Am I codependent or just loyal? Codependency, people pleasing and loving someone who drinks

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Codependency is not an official diagnosis. It is not in the DSM-5, and the term is heavily criticised. This piece is not here to tell you whether you are codependent. It is here to help you put words to what is going on at home when the person you love drinks or uses, and to tell you the things I wish someone had told me.

Where I'm coming from

I have a master's degree in psychology, and I worked as a therapist before I ran a private practice. When I was in school, codependency was the word everyone used. Today the field says affected family members, because that is what it is. And a big self-disclosure, if it helps: I grew up with family members who drank heavily. My mother, a military officer, had a partner with a severe alcohol use disorder. Some of my own partners have had problematic drinking or substance use in one way or another. So I get it, from my own life as much as from training, and it is also exactly what I see in my clients.

Where the word came from

The idea surfaced in the 1930s, when people started noticing how badly chemical dependency affected the family around the drinker. By the 1970s the literature had the terms co-alcoholic and para-alcoholic. Here is what it describes. When a child lives with an adult who uses, the child becomes parentified: you learn early that you have to take responsibility, regulate yourself, keep yourself safe, and sometimes take care of a drunk adult for the night, at an age when you were supposed to be the one being cared for. Seeing the person who is supposed to be your rock vulnerable, intoxicated and unable to care for themselves or for you does not go away smoothly.

Then, as an adult, your loved one drinks, and those triggers come alive. Suddenly you feel you have to be in control. Suddenly you carry a responsibility nobody gave you. Yes, he is your partner, and you love him and want him safe. But the burden that comes with his drinking was never an agreement. Nobody said, I'm going to drink heavily and you're going to keep me safe. And alcohol hits people differently. In my experience a lot of my partners became combative, or put themselves in danger, or tried to drive, and I could not just go to bed. That kind of thing wears on intimacy, on sex, on communication, on everything. People break up over it.

Healthy detachment

The first practical thing. Healthy detachment is not abandoning him and it is not negotiating with him. It's me or the bottle does not work, because nobody chooses a substance over a person. That is not a conscious choice; it is an addiction. But that does not mean you put up with harmful behavior, and it does not mean your boundaries get violated. It means deciding what you are willing to do: to be there for him, to keep him safe to the extent you can, with what we call unconditional positive regard, seeing the real person behind the intoxicated part. And also to disengage. To say, I'm not giving you money for this, I'm not okay with you drinking tonight. To have the conversation the next day. And, if it becomes too much and he is not making any effort toward treatment, to leave. I am not telling you to leave anyone. I am telling you it is allowed.

If there is physical violence, that is a different conversation. Get yourself to safety first and talk to a mental health professional. Nobody deserves to live with violence because of someone's disease.

You cannot make him sober

You can't make him recover. Only he can do that. You can support his sobriety. And when he does decide to go sober, know that your family dynamic changes with him. In gay culture the club is the safe place, and what we do at the club is drink. A lot of queer spaces simply hand you alcohol. When your partner is in recovery he may not come to the places you used to go together, and you need to talk about his triggers. Some people are fine with you drinking; some are triggered by it at certain points in recovery.

My husband decided to stop drinking. For me it was just an adaptation: sometimes I go to the old places and he does something else. And slowly I lost interest in those places myself. The opposite happens too. Couples break up because one person gets sober and the other finds the dynamic boring. That is how deeply you are affected by someone else's drinking, in either direction. Affected family member. Not clingy, not controlling, not codependent. Affected.

What is available

Recovery is possible. Recovery will change your family system, especially in a world where alcohol is at every gay event. And help exists. In my practice, under my SUDPT credential, I don't treat substance use disorder on my own, only in appropriate settings, and I will refer you when that is what is needed. What I do take is you: the partner, the affected family member, with clinical hypnotherapy, motivational interviewing and parts work. And sober curiosity, for the person who parties every weekend and gets a bit too much without that being an addiction, and who is curious about drinking less. Not every problematic weekend means a disorder.

If you need support, I'm a Registered Hypnotherapist in Washington and I see people online across the United States and internationally. Start here and request an appointment, and I will tell you honestly whether this is a fit or whether you need something else.