Is Alcohol Impacting Your Relationship?

A 2018 study found that alcohol had negative effects on both partners in a relationship for different reasons. Being in a relationship with someone with alcohol use disorder can be challenging. Your husband may pick fights with you when he drinks or you’re no longer as intimate as you were before. You may feel like alcohol has ruined your relationship or is the cause of your divorce. In addition to self-care, partners of those affected by alcohol addiction can intervene by helping them find rehabilitation services. While it can be challenging to convince a loved one to seek professional help, identifying how sobriety would benefit their lives can often help them take that first step.

While alcohol dependence can be devastating to one’s health, it can also impact a person’s relationships, including the most meaningful people in their life. When you use alcohol to relax or reward yourself, it creates a strong association in your brain between alcohol and pleasure. Eventually, your brain can adapt to crave alcohol in order to feel good, even despite negative consequences. When someone starts drinking in order to feel happy, their partner may see this change as a reflection on themselves, and internalize that their partner is unhappy in their relationship. If there are underlying issues in the relationship, drinking to feel happy can also prevent these issues from coming to the surface and getting resolved. While drinking can lead to significant relationship challenges, it often doesn’t happen overnight.

A friend or partner may constantly hear reasons for being late, disappearing or mood swings. Managing your drinking and getting the right support are really important for your mental health. Finances are often one of the biggest stressors in a relationship, and if you add alcohol into the mix, finances can become even more volatile. This can happen for a variety of reasons, including overspending at the bar or grocery store, spending money on hangover cures and cab fares, and making irresponsible financial decisions when under the influence. Drinking can lead to even more serious financial consequences if an individual loses their job, or gets into legal trouble due to their drinking. The Contemplation Ladder (Biener & Abrams, 1991) is a single-item index that was used to assess motivation to change alcohol use behavior.

Alcohol and romantic relationships

Sometimes, we have questions or concerns about our relationship with alcohol, but we’re not sure where to turn for answers or if a problem even exists. Designed as a quick, at-home assessment, a list of foods that contain alcohol quiz can help you evaluate if drinking is getting in the way of your happiness or other aspects of your life. Problem drinking and relationship troubles can have a reciprocal effect on each other. How much you drink, and your overall drinking habits, may be a source of conflict with some people in your life.

Whether one partner drinks too much or both partners do, alcohol problems can lead to what is worse weed or alcohol increased arguments, hurt feelings, and emotional distance in a relationship. Alcohol misuse can affect relationships with partners, family members, co-workers, and others. If you’ve noticed that you’re only doing activities with your partner that involve alcohol, try to find other ways to spend time together without drinking.

1. Participants were provided a list of local referrals for psychological services after completing all measures and were given credit as partial fulfillment of a social science course in return for their participation.
2. After obtaining consent, the measures were presented with standardized instructions.
3. Some partners may even wonder if they are no longer attractive to the other person.
4. A partner of someone addicted to alcohol may believe they’re helping the other person by enabling the addiction to continue.
5. Participants were asked to specify their age, ethnicity, academic status, sexual orientation, whether they were currently living with their dating partner, and length of their current dating relationship.
6. While it can be challenging to convince a loved one to seek professional help, identifying how sobriety would benefit their lives can often help them take that first step.

It’s essential to avoid becoming codependent if you feel you’re in a relationship impacted by alcohol addiction. As stated above, keeping a distance is necessary to avoid enabling and ensure you don’t become emotionally dependent on helping them. The connection between alcohol, interpersonal violence and codependency is widely documented. Constant conflict or neglect can severely impact children of parents with alcohol addiction.

Avoid Codependency

Support groups can help people with alcohol addiction and those who are codependent on someone with alcohol use disorder. A 12-step support group can often help people recover from a codependent relationship. Other support groups are available for family members who need help navigating the challenges that occur from alcohol addiction. Self-care can get thrown out the window in relationships with alcohol addiction. That’s why it’s important to help yourself first to provide the best possible support for your loved one. While you might think it selfish to distance yourself from a friend or family member, it’s essential to look out for your own well-being before you can help someone else.

Addiction Treatment Programs

Below, we offer seven signs that may indicate you and/or your partner’s drinking has become unhealthy. However, it’s important to remember that warning signs will not look the same in each relationship. Sometimes you will simply have to trust your intuition that something feels wrong.

Fortunately, there are more ways than ever to get support if alcohol is harming your life and happiness. Ria Health is one online program offering comprehensive help—from coaching meetings to anti-craving prescriptions—100 percent from your smartphone. With Ria, you won’t have to rearrange your life to start improving your drinking habits, relationships, and overall well-being.

When you’re in a relationship with someone who drinks too much, their behavior can be hard to cope with. And when you’re the one with a drinking problem, it can be tough to recognize the harm you’re causing and make a change. While every person’s response to alcohol is different, your reaction may make your partner uncomfortable.

How does drinking affect our relationships?

Those who prioritize the needs of their partner above their own often suffer from mental health issues like depression and low-self esteem. When you feel affected by codependency, it’s helpful to take a break or distance yourself from the relationship. Alcohol use disorder severely impacts an individual’s eco sober house personality and, as a result, can make them unrecognizable from the person they were before they started drinking. People with alcohol addiction often become secretive over time to hide their dependence out of fear, shame or guilt. Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a common addiction, affecting nearly 15 million adults in the United States.

Oar Health Member Stories: A Family History of AUD

While this study did not explore the mechanisms underlying these findings, these data may indicate an important educational target for college programming aimed at decreasing the heavy drinking patterns of college students. Furthermore, future research will need to explore what specific aspects of dating relationships contribute to favorable health outcomes and bolster the motivation to engage in healthier behavior patterns. We often think about how drinking can affect our romantic relationships, but may not consider how it affects our friends and family. However, if a parent struggles with alcohol use disorder, it can cause instability in the household, and harm parent-children bonds. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study shows that children of parents with a substance use disorder are more likely to experience physical and mental health problems throughout their life. Furthermore, in addition to the higher risk for relationship dysfunction created by hazardous alcohol use, hazardous drinkers may also be less likely to actively engage in improving their relationship than non-hazardous drinkers for a variety of reasons.