Amber Hollingsworth explains how partners of people with addiction slip into a parent-child dynamic through nagging, monitoring, and covering, which kills intimacy and breeds resentment on both sides. The caretaker role actually makes the addiction worse by triggering rebellion. She argues the way out is stepping back and focusing on your own life instead.
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I want you to think back to who you were before the addiction entered your relationship. Were you a nag? Were you a rule maker? Did you check up on your partner, track their whereabouts, pour their drinks down the drain, rehearse arguments in the shower? Probably not. So when did that person show up? And more importantly, where did you go? Today we're going to be talking about what addiction does to a marriage, not just what addiction does to the person drinking or using, But what it does to the person who loves them, what it does to the marriage, what it does to you. It doesn't happen all at once. There's no moment where you decide, I'm going to become their parent now. It happens in a thousand small moments, each one completely reasonable on its own. Like they miss a payment, so you start handling the finances. They show up late to something, so you start reminding them and then double checking and then eventually just doing it yourself. They drink too much at a family event. So next time you try to manage how much they drink before they go and while they're there. Every single one of these responses makes complete sense because you're just trying to hold things together. But slowly, before you realize it, you stop being their partner and you started being their parent. So let's walk through what this actually looks like in real life. Let me know if any of these sound familiar. You're constantly trying to get them to see what you see. If you just went to bed earlier, if you just went to the gym, if you just called your sponsor. You sound like a broken record, but you just can't stop because the alternative is silence and not saying anything feels like giving up. You ask the same thing 17 times. You tell yourself this time will be different and it isn't. And now you feel like the most annoying person alive, even though you're not the one with the problem. You start criticizing. Everything they do starts to look like evidence. The way they pour a drink, how long they've been in the garage, whether their eyes look clear. You're scanning constantly and it comes out as criticism because you don't know what else to do with what you're seeing. Maybe you start rulemaking. No drinking before 5, only beer, only on the weekends. You set the rules, they agree to the rules, the rules last about 3 days, and then you're back to square one feeling like nothing's ever going to work. And then comes the monitoring, checking the recycling, counting the bottles, smelling their breath when they come home, going through their phone. You never thought you'd be that person, but here you are. Maybe you're covering for them, making excuses to the kids, calling their boss when they can't show up, telling your friends everything's fine, carrying the secret because the alternative feels too scary to think about. Does that sound like a partner or does it sound like a parent at the end of the rope with a teenager who just won't listen? Now let's talk about what this dynamic actually does to the relationship. First, the intimacy disappears. And I don't mean just the physical intimacy. I mean all of it. The friendship, the inside jokes, the feeling like this person is on your team. It's almost impossible to feel close to someone you're simultaneously parenting. It just kills all the romance. You can't be attracted to someone that you're managing. Second, the resentment builds on both sides. You resent them for making you into this person, for the exhaustion, for carrying everything alone. And they resent you for the monitoring, the rules, the criticism. They feel controlled, even though you're only doing it because you're terrified or you're trying to help. And here's the cruel irony. Your parenting behavior actually makes addiction worse because the more controlled they feel, the more they want to escape. And whatever their addiction is, is how they escape. Third, you lose yourself. Somewhere in all of this, all your needs, your own identity, Your own life quietly get pushed back to the back burner. And maybe you've been here so long, you might not even remember what you want anymore. The nagging, the monitoring, the rulemaking, the criticizing— this is not who you are. This is what addiction does to the people around it. It pulls everyone in the orbit. It reorganizes the whole family system around managing the addiction. You didn't just become this person because something is wrong with you. You became this person because you love someone And you've been trying to hold everything together with absolutely no roadmap on how to do it. The problem is, is that your strategies haven't been working. And when something isn't working, most of us just do more of it. Nag more, monitor more, set more rules. But more of the same thing is just going to get you more of the same result. So let's talk about what to do instead. The first thing you need to understand is that the parent-child dynamic doesn't just hurt the marriage. It actually reduces your influence over the situation. Think about it. When someone feels like they're being parented, what do they do? They They dig in, they defend, they shut down, or they just rebel. None of those responses move them toward recovery. But when you stop parenting, when you step back into your own life, stop managing theirs, and you start managing communication in a way that doesn't trigger defensiveness, something shifts. You actually become someone that they want to talk to instead of someone they want to hide from. And that is where your real influence and power lives. For those of you who are ready to stop spinning your wheels and ready to get through to someone in denial, I want to invite you to our Denial Breakthrough Challenge. The challenge is a multi-day live coaching event where I teach you how to have honest conversations that won't blow up, how to address the drinking and using without triggering defensiveness, and most importantly, how to break through denial without turning it into a giant power struggle. You got to remember, denial is a defense mechanism, and when you come directly at it, the defense mechanisms just get stronger and bigger. In the Denial Breakthrough Challenge, I teach you how to strategically not step on those defense mechanism landmines. I'll put the link to register for that in the description below. We have it every 4 to 8 weeks or so, so make sure you grab your spot. If you felt like this video spoke to something you've been experiencing, drop a comment below and tell me what really hit home. And if you're not subscribed, now's a great time because on this channel we talk about the real stuff, the stuff that's hard to say in a way that doesn't shame you or shame them. I want you to have your partnership back, and that starts with you getting the right information. And I'll see you in the next video.
