I remember briefly hearing, “codependent addiction”. It bounced off me like water on a duck’s feathers. At least at the time. That’s ridiculous, I thought. I didn’t use drugs. I didn’t drink nor had any other addictive habits. How could I be addicted to my partner’s addiction, which was forced on my life without my permission.
One of the examples the speaker gave stuck in my subconscious and I begin to notice and acknowledge slowly over a course of several weeks. I had been and was doing things that I had never done before, which were all based on my partner’s addiction. I became sick to my stomach at this realization. I was and am addicted to behaviors I had created dealing with my partner’s addiction.
These addictions started settle and quickly escalated. The first one was checking his cellphone. Why, I’m not sure. But, my gut instincts led me to believe something was not right. As the saying goes, “Seek and you will find”. I found a text message that I felt the sender and the reply both were inappropriate. I questioned my partner about it and it set-off our first big argument. Still, til this very day I am very uneasy about this person. The event itself started a habit of my checking my partner’s phone. Until recently, I found text and photos that were inappropriate for a person that’s in a committed relationship. The act of peeking crossed the boundary of respect for the other person’s privacy, but also crossed the boundary of my partner’s respect for the relationship and became a bad source of arguments and distrust in the relationship.
The next addiction started also with the cellphone. I’m not sure how I came about learning this, but I realized because our phone services were all connected to mine I was able to track his phone. So, whenever my partner didn’t show up by a certain time I looked for the phone’s location. I felt uncomfortable doing this, but I needed to know where he was. It felt like a mother looking for her lost child or a person tracking an important package. When my partner failed to come home this led me to going where the tracker showed the phone was. Most of the time it did not give the exact location and I wasted time looking for him when he had moved on. This also opened the door to more arguments, lies and distrust. Once, I found him at one of our rental properties at an inappropriate time with a female. I won’t go into the hurt I felt from all of this, but til this very day there’s a deep distrust and my gut feeling is that he has cheated on me. The tracking and the arguments led to him discovering how to turn his phone locator off, which he started doing in advance of him leaving the house or work.
Here I was with this access to his phone that I not only could read hurtful truths, see other women’s nudity but see where he was spending hundreds and thousands of dollars with his drug dealers. I started desperately trying to save this relationship by trying to control all these mechanisms. How did I go about doing this you may ask? With his phone. I could block calls, text messages, defriend people on his social media, and even turn his phone off. All of this, means nothing to a person using drugs. It didn’t stop the calls, the texts, the photos. It didn’t stop him from staying out all night or talking to other women, nor spending money.
At some point, I started to isolate from the life I had. I became physically ill with high blood pressure, hair falling out, and a nervousness I can’t quite describe which led to crying spells, loneliness, and ANGER.
Visit this site soon for part two- Addicted to the Addiction. by Penda Te