If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, I feel for you. I had many alcoholic family members including my father. That baggage led me to marry an alcoholic the first time. Extricating or dealing with a relationship with an addict is a challenge. This article discusses some aspects of addiction. The most commonly used substance in the United States is alcohol. While alcohol is a legal psychoactive substance, it can be addicting. Many people from every social spectrum consume alcohol in many settings and never have long term adverse effects. In addition to alcohol, many mood altering substances are highly addictive and impair physical, social, and psychological functioning of persons who use them. As of this date, the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health report is from 2016 and was published in 2017. You can view a copy of this report at this web address: https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUH-FFR1-2016/NSDUH-FFR1-2016.pdf The report provides the following facts:
While this report does reflect some positive trends, the problem of addiction takes a great toll on our culture. Especially disturbing is the growing evidence of the danger of opiods or herion. Generally addiction progresses through a fairly predictable cycle: experimentation, social use, dependency, addiction and hopefully, recovery. I illustrate these stages with alcohol use below: Experimentation: I have tasted alcohol and had some experience in drinking alcohol as a teenager and young adult. Alcohol has never really caused me too many problems. It has been limited due to availability and other barriers. Social use: Now, as an adult, I go to a restaurant on Friday nights with my girlfriends and co-workers. Alcohol becomes part of a relaxation ritual for me. Still my once a week drink is not creating any problems for me. Dependency: I start to view alcohol as an aid for relaxation. While going through a stressful time at work, I start to drink a glass of wine every night when I fix dinner for my family. My relaxation begins to become dependent on that glass of wine. Being a “drinker” starts to become integrated in my identity. I am a “drinker”. Note: Dependency has both a psychological and a physical component. Both are problematic. Addiction: I begin to develop a tolerance for alcohol, requiring me to use increasing amounts in order to feel the effects. Soon, I’m drinking a bottle of wine every night and it is causing great problems in my family, causing me to miss work, neglect my home, etc. I have crossed the line into addiction which will become a physical dependence if I continue. Recovery: Something occurs that prompts me to seek treatment and I discontinue my alcohol use, engage with a support system and begin to re-establish my life without substance use. Unfortunately, many times recovery is characterized by relapse. Hallmarks of successful recovery are sobriety, abstinence, social support, and active relapse prevention. How can you tell if someone will become addicted? There is currently no way to know this. Some people may use substances many times without having a problem and then at another point in their life, use and become immediately addicted. Infrequent use in small amounts generally will not require treatment. The person who uses in this manner will likely be able to stop use when they decide to. Often, legal, social, family or other types of sanctions will be enough of a threat to convince them to stop using substances. Treatment may be required for people who cannot stop substance use on their own. Without outside intervention, it is rare for an addicted person to be able to discontinue use for an extended period of time. Despite consequences, often extreme consequences, the addiction overpowers their will. The desire for use outweighs any of the external results. Treatment can decrease the economic and social costs of addiction. Additionally, there is much evidence that treatment is far less expensive than the real costs to our society. Multiple reports on the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) support this. You can review these articles at their site: https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications More on this topic later. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, find help through local resources or SAMHSA's website. https://www.samhsa.gov/find-treatment In the meantime, stay lovely! Allison PS-Sign up for my email list and I’ll share some great relationship tips with you! SIGN UP HERE!
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Some qualities of relationships which often are present when affairs occur are high conflict, low emotional warmth, neglect of pleasure, and discomfort with emotional closeness by one partner. How can you use this information to strengthen your relationship? Building and reinforcing the qualities indicated above can be a great starting point. Using the embedded worksheet, you can identify areas where attention is needed. The lowest numbers indicated by either partner will direct your focus. For instance, if engagement is low for one partner, it may be helpful to learn some healthier means of addressing conflict. If excitement is low for the other spouse, perhaps they need to take some risks. Next: How do you know what to do about it? Agree on some concrete actions to work on. In our above example of engagement, determine what each partner pictures as “engagement”. Maybe one sees that as taking long walks holding hands and discussing issues. Maybe the other partner sees that as giving each other a kiss good bye every time they part. Everyone gets to have their own definition which means they are all valid!! Here’s the kicker……trade rating scales with each other. After all, the goal is each partner’s ratings will move higher and higher. What can each improve on that will lead to higher relationship satisfaction for their partner? Even small changes can lead to relationship improvements. (You do get credit for effort when you’re working on your relationship.) Sign up HERE for my email list and I’ll share some great relationship tips with you!
Q-Can you fall for someone without actually meeting them face to face?
A-Absolutely! All you have to do is ask 5 of the couples you know and I bet at least one will have met online. People who meet this way often have the luxury of being themselves without the normal awkwardness that comes with getting to know someone in person. That depends on the people involved really being themselves though! There's also always the possibility that there won't actually be chemistry when you meet in person so I would hesitate before too much commitment. Becoming emotionally intimate with the right someone is very rewarding! Sometimes that can be easier online or indirectly than in person. Go for it! Best of Luck! Allison PS-Get on my email list to get Four Great Relationship Tips! A-This is a BIG topic! The best way is to manage them is together with agreement on how to do that. It rarely happens that way without some negotiation that can get heated.
I’ve seen couples work with every possible configuration: Money together/separate; Bill money split between; One person pays for mortgage, the other utilities; One person gives the other an allowance; etc. I bet every couple I’ve ever worked with does it uniquely! In my experience, money represents different things to different people. To sort out how to handle money, you need to start there. For example, a wife gets anxious whenever the husband starts buying lots of stuff. She probably looks at money as safety and security. If her husband wants her to feel safe and secure, he needs to respect that. By the same token, if a husband looks at money as a means to have fun and adventure and that’s an important value to him, a wife needs to also respect that. Either of these attitudes can be taken to the extreme (as so many things in relationships can) a balance has to be created. Agreement on the low balance of the account, agreement on the amount to go in savings, agreement on entertainment budget. These can be hot button topics, but necessary conversations and negotiations. I find that when one person handles all the financial matters, it allows the other person to be in a bit of denial about the reality of the situation. That’s not good. Both people need to be involved in at least KNOWING what the situation is and making decisions around. Most importantly probably, in my opinion, is making an agreement in which both parties feel neither resentful nor taken advantage of. This is easier said than done. Lastly, I’ll say that financial infidelity has been the end of many relationships. Don’t be dishonest when managing your relationship finances! As always, start with your future vision and agree on the best means to accomplish in partnership. If you need help, get yourself a marriage therapist. Best of luck, hope that helps! Allison PS-If you haven't' signed up for my email list, what are you waiting for? Click over here. We are biologically designed to seek belonging, both to communities and to other people. The stronger and more secure that sense of belonging, the more confident we are taking other risks in life. From our early years, we learn to behave so we’re accepted by our peers and families. Anyone who’s experienced the pain of being bullied or ostracized from their peers knows that it can shake your confidence. One benefit of being in a committed relationship is the feeling of a solid foundation with our partner. From this foundation, we can face greater risks of “not belonging” out in the world. Our level of self-doubt is based on this feeling of belonging. As children, the more our families created that attachment, the more confidence we tapped into. Research shows our level of self confidence increases as our sense of belonging with our partner increases. This promotes greater personal and family functioning as the basic anxiety of belonging moves out of the forefront. Attachment security sets us up to take risks in other areas of our lives. We see things more rationally, aren’t as needy of approval. For example: That old saying, “behind every successful man is a good woman” illustrates this for us. Feeling that belonging at home allows work life to be more effective. When we KNOW we belong, it’s easier to risk rejection from other arenas. Exploring our self-doubt both individually and with our partner helps us learn. We begin to recognize how self-doubt causes us to behave in less than productive ways. Our partner begins to understand how to nurture our sense of belonging. And, if you’re lucky, vice versa. Is there an area of self-doubt that you struggle with? Can you make the link to your sense of belonging? Take time to work this out by asking a series of 5 Why questions. (Search this site if you don’t know what that is.) Share any insight below in the comments. Together with you, Allison Sign up for my email list and I’ll share some great relationship tips with you! SIGN UP HERE! Experts say that 90% of communication is non verbal. For instance, I had a nervous habit of giggling when I was anxious. Someone confronted me about being flippant about a serious topic and I went to work changing that habit. Some aspects of what we call body language are outlined below. This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how we communicate though. 1. Eye Contact-Maintaining good eye contact is a great method of becoming engaged with the speaker. It demonstrates focus and attentiveness to what is being spoken. There are some cultural implications with direct eye contact (and you should always have awareness of these), but for most people looking into the eyes of another person most of the time is essential to making them feel heard. 2. Smiling-In most cultures, a smile is a gesture of welcome and approval. Smiling encourages the speaker to continue speaking (good goal!). Conversely, frowning implies disapproval and should be avoided unless you are using this to accentuate a point. For instance, you might be puzzled by conflicting information. Displaying a frown while asking about this incongruence can accentuate the question about clarification. 3. Gestures-A lot of people “speak with their hands”. While this can be habitual, like saying umm, it is worthwhile to examine if you should tone down this particular habit. It can be extremely distracting to the speaker. Not to mention, some gesturing may be perceived as threatening. If your partner feels intimidated by your gesturing, sit on your hands! 4. Proxemics-Everyone has a different comfort level with how close you get to each other. A good rule of thumb is at least 3 feet in distance. You both should be able to reach out and grasp hands for a handshake comfortably. Be mindful that different cultures have different concepts of appropriate proxemics. Your partner might be very comfortable to be close to you ordinarily, but in the heat of an argument, more distance might be called for. 5. Touch-Touching your partner is an intimate interaction. The type, frequency and areas to be touched is highly personal. Discuss this with your partner. Touches can communicate affection or anger and the message is the one the receiver gets. If your partner tells you they don’t like a certain touch, don’t get upset, believe them! All these avenues of communication can help or hinder your connection. Winners examine their strategies and improve them. Keep Being Lovely! Allison PS-Sign up for my email list and I’ll share some great relationship tips with you! Sign UP HERE! If you’ve explored much of my stuff, you know, I’m always looking at nature for the lessons it can teach us. Have you ever watched one of those time lapse videos of a flower growing and blooming? You see the flower begin growing and proceed through its life span. You see the flower burst forth in enthusiastic growth and then pause where it seems to rest. Then suddenly, another burst of growth occurs. It’s not a continuous steady growth. It bursts and rests and might even appear to retreat at times. I think it’s so useful to think of our own growth like this. It happens in fits and spurts, in seemingly unrelated cycles. The truth is growth cannot sustain itself in a straight predictable trajectory. We have to allow it to run its own course. No matter how we struggle, we have to go through the transitions, the resting places, the retreats, the bursts of unbelievable growth. And boy, some of this results in a lot of growing pains. When we’re in those times of growth or “bursting forward”, it can be a bit scary. We don’t know where we’re going, but somehow, we can’t stop it. It can also be frustrating when we reach a place of rest. We may feel comfortable with that movement or lack of movement. Maybe we desire to keep it in motion. Sometimes, we look at motion as “good” and rest as “bad”. But know that nature always seeks balance and our effort has to be balanced by rest, or we become unhealthy. It becomes important in our practice of self compassion to acknowledge and appreciate times of pause. How does this relate to your relationship? How do you handle these natural cycles? Do you get frustrated with yourself when you feel stagnant? Do you get scared and want to stop change when it’s occurring so quickly? Doesn’t everything that affects you also affect your partner? Something more to consider: Your partner is having the same sort of growth cycles. Do you get frustrated with your partner when they’re low energy? When they don’t move, grow or act as fast as you’d like them to? Or when they don’t set the same priorities as you? In the compassion department, you have to respect your own cycles and understand that your partner is experiencing their own resistance, growth and rest cycles. Practice time: Where have you not been honoring the growth cycle for yourself or for your partner? Can you recognize and summon patience for yourself and your partner? Can you become curious instead of judgmental about where you both are in growth cycles? Keep on Growin’, Allison PS-Sign up for my email list and I’ll share some great relationship tips with you! Sign Up HERE! A-Feelings are just feelings and they're not good or bad, right or wrong. You can feel attracted to someone and not have to have a relationship with them. The same way I can really like chocolate cake, but not have it for dinner every night.
Behaviors do not HAVE to follow feelings, although we usually treat them as one and the same. If there's a good reason not to be with him, then don't. If he's just different from your normal "type", why not give it a chance? The world is full of unlikely love stories. Best wishes! Allison PS-Do you have a Q that needs an A? Let me know at allison@allisonvelez.com PPS-Sign up for my email list and I’ll share some great relationship tips with you! https://www.winningyourrelationshipgame.com/sign-up-for-4-awesome-videos.html Is it just me or is the whole world talking about porn these days? Everywhere I turn, someone is struggling with pornography in their lives or knows someone who has. I like to remain neutral about topics that can get moralistic so I’m not trying to be judgey about this. I have seen the destructive nature of pornography in my practice though. I’ve tried engaging with others about this topic and some folks are very dismissive. I hear things like “boys will be boys”. I attended a training a while back and the instructor stated when porn is a problem in a relationship, it’s the objecting partner’s problem. They suggested the remedy was relaxing and watching together. I was a little judgey in that moment, appalled actually. Working with couples, it’s very common that porn is a point of contention. Telling the objecting partner, “This is your insecurity problem” when that partner is not getting their sexual or connection needs met is terribly short sighted. If a neighbor watches porn in front of your children, it’s considered abuse. Why does it suddenly become non-abuse when your child turns 18? There’s something inherent in porn that leaves some of us vulnerable. Now I’m not saying watching porn is wrong. Lots of couples enjoy it together as part of a healthy, happy sex life. When it leads to unrealistic expectations about sexual behavior, it’s a problem. When it is interfering with a happy, healthy sex life, that can be a problem. When engagement with porn overshadows the actual relationship, problems abound. So, do problems in the relationship drive someone to porn or does porn cause problems in the relationship? Just as an observation, pornography allows the viewer to be totally self-centered without the burden of engaging with another human. That’s something we can probably all relate to wanting at times. There is no performance pressure when you’re engaged with porn. No one is judging whether you’re satisfying another person or not. While scientific studies are contradictory about whether porn addiction is “a thing”, biologically, porn impacts us physically. Consider the opinion of Kevin Majeures, a psychiatrist, specialist in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and staff of Harvard Medical School. According to his research, the brain is impacted by pornography as follows. In studies of rats, a male rat contained with a receptive female will mate, but once done, the rat is content. However, if a second receptive female is introduced, the male will again mate. This pattern is repeated every time a new female is introduced until the male rat is exhausted. This pattern has been repeated in every animal studied. This is called the Coolidge Effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolidge_effect Pornography impacts a human male’s brain in much the same way. Pornography offers the watcher a seemingly unlimited number of willing females. The lower brain is unable to discern a difference between a real female and a virtual female. Each new female that appears bumps up his sex drive again. Dopamine is the hormone of desire. When you see something desirable, your brain pours out dopamine. This helps you focus on the object of your desire. When someone clicks and sees a new object of desire, an enormous flood of dopamine occurs and it’s on. In our evolutionary history, humans have never been exposed to so many potential mating opportunities. With each new female introduced, a new rush of dopamine occurs. This creates a dopamine binge. This hormonal cascade creates a vicious circle. Use of pornography overstimulates dopamine production. When the brain becomes flooded with dopamine, the brain destroys dopamine receptors to control the flood. This creates a lowered ability to utilize the dopamine. Thus, it takes even more dopamine to achieve the same thrill. It takes more time using porn, or more site visits, to get to the same stimulated state. Eventually this will not produce the desired effect and the dopamine must be boosted with shock, disgust or surprise. This means moving to kinkier and more perverse pornography, things that induce fear or disgust. This leads Dr. Majeres to 2 conclusions. 1. Pornography is highly addictive and 2. Pornography is harmful to relationships. If you are interested in reading Dr. Majeres’ article, this is the link: http://purityispossible.com/the-science-behind-pornography/ Having sex with the same person repeatedly offers no sustained, similar rush in dopamine. This often causes the person watching pornography to prefer that activity to real life engagement. Their partner feels rejected, inferior and unimportant. Their partner gets their attachment bond rattled. Whether you see it as an “addiction” or not is irrelevant because it CAN be a problem. Even if it’s just that your partner finds it disturbing. Part of our job in a relationship is to do what we can to make our partner feel secure. Some signs that pornography might be a problem in your relationship are:
So, to those who see porn as no big deal, consider your partner’s feelings and preferences. Consider your own well mindedness. Porn has the potential to destroy relationships and families. I’ve seen it happen. If you or a loved one is struggling with porn obsession, find some help here: http://husbandhelphaven.com/porn-addiction-withdrawal-walkthrough/ https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-to-quit-porn/ https://www.youtube.com/user/CovenantEyes/videos https://www.covenanteyes.com/2012/04/23/how-to-quit-porn-6-essential-steps/ What have been your experiences with pornography? Has it been healthy or destructive in your life/relationship? Take care, Allison I stub my toe I give a little yelp, or a big yelp depending on the stub. It’s my natural reaction and there’s not much space to reasoning about that. Or is there? In a lecture hall where a hundred attendees are listening to a speaker and I stub my toe, I’m probably not going to yelp! Somehow, the situation interrupts my natural reaction and I can choose a more appropriate response. Many relationship interactions are the same. We react to discomfort and fail to censor our reactions. My husband tells me he doesn’t like my haircut and I snap at him followed up by the cold shoulder all because I can’t handle the discomfort his “criticism” caused me. The problem with reactions is they rarely make a situation better and in most cases, really mess it up. It represents the paradox of emotions in that what we want, we make less likely because of how our emotions drive our behavior. It can be really worthwhile to spend some time in discomfort learning about yourself and responding in more effective ways. Take my example: my husband says he doesn’t like my haircut. I feel upset, uncomfortable, but I catch myself and rather than reacting, I explore why I’m having such a strong feeling. So, my thoughts might run like this: Who does he think he is? I like this haircut! His haircut really sucks. (You might agree, this isn’t helpful) You might employ the Five Whys here. Why am I feeling so upset? Because his comment feels like criticism. Why do I have a problem with his criticism? Because I want him to think I look nice. Why do I want him to think I look nice? Because I want him to love and accept me. Why do I want him to love and accept me? Because if he doesn’t, he might not want to stay together. That’s only four whys, but I’m starting to get a much clearer idea of why his comment bothers me. My insecurity is triggered a bit and that fear fuels my anger. Of course the rational part of my brain understands this is ridiculous. Armed with that understanding I can now respond very differently. This process requires spending a time in discomfort (that’s how growth occurs). How much discomfort is there when you snap and withdraw? I’m betting MORE than my way! So Practice Time! Think about the last time you had a strong reaction to something. Can you allow yourself to sit with that memory and analyze where it came from? Spend some time with the Five Whys to lead you to a deeper sense of where your fear or pain lies. This is excellent material to share with your partner if you can. Let me know how it goes! I’d love to hear from you. Comment or email me privately at Allison@allisonvelez.com Until then, Allison |
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