How To Rebuild Your Relationship After Alcohol Has Destroyed It! 💔👉🏻💝

How do you rebuild trust and put your relationship back together when there's been an alcohol problem in the mix? That's what we're going to talk about in today's video. I'm going to give you four very practical, useful and successfully proven strategies. If you will do these four things, you'll be well on your road to putting your relationship back on track. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth and this YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so that you can get your life and your family back on track and live the life that you want to live. And this is the only channel out there that tries to help you understand the issue from both sides, which is exactly what we're going to do today. We're to going, going to look at trust issue. When there's been an alcohol problem in a relationship, how do you move past that? Now, naturally, when I say fix a trust issue and there's been an alcohol problem, you probably immediately think, how does the one with the alcohol problem prove themselves to the other person? And yeah, that's a big part of the equation. But to be honest, it really is a two way street. You see, anytime there's been an addiction issue inside of a relationship, you will develop trust issues on both sides. The person with the addiction also does not trust the family member because guess what, both people have probably been being a little dishonest. Both people have probably been doing a little sneaking, right? And so there's distrust and uneasiness on both sides. So in order to put the thing back together, both people are going to have to try really hard to change some things. Now, one very practical, useful tool that we use in our office is something called a Sober Link. Now, soberlink is an alcohol monitoring system which has proven to be highly effective in restoring relationships, family and trust and helping people along their journey and recovery. What soberlink does is it provides accountability for the person in early recovery and it gives the family peace of mind. Now, I want you to know that soberlink is a sponsor of this channel. But long before Soberlink sponsored this channel, I have been a huge, huge fan. We've used soberlink successfully in our our office for more than eight years now. Let me tell you how it works and why it's so helpful and effective. So essentially the person is given a soberlink device, which is a breathalyzer device, but more sophisticated than most. And that breathalyzing device actually has like cellular technology in it. So it hooks to what I call the soberlink cloud, kind of like the iPhone cloud that's up in the sky somewhere. And the person who's in early recovery will work out a schedule of testing with somebody in their recovery support group. Now, that doesn't necessarily have to be the family member. It can be the counselor, the sponsor, the recovery coach, or someone else who understands what's going on and is willing to help. Once that schedule is established, it'll get put into the soberlink cloud and the person will receive a text message when they're supposed to take a Breathalyzer test. Now, if you're late or you miss your test, or you get a positive on your test, then your support person, whoever the person you've identified and given permission to, will receive a message letting them know what's going on. And if you're positive on the soberlink, it'll actually have you retest again in 15 minutes and then again in 15 minutes. It'll keep doing this until the alcohol is all out of your system. This provides huge accountability. And the way we do it in our office is we have the person identify a recovery support person, usually somebody other than like the partner or the spouse, because we don't want the partners spouse to have to be in that, you know, probation officer type role. But it gives that partner spouse a lot of peace of mind to know that it's being handled and that accountability is there and someone else is watching out for it. Right. So knowing that someone else is looking out for the person and there and there is someone that knows if there's a relapse or something going on and that they're going to be dealing with it. When that person, it just goes a long way. And then family member, the partner, the spouse, whoever, can kind of like let go of it a little bit, which makes them breathe easier, which sure does make life for the person a lot easier because they don't feel like they're being micromanaged, watched like a hawk, questioned all the time, accused and all that stuff, it really eases all of that tension away almost immediately. Honestly. I know you might be thinking, well, what if the person just has someone else take their test form? Well, one of the cool things about soberlink is it has facial recognition technology in it and it makes sure that you're you or you're the person that's supposed to be taking the test. There are several other benefits to soberlink technology, but I am telling you, one of the best ones is how quickly and effectively it can restore Trust. So all the endless questioning and accusations and, you know, smell checks and all that stuff can just ease back. Telling you it helps a ton. Now, if you want to know more about SilverLink, I'm going to put the link in the description so you can find out all about it. But keep listening because I've got three more things that are really important that you need to do if you're going to restore trust. The second really helpful thing that both people can do to help restore trust in the relationship is to blame the addiction or the alcohol, whatever you want to call it, not the person. And I mean this on both sides. Most of the hurt, the betrayal, the lies, the sneaking, that's happened on both sides of the equation, those are all symptoms of addiction, right? You can see it in any family system and any two people anywhere. I'm telling you, it is very, very predictable. And so instead of blaming loved one who has the alcohol problem for all of those things, or instead of the person, the alcohol problem, blaming the family for being too controlling and snooping in their business, you, if you both will understand that those are symptoms of the problem. And if you're going to put your frustration somewhere and your anger somewhere, put it on whatever you want to call it, alcoholism, the disease, addiction. But understand where that blame goes. And even in the way that you talk about it with each other, if you can acknowledge that it's a symptom of that, not a symptom of the person, both people are going to feel way more understood. And that is really going to expedite your journey back to trust and a good relationship. Now, the third thing that I want both people to do, if you really want to be successful with this, is I want both of you to learn how to hear things that you may not like without freaking out. Because one of the essential things about building trust is you want to be told the truth, right? Both people want to be told the truth. But in order for people to be able to tell you the truth, you got to be the kind of person that the truth can be told, sold to, right? Like if your spouse almost has a relapse and they come and tell you about that, how they really wanted to drink and they. They actually went to the store and they almost bought it, and you freak out, guess what? They're not going to tell you that again, right? If you, as the family member, did something you weren't supposed to do, you snuck and you looked at something or you called somebody or did something, then be honest about that and the other person has to be able to hear that and understand that those are still symptoms of the addiction. And it may take a little while for all of those symptoms to go away. But you're gonna have to be able to hear things that you don't want to hear. And if you're the person that's in early recovery, you may get like, a few accusations or a few where what were you doing or questions or stuff like that. And you need to realize that is part of the process. And you can't freak out or be upset with the other person, just like they can't freak out and be upset with you. It's gonna take some time. So give each other a little room and a little grace. Which leads me to number four. And that is, it'll go a long, long way, if you will, recognize the efforts of the other person when you see the small things that they're doing to try to change. Acknowledge it. Hey, bring it up. Say you see it, you notice it, you appreciate it. Recognize what might be hard that the other person is going through. Man, if you can do this, the other person is going to feel so heard and understood, telling you, if you can do these four things, you're going to be well on your way. You've got the Sober link for accountability, right? You've got let's put the blame where the blame goes, which is only addiction. We're going to be better communicators, have a little more patience with each other, and we're going to recognize the difficulties that other people are going through and the efforts that they're making to make things better. Obviously, if you can do these things, your relationship is going to improve dramatically. Now, as always, there are links to recovery resources in the description, including the soberlink, so make sure you check that out. And up next, I want you to watch this video on relapse prevention. This video on relapse prevention is. Is relapse prevention on both sides of the fence. So from the family perspective.