The Addictive Personality

Ok, so I'm reading up on the subject and getting a great education on the subject of "addictive personalities."

I'm quoting from "The Addictive Personality" by Craig Nekken.

"Addiction is an emotional relationship with an object or event, through which addicts try to meet their needs for intimacy."

So, this section caught my attention because intimacy is the central problem my husband and I have. In reality, although it has come to a head lately, intimacy has been a struggle for us for 10 years. I have held back my trust and always kept a small percentage of myself in check and have not exposed myself completely to my husband. This stems from an innate lack of trust I have for the men in my relationships. I was betrayed and abandoned in my first serious relationship, and I have had serious trouble with intimacy and trust ever since.

The key for me was the realization that sense memories of a very dark time in my life were being triggered by these fleeting encounters with marijuana. The mere smell of it brought back feelings of betrayal, stress from abuse and threatened abuse as well as humiliation. I thought long and hard about it and realized that by husband was not committing these acts against me himself, but the association with marijuana made him the vehicle for those very real feelings to resurface.

Another key aspect of this book is the presentation of 2 separate entities in addiction which the author refers to as "Self" and "Addict." The Self is that real, soul-filled, capable of intimate connection and creative love that is in constant battle with the Addict, who is the pleasure/power seeker that will justify and rationalize everything to act out. The Addict has no need for people and will seek to isolate the Self from introspection and intimacy with others.

So the things I have to work on are:

- Releasing myself from the sense memories associated with marijuana (this includes the smell, sight and sound - words and idiomatic expressions that bring up negative feelings.

- Seek therapy for the emotional injuries I have sustained in the past, so that I don't keep revisiting them and trying to project that onto my husband.

- Recognize when my husband is Self and when he is Addict, so that I can nurture Self as much as possible when I have the opportunity. Also to deal with Addict, so that he doesn't further injure me.

My husband does struggle, because I have become aware whenever Self or Addict surface. I have to work hard not to get angry and frustrated when Addict is out and systematically destroying our intimacy. I see Self deep within struggling for control, but afraid and beaten up. Addict is powerful and mean, but he's no match for me. The battle will be ugly and bloody.

I've thought of a wonderful visual analogy for this, which I will publish in a separate post.