Avoiding Romantic Relationships in Early Recovery

People, Places, and Things

A support network is not synonymous with romantic relationships.

Our problems, and our solutions, are usually found in relationships. Whether at work, home, or community, our sources of joy and stress include people. Relationships and their quality have a direct impact on the quality of substance use disorder recovery. 

Romantic love is a complicated topic in substance use disorder** recovery. This is true for existing relationships and new relationships. 

Existing romantic relationships have often been complicated by the progression of the substance use disorder itself, and the interaction of the couple with the illness often creates feelings of anger, frustration, resentment, and confusion. It’s important to identify, address, and work through these issues so that the person in recovery can have a broad foundation on which to build recovery. I recently did a video on the surprising stress of sobriety on existing relationships.

Today we are going to talk about new romantic relationships in early recovery.

The Science of Recovery and the Science of New Love (not a match made in heaven)

New romantic relationships are problematic because they can mimic the chemical feelings of the use of alcohol and other drugs. 

The science of love includes changes to the neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, which creates an intense feeling which can make the person feel high. New relationships often go through 3 stages: 

• Lust 
• Attraction 
• Attachment 

 A landmark experiment in Pisa, Italy showed that early love (the attraction phase) literally changes the way you think. This change is similar to the effect of alcohol and other drugs. The similarity this creates to the use of alcohol and other drugs can mask the need for a developing a pattern of living or the development of neurobeneficial habits into the newly recovering person’s life.

The Risk of New Love Relationships

New relationships can be problematic in the following ways: 

• Relationships take the focus off recovery.  
• Relationships take the focus off the individual.
• There is often a lack of knowledge about healthy relationships. 
• Relationships increase the potential for relapse due to many reasons: emotional intensity, elevated chemicals, decrease in brain transforming activity.  
• There is the potential for unresolved, unhealed, and immature areas becoming manifest in relationships. 
• There is a strong likelihood of outgrowing the relationship.

Beware of Pseudo-Intimacy

I want to include some information for people in an existing relationship but who develop feelings and attachment to another person. This is unfortunately very common. The person in early recovery is at risk for going with the flow of new positive feelings. In addition, existing relationships are often ruptured, stressful, and challenging. This, paired with the intense chemical feelings of new love, create a skewed perception of the “rightness” of the new relationship. Often the person in early recovery and in a new romantic relationship will apply this misperception, justifying the new relationship and the deterioration of the existing one.

In spite of a lot of research, evidence, and personal experience many people will ignore these risks.

Minimizing the Risks and Managing Your Recovery

So, if you are in a romantic relationship, keep these suggestions in mind: 

• Be willing to admit you don’t know the needed skills to have a healthy relationship. Seek help if needed from a therapist, clergy, or other appropriate and trained individual.
• If you are not in a relationship but begin one, be selective and screen your partner carefully. It is common to make hasty and unwise partner decisions in early recovery.  
• Be aware of accelerated situations. What I mean by that is that some settings foster intimacy in ways that can make people feel closer and more intimate than the history of the relationship supports. By the nature of what is shared in some settings, which can be very personal, people often feel very close to others quickly. This happens in church, 12-Step meetings, church, mutual help and peer support, online settings, therapeutic support such as Grief/Loss or Divorces support settings, and substance use disorder treatment settings.
• Practice risk management. What I mean by that is to intentionally pace and slow the relationship. Make sure others in your trusted circle are aware of the developing friendship or romance so that another pair of eyes can increase the care and watching.
• Don’t risk more than you can afford to lose – This is another way to encourage pacing and an intentional, rather than automatic, decision to move into a relationship. Going “all in” in early substance use disorder recovery carries a lot of risk.
• Don’t risk more than the other person – Persons in early recovery are often quite vulnerable. One way to protect oneself and sobriety is to keep the power in the relationship stable by not over-investing, over-sharing, or over-giving.
• Learn and practice healthy vulnerability and interdependence 
• Identify and watch for repeat patterns – We can learn a lot from our previous romantic relationships; both the successes and the parts that didn’t work. Work with your therapist to identify patterns in your relationships and review your current situation with that informed lens.

Know when to back off. Backing off may be informed by any of the following: 

• You want different relationships (differing levels of commitment or exclusivity.)
• When the partnership includes abuse, control, or is demanding.
• When the partner is needy in ways that drain the person in substance use disorder recovery.
• When the partner is dishonest, manipulative, or “sneaky.” 
• If friends or family who are healthy are wary or have expressed concern; they may see or observe patterns that you are not aware of.
• You do things in a relationship you don’t want to do (this can happen with money, sex, time, other relationships, etc.)

Summary of the risks of romantic relationships in early recovery

Remember that early recovery is fragile and so are the relationships around them. Many relationships that survived the disease do NOT survive the recovery.  

Also: At the risk of sounding “old school” in recovery language, you are not the exception. Your new relationship and feelings are not different from all the people who experienced recovery work by-pass by investing in a romantic relationship before establishing a sobriety pattern of thinking, being, and doing.

Support offered by Dr. Jo

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**Person-centered language note: As a leading clinician in substance use disorder assessment, treatment, and recovery, I am committed to elevating the language around mental health and substance use disorder. This means I will use “alcohol use disorder” rather than “alcoholic.” It means I will use “person with a substance use disorder” rather than “addict.” I minimize my use of the term addiction because it carries stigma, often people have their own relationship with the word accompanied with misinformation. I use the term recurrence or return to use rather than relapse. However, it’s important that people searching for help get connected with services that benefit them. In this regard, people are not searching “am I a person with a substance use disorder?” They are searching “am I an addict?” They do not search, “can a high functioning person have an alcohol use disorder?” They search “am I a high functioning alcoholic.” They don’t search “treatment for people who have a recurrence” but do search “how do I stop being a chronic relapser?” As such, I want to affirm people with substance use disorders with my care, which includes language but I also need to structure my business in a way that google searches find my material.