Marriage Destruction
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| Spouses Trying to Agree?? |
Today’s Learning Moment – 02 08 21 Issue: Marriage Destruction – When A Offspring Develops Mental Health or Substance Use. (MHSU)
My wife and I were talking the other day about ideas for Learning Moments. She’s a very smart woman. Besides giving me a long list of subjects for future articles, she also specifically said, “Why don’t you write about how destructive having someone with MHSU in your family is to marriages of parents and grandparents?”
I immediately felt that fight or flight response in my body. To think about it means you have to acknowledge it. “It” has caused us lots of conflicts. Not something I enjoy reliving. However, both of us know with certainty that dealing with offspring suffering MHSU has irrevocably changed our relationship. After I got over my initial anxiety, I realized this is exactly the type of article that has to be written to support the journey of other families.
The need became even more apparent when I started to research the idea. What I found immediately is there is lots of research on the impact of the relationships between people with MHSU and their families, but hardly anything on what happens to the prime relationship of parents or grandparents dealing with a child or grandchild with MHSU. (3) Section 5.3
That means some of what I’ll say in this article is based on the experience of my wife and me as well as other stories I’m heard from many other wives, husbands, moms, dads and grandparents. However, I did find some material, which you can check out in the reference section at the bottom of this article.
First of all, let me say that my wife and I are still married, still a couple, and still love each other, however, I believe we’re the exception to the rule. Possibly because we’re both so darn stubborn and never give up. Maybe just blind luck. It certainly isn’t because we knew how to deal with the outfall of MHSU that we’ve lived with. We’ve had MANY moments when both of us had no idea what we should do next, never mind if we even understood what we were facing. That doesn’t exactly lead to having a common strategy that we both could agree to.
Here we are, decades later, still dealing with family members suffering from MHSU. Yes, I think I can say we know and understand a lot more of the challenges MHSU delivers. Somedays that works in our favour. Other days it seems like we go right back to the beginning as we struggle to arrive at a combined strategy dealing with the latest issues in a string of thousands of past problems.
No matter what, the one thing we know for sure is that our relationship has been forever changed due to what we’ve dealt with and are still facing. Every interaction with our MHSU family member chips a little more off of us.
The problem for people in parenting roles dealing with MHSU is that everything associated with it is completely polarizing. One spouse may believe SU is a choice and “using” represents a moral or fortitude failure. The other spouse may see it as a disease. You can see, even in the basic belief foundations we have about MHSU, there can be tremendous differences. Spouses can blame one another for being either too permissive or too strict. They can feel guilty, helpless or angry, blaming themselves or projecting that blame onto their spouse. They can blame themselves or their spouse for hereditary MH problems or SU tendencies. All of this will lead to completely different views on actions when dealing with a family member.
Few couples will have matching views on MHSU, or strategies that you apply with family members with MHSU, or their treatment, or how you respond to them, etc, etc. This means when critical events occur, what one partner does won’t align to what the other partner believes should happen. THAT leads to lots of inevitable conflicts between spouses. Given the nature of MHSU, there’s going to be many, many events that will lead to disagreements of what happened, why it happened, and what should be done about it.
Couples usually have developed ways to deescalate and resolve differences early in their relationship. However, when an offspring or grandchild with MHSU enters the picture the challenges they bring will test those agreements like nothing else a couple will ever experience. Parents endure overwhelming emotional, psychological, physical, familial and financial consequences when trying to work with a family member’s substance abuse problem. The same can be said of MH illness as well. If you’re both on the same page, these challenges can be overwhelming. Having different views can lead to a devastating impact on your primary spousal partnership.
My wife and I have spent what feels like thousands of hours discussing and dare I say, arguing about the latest catastrophe our MHSU loved one brings to our door. Over the years, we have achieved common ground on many methods we use when connecting with our family member. Yet, even now, there are times when they spring something new on us. We’ve also slid back to a previous approach that didn’t work or we just don’t know how to best deal with a new situation.
In the beginning, many of us are in complete denial that our children even have a drug problem or mental illness. You can imagine how difficult it is in engaging in a real conversation with a spouse that doesn’t believe that a problem even exists. None of us got a class in school that taught us positive conflict resolution with our future spouse. It’s bad enough trying to figure out chores, who cooks, or who looks after the finances. When we end up with something as fundamentally life-altering as MHSU in the family, we’re left to flounder through it, often with no direction or help.
Most of the professionals you deal with are completely focused on your family member with MHSU. Little or no time is spent with you or your spouse on giving you real tools that you both can use to work together.
People dealing with MHSU use usually fall into the following three categories of how they approach the problems arising from the illnesses. They will directly confront the issues, tolerate them or withdraw. (3) page 23 You can imagine the problems between two spouses if one is confronting and the other is withdrawing or even different levels of those strategies, assuming you’re both on the same page.
There are no simple solutions to the fall out spouses will experience. My wife and I have found some that help, however applying them consistently, especially in the heat of the moment is challenging to the extreme. Even so, I’ll do my best to explore some ideas that may help you.
The sooner that you both reach that point that you acknowledge that there is a problem in your family, the better. That’s the time to sit down and work out communication strategies. Communication between the two of you is the single most important plan.
Here’s why — agreements of how, when, and what you’ll do in a given situation will ALWAYS be fluid. There is no one way to handle all the challenges a family member with MHSU brings to you. Even what seems like the very same issue this month will result in you dealing with it differently next month. This means the only constant between you and your spouse is discussing how you’re going to handle the current issue. Strive for consensus, but if that’s not possible, try to agree that one of you will be the decision-maker and prime interface for your family member.
Learn everything you can about your family member’s MHSU illness. Share what you learn with your spouse. If they’re not receptive, that in itself is a major learning moment for you. It means you’re not on the same page together and approaches you use will be more difficult.
When things get heated … and they WILL, have an agreement to put the issue aside until one or both of you have calmed down. Time is on your side, so taking a half-day or few days may work to your advantage. I can’t tell you how many times the problem our family member brought to us just disappeared by not “fixing” it immediately.
Tempers will flare. Often this comes across as being angry at our spouse. I know for my wife and me, this has been a real challenge, especially for me. I get so frustrated that I could just spit nails sometimes. That frustration can easily morph into destructive behaviour that has impacted our marriage relationship.
Extend grace to each other. Grace is giving each other the room to not have the same opinions or solutions as our spouse and respecting their views despite the difference from your own opinion. Grace also extends to not blaming your spouse when a decision doesn’t result in the outcome you thought it would. I can say with complete assurance that most outcomes won’t be what you expected. No blame, ever! Especially when you agreed your spouse would be the prime for a decision and it goes wrong.
Remember when your kids were small and they’d leverage one of you off the other? Family members with MHSU can be very manipulative. They will utilize those early childhood strategies of divide and conquer to the maximum. Always strive for a consensus front, even if you couldn't agree on the next steps. Someone has to take the lead. Once that person is the lead, don’t interfere.
Live and learn from every event. When something doesn’t work, discuss what went off the rails and do something different the next time. I guarantee that your family member is learning from each interaction with you and your spouse. If it doesn’t work to their advantage, they WILL adapt and come back at you with a different approach. Nothing stays the same or will always work with your family member. Be always open to changing an approach that’s not working.
I know at times it won’t feel like it, but your main support team is you and your spouse. Do whatever you have to in preserving your main support team. Things become so much more difficult if you and your spouse aren’t working together. If everything else fails, you at least can be a comfort to each other.
I’ve already made this article way longer than I should, however, it feels like I’ve left so much unsaid. If you have questions, please contact me at albernihelp@gmail.com. Possible some part of this article needs to be expanded. Let me know what you need more info on.
If I can leave you with one thing to take away, it would be that you be gentle with each other.
All our past articles can be found here: https://ptalbcat.blogspot.com/
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Author: Ron Merk — Ron is a person with family-lived experience. He advocates for people with substance or mental illness.
Families Helping Families is an initiative of the Port Alberni Community Action Team. We send out “Learning Moment” articles regularly to help folks understand substance illness. Knowledge is vital in understanding the illness of our family members. You may copy, distribute or share our articles as long as you retain the attribution. You can be added to our distribution list by dropping us a note to - albernihelp@gmail.com
This article was written using info from the following sources:
Reference Material
(1) 2004 - Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. Substance Abuse Treatment and Family Therapy. Rockville (MD): Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US); (Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series, No. 39.) Chapter 2 Impact of Substance Abuse on Families. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64258/
(2) 2010 – Addiction, The Sibling and the Self https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233062032_Addiction_the_Sibling_and_the_Self
(3) 2013 C Swartbooi A phenomenological study on parents' experiences of their adolescent's substance abuse http://etd.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11394/3863/Swartbooi_MA_2013.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
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