Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) often grow up in very chaotic, turbulent families. Their parent's alcohol dependency, mood swings and absences can all affect how young children learn to relate to other people. These effects can continue long into adult life, often affecting the marriages of ACOAs.

ACOA often have a deep yearning for intimacy and trust, held in check by their fear that their needs will not be met. Luckily, there are things you can work on in your marriage today that can reduce the legacy of your parent's alcoholism and define your marriage on your own terms. Join us as we explore the effect of parental alcoholism on marriage, and how you can stop it impacting your happiness.

How Your Parent’s Alcoholism Affects Your Marriage

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Having a spouse who frequently wants to control you can be frustrating. But control issues commonly come from a specific place. Typically, they are rooted in fear, underlying mental health issues (sometimes linked to fear), perfectionism, low self-esteem, betrayal, insecurities, or unhealthy ideas of what a relationship should look like.
     
Knowing where your spouse’s desire to control comes from will likely help you feel more compassionate and understanding towards your spouse. Once you can see the source of the issues, you may be able to alleviate some of your spouse’s fears, get professional help, or set appropriate boundaries so that your marriage can thrive.

Why Is My Spouse So Controlling?

Sometimes, when you are in an emotionally abusive relationship, it is hard to see it at the time. Knowing the signs of abuse can help you recognize it if your romantic relationship is emotionally abusive. Emotional abuse is always a pattern, so seeing one of these signs once, or noticing them during conflict is not a sign of emotional abuse. However, if you are seeing a number of the signs repeating themselves in your romantic relationship, that’s a sign that your partner is emotionally abusive.

Some of the signs of emotional abuse include: gaslighting, unpredictability, isolation, criticism and blaming, avoiding responsibility for unacceptable behavior, deliberate accidents, control, blame, shame, and humiliation. It’s important to recognize these signs and realize you are in an emotionally abusive relationship so that you can set boundaries to keep yourself safe from emotional abuse.

Defining Emotionally Abusive Behavior

Infidelity is a difficult, often traumatic experience, and the process of healing takes time. Understanding the effects of betrayal trauma as well as the signs that your spouse is trustworthy again can help you in the journey of healing and rebuilding trust in your marriage (provided your spouse is in a place where they can be trusted again).

While to some degree, every betrayed spouse’s response to betrayal is different, there are also common trauma reactions that most betrayed spouses experience to one degree or another that can make it hard to trust your spouse again, and recognizing these responses is an important part of healing and rebuilding trust in your marriage. There are also certain things to watch for that will help you determine whether or not your spouse is now committed to acting with openness, honesty and integrity in your relationship.

Some signs of trustworthiness include: decreased defensiveness, voices their commitment to the marriage, accepts responsibility, demonstrates personal growth, is willing to be accountable, and demonstrates a preference towards honesty over self-protection. If these are present in your marriage, it is likely that you can begin to trust your spouse again as you work on rebuilding your relationship.

How Do I Know When/If I Can Trust My Spouse After Betrayal?

Understanding the five pillars of attachment helps you understand how your relationship with your primary caregiver has influenced the way you interact with your romantic partner. The five pillars of attachment are: a sense of felt safety, a sense of being seen and known (attunement), the experience of felt comfort (soothing), a sense of being valued (expressed delight), and a sense of support for being and becoming one’s unique best self. 

It is natural that if your attachment needs were not met as a child, your relationship with your spouse will suffer in some way. Feeling unworthy of your spouse’s affection, feeling you should constantly be fussing over your spouse, or being unable to handle conflict are all possible signs of a poor attachment bond with a caregiver that is affecting your relationship with your spouse. 

The good news about attachment is that even if you didn’t have a parent who was able to meet your attachment needs, it is possible to develop a more secure attachment style. Listen to this episode to learn more about how to grow into a more secure attachment with your spouse.

The 5 Pillars of Attachment

Infidelity can happen for many reasons, and individuals can experience it differently. Some spouses are fully aware of what they did and how it happened. Other spouses feel disconnected from their actions, and unsure about how they got there.    

There are a number of things that make a marriage more vulnerable to infidelity. These include: low marital satisfaction, a lack of sexual intimacy, doubts the marriage will last, multiple sexual partners prior to marriage, crisis, psychiatric problems, infertility, and gender-role conflict. Some of these are not issues for all couples, but they can all be a contributing factor to infidelity in some marriages.   

Regardless of any obstacles that may come up in your marriage, or even if you have had sexual infidelity in your marriage, there is hope for you and your spouse. If you both commit to working on your marriage and taking responsibility for your actions, there is hope for you to have a thriving, passionate marriage.

How Your Parent’s Alcoholism Affects Your Marriage

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