Codependency: why you keep attracting partners who drink

Have you ever asked yourself why you, a successful person with a six-figure job or a profitable business, someone who is genuinely good at what you do, keep ending up with the same two patterns? Pattern one: in your romantic life you attract a man with problematic substance use. Pattern two: in your business you keep hiring partners or employees who need constant support, there is always something wrong with them, and you end up carrying them until you finally have to let them go. This piece is about the first pattern. The second one is its own piece.

Where I have seen this

I'm Eugene Berezin, a Registered Hypnotherapist in Washington. Before this I worked as a psychotherapist in Moscow, and then in behavioral health and mental health services here in the United States. One pattern I kept seeing in some of my gay male clients, extremely successful men earning very good money, was this: they ended up in a relationship with a person who used substances, or who needed significant support. And almost all of them came from a dysfunctional or semi-functional family. Almost all had family members with substance use. Almost all had taken on a role early: the super-functional responsible child, the one the addiction literature calls the hero of the family. Or the caregiver. Or the family therapist, the healer, the one who took care of everyone. Those roles intertwine.

I say we, because I grew up in a semi-functional family myself, with substance use in it. People like us know what to look out for. We will not go for the party animal, the guy who gets drunk on the second date or offers party drugs. We know better, because we were harmed by that behavior so much. And yet we end up in a relationship with a partner who uses in a problematic way.

What it looks like

He does not communicate with you when he goes out. He is at a gay club or a gathering, it is five hours later, and you are legitimately concerned. You check on him, not because you are controlling, but because you intuitively know something is wrong, and he is not responding. More importantly, he has a history: times he could not drive, times he ended up with very bad company, times he came home injured, times you had to step in. You have a documented history that he cannot be trusted when he is partying or using in a problematic way. The substance can be almost anything.

And when you bring it up, he says: you're controlling, you're trying to control my behavior, you have trust issues, you're insecure.

What to do about the conversation

First, understand the role you are playing. Are you enabling this, or not? Are the two of you, as a unit, aware that this pattern affects you both? If every time you raise it he calls you controlling, you have to address the conversation more directly, and show the receipts. Not to blame. To name the pattern you are noticing, specifically.

If the two of you are aware of what is happening and you both legitimately want change, he may be open to professional help. Any substance use does not automatically mean dependency, and dependency does not automatically mean addiction. But a pattern where a person goes out, drinks too much and gets in trouble, again and again, is worth noticing and worth working on with a professional, an addiction counsellor or a therapist. And if not that, there are many ways people recover. Some go to outpatient treatment. Some quit on their own. There is no one right way. That part is his.

What is yours

You cannot control him. You can look at your own behavior. If you are the hero and the caretaker and everything sits on your shoulders, the question is how you can be this highly functional, type A-plus person in your family and your relationship without needing another person to play the role that drains your emotional energy and makes the relationship unhealthy. This is not about breaking up with your partner. In some cases there is nothing left to do but leave, and if you have already left a partner over substance use, that is worth exploring on its own. But the pattern lives in you, and it will travel with you to the next relationship unless you look at it.

Those are hard questions to answer alone, which is why I tell people to work with someone: a therapist, a hypnotherapist, a coach, a mentor. In my practice I do clinical hypnotherapy and motivational interviewing. Motivational interviewing is not psychotherapy; it is a very good tool for understanding why you do what you do and what you actually want. Clinical hypnotherapy is very good at reaching the part of you that runs these patterns on automatic. Together they work well. My theoretical foundation is Internal Family Systems: the mind is made of parts, and you have a hero part and a caretaker part that keep overplaying.

Why the spark survives all of it

Here is the interesting part. Your caretaker and hero parts affect your partner's parts. When you are in those roles you are not your true self, which is caring, compassionate, clear and connected, but not controlling. When your caretaker, your enabler, is activated, a part of your partner relaxes: he will take care of me. And then something rewarding happens: a really good conversation, really good sex, something pleasant that heals the wound for a moment. That gives both of you a hit, and it keeps the spark alive. The answer is to look at your patterns and rewrite them.

If you want to do that work, this is the page for you, and you can request an appointment from it.