So what does it take to make a healthy relationship - trust, communication, spending time together?  Yes, all of those things and more.  Being able to put someone else’s needs ahead of your own is perhaps the most basic building block for a healthy relationship.  But if your world is turned upside down with addiction and mental disorders, you may not know how to do anything but look after yourself.  Relationships and untreated dual diagnosis problems just don’t mix well.

What You Need for Healthy Adult Relationships

First, take a look at some of the skills a person needs to create and keep a healthy adult romantic relationships.  Many of these principles apply to casual daters as well as people dating for marriage and married or life-long couples. 

• Having empathy means that you can take the other person’s viewpoint and understand where they are coming from.
• Being selfish is easy; putting the other person first makes them feel important to you. 
• Being vulnerable means that you share some things about yourself that aren’t so perfect. 
  One of the most valuable things you can give to another person is your time. 
• When a couple solves problems together, they are putting aside their selfishness to gain something greater for both of them. 
• The more effort and patience you put forth in choosing your partner wisely, the better your relationship experience will be. 
• When you do decide to date seriously and eventually marry, the strongest relationships bring two healthy people together to create something bigger than just themselves. 

How Addiction and Mental Disorders Create Relationship Problems

So do you have a good picture in your mind of how a healthy relationship comes together?  Giving, sharing, making time, being a decent person to your partner?  Now throw in everything about addiction and mental disorders that makes a person’s daily life miserable.  Hours or days of being drunk or high, stuck in a foggy daze.  Excuses for where money has gone, why you are hardly ever home, why you cancel dates or commitments.  Confusion, unbearable despair, fears and obsessions, a constant bad mood - does any of this sound conducive to a great relationship?  No, not hardly. 

In fact, probably the biggest problem is how people with co-occurring disorders chose their partners to begin with.  (This also holds true for people with just mental illness or addiction alone.)  As a general rule, people tend to pick romantic partners that are about as mentally healthy and confident as they are. 

For example, a self-confident woman who is content with herself and has a solid character is not likely to get deeply involved with a drug addict or someone with bipolar disorder.  She would quickly recognize signs of a person with little life direction, poor self concept, evidence of a heavy drinking or drug lifestyle.  Not something she’s likely to keep doing for very long.  She wants someone she can count on, not someone she has to chase after or babysit when life gets tough. 

By the same token, an anxious woman with alcoholism won’t stay with a strong steady guy who has ambition and good impulse control.  She won’t be able to deal with her feelings of inadequacy very well, won’t relate to his consistency and self-control.  She’d be much more comfortable with someone who’s got a similar level of life problems, maybe even someone with worse problems than herself to improve her feeling of personal power.

Drug Treatment Helps Relationship Problems

Drug treatment can help relationship troubles When a person’s life is completely out of control from untreated addiction and mental disorders, dual diagnosis rehab is the way to turn everything around.  You learn how to live without the deception and turmoil of addiction, you learn how to use your mind and handle your emotions more effectively.  Essentially, you learn all the things it takes to become a healthy part of a great relationship.