Thought for the Week

Timothy D. Stein, MFT, CSAT

March 30, 2015

If you have an active addiction, couples therapy will go nowhere.

Addiction not only damages relationships, it also impairs relationships’ healing and growth.  Honesty, consistency, and emotionally intimate connection are needed for a relationship’s healing and growth.  Addictions, by their very nature, create dishonesty, inconsistency, and emotional distance.  When the building blocks of relationship healing and growth are absent, couples therapy (beyond crisis management) is fruitless.

Am I focused on my individual recovery or fixing my relationship?  Have I done my work to allow honesty, consistency, and emotionally intimate connection to be present in my relationship?  If not, what would change if, for now, I focused on my individual recovery work so that later I am fully available to support healing and growth in my relationship?