets of the family recovery experience in an interview with a young married couple who are both in early recovery. While some listeners may thing that doesn't apply to me because it doesn't look like what I'm going through, if you follow along, you will find that many of the issues this couple are facing are the same that any family faces when one or more family members are newly sober from their addictions, all this and more after a quick word from one of our sponsors.

[Commercial]

Casey Arrillaga: Welcome back. Relationships at any time of life can be tricky, so if you throw early recovery into the mix, it can be a real challenge. While there's no set rule or even set definition of what constitutes early recovery, the common wisdom in many fellowships is that romantic and sexual entanglements should be avoided in the first year of recovery. Few listen seriously to this advice and even fewer follow it.

On top of this, many people enter recovery already in a relationship. While some of these relationships may not be serious or may have been based in mutual using and enabling, there are plenty of people who are married or in other serious long-term relationships when they stop their addictive acting out. What can be said for those of us who are making this drastic life change while still trying to keep our relationships intact? Let's hear from a few people who have personal experience. What is the hardest thing about being in a relationship in early recovery?

Female Speaker: There's a lot of different forms of relationships. For me, when I was – romantic relationships is difficult early recovery. I did get into a relationship early in recovery. We stayed together. We both stayed sober. There was a lot of growing pains. Discovering who I was, and discovering who they were, being able to mold with each other but at the same time, some of that grew apart.

For my personal relationships with family and friends, I've lost a lot of friends, I've gained a lot of friends. Family is sometimes the most difficult for me because I see that a lot of my family doesn't change even when I start getting healthier and I start getting to a point where I don't act out in the same behaviors. All of a sudden, I'm realizing that the same people stay the same way.

Male Speaker: I think the hardest thing about relationships in early recovery is that I don't know who I am as a person.

Female Speaker: It was hard having that trust with someone. It was hard just being in a relationship because all I knew before was just my addiction.

Female Speaker: I think the hardest thing is working with my insecurities, really trusting that my higher power has made me a certain way that's special, and I guess trying to get the other person to see that. I guess insecurities, for sure.

Male Speaker: The hardest thing in my opinion would be not knowing exactly who you are, and your partner not knowing exactly who they are or what they want. In early recovery, you haven't truly grown into the person that you're going to be. As time passes on, man, you're starting to become different people. Those people can sometimes grow apart as a result of growing spiritually.

Female Speaker: Did we have our bumps in the road? Yeah, we did, we fought. In the beginning it was like, why are you going to a meeting at 9 o'clock at night?

Female Speaker: Intimacy, engaging in healthy intimacy, especially with someone who you've been intimate before under the influence of substances, and then having to reengage in a healthy manner, and being able to set boundaries. That's difficult. It's difficult.

Casey Arrillaga: As luck would have it, Kira and I were actually married ten years when we got into early recovery.

Kira Arrillaga: Yeah, that was lucky. I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. Was it?

Casey Arrillaga: It's lucky now because we can share some experience, strength, and hope.

Kira Arrillaga: Yeah, you're right.

Casey Arrillaga: When I look at it, really, we both each watched the other one go through early recovery while in relationship together one at a time.

Kira Arrillaga: To be honest, even at the time, I do think I was lucky.

Casey Arrillaga: Thank you, well, the reality is that it was difficult. I wasn't sure what you were going to think of me when I got sober. I wasn't sure if you were still going to like me or love me. I wasn't even sure if I was going to like me or love me. I don't know what it was like for you when you first got sober.

Kira Arrillaga: It never occurred to me that you wouldn't like me anymore.

Casey Arrillaga: You're cooler than I am.

Kira Arrillaga: Apparently.

Casey Arrillaga: Yeah.

Kira Arrillaga: I had already started liking myself by the time I got into recovery. I just didn't want to be an addict. Once it was brought to my attention that I was an addict, I felt like I needed to change. That alone was almost enough to be a bottom for me, except that of course my body had suffered, my career had suffered, and I generally wasn't all that happy. I needed recovery on a lot of levels.

Casey Arrillaga: When I came into the relationship, I loved you so much. I still wanted to hide a lot of my problems from you. There were a lot that were hidden from me. When things came to light ten years in, and I started to get sober, I was afraid that you might not like me anymore.

Kira Arrillaga: You were afraid you wouldn't be cool anymore. I got to practice being less judgmental when you got into recovery.

Casey Arrillaga: See, what I never knew was I wasn't that cool in the first place.

Kira Arrillaga: Everyone thought you were.

Casey Arrillaga: I had them all fooled. What can I tell you?

Kira Arrillaga: Meanwhile, nobody thought I was cool, so there you go. I was. I was totally cool.

Casey Arrillaga: Yeah, and you didn't know it. One cool thing is that as we've developed in our relationship, we've been in recovery together now for 18 years, I think we've gotten a lot cooler.

Kira Arrillaga: I think so too.

Casey Arrillaga: Yeah, I liked us a lot in the first place, but I like us even better now.

Kira Arrillaga: One thing that you know a person is cool if they can admit that they're cool.

Casey Arrillaga: That's funny. I never thought of it that way.

Kira Arrillaga: Yeah, that's what they say.

Casey Arrillaga: Is that what they say? I know that we went through an amazing journey of recovery so far. All the stuff we're talking about was decades ago for us. We're going to hear from a couple who have been going through this much more recently.

Kira Arrillaga: Yeah, listening to the interview that you did with them is fascinating for me because it is so new, and it's so raw, and the relationship is so vulnerable. Each of them is vulnerable in a way that I haven't felt in a long time that I can relate to completely.

Casey Arrillaga: Absolutely, me too, it took me back to a lot of things, which gives me a lot of hope for them. Without further ado, let's hear that interview.

Jay and Myra, welcome to Addiction in the Family. Why don't you each introduce yourselves, if you would, by first name.

Jay: I'm Jay.

Myra: I'm Myra.

Casey Arrillaga: It's great to have you guys on the show. I'll start by asking what has you two on a show called Addiction and the Family?

Myra: Do you want to go first?

Jay: Okay, sure, well, we are sitting here because I, myself, am an addict alcoholic. I went to treatment about five months ago. I've been clean and sober for five months today, actually. That's we're sitting here. That's why I'm sitting here.

Myra: I'm sitting here, one, as her spouse, so a family member of an addict and also as an addict, myself.

Casey Arrillaga: How did you come to the conclusion that you also have addiction?

Myra: I had an inkling years ago just because of different things that had gone on. Learning about what addiction actually is, that it's actually a disease and not a choice, and that it's not just drugs or alcohol. There can be many other things that are addictions because of how they affect the brain and the body. Really, it's only been since she went to treatment that I realized, oh, there's things in my life that qualify me as an addict, myself.

Casey Arrillaga: That's a really good insight. There's a term that I've started using for that, which I call cascading recovery, when the recovery of one family member leads to the recovery of another family member. Perhaps other family members, after that, follow suit. I heard you saying that Jay going to a treatment center, and getting the education that you picked up, really helped. How much would you say her recovery directly influenced yours?

Myra: I mean, it definitely took her going to treatment for me to take a deeper look at myself, and what was going on in my life, and what – the ways that I was coping that weren't just coping skills, or sad coping skills, or lack of coping skills. It really was when she started to get some time in treatment, and she started to – her clarity came back. She was gaining more sobriety. Really, when she came home I was like, okay, this recovery stuff, it actually can change people. When I met her, she was sober. She's completely different from even then. She's really in recovery. That really is what inspired me to even consider trying it for myself.

Casey Arrillaga: That leads into a really important concept in family work. That's what's known as the identified patient model. In the identified patient model, there's this thought within the family that one person in the family is the one with the problem. If that person's problems would be solved, then the family's problems would be solved.

This is an illusion that I've seen a lot of families fall into. Yet I've never worked with any family I can think of where if the one person got better, the whole family was fine. Maybe they would be able to ignore their other problems if the one person was doing better, but that's not the same thing as being able to solve them. I wonder what experience have you guys had with that? Jay, maybe you could start us out.

Jay: Yeah, I think my family definitely thought that about me. It's not just me. I mean, even though I've been clean and sober now for five months, we still have the family issues that we always had. My family doesn't like to talk about it. None of them are really involved in my recovery, nor do they seek support from Al Anon or anything like that. That's been hard for me because I'm getting healthy, but I feel like they're not in a way.

Casey Arrillaga: How about within your marriage?

Jay: Yeah, that was definitely me, I think, because my drug use and alcohol use was way more out there and extreme? Even though Myra has her issues as well, they weren't seen as extreme, whereas for me, my using was to the extreme. Therefore, it felt like I stood out more as the problem.

Casey Arrillaga: Did you have the idea that if you got better everything would be fine?

Jay: Oh yeah, I thought that plenty of times. There was a couple of times that I relapsed and withdrew at home, on the couch, in the arms of my wife. That happened twice. I thought, yeah, if I could just get better, everything would get – everything would be better. None of this would be happening. That wasn't true.

For me, personally, drugs and alcohol were just the symptoms of what was going on inside of me and what was going on between us. Yeah, I definitely had had times where I felt like God, if I could just make this go away, she'll love me. We won't fight. Everything will just be better. That's just not the case. You take away the symptoms, which is drug and alcoholism, we're still left with all those underlying things that we need to work through.

Casey Arrillaga: Myra, I wonder in your family were you the identified patient or was it somebody else?

Myra: No, it was definitely me and my growing up and stuff. I had a lot of issues with mental health, depression, anxiety. It was very much those things don’t exist in our world. I came from a super religious background. It was always just pray about it and it will go away.

It was always if Myra could just get better, then our family would be better and look better. I was always told you guys live in a glass house, so you need to keep X, Y, and Z image up. Obviously, that wasn’t true because my sister had her own thing and my parents have their own things. Our family still isn’t better, so to speak.

As far as our marriage is concerned, I definitely to a fault thought if Jay just got better, everything would be fine. If she would just stop using, if she would just stop drinking, even down to if she would just go to therapy and she could still drink, if she just stopped using, then everything would be fine. I didn’t think that I was the problem. There are fights and arguments that we would have that I could see my side in, but I didn’t think that I was the problem.

My thought was always all I’m doing is loving you. All I’m doing is being there for you, and I’m the one that comes to you first. That was a huge wakeup call. It was a smack in the face. It wasn’t a wakeup call to realize no, that’s not the case.

Here she was in treatment getting better, and I wasn’t getting better. It was all of these things. Not only was I not getting better, but I was realizing there are more and more things that needed to get better on my end. Even down to when she came home, when she came home this different person with this zest for life and wanting to do things right this time and taking her recovery seriously, I wasn’t at that place. It was like no, it’s not just one person. That was really hard to admit because I thought I just took care of her and I just loved her.

There was a time where I thought if I did that hard enough, if I showed her that I was never going to leave or whatever, if I could do it, if I could just prove to her, that that would be enough to get her to stop. That wasn’t the case. We got married and it still didn’t work. Looking back now I’m super thankful for that, but it’s kind of a funny story to tell people. I really thought it would. I really thought when I said –

Jay: If you got married, it would fix everything.

Myra: What can I do to show you that I love you and I’m not leaving? She said, “Marry me,” and I did. It still didn’t do anything. I was like okay. I guess I can’t fix it, but she still needs to be fixed.

Casey Arrillaga: What was that moment like for you?

Myra: To realize that I couldn’t fix her? It was the day before she came home from treatment that I realized. It was a relieving moment because I carried the weight of how far she had gotten in her drug use. I carried that blame just because of how our relationship had been up into when she went to treatment because she had said her drug use was so out there and so apparent that it got to a point where I told her to leave. That’s when she really went off the deep end.

I blame myself. The whole time that she was in treatment, my goal was to make sure that when she came home, everything was the right way and everything was how she needed it to be to make her world easy so that she didn’t have any stressors other than just coming home from treatment. When I realized that I couldn’t do that and that it wasn’t my fault and that I couldn’t keep her sober, it was scary. It was a scary thought.

It was also a relieving thought because I realize that my job was just to love her and to support her. It took a lot of the weight away because I realized I could just be her wife, and I didn’t have to keep her sober. I just get to love, and I get to watch her stay sober for herself.

Casey Arrillaga: That’s really beautiful. I wonder though, did it bother you after all that effort that you weren’t the one that was able to get her sober?

Myra: I don’t think for me that it was so much that somebody else was able to help her get sober as much as it was I wasn’t the one who was able to get her to go to treatment. Once she was here, I was so happy that she was in treatment. I was relieved just that she was safe. That thought never really crossed my mind that it wasn’t me helping her get sober.

I definitely was resentful that I wasn’t the one that got to take her to treatment. On the other side of it, I was resentful that I got to see her get well and come home. Then I didn’t get to have the same help that she did in going to treatment.

Casey Arrillaga: What got in the way?

Myra: Life, insurance, jobs, money, myself.

Casey Arrillaga: Can you talk about that a little more?

Myra: Fear of going, that the treatment center that seemed like a good option was in Dallas. That was really far. I didn’t want to go to Dallas, so I didn’t go to Dallas. That was really the biggest thing. At that point was when I kind of was like I’m not going to treatment because I’m not going to Dallas. The treatment center in San Antonio wouldn’t take me unless I went to Dallas. I was like I’m not going to Dallas, so I’m not going to treatment.

Casey Arrillaga: It’s difficult to hear that it’s so hard for people to get into treatment. It’s a hard thing for a lot of family members to watch their loved one go through. I wonder for you, Jay, what was this like?

Jay: It’s been hard. It’s been hard for me because I’ve watched her hurt, and I’ve watched her struggle. I’ve had some guilt around that, that I can’t give her the same resources and care that I got. It makes me feel good though that in seeing me in my recovery, it’s influenced her to want that more. That has helped me, knowing that I’m doing the right thing, that she sees that and she sees that it can work.

In the beginning she was not for going to treatment at all. That changed with her seeing what recovery and treatment has done for me. Life happens. Insurance happens. Money happens. We decided we’re working close with our family doctor, and it’s helped a lot.

She’s come a long way. That’s why we started considering an outpatient thing three days a week or something like that. I want her to have that experience because there’s nothing like bonding with the people you’re in treatment with. You know that you’re not alone. You’re not the only one. You’re not unique in your struggles, in your hurts, or your addictions.

If you’re taking it seriously and you want to be well, it’s a good experience. It was for me, anyway. It’s not easy, by no means, or it’s not like we’re up here all day just having fun at the pool. We’re doing therapy all day. We’re digging in deep.

That’s the work you put in when you want to be sober. I wanted her to experience that. I’ve had to accept that I’m not in control of that. When it happens, it’s going to happen for the right reasons, not because I forced it to happen.

Casey Arrillaga: Absolutely. After a quick break, we’re going to hear more from Myra and Jay about the best and hardest things about their marriage in early recovery and where they find a sense of family and support in this difficult time in their lives. Stay with us. We’ll be right back.

[Commercial]

Casey Arrillaga: Welcome back. Let’s hear more from that interview we did with Jay and Myra about their marriage and early recovery. What have been some of the benefits and drawbacks of being married to someone else in early recovery?

Jay: Why don’t you go first?

Myra: I think some of the benefits have been inspiration, the understanding of how hard it can be to stay sober and to fight those days where you’re like I just want to drink for no other reason than I just want to drink. I can’t get the thought out of my head. To have somebody that understands that and isn’t like what’s wrong with you, where you don’t have to explain yourself is definitely a benefit. You can just be like I’m having a really bad day, and I just need you to be here. They get it.

That for me personally has been a huge benefit. It’s made us grow closer together because we’ve been in each other’s shoes from all sides of the table now. That’s, I think, given us more patience and compassion for the other person. I’m slower to get upset when Jay has a bad day versus before I would be like can you just get your crap together? She just wants to be there however she can.

I definitely think the biggest benefit would be to have someone literally right next to you who gets it and can support you, no questions asked, and can love and knows how to love you because they know what it feels like. One of my biggest challenges is to hear her say she has to put her recovery first. As her wife, I feel like it should be me and then her recovery even though I’ve heard people say in the program anything you put before your recovery, you’re going to lose. I logically get that, but my selfish wife heart says that’s garbage and I should be above your 12-step program.

That’s been something that’s been really hard for me because I’ve had times where I’m like I’m not as important to you as your sponsor is or I’m not as important to you as working on your 12-step program or doing your step work or going to a meeting. That’s been a challenge. Another challenge has been not being in the same place as far as recovery goes. I have 90 days. She has five months. She’s worked her steps, and I haven’t.

It’s hard because she has a lot more knowledge and not to say that she knows everything or she has it all figured out as far as recovery goes because I don’t think that she thinks that way, but I definitely have had times where I’m like you think that you know everything because you have more sobriety than me. That’s me wanting to pick a fight because that’s the kind of person that I am. I try not to do that. That has been a challenge is not being in the same place and me being hard on myself and telling myself that I’m not as good as she is because she has more sobriety than I do.

Casey Arrillaga: That is an issue that can definitely come up for couples in recovery, especially when they have different lengths of sobriety. I wonder, Jay, what are the benefits and costs that you’ve seen?

Jay: One of the benefits for me has been that I know I’m not alone. We can be honest with each other and about how we’re feeling about our addictions. We’re not dancing around it anymore or just shoving it under the rug. We actually can talk about it and process through it, and it’d be okay. It actually is bringing us closer together.

One of the challenges for me personally is because I’m an addict alcoholic, I recognize the behaviors, and I see them. I see them in my wife. Sometimes it’s really hard for me not to sponsor her, so to speak. She needs to have her own recovery. She needs to have her own sponsor, work her own steps.

If she asks me for advice or if she asks me what I think about this or that, I give her my experience, strength, and hope. That’s where I have to leave it. Sometimes it’s hard for me to. Because I am a little further along, it’s hard for me not to take control of it and be like you should be doing this and this and this. That’s been a little bit hard for me at times.

For me, this is the only relationship marriage that I’ve been in where my wife has had an addiction or a mental illness. My previous relationships, I didn’t have that. My wife has a few mental illnesses. It’s been challenging for me to learn about those things and learn how to help her through those things. I’ve never experienced that before.

Every day we learn a little bit more and we grow a little bit more. Sometimes it’s really hard. Our therapist gives us this picture of our mountain. He’s like you guys have climbed so far up the mountain. Why piss it away now?

It’s been good for us to be both addict alcoholics and in recovery together. We still have a hell of a lot to learn. Thank God that we’ve had people in our lives that are couples in the same situation. They’ve given us hope that this can work.

We stick to it. This can work. It doesn’t always have to end in disaster. That’s been very helpful, and I’m grateful for that too.

Casey Arrillaga: That’s really beautiful. If I may ask, what has family involvement looked like for you two? How would you say it’s affected your recovery? Jay, maybe you can take this one first.

Jay: For me, there has not really been any support from my family. There is now that I’ve been home. It’s gotten a little bit better. While I was in treatment, my family wouldn’t even come up to see me on visitations and family workshops. The reason they wouldn’t come up was because my wife was here with me. They don’t agree with our marriage.

I really haven’t had any support. I don’t necessarily know how that’s affected my recovery as far as in a negative way. I’ve just learned to accept that that’s the way it is. I wish they would be more involved.

Your lecture on Bio of Addiction, I wish my family could sit through that and see this is actually a disease. It’s not just your daughter run ragged or your sister not caring about life or not caring about anybody else. I wish that they could hear those things and understand those things because I feel like they would understand me more or even going to Al-Anon meetings themselves. I’ve even brought it up to them a few times and it’s always like we’re okay, like they’re not part of the problem.

It’s all me. I wish we could have had family counseling with my mom and my brother and sister. They just wouldn’t come. That didn’t stop me from moving forward in my recovery because I know this time around since my relapse and getting sober again that I’m doing this for myself and nobody else.

Casey Arrillaga: Absolutely. Myra, how has family involvement appeared for you and how would you say it’s affected your recovery?

Myra: You’re asking about my biological family?

Casey Arrillaga: Yes.

Myra: They are not involved at all in my recovery. I’ve told them, “I’m on the way to a meeting. I’m sorry I can’t answer your phone call right now.” I think that happened on Thanksgiving. My mom’s response was, “AA on Thanksgiving?” I was like, “Yeah, that’s where a lot of our family is.”

That’s kind of their involvement is not. As far as it affecting my recovery, I think the biggest thing that it’s affected is me learning that my family doesn’t have to be the people I share DNA with. We have a huge family now that she’s gone to treatment, people that love us and accept us more than I think either one of us have ever felt from our biological families in recovery. If anything, it’s affected my recovery for the good because it’s brought in my idea of what family is and what family looks like, and it’s opened up the doors for us to have relationships with people. We still keep in touch with people who she was in treatment with. We spent Thanksgiving with them.

To me, it means more than having some nonchalant acknowledgment from the people who raised me, and it’s brought us closer together. We’ve had to make a choice of are we going to let the fact that our families don’t support us in our recovery or our marriage? Are we going to let that cause us to be like, oh, poor us, we wish, or are we going to let that be like we have each other and we have these other people, so we don’t have to focus on the negative? That’s what we’ve chosen to do, and so it’s brought us closer together as well.

Jay: Yeah, actually, you hear those horror stories. It just tears people apart, and at one point it did. At one point, it really did tear us apart, but we just choose not to – like you said, we have other family that actually genuinely care and support us that we don’t share DNA with. I mean, I get more love and support from all of you guys than my brother. I don’t even get a phone call from my brother, but I’ll get a phone call from someone I was in treatment with saying, “Hey, how’s it going? How are you doing? Oh, you got five months? Awesome!” My family didn’t even know I was five months clean and sober today unless I told them.

She’s right. Myra's right. It definitely has brought us a lot closer in a healthier way, yeah.

Casey Arrillaga: Oh, that is so beautiful. Myra, Jay, thank you guys so much for being on the show today. I look forward to having you again sometime.

Jay: We’re glad to be here.

Myra: Thanks, Casey.

Casey Arrillaga: Since we recorded this interview, Jay and Myra let us know that Jay is coming up on eight months sober. Myra is continuing to struggle, but she’s continuing to reach out for help and says communication with her mother has gotten a little bit better. Let’s get some reflection from Kira about that interview. What’d you think?

Kira Arrillaga: They remind me of us.

Casey Arrillaga: Yeah, I still get that feeling in a really nice way. I got to say I choked up every time I listened to the part of the interview with Myra talking about the true meaning of family and what they discovered in recovery.

Kira Arrillaga: Yeah, a lot of people that are in addiction and a lot of families of addicts as well have to struggle with losing family members or not wanting to be around family members. She mentioned that she went to an AA meeting on Thanksgiving, and mom didn’t like that idea. I was thinking that those meetings are very well attended on family holidays.

Casey Arrillaga: Yes, they are. There’s a reason. I got to say, I mean, Kira, you know that my family stopped talking to me for a few years, and that was when I was still in my addiction.

Kira Arrillaga: I remember that, yeah.

Casey Arrillaga: I will say that getting into recovery did not magically repair all of that, but over time I watched my family grow closer and closer. We got to a point where we had gone from not talking at all. Don’t darken my doorstep. You don’t love anyone. You’re crazy to now where my mom wants to know when am I going to see you again? We stay at her house on Christmas. That’s a pretty big deal.

Kira Arrillaga: Yeah, it is.

Casey Arrillaga: One thing that I really know about that is it didn’t happen overnight.

Kira Arrillaga: No.

Casey Arrillaga: No.

Kira Arrillaga: It did not. It took a long time. It took just showing up and making – they call it a living amends if you’re working the steps. Step 9 is where you make amends to people that you’ve harmed. Usually, I think apologizing is not enough when it’s a family member that you’ve hurt over and over again and had a lot of history with. Maybe they’ve hurt you too, and they’re not making amends. You make your living amends to show who you are now, and your mom really loves you a lot. She’s very proud of the person that you are now, and that was not the case for a while.

Casey Arrillaga: No, it wasn’t, and we were out of contact. During the time we were out of contact, I was working on myself. In my recovery, I was able to show up in a way to be honest with my family in a way that I simply had not even considered as a possibility before. Not because I thought they couldn’t handle it. I just didn’t think being honest was a good idea.

Kira Arrillaga: The truth hurts.

Casey Arrillaga: When you’re in active addiction, being honest is not always the best policy. I mean, how can I continue my active addiction and be honest with people? That changed within my family and being able to bring a greater level of honesty about myself and to my family. I think, ultimately, I believe that became more healing for everyone. I mean, they’d all have to speak for themselves, but I certainly know what it did for our relationship.

Kira Arrillaga: Yeah, our relationship was not going to survive without recovery, first for you and then for both of us. Certainly, I needed to heal both as an addict and as a wife of an addict.

Casey Arrillaga: Yeah, I’m sure glad you did.

Kira Arrillaga: Me too.

Casey Arrillaga: Yeah, well, I think that’s a good place to start wrapping up this episode. I know we’re not the only ones who have ever noticed what is so cool about relationships in recovery, so before we go, I want to hear a little bit from some other people who might be able to talk from their direct experience about that.

Kira Arrillaga: Let’s do it.

Casey Arrillaga: What is the best thing about being in a relationship in recovery?

Respondent: Man, I’m glad you asked that question. By far, to me the best thing that me and my current relationship that we experience is the fact that we have a program to rely back on. We have an awareness of our character defects. We have an awareness of how we’re acting and how we’re conducting ourselves.

Respondent: The best things about relationships is it’s authentic. You get to be vulnerable, and you learn so much about yourself and about other people. You care, and your heart opens. Sometimes it’s painful, but I realize that through the pain it’s like your heart is growing. It’s making space and stretching your heart to be able to be open for other people.

Respondent: I think the best things for me is being really vulnerable and open and transparent about who I am today, and I have found somebody else that is in the same spot with me, so us growing together and being vulnerable together has really helped a lot. I feel like it’s a really special thing that we can both go through that together.

Respondent: Probably getting to share my life with someone. Before, I wasn’t sharing my life with anybody. I wasn’t even sharing it with myself.

Respondent: Being in recovery has allowed me to be authentic and honest. Not only communication but just in overall honesty of the situation.

Respondent: I can share a journey with someone. I can share my experience with someone. I can be present for people today. I think that was one of the hardest things for me before recovery was that I wasn’t able to be present for the people I love. Today I get to do that, and it’s amazing.

Respondent: Being there as a spiritual program, we have an employer that we call God. I try to do the right things under His eyes, and I try to check myself and so does she. We believe in the same God, which is really cool. The fact that we have a program where we have a higher accountability, we’re not just accountable to each other, but we’re looking both to a higher – I guess a higher consciousness to align both of our consciousness with so that we don’t – she doesn’t become a higher power, and I don’t become hers.

Respondent: He encourages me to go to meetings. He encourages me to call my sponsor. Ultimately, it got to the point where he was like, okay, this is your life, and this has to be part of my life. I want to be a part of your life, and he’s one of the most supportive people in my life.

Casey Arrillaga: Oh, what a great dose of experience, strength, and hope around relationships in recovery. We want to thank you for being with us for another episode of Addiction and the Family. As they say in so many recovery fellowships, take what you liked and leave the rest. Focus on what you can do for your own recovery today, and give your loved ones the freedom to make their own choices. If you like this podcast, please subscribe. It means a lot to us. If you know someone else who can use what we have to offer, please tell them about Addiction and the Family. All of our episodes and more could be found at addictionandthefamily.info. If you have comments about this podcast, have a question you’d like to hear answered on the show, want to contribute your voice, or just want to say hi, you can write to us at addictionandthefamily@gmail.com. We’re also happy to be your friend on Facebook, and we can be found tweeting on Twitter.

Kira Arrillaga: Addiction and the Family is produced, written, and engineered by Kira and Casey Arrillaga with music by Casey.

Casey Arrillaga: In our next episode, we will dig deep into the science of addiction, especially what is happening in the brain, how people with addiction lose the power of choice, and where hope and recovery can be found. See you then.