SEX FILES: How to move forward from an addictive marriage

Most sober partners feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility for the outcome of the addict's life. However, being the glue that holds everything together often comes at the expense of the sober partner’s own needs.

Published Sep 06, 2026  •  Last updated 24 minutes ago  •  3 minute read

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Ask Dana Killion to describe her former marriage, and she’ll tell you it was addictive.  

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Not enabling, addictive.  

She was married to a high-functioning alcoholic, and while it’s common in the addiction world to describe sober partners as “enabling,” she never saw it that way. Instead of helping him drink, she spent years monitoring his drinking and consistently encouraging him to get sober, because she knew that eventually alcohol would kill him.  

“It felt as if his life was in my hands,” remembers Killion.  

While her ex-husband was addicted to the bottle, she was addicted to trying to help him.  

Responsibility comes at expense of sober partner’s needs

Killion, who is the author of the new book, Becoming Unbreakable: A Big Sister’s Guide to Trauma, says her experience is common — most sober partners feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility for the outcome of the addict’s life. However, being the glue that holds everything together often comes at the expense of the sober partner’s own needs.  

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Killion’s turning point happened one night at 3 a.m. when she couldn’t sleep. 

“Standing in my living room staring down at the churning water of Lake Michigan from our high-rise apartment, I found myself wondering what it would feel like to slip into the lake and disappear. I wasn’t suicidal. I was utterly empty, numb, and emotionally detached from everything,” says Killion.  

It was the moment she stopped asking “can this marriage be saved?” and instead realized she was no longer willing to pay the emotional toll.  

“I understood, finally, that I had to fight for my emotional health because being emotionally numb wasn’t good enough. And I was the person responsible for fixing that,” she says.  

But moving past a traumatic relationship doesn’t happen overnight. Instead, it’s a process that starts by acknowledging what happened — after all, we can’t undo trauma, but lying to ourselves that “it’s in the past” or that we’re “over it” doesn’t help us heal.  

Create our own closure

Killion sees it as her job to transform pain from an active wound into a faded scar. “It will always be part of me, but I don’t have to allow it to control my life. I’m not forgetting or shoving it into an emotional box. I’m respecting the experience as something to learn and grow from,” she says.  

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This starts by creating our own closure. “When someone has hurt us, we have a very real need to understand why things played out the way they did. Our brains want stories completed,” says Killion. Yet often we don’t get a clear explanation from the person who caused the pain.  

In this case, Killion recommends people create their own story. “Using facts I had about my former husband’s history, things I learned about addiction, and conclusions I drew, I created my own story to explain his behaviour, but just for my use,” she says.  

That story helped Killion find closure, allowing her to release the old hurt and resentment from the relationship. It’s the reason she recommends this exercise to anyone who has left an unhealthy relationship and is afraid to trust—or love—again.  

“Stuckness keeps us from healing,” says Killion. She adds: “Creating my own story of why he behaved the way he did, I was also taking control of my healing and not waiting for something he couldn’t provide.”  

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Write out your story

As someone who has also walked away from several unhealthy relationships, it can also be helpful to physically write out the story of the relationship in a journal and repeat the process until eventually the event on the pages loses its emotional resonance.  

“My goal is to make the trauma as emotionally neutral as I can. That’s how I view healing,” says Killion.  

Creating new stories for ourselves — and putting the old ones to bed — is crucial to gaining valuable knowledge about ourselves and eventually moving forward.  

Recalling her marriage, Killion says the experience shaped her and took some things from her that she wishes it hadn’t, but she found other good things in the aftermath. Most importantly, she’s no longer addicted to trying to help someone with a substance use disorder.   

“I’m changed, not forever broken. That’s what moving forward looks like to me,” she says.  

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