“As women grow more confident and emotionally healthy in recovery, their self-esteem and confidence improves, and they begin to actually like themselves. This control is attractive at first, but soon becomes controlling or abusive” says Desloover. “Women in early recovery often choose abusive men because they seem in control, while the women feel out of control in their own lives. The dissatisfaction they feel in their relationships is often the stressor that led to their drug abuse in the first place. Some women choose abusive partners in early recovery because they lack discernment or grew accustomed to being treated poorly in childhood. This person often is abusive or codependent, as is the recovering person early on.Ĭodependent individuals focus too heavily on the needs of their partner (“My happiness is dependent on making/keeping you happy”), and define themselves by their relationship, sometimes lowering their personal standards to please someone else. In early recovery, people tend to choose the same type of partner they would’ve chosen when they were using drugs. It would follow then, that recovering individuals would choose differently after working on themselves first. People tend to choose partners who are at their same emotional maturity level. “If they start dating too soon, they are likely to choose someone who is emotionally less mature, as they themselves are, than if they waited a year.” Choosing Unhealthy Partners. “In treatment, people learn new skills that need to be practiced before they are able to make them part of their daily life without returning to old patterns,” she explains. Recovering people often have learned to either shut down and hold in their emotions for fear of being hurt or to romanticize their relationships and fall in love at the first opportunity, without discriminating. People in recovery might choose to date a very different type of person when they first quit using as compared to when they have achieved a year of sobriety, observes Desloover. “We have to learn to love ourselves before we can love someone else.” The Pitfalls of Dating Too Soon “It is commonly recommended in the recovery community to avoid romantic relationships for the first year, because most of us are just beginning to get to know ourselves and to define our values,” Desloover says. Tanya Desloover, MA, CADCII, a marriage and family therapist intern in Newport Beach, California, also recommends waiting one year. Although the Big Book of AA doesn’t offer guidelines on dating in recovery, addiction counselors strongly advise waiting until a person has achieved one year of sobriety. Early in recovery, relationships are one of the leading causes of relapse. Most recovering addicts have a long history of dysfunctional and destructive relationships. Learning to feel emotions again, including positive feelings of love and intimacy, can be one of the most challenging parts of recovery, but also one of the most rewarding.Ĭontrary to what a lot of people think – that an addict’s job is the first thing to go – drug use shows up first in the dysfunction of the addict’s relationships. An Interview with Tanya Desloover, MA, CADCII
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