"Passionate Best Friends, The Next Step For Couples In Recovery"
By Amy C. Robertson, LCSW-C, BCD

When they first came to see me, Alex was an active alcoholic and his wife, Cynthia (not their real names), was angry, resentful and ready to leave him. Unless they received help not only for Alex's dependency to alcohol and Cynthia's role in enabling this addiction, but also for their marriage, chances were slim that they would remain together whether Alex became sober or not.

Since our first meeting three years ago, Alex and Cynthia have voluntarily separated, entered into recovery programs and moved back together. Not only have they renewed their commitment to each other, but they are experiencing a greater sense of intimacy and joy in their marriage since they first fell in love with each other.

Such a turnaround may sound like something one only finds in children's tales with the cliche ending, "and they lived happily ever after." Reversing the downward spiral their marriage had entered required them to not only arrest the progressive disease Alex struggled with, but also to find a way to stay connected to each other during the on-going recovery process.

For many couples with a partner in recovery for alcoholism, drug use or other addiction, their relationship to each other is neglected since the emphasis is on their respective recovery programs. Often this causes the partners to have parallel lives -- and marriages. It doesn't have to be this way.

A process developed in the early 1980s known as Imago relationship therapy is helping couples such as Alex and Cynthia develop intimate and satisfying marriages. Under the guidance of a trained professional in the Imago technique, couples can work through the wide gulf of issues and feelings that are unleashed during the recovery process and that often lead to relapses, affairs and divorces.

Imago is no substitute for the primary treatment someone requires with an addiction to alcohol, drugs or other substance. Imago, however, can help a couple stay connected to each other while they manage the intense feelings of anger, hurt, resentment and loneliness that come up in each partner during the first four or five years of recovery -- the same period couples in recovery are most prone to divorce.

When I began working with Alex and Cynthia, he was still an active alcoholic. Given the nature of this disease, my first step was to guide the intervention process so each partner could get started with treatment and recovery. Alex began recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Cynthia started attending Al-Anon meetings. They agreed, too, that it would be better if they temporarily moved apart. Physical separation during the early or first stage of recovery can often help partners from further wounding each other. Rather than driving them even farther apart, the separation began the healing process.

Once the addicted person begins to concentrate on staying sober and attending 12-step program meetings, it is not unusual for the other family members to feel things at home are worse, not better. This is the time when feelings of hurt, anger and resentment well up in the spouse who may have endured years of emotional and physical abuse while the alcoholic was drinking.

Although the natural urge at this point is to unload these feelings onto the person with the drinking or drug problem, Imago takes a different approach. Each partner is taught how to contain their reactive feelings until they can be expressed during the dialogue process, which requires each partner to alternately send and receive messages from each other. This structured dialogue is designed to facilitate safety and mutual trust between the two partners. Couples learn how to mirror, empathize and validate each partner's feelings.

After the spouse with the addiction has one to two years of maintaining his or her sobriety or other abstinence, concerns in the relationship shift from the addiction to power struggles and family-of-origin issues. This is the time when the couple is most vulnerable to affairs and other "exits" as well as to separations and divorce. The couple begins to realize that just being sober isn't going to fix all of their problems.

At this point Alex and Cynthia were still living apart, and while he had stopped drinking, Alex was still seeing another woman. Cynthia also struggled with her own exit: whether to have another child with Alex, which would allow her, at least temporarily, avoid going back to work or addressing the trouble spots in her marriage.

It didn't take long, however, before Alex and the woman he was seeing to begin experiencing difficulties similar to the ones Alex had in his marriage. Realizing this, he agreed to end the affair. Once he did this, Cynthia consented to coming in for Imago couple's counseling. Their initial commitment was for three months.

My goal was to help them re-image each other and help them understand that the behavior they most disliked about their partner was coming from that person's own hurt and pain -- much of which was related to the person's family-of-origin -- and not something they were deliberately doing to make things miserable for their partner.

Imago provides couples with several techniques to begin working through power struggles and other relationship issues. Through Imago couples are taught respectful ways to ask each other to modify or change behavior or mannerisms that aggravate the other spouse. The basic Imago dialogue process helps couples learn to forgive each other for past wounds and to let go of the hurt, angry and resentful feelings. Instead of repeating self-defeating patterns that ignite old arguments and fights, Imago replaces unworkable habits and behaviors with new skills that help motivated couples reverse what otherwise may seem like a hopeless situation.

When Cynthia was the sender in the dialogue process, Alex was required to listen to what she said without interrupting or arguing about what she said. This was not easy for him to do, especially in the beginning, but over time learning how to contain one's feelings becomes a cornerstone for developing a more intimate and conscious relationship.

When Cynthia would send, she not only talked about her hurt and angry feelings as a result of the lying and other things Alex did while using alcohol, but also memories of her dad and sister when they had been distrustful towards her. Making the connection between the past and present helped her understand some of the underlying issues at play in her own marriage.

For Alex, the dialogue process uncovered how his mother had had a series of affairs that continue throughout his parents' marriage. Although they stayed together, the affairs didn't stop. In addition, Alex's mother had problems with alcohol. Cynthia began to see some of the difficulties Alex encountered while growing up and the reasons why a similar situation was being repeated in their marriage. Through the Imago dialogue, Cynthia began to stop blaming Alex and became more aware of the unconscious issues he brought to their marriage.

Given the new behaviors they were using during the dialogue process, a sense of safety gradually developed between them. Cynthia began to let go of her hurt and resentment towards Alex while he became willing to make amends for what he had done to her.

Not all couples begin using the Imago process as early in the addictions recovery process as Alex and Cynthia. For persons in marriages where there has been a long period of sobriety or abstinence -- five years or more -- Imago counseling can help partners develop greater intimacy and joy. The tendency for couples like Peter and Helen (not their real names), who also have managed their recovery through 12-step recovery programs, is to develop parallel marriages since their over-riding goal has been to remain sober or abstinent. While they have gained a large measure of serenity through their recovery programs, their relationship to each other may have settled into a rut that has them wondering if this is the best their marriage can be.

Together for more than 20 years, Imago helped Peter and Helen discover that there was more to their relationship than staying sober and avoiding anything that might cause them to slip or enter into a relapse. Here I used the dialogue process to help them explore the thoughts and feelings that kept them from experiencing more joy, happiness and passion in their marriage.

Neither Peter nor Helen realized that their partner could be their best friend. Each of them had grown up in families where their parents had each formed strong friendships outside of the marriages. Through the Imago process and the wide range of techniques available to help couples reinvigorate their relationships -- behavior change requests, container days, the revisioning dialogue, positive flooding and couples weekends -- they found ways to work through their fears. They began to rediscover the passion they had felt for each other early in their marriage and that experiencing these feelings wasn't going to lead to drinking or other old behaviors.

Regardless of what stage of recovery a couple is at, Imago can provide them with the skills and techniques they need to improve their relationship. No one has to endure the havoc created in a marriage because of the impacts from an addiction or from having grown up in a dysfunctional family.

I've had many clients tell me that despite their best intentions to not have an unhappy or broken marriage like that of their parents, they still find themselves replicating the patterns they so much wanted to avoid. Through treatment, 12-step recovery programs and Imago counseling, couples in recovery don't have to settle for anything short of a healthy, intimate and conscious marriage or relationship.

Amy C. Robertson, LCSW-C, BCD, is a Certified Imago Relationship Therapist with a speciality in addictions. She has a private practice in Kensington, Md., and can be reached at tel. (301)680-0604. For more information: Organizations: * The Institute for Imago Relationship Therapy, tel. (800)729-1121, www.imagotherapy.com * Mid-Atlantic Association of Imago Relationship Therapists, tel. (301)984-2170 * Al-Anon, tel. (202)882-1334 * Alcoholics Anonymous, tel. (202)966-9115 or (800)711-6375 * Recovering Couples Anonymous, Box 11872, St. Louis, Mo. 63105 or www.recovering-couples.org Books: * Under the Influence: A Guide to Myths and Realities of Alcoholism by Dr. James R. Milam and Katherine Ketcham (Bantam 1981) * Don't Help: A Positive Guide to Working With the Alcoholic by Ronald L. Rogers and Chandler Scott McMillin (Bantam 1989) * Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix (Harper and Row, 1990)

For: Washington Woman First North American Serial Rights Only (1597 words)