Develop Healthy Relationships in Recovery

[Jaunty Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome, everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction, brought to you by Westwords Consulting and the Kenosha County Substance Use Disorder Coalition. I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: For recovering people, toxic and addictive relationships are a leading cause of relapse and mental health issues. Changing that pattern in relationships takes work and is the topic of our conversation today with our guest, Mark Sanders.

Mike: Mark, is an international speaker, trainer, and consultant. He's the author of numerous books on behavioral health, including Relationship Detox, helping clients develop healthy relationships and recovery. Mark has been a certified addictions counselor for over three decades and has received numerous awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Illinois Addiction Counselor Certification Board and the Barbara Bacon Award for outstanding contributions to the social work profession as a Loyola University of Chicago alumni.

Mike: He is also co founder of Serenity Academy of Chicago, the only recovery high school in Illinois. And has had a 30 year career as a university educator, having taught at the University of Chicago, Illinois State University, Illinois School of Professional Psychology, and Loyola University of Chicago School of Social Work.

Mike: Oof.

Mike: Busy guy.

Mike: Welcome, Mark.

Mark: Thank you so much for having me here, Mike.

Mike: Well, thanks for doing this. I want to talk about the topic of your book. I could go in a million different directions with you, but we'll try to stick to this one. It's not surprising that substance use disorders and toxic relationships go hand in hand, right?

Mark: Yeah.

Mike: So what makes a relationship toxic?

Mark: Yeah, so there's a number of characteristics of it and I use that synonymous with addictive relationships. So there are a number of characteristics that suggest toxicity or addictive relationships. So I have a short list. An addictive or toxic relationship, there's lots of drama, right?

Mark: Many individuals who enter into these relationships have never seen a good relationship, so they often believe that drama equals love. You can also tell toxicity or addictive styles of relationship because these relationships are often smothering, where there's no breathing room, right? I sometimes ask people, what's the divorce rate in America, the answer is 58%.

Mark: And one reason is because people smother each other, they, they take the concept of one half, literally, you know, you go to a party and they ask you, where's your better half? And you say, if you only knew, and ministers don't make it any better when they perform these wedding ceremonies, they make statements like you are one half, then upon meeting the other, you become one whole, and they are one half, and then upon meeting you, they become one whole.

Mark: I've done the math on that one half plus one half equals two fourths, which equals one half. Let me prove it. My grandma used to say you can do bad all by yourself. I imagine your listeners have heard that phrase. You can do bad all by yourself. So I want you to think about a person in recovery and her future is so bright.

Mark: She needs to wear sunglasses at midnight to keep the rays out. She's here. And she meets the wrong person, and it pulls her down. One half plus one half equals two fourths, which equals one half. I heard John Bradshaw, the great speaker, share a poem written 400 years ago, and I'll share the poem. If I am who I am because you are who you are, and you are who you are because I am who I am, then I am not who I am, and you're not who you are.

Mark: Meaning that if I need you to make me whole, because I'm a half person, right, then I'm in trouble, right, if I need you to make me whole. A healthier version, according to Bradshaw, of that same poem, if I am who I am because I am who I am, and you are who you are because you are who you are, then you are who you are, and I am who I am.

Mark: I am whole, and you are whole. We don't need to smother each other. And when two whole people come together, there's a new mathematical formula. It's one plus one equals three. That's two whole people. The subtotal of both of us together, it's greater than either one of us by ourself. Wholeness. The third characteristic of toxic or addictive relationships is extreme jealousy.

Mark: Maya Angelou told Oprah Winfrey that jealousy is like salt on food. A little bit of salt spices up the food, but too much destroys the food. A fourth characteristic of toxic, unhealthy relationships is abuse. Verbal mental abuse, right? Physical abuse. A fifth is the person experiences withdrawal when they're not alone.

Mark: You asked me about my book title, my book, Relationship Detox. How to experience unhealthy relationships and recovery. I'd have a lot of clients come to me in recovery. Five years in recovery, six, seven, ten years in recovery. And they would say to me, I don't need you to help me with my recovery. I know how to do that myself.

Mark: I need your help in helping me figure out how to have healthy relationships and recovery. Tell me, they'd say. I'm sober 16 years. Why am I dating someone who's been sober for 16 minutes? It never works. It never helps me with anything. And so, sometimes they would leave the person, and they'd say, I haven't spoken to her for three weeks.

Mark: I haven't spoken to him in two days. I feel like I'm going through withdrawal. Right? So, I coined the phrase relationship detox. Right? Like, we're just detoxing from the relationship. And so, another characteristic is that you feel like you're experiencing withdrawal symptoms when you're alone, because you're so used to being smothered in a relationship.

Mark: And of course, the hallmark of all addiction whether you're talking about gambling, alcohol, meth, or crack is you stay in spite of the consequences, you continue to drink in spite of the consequences, you continue to use [inaudible], you continue to stay in that relationship in spite of the consequences. And then one more.

Mark: Here's the pattern. When the person leaves one toxic relationship, they tend to enter into another, not breaking the cycle. It's almost like they leave that relationship and wind up dating that person's twin. Which means they have work to do.

Mike: Well, how do you get somebody to recognize those relationship patterns?

Mark: Yeah. So and of course you can't tell anybody that this is really bad, right? You just kind of help them look at what it's cost and what are the benefits of it. And you do that in a non judgmental manner. Right. So what does this cost me, this relationship and what are you getting out of it? So you help them to take a look at that.

Mark: And then they're in position to weigh it. I happen to believe Mike, I'm going to sound like Oprah.

Mike: We can't get her on Mark, so that's all right. (laugh)

Mark: Every relationship is holy, as long as the person is learning the relationships that relationship are there to teach them and we tend to keep repeating these patterns until we learn those lessons. I also believe Mike that a discontinuation of chemicals is the easier part of recovery.

Mark: The hardest part is learning how to have healthy relationships in recovery. Once the person knows how to have healthy relation, that includes friendships too, healthy friendships too. Healthy romantic... really healthy marriages. They no longer need chemicals as much as they used to. Years ago I defined addiction as a pathological relationship with a drug is actually a substitute for true human intimacy. Once we have that intimacy, boy we no longer need the chemicals the same.

Mark: That is why in Wisconsin and all over this country when COVID 19 struck and we were separated from loved ones alcohol use increased, illicit drug use increased, overdose increased, because we need community connections and real love and real relationships. That's the real work.

Mike: You know when you mentioned the relationship patterns. That's I occasionally when I talk about the patterns, I get some blow back and people say, Oh, it sounds like you're blaming the victim.

Mike: Well, it's not blaming the victim. Is it Mark? It's just self awareness.

Mark: Yeah. So the other part of that you asked me, what do I do? I've done a lot of teaching because the flip side of what I just share with you, the characteristics of addictive relations, with toxic relationships. I also have these characteristics that I share of healthy relationships.

Mark: Once they have the information, then they get to compare notes. See, because if I diagnose this, this is Mark, this is your opinion. I dare you try to say something is wrong with my partner in our relationship. But here's some of the characteristics I share of healthy relationships. In a healthy relationship, both partners are whole.

Mark: And there's often three parts to wholeness. First, you have to have a relationship with yourself because it's only through a relationship with yourself... You've heard the expression that the one way you can know that you can live with someone, if you can live without them, and when you have a relationship with yourself.

Mark: You begin to believe, I'm okay. I want this relationship, but I'm okay with me. So I would encourage people in recovery to date yourself, get comfortable in your own skin. Again, so much drug use and [inaudible] COVID because many of us are not comfortable in our own skin. There was an astronaut that said that in essence all of our problems can be reduced to our inability to sit still in a room, right?

Mark: Just to get still. So could you once a week take yourself to lunch? Go to a movie by yourself. I know you're uncomfortable. Go to a matinee, not at night when couples are coupled up, right? But in order to be ready for a healthy relationship, wholeness involved, having a relationship with yourself and healthy friendships.

Mark: And because the great majority of individuals that we work with that have substance use disorders, who have addictions also believe in that which is greater than them. A relationship with that which is greater than their higher power. That's a safeguard. You know what my wife told me when I used to have my drill sergeant physique, when I was really young and she was really young, she said jealousy for me, she says, is proof that I need to get closer to God, because if I find myself getting really jealous, it means I'm making a deity of God of a human being, and that's a problem.

Mark: I need to be closer to God. So, wholeness is a sign of healthy relationship. Both partners are whole. A second characteristic of a healthy relationship, get this, each partner is growing and encouraging the other to grow. Why is that important? It's important because of what Maya Angelou told Oprah Winfrey, only equals can be friends.

Mark: There's something about two people growing. Because what happens when one is growing and the other one is not growing? Resentments can occur, right? Envy can occur. A third characteristic of a healthy relationship is each is able to spend time alone. Not in isolation, just alone. Being comfortable in their own skin.

Mark: A fourth characteristic of healthy relationships is minimal jealousy. You know, minimal jealousy. And again, if you are whole, you have a life outside of the relationship and you're growing. You don't even have that much time to be jealous. Mike, you know, for years I was on the road giving speeches, right?

Mark: You talked about the Hope Conference, it was virtual I think the last time we had it, right. When I was on the road, I was gone half of the year. I had no idea what my wife was doing when I was gone, but I didn't have time to think about it because I was busy trying to make a difference in the world.

Mark: Another characteristic of healthy relationships. Is the couple is able to participate in what I call fair fighting. Now, couples argue, right? But what we mean by fair arguing, it usually involves one thing at a time and in the present moment. For example, unfair arguing goes like this. "I don't like what you said to me last night. I don't like what you said to me last week. I don't like what you said to me last year. I don't like what you said to me. November 5th, 1963". Or they're loading up with ammunition. One thing at a time and in the present, right? Giving without ulterior motives is another characteristic. Here's what I mean.

Mark: You know, we haven't mentioned the word codependence, right? But what I've learned is that we tend to as people, before we develop an addiction, enter into these unhealthy relationships, and then when they fall apart, we discover drugs, like, and alcohol, right? And so I had a client who was in love with a married man.

Mark: And Mike, she said, his wife doesn't understand him. He's a good man. She really understood him. Mike, let me tell you what I was thinking. I was thinking, wait a minute, the wife lives with him. She knows him better than you. But I didn't say anything. I'm a therapist. And so my client was on Section 8 and back then, if you were on Section 8, if you declared yourself homeless, they would speed you up.

Mark: She was on the list for an apartment. They would help you get your apartment quicker. So she told me when I get my apartment, he's going to leave his wife and move in with me. She doesn't know how good of a man he is. So here's what she did. She went underneath a bridge downtown Chicago with her cell phone and a lunch and declared herself homeless.

Mark: And Section 8 came out and she was homeless. And they got her an apartment quicker. Did he move in? He didn't move in, Mike. And she said, after all I did for you, you didn't move in. Mike, there was ulterior motives, right? And ultimately it backfired, right?

Mark: Yeah, so when I provide information on healthy and unhealthy relationships, then they get to weigh in. And sometimes, Mike, it takes a moment to break the pattern still.

Mike: You know, how are we supposed to, you just went through them, and they make so much sense, and I love the one about the arrows in the quiver, you know, going back to the early 2000s to argue. How are you supposed to recognize those if you've grown up in a toxic environment?

Mark: Yeah, so I sometimes ask people, Have they ever seen a healthy relationship?

Mike: Yeah.

Mark: Some people have never seen one, right?

Mike: Right.

Mark: But they're creating it on the spot. My brother did something that was really smart, right? He started an organization called Married Couples in Recovery. Now, we know he started one for married couples.

Mark: He was married. But, you know, there's a value in just having support around couples in recovery. And what we realized lots of people in recovery are attracted to each other. We see that all the time, right? And but yet there's no historical model for that. For instance, two people in recovery learning how to be in love and make their marriage work.

Mark: For example, when Bill W. co founded AA, he was in AA, but his wife Lois was not, right? She founded Al Anon. When Jimmy K. founded Narcotics Anonymous there was no evidence that his wife was a member of Narcotics Anonymous. So how do two people in recovery figure this thing out?

Mark: So he started that organization where married couples can come together and learn how to develop healthy relationships in recovery. Some people seek therapy around it, right, which is not a bad idea. There was a man by the name of Ernie Larson from Minnesota, who wrote a book called Stage Two Recovery. And he said stage one recovery is early recovery, the first couple years in recovery, and the hallmark of stage one recovery is discontinuation of drug use and having a better quality of life.

Mark: He said stage two is what happens after you've achieved a period of abstinence, right? He said invariably every person in recovery wakes up one day and looks in the mirror, and they ask, is this all there is to recovery? Is this it? And then at that point they have a choice. Either I go back to getting high or I take my recovery to higher heights.

Mark: And that's stage 2. And he says there are two things that people want to accomplish in stage 2 recovery. One of them is recovery from what he called negative core beliefs. And what negative core beliefs are, is the thing that the person who's now in recovery thought about themselves when they were children, right?

Mark: Which makes it hard to have healthy relationships in recovery. They often learn these lessons from their parents, like... No one would ever love me as I am, right? Or I'm basically unlovable, right? I'm unworthy of success, right? And they learn those lessons by being abandoned in childhood, right? And so they bring those lessons with them into recovery.

Mark: As a matter of fact, Dr. Brené Brown talked about the core of addiction is shame. And children who are abandoned in childhood develop shame. She defines shame as the belief that I'm unlovable and unworthy of belonging. In other words, my parents were not there for me emotionally. Therefore, I'm unlovable and unworthy of love.

Mark: What a perfect setup for unhealthy relationships. So therapy can sometimes help one work through that in second stage recovery. And then Arne Larson said, Along with recovery from negative core beliefs, the other work in stage two recovery, It's learning how to have healthy relationships in recovery. So therapy can help in stage 2.

Mike: My daughter was just over before we got on here and I gave her a early birthday present, which was a used set of golf clubs because she's beginning to learn.

Mark: Right. Nice.

Mike: And I watch her take a couple of swings, and she's not bad, but she's not good. And for her to get better, she's going to have to learn a skill.

Mark: Yes.

Mike: And I'm one of those folks, Mark, and there's many of us who grew up not watching a functional relationship in the home. Watching a ton of arguing. So when it came time to have a relationship, how do you, it's a skill, right? And it's not bad to have to acquire a skill. You just don't have it.

Mark: Yeah. So one of the things that I would keep near when I did a lot of this work around relationships and recovery, and by the way I'm from a family where we were even supposed to have children because we'd never seen even healthy households where there were couples and children. That's why I had children later than the other people, but you've heard this poem before.

Mark: I keep it near when I work with couples because I don't want to forget. And I show it to them as well. It's called an autobiography in five short chapters. Chapter one. I walked down the street. There's a hole in the middle of the sidewalk. I don't see it. I fall in. Chapter two. I walked down the same street. I forget that the hole is in the middle of the sidewalk. I fall in. Chapter three. I walked down the same street. I remember that the hole in the middle of sidewalk at the last minute I forget I fall in. Chapter four. I walked down that street. This time, I remember that the whole is in the sidewalk in the middle of the sidewalk. I walk around the whole. Chapter 5. I walk down a different street. And it takes many seasons to break those patterns. Okay. Some people break them quicker than others, but, every time there's a relationship that's not working, I non judgmentally want to ask. What did you learn from that experience?

Mike: Yeah, you know, we're talking about people newly in recovery too, right?

Mike: And there's a scene, I don't know if you saw the movie, I assume you did. There's a scene in the old recovery movie, 28 Days, with Sandra Bullock.

Mark: I saw the movie.

Mike: Yeah, good movie, she did a really nice job.

Mark: Yeah.

Mike: But there's a lot of, well, there's a scene where the counselor says, You can't get into a romantic relationship after treatment is over, until you can keep a plant alive.

Mark: Wow!

Mike: And it's cute for the movie, right? And so there's one character who can't keep a plant alive no matter what. But it's not quite that simple. How does somebody newly in recovery begin to form a healthy relationship?

Mark: Yeah, I think it starts with a healthy relationship with like one person at a time. So, for example, the nature of addiction is that often I'm not where I say I'm going to be where I say I'm going to be there, right? So you just take one relationship at a time and we start to do what we say we're going to do when we say we're going to do it.

Mark: You know, Mike, there's something about working on ourselves. There's a man by the name of Seligman who talked about, he's done a lot of research on self esteem probably more than just about anyone else. You know how people say, Mike, women from every cultural group in America now has more education than men in that same culture, right?

Mark: And, you know, the time when men were always the one earning most of the money? Mike, you know, I'm a, I don't know, junior sociologist, right? You know, back in the day when I would catch public transportation to work. For every woman that was like waiting on a bus or train to go downtown Chicago to work. For every woman there were 20 men. Mike it's reversed itself.

Mike: Yup, it has.

Mark: So what we're going to need to do, I'm going somewhere with this. We're going to have to expand the definition ultimately of what it means to be a man. It's not necessarily just earning the most you know money, that kind of thing. What was the question that we were, what was the last thing you would asked?

Mike: Well, newly in recovery, how do you begin?

Mark: Yeah. Right. Right. So like developing healthy relationships, like. So the nature of addiction, right. Is keeping your word. Being where you say you're going to be when you're going to say you're going to be there in all relationships. That means honoring relationship.

Mark: If you're in 12 step recovery with a sponsor and with friends, right. You start to develop those healthy friendships, right. After all you start to trust, right? You start to share your secrets and unthaw from shame and feel that you're worthy of love, right? You work on your self esteem. Martin Seligman, I mentioned to you, did some of the definitive work on self esteem. And where I was going with that statement before is you start to hear more and more people, more women lately saying there are no good men out there.

Mark: You know, they're not there, but that's not what his research illustrated. What his research illustrates around self esteem. Is people tend to date their self esteem. That people with low self esteem even when it doesn't look like, I'll give you an example. People with low self esteem tend to date people with low self esteem. People with medium self esteem interrelation with people medium of self esteem And people with high self esteem tend to interrelate with people higher self esteem. So Seligman said the answer is not to say there are no good men and good women out there. Elevate your self esteem and two things will occur. Who you find attractive might also change, right. When you feel suddenly, because of elevation, self-esteem worthy of love, you might find people attractive that you never found attractive before.

Mark: You see, if I still feel bad about myself, I might find myself attracted to people that contribute to my feeling bad about myself. Part of the answer in early recovery is to work on myself, to learn how to live in my own skin. And by the way, to add healthy friendships because we're not talking about isolation, we're talking about readiness, right? For romantic partnership.

Mike: Well, and when we talk about relationships, we have of course talked about romantic relationships, but it's not toxic relationships go across the board. Friends, colleagues.

Mark: Yes.

Mike: Family.

Mark: Yes. Yeah. All of the above. And so gaining an understanding of feeling. My mother always says everybody needs to have an insult level.

Mark: Well, that's enough. I'm not taking any more insult level, right? What we find, though, Is the more that we work on ourselves, right, the more we become aware when people are violating our boundaries, right? When they're insulting us, you know, that type of thing. So it's going to always come back down to working on ourselves, but not isolating [inaudible] sense of community.

Mark: One of the things I've been looking at lately,

Mark: I read a book in Men's Health, right? That says that when men don't have contact with male friends, it can do as much damage to our health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and drinking a pint of alcohol per day. So right away, I started connecting with these friends my age. Now, an interesting thing kind of happens is when we gather as men in the same age group, we start to learn from each other, especially these are healthy friendships.

Mark: Again, as the person in recovery, the friends who I'm hanging with are not getting drunk when we're together, right? These are other men in recovery who are not drinking, right? So we get to talk about things like our relationships with our children, and our relationships with our spouses and our partners.

Mark: We become, at a baseball game, an informal source of support. And then I read Mike. That when women don't have contact with female friends, they can get physically sick, right? So those friendships become important, and they are the perfect safeguard, right? Because you notice that whenever there's domestic violence in a relationship, the first thing that the partner wants you to do is isolate yourself from all your friends.

Mark: So that becomes a safeguard from those types of violent relationships. It also basically assures that we don't smother our partner because we have other healthy relationships outside of that relationship.

Mike: Well, and as you stated earlier, look at what happened during the pandemic, especially with women drinking.

Mike: Excessive drinking went through the roof across all categories. Mark, I get asked a lot can you repair a toxic relationship, an existing toxic relationship?

Mark: Can I share with you what I think I've discovered?

Mike: Uh huh.

Mark: As a long time therapist. This is what I discovered. It's only me.

Mark: I've been a therapist for 42 years, and here's what I think I learned. Never read this in a book. I just witnessed it with hundreds of couples I've worked with. No matter the size of the problem, if they both want to make it work, there's a chance it can work. And no matter how big the problem, if they both want it to end, Mike, it's going to end.

Mark: And I learned that no matter how big the problem, if one wants to stay in a relationship and make it work, and they definitely want to stay and make it work, and the other one definitely doesn't want to make it work, it's not going to work. If they both want to make it work and willing to work to it, it has a shot.

Mark: That's what I've learned.

Mike: Well, and sometimes it's going to take a lot of work, especially if you have years and years of toxicity.

Mark: Now, if domestic violence is a part of the picture, because sometime it is, you know, lots of clients that we work with have histories of witnessing domestic violence and then domestic violence and relationships, right?

Mark: If it's domestic violence, and I agree with the people who have all the expertise. In terms of running domestic violence shelters, right? It's not so much in the beginning about couples therapy because it's an unequal amount of power, the use of physical force, right? So, then you say, well, there's domestic violence.

Mark: Let's go to couples therapy together, right? Then in couples therapy, person doesn't like what their spouse talked about in therapy, so they abuse them in the car. So I am the fan of them doing that separate work before they do couples work together. And we found, in men and women, where there's domestic violence.

Mark: It's not so much about anger management, because judges are always referring people to anger management. If that were the case, if you were just an angry person, then you would slap the judge or the police officer who arrested you. We've learned that that's about sexism. And sometimes what you witnessed yourself growing up, what you each have witnessed.

Mark: But for the most part, show the domestic violence that they both want to make it work. They're willing to work at it. There's a shot.

Mike: Well, and I think to wrap it all in a little bow. It begins with self, begins and ends with self.

Mark: Yes. Yeah, because if I work on me, and if we are working on each other, and as I mentioned, 1 plus 1 equals 3, the sum total of both of them together, if they're both whole and working on themselves, it's greater than either one of them by themselves.

Mark: Mike, they both make $40,000 each. Together they make 80. Now they have two cars, two brains, right? They're greater than they were by themselves, if they're whole.

Mike: Outstanding. You know, I want to be respectful of your time, Mark. We could go on for just a long time and maybe we can have you back if you'd be willing to do that.

Mark: Thank you so much. You invite me, I'll be here.

Mike: Yeah, it's been great. And those of you listening, you've heard me do this before. If you've listened more than once, there are links to Mark's website and to his resources at the end of the podcast. We always invite you to listen in next time. If you're able to. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, take care of yourself.