This post is about the particular challenge that marriage has on Christians who are addicts. I suspect the principles translate to singles, but not sure how at the moment.
My experience was that, although my addictive behaviour decreased in frequency when I joined a 12-step fellowship, it continued to progress and grow. And, importantly, it did not stop until I confessed all to my spouse. In reflecting on this, I have come to the following conclusions:
- Honesty with God, self and other and interdependent. Partial honesty with an ‘other’ will cripple and distort my honesty with God, and with myself. This is reflected, of course, in the wording of Step 5 – “admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.”
- If marriage is, as Scripture describes, a ‘one flesh’ union, where there are ‘no longer two, but one’, then this seems to have radical urgency for honesty and confession. In the very act of being less than fully honest with my spouse, with whom I had become one flesh, I was also being less than fully honest with myself.
the grace of addiction 