7. Emotional balance important in intimate relationships

By Tom O'Connell

Why can't people find the bliss they're seeking in relationships? What's going on with couples that leads them into separation instead of togetherness? What's at the root of the conflict and incompatibility? I think the answer is found in one word: "Addiction."

When I began writing about addiction regularly back in the 1970s, I was told by Bill McCue, the director of one of Boston's inner city drug rehabilitation programs, that addiction could be described as "the hole in the doughnut." He explained that addicts were trying to fill an inner emptiness that couldn't be filled. And they kept trying...and trying.

On a spiritual retreat to Graymoor in New York, on the Hudson, I met Father Dan Egan, otherwise known as "The Junkie Priest." And when I asked him about addiction, he said, "The basic problem is that deep down inside there is something missing...and what's missing is the spiritual dimension." Instead the addict chooses instant gratification and an endless search for pleasure. But the result is pain because it's a futile quest.

Eventually, I realized that regardless of what our addiction is, whether substance or behavior, the addiction itself is a primary relationship. And that addictive relationship forms a triangle that impairs our other relationships.

Another insight came to me when Dr. Stanley Gitlow of Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, an alcoholism pioneer, revised his earlier thinking about addictions and said, "Addiction is a disease in which any technique for adapting to life is used, other than interpersonal relating." The only change I would make in this definition is to insert the word "healthy" in front of the word "interpersonal."

Addiction is a life-damaging substitute for healthy interpersonal relating, so it separates us from good interactions with our own inner beings, with others, and with God. Addiction isolates us and turns us into victims of two personal problems described by Bill Wilson, A.A. co-founder and writer of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions: "instinct run wild" and the "total inability to form a true partnership with another human being."

So addicts need to learn to relate. With addiction as the primary relationship, and driven by "self-centered behavior" at the core, the result is "twisted relations" and "perverse soul-sickness," as Wilson noted. And this brings a loss of emotional balance.

Whether we're addicted to sexual behavior masquerading as intimacy, overeating, alcohol, drugs, gambling, work, or another obsessive-compulsive activity, we miss the mark in relationships with ourselves, others, and God. Also, we forfeit the chance to find healthy intimacy, a source of real joy. And it all goes back to that "hole in the doughnut," that "spiritual illness," that prevents us from finding true love.

But there's hope. Mutual help groups offer a way to interact, improve spiritual values, and find nurturing, new insights, humor, fellowship, and unconditional love.

The goal of recovery is "emotional balance." But we become unbalanced when we substitute new addictions for old ones, including unhealthy dependence on a loved one. The goal, by the way, isn't a destination; it's a journey of one interaction after another.

Unhealthy relating commonly leads to addiction relapse. On the other hand, healthy relating is the key to achieving quality addiction recovery.

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