Or do you feel like you can’t seem to have a single good day anymore, no matter how hard you try? If so, it may be time to consider how alcohol is impacting your relationship. By taking a closer look, you might find that you or your partner’s drinking habits are at the core of many of your disagreements. Sometimes, a codependent relationship can grow between a person with an alcohol use problem and their partner. For instance, a codependent spouse may look to the drinker for constant validation, become overly involved in the person’s emotions, and try to “fix” them. Long-term heavy drinking can also cause permanent changes to the brain, such as problems with understanding, remembering, and thinking logically.
This self-medication may divert attention away from the problems experienced in a dysfunctional relationship and lower the motivation to actively work toward improving it. Lastly, it may be that the presence of a dysfunctional relationship increases the desire to engage in heavier alcohol use in order to blunt or distract from unpleasant experiences (Swendsen et al., 2000). We often think about how drinking can affect our romantic relationships, but may not consider how it affects our friends and family.
Mental Health
If you notice some of the warning signs mentioned above, it may be time to take a closer look at the role alcohol is playing in your relationship and seek support. When you increasingly choose to drink rather than doing previously enjoyed activities with your significant other or friends, you may need to examine your motives for these choices. Partners and friend groups should have activities they enjoy doing together.
- A good relationship with alcohol varies from the person and between different cultures.
- Everyone responds to alcohol differently- and the way you react to alcohol may be a problem.
- This can be challenging for the partner who is still craving sex and intimacy.
- They may also have difficulty developing trusting and close relationships with others, and this trauma can last well into adulthood.
- You have to maintain a balancing act, counteracting your spouse’s inconsistent behavior.
- Alcohol use has the potential to affect any close relationships in your life, including those with romantic partners, as those in relationships are inextricably linked.
Find a therapist to help you sort out what happened, heal some of your wounds, and get your life back on track while preparing for your spouse to come back and start a new life together. Becoming involved with your spouse’s recovery from how does alcohol affect relationships the beginning will not only provide them with encouragement and support but will allow you to work on repairing your relationship. Once your spouse has agreed to get help and is admitted to a rehab program, your work is not done.
Inpatient or Outpatient Treatment
They can help determine whether further evaluation may be helpful and whether treatment may be needed. In dating and marriage, we share experiences, friends, and social events with our significant others. Research shows that our social circles have a significant influence on alcoholism. 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.
Encouraging our loved ones to get treatment is important, but there are also other steps that can help us protect our well-being. Volpicelli suggests that, perhaps, alcohol brings out the elements of your personality that are already there, making them more pronounced. Over the long term, the impact of alcohol depends on the amount and frequency you consume, says McDonagh.
How Alcohol Affects Intimacy
For example, a commonly prescribed drug for depression called escitalopram affects how tightly wound DNA is and can change the expression of genes important to brain plasticity. The version of a gene you’re born with can be modified in many ways before it becomes a functional protein, including exposure to alcohol and drugs. Rather than discouraging researchers, this complexity is empowering because it provides evidence that changes to gene expression in your brain aren’t permanent. Research into the long-term personality effects of alcohol use is ongoing.
This can lead to reduced intimacy and a disconnect in the relationship as a whole. Below, learn about the effects of alcohol on relationships, along with six signs that drinking might be impacting yours. Many commonly prescribed medications for mental health disorders also affect gene expression. Antidepressants and mood stabilizers can change how DNA is modified and which genes are expressed.
Alcohol and Romantic Relationships
To do this, you will both need help learning and practicing new, positive behaviors. Heavy alcohol consumption can also cause malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies which can further contribute to alcohol’s detrimental effects on the brain. In some cases, people may develop alcohol-related dementia or a cognitive disorder known as Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.
