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Summary

Help for Abusive & Addictive Relationships
End Fixations and Codependence © Martyn Carruthers

Online Coaching for Emotional Freedom

Abusive and addictive relationships hurt families and damage children. Do your relationships
bring sharing and togetherness - or do they bring stress, anxiety and despair?

Being in love with someone who loves you is wonderful. Falling in love with fantasies and illusions, rather than with real human beings, is not. And until the illusions dissolve - which they will - many people feel addicted to their fantasies and fixated on those people who remind them of their illusions.

Being with people who reflect illusions can trigger endorphins - brain chemicals - in similar ways to addictive drugs. People can become hooked to their own brain chemicals and behave much like other addicts. They want fixes and they must maintain their supply or risk withdrawal symptoms.

When your illusions fade away, a beloved person may seem to change. Suddenly that person ceases to be a fascinating source of love and vision ... he or she often may seem to become horribly normal ... or worse ... horribly abnormal. A sudden lack of endorphins can cause craving ... which is often confused with love. Many people blame their ex-lovers for their own unpleasant feelings.

If a partner is also addicted to similar illusions - they may form a closed relationship that can best be called codependent. Such relationships can be highly unhealthy, but are rather common and often even stable. Short term codependent relationships may cause a few problems and can assimilated as experience. Long-term codependent relationships can lead to years of misery.

It is healthier to recognize immature adults and to avoid them or to help them change their beliefs and emotional blocks. However, immature beliefs are often promoted as normal and desirable - by children's stories, television, marketing and the lyrics of songs ... fairytale beliefs about love at first sight and love can solve anything can have horrible consequences. Why not audit your own beliefs?

Emotional Maturity

As people mature, they can decide what type of relationship they want. If they choose healthy relationships, their lives will be much easier later on. Addictive relationships can be more dramatic and feel more passionate but usually limit choices and damage freedom.

Addictions bring short-term relief and long-term nightmares. Although some addictions are common and the consequences well known; many intelligent and knowledgeable people become addicts. If compulsions and obsessions are included with addiction, few people may seem to be free.

• Do you want to fall out of love - to STOP loving someone?
• Do you worry about when it might be safe to talk to your partner?
• Are you chronically fatigued, angry or anxious about your partnership?
• Do you take psychoactive medications, alcohol or drugs just to stay together?
• Do you tell your partner - or are you told by your partner - to get coaching or therapy?

Addictions often fulfill a goal of “I do not want to be me!”. Addictions often help people dissociate or not-feel unpleasant emotions. We coach people to end addictive behavior, and we help them change the emotions and relationships that support it. But the longer it's left - the harder it gets.

What are Addictive Relationships?

Bad relationships are rarely about disagreements or arguments, bad relationships are more often about frustration. Bad relationships often imply that one or both people are codependent, are committed to someone or something else (often parents or past partners) or are incapable of commitment. (See Partnership Breakdown for a description of these steps.)

Addictive relationships cause long-term damage. Abuse or emotional blackmail provide constant stress can increase your risk of psychosomatic symptoms and hypertension. Addictive relationships can also lead to alcohol or drug abuse, depression, or even to suicide and suicide threats and attempts.

• Are you free to be your best self?
• Can you leave damaging relationships?
• Are you free to love and be loved by another person?

Many people have told us that they cannot leave a bad relationship. Or that one side of him or her may be desperate to leave but another side may demand to stay. (See our transcript on complex conflict.)

Are You in an Addictive Relationship?

Most addicts try to control the supply of their intoxicant. Love addicts who are scared that they cannot live without their partner may tolerate cruelty and indifference. They may convince themselves that personality differences are temporary and that their partners will thank them for everything that they do.

Love addicts may avoid relationships with healthier people - perhaps calling them boring. Do any of these signs of addictive relationships apply to you?

• You justify staying in a sick relationship
• You avoid or ignore the guidance of healthier people
• You know your relationship is unhealthy, yet you cling to it
• When you consider ending the relationship, you feel anxiety, guilt or physically ill

If any of these apply to you, perhaps you are passive aggressive or addicted? We can help you understand your situation and decide how you want to enjoy healthier relationships.

Ending Relationship Addiction

How strongly are your relationship decisions influenced by:

• Transferences (e.g. my partner is a substitute for a parent)
• Practicalities e.g. finances, shared accommodation, children and career plans.
• Beliefs e.g. "I'll never find anyone else," "I'm not good enough," or "I can save this person."
• Philosophies e.g. "True love is forever," "Being alone is bad," or "I should never hurt anyone."

If you try to fight a love addiction, you may make it stronger. If you are in an addictive relationship, it may be hard to decide what is appropriate. You may feel that you do have no rights or choices; and that you cannot set boundaries. Some useful steps are:

1. Make your emotional health a priority
2. List your emotional and personality assets
3. Commit time to developing peace and integrity
4. Focus on your own desires, goals and challenges
5. List whatever makes you feel unworthy of happiness
6. Consider getting private coaching or professional training
7. Talk to good friends - share your experiences and lessons
8. Avoid victim games: avoid being a helper, a victimizer or a victim
9. Discover how you can relax and observe (or witness) what's going on
10. Avoid trying to manage or control other adults (except students or employees)

We can help you if your addiction to a person causes pain or suffering. Our individual coaching can dissolve many obsessions, and our couple coaching helps partners understand each other, define couple and family goals and make changes that both partners want.

• Do you normally stay in bad relationships?
• Do you stay in a relationship due to laziness, guilt or anxiety?
• Do you want to end a relationship, but you cannot follow through?

Unhealthy relationships do not mean periods of disagreement or disenchantment. Unhealthy relationships usually involve endless frustration and stress. Is one partner emotionally entangled with a parent or previous relationship? Does one partner not want to commit to partnership? Perhaps one partner is incapable of commitment.

Physical abuse is an extreme sign of an unhealthy relationship. More often, ongoing frustration and stress can trigger biochemical changes in your body that drain energy and lower resistance to physical illness. Staying in unhealthy relationships can lead to alcohol or drug abuse and even suicide attempts.

We can help you if:

1. You know that you should end a relationship, but you feel stuck.
2. You suspect that you stay in a relationship only to avoid guilt or fear.
3. You cannot decide whether to accept this relationship as it is, change it, or leave.
4. You know that you tend to stay in bad relationships and you cannot change this habit.

It may be difficult to end a partnership even if you are certain it is bad for both of you.
We can coach you to make difficult decisions, with integrity.

Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 1996-2011 All rights reserved. Soulwork Systemic Coaching was primarily developed by Martyn Carruthers
to help people dissolve emotional blocks, improve relationships and achieve goals. These concepts and strategies are for general knowledge only. Consult a physician about medical conditions and before changing medical treatment. Don't steal intellectual property ... ask for permission to post, publish or teach this work.