Many marriages start off as good marriages, but over time turn stale or even hostile. At any given time huge numbers of couples are searching for ways to get their once healthy marriages back on track. There are five necessary conditions or factors which together can help you maintain (or rebuild) a strong, healthy marriage.
If you were to delve, you would probably find that virtually every troubled couple has neglected one or more of these key conditions. Of course, there are other things that can mess up a marriage, but neglect the following at your peril.
Anyone who abuses alcohol long enough or heavily enough eventually will have problems with memory. The functioning alcoholic will have memory problems. His memory problems are simply less severe than those of the skid-row alcoholic.
You both enjoyed a drink when you were first married. But unlike your drinking, his has increased over time. In fact it has become an integral part of everyday living for him.
It has become a familiar part of your life too, because you worry about what is happening to him and to your marriage. For present purposes I will limit my comments to home life.
Perhaps he is just a friendly alcoholic. He pours a drink as soon as he gets home from work and he keeps one going all evening. He watches television with you and the children and is easy to get along with, provided he always has a drink. He insists there is nothing wrong with this drinking and that he is functioning quite well. After all, he reasons, he does his job and he brings home the money.
However, he never goes to the children’s games, because he doesn’t plan ahead. By the time he is asked, he’s already drinking and can’t go. "Next time…"
If you enjoy sex in the evening, you are out of luck, because by bedtime he’s blotto. And sex is not the only area where you are feeling neglect. It’s hard to have a discussion about anything significant after he has had a couple of drinks. You spend a lot of time effectively alone. You didn’t bargain for loneliness in your marriage.
Is it possible to have a marriage relationship unpolluted by criticism?
Answer: Yes.
Could a relationship without criticism be healthy?
Answer: Yes. (One of them would not have to be dead, as an uncle suggested to me when I was entering my first adult relationship.)
Could you express your emotions and strongly disagree about something and yet still not criticize?
Answer: Yes.
The Upward Spiral of Communion
When you first meet someone, you talk, you get to know each other, you find you like each other, and you both want to talk more. Communication, knowledge and affection lead to a deep connection between you, so I call the process "the upward spiral of communion." You are connecting at the heart, mind and spirit level. There can be no criticism.
If he or she were to criticize you early in your relationship, it would break the connection and you would part. If you were to feel critical, you would just leave with a silent "I don’t need this."
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"The benefits to all of overcoming an addiction to the wellbeing of another are far reaching, but as always, the healing process begins with awareness."
Awareness alone doesn’t remove the problem, but it may produce a roadmap to wholeness. And with wholeness can come real intimacy.
Imagine a husband and wife where the man is addicted to alcohol and the woman is addicted to him and his well-being. She has an intense pull towards her husband. She loses herself in the intensity of the need to care for him. On the other hand she has a strong need to pull away from him and get a life for herself.
We have all seen it: one of them leaves and comes back, and then leaves again and comes back again. There seems to be no middle ground. It’s either total enmeshment or complete cut-off.
Addiction to a drug like alcohol develops gradually. Drinking alcohol may start out as social fun, or it may from the beginning be a way of escaping pain and difficulty. Sometime I think of it as one of dissociation’s helpers, because alcohol helps a person to split off from reality. But that's an idea for another post.
The point is that people cannot know whether alcohol has become an addiction until they are deprived of it, either through circumstance or through an attempt to quit drinking.
Do you want a better lifefor you and your family? Then check out Dr. Neill Neill's new ebook, "Living with a Functioning Alcoholic - A Woman's
Survival Guide" Read More
Many marriages start off as good marriages, but over time turn stale or even hostile. At any given time huge numbers of couples are searching for ways to get their once healthy marriages back on track. There are five necessary conditions or factors which together can help you maintain (or rebuild) a strong, healthy marriage. 
It has become a familiar part of your life too, because you worry about what is happening to him and to your marriage. For present purposes I will limit my comments to home life.
