You Don't Have to Stop Loving Them to Start Saving Yourself

The Complicated Grief of Loving the Person Underneath the Addiction

By Lisa Franco Alexander

There is a backyard here in Panama where I am beginning to learn how to be alone.

I did not choose it as a place of healing. I did not walk through the gate one day and decide that this would be where I would begin rebuilding my life.

It simply became that place.

The owner picks me up and brings me there because, right now, I do not have a car. When I am home alone, people from this circle bring me dinner. When I arrive, I am greeted with hugs. People tell me they are glad to see me. They remind me that I am loved, that I am capable, and that I can navigate this life on my own.

They are helping me return to the woman who handles things herself.

I am grateful beyond words.

And sometimes, being there breaks my heart.

Because that backyard is filled with memories of him.

When a Safe Place Holds Painful Memories

There were happy times there. Laughter. Friends. Ordinary evenings that I had no idea would someday become memories I would ache to revisit.

Now I can sit in that same place surrounded by people who care about me and suddenly remember something beautiful.

Then something terrible.

Then something beautiful again.

That is the strange cruelty of complicated loss.

The memories do not arrive neatly categorized.

There is no folder marked GOOD and another marked BAD.

The man I loved and the man whose actions caused enormous pain are the same man.

The marriage that held beautiful memories also held devastating ones.

Addiction was part of our story.

So was love.

And I cannot rewrite one simply because the other is also true.

Everyone Wants Me to Move Forward

The people around me want something good for me.

They want me to heal.

They want me to be independent.

They want me to discover that I can build a life even though the life I expected to have has changed dramatically.

Some would probably be relieved if I simply stopped loving him.

But hearts do not always cooperate with what would make life easier.

Last night, three of his closest friends were there.

Each one came to me separately.

Each one hugged me.

Each told me he loved me.

One is furious with my husband. His feelings about what happened are harsh and absolute.

The other two seemed to understand something that is much harder to explain:

I still love him.

I still cry over his situation.

I still hurt knowing that he is in prison.

I can acknowledge the choices that brought us here without becoming incapable of compassion for the person who made them.

Those truths coexist inside me.

For a long time, I thought healing might eventually require me to choose between them.

I am beginning to understand that perhaps it does not.

Addiction Leaves More Than One Casualty

When addiction enters a family, everyone begins responding to the person who is using.

Is he okay?

Where is he?

Is he using again?

What happened?

How do we help him?

How do we stop this?

How do we save him?

Eventually, an entire family can begin orbiting one person's disease.

Meanwhile, something is happening to everyone else.

They are becoming exhausted.

Frightened.

Angry.

Hyperaware.

Hopeful and hopeless, sometimes within the same hour.

They may cover consequences, make excuses, search for answers, issue ultimatums, forgive, rage, pray, rescue, retreat, return, and try again.

And somewhere in all of that, they can lose themselves.

That is one of the hardest things I have had to confront.

At what point does loving someone become abandoning yourself?

Saving Yourself Is Not a Punishment

There is an idea that can quietly take hold when you love someone who is struggling:

If I take care of myself, I am giving up on them.

If I laugh, perhaps I did not love deeply enough.

If I enjoy an evening with friends, perhaps I should feel guilty.

If I build a life without him beside me, perhaps I am betraying the life we once shared.

If I become stronger, perhaps that means I am leaving him behind.

But what if none of that is true?

What if saving yourself is not something you do to another person?

What if it is simply something you finally begin doing for yourself?

I can wish healing for him without destroying myself waiting for it.

I can hope he changes without making my future dependent upon whether he does.

I can remember the good without denying the bad.

I can acknowledge the bad without pretending the good never existed.

And I can love him without allowing that love to consume whatever remains of me.

Love and Boundaries Can Exist Together

We often speak about boundaries as though they are evidence that love has ended.

Sometimes they are evidence that we have finally understood love is not enough to make another person change.

Love cannot force sobriety.

Love cannot undo consequences.

Love cannot make another person choose recovery.

Love cannot rewrite yesterday.

And love cannot require one human being to disappear so another can survive.

A boundary does not necessarily say:

I no longer love you.

Sometimes it says:

I love you, and I cannot continue losing myself this way.

That distinction matters.

Especially for those of us who still love someone everyone else believes we should have stopped loving long ago.

The Man Sitting Beside Me

There is another man who sometimes sits among this circle of people.

He is older.

And he is a recovering crack addict.

His presence has given me something unexpected: another window into a disease I experienced primarily from the other side.

He knows addiction from inside it.

I know what loving someone through addiction can do to a family.

Now he is working toward creating a nonprofit recovery space here in Panama for people struggling with addiction. He has asked me to become part of it—to teach and coach around inner peace, self-worth, and healing.

I cannot ignore the significance of that.

Something that caused enormous pain in my life may someday become part of how I help another person find a way through theirs.

That does not make what happened worth it.

I would never romanticize suffering that way.

Pain does not need to have happened for a reason in order for us to create meaning from what remains.

Perhaps that is one of the ways we reclaim our lives.

We decide what the pain gets to become next.

The Backyard Looks Different Now

I still walk into that backyard and remember him.

I suspect I will for a long time.

There will probably be evenings when a song, a chair, a conversation, or someone's laughter takes me backward before I even realize what is happening.

But something else lives there now.

People who pick me up because I cannot get there myself.

People who send food when I am alone.

People who wrap their arms around me when I walk through the gate.

People who see something in me that I sometimes struggle to see in myself.

A future.

Not the future I planned.

Not necessarily the future I would have chosen.

But a future nonetheless.

And perhaps that is what moving forward actually looks like.

Not erasing him.

Not rewriting our history.

Not deciding that every beautiful memory was a lie because terrible things happened later.

Not forcing myself to stop loving someone because doing so would make my story easier for other people to understand.

Perhaps moving forward means allowing yesterday and tomorrow to exist in the same heart.

You Are Allowed to Carry Both

If you love someone who has hurt you, disappointed you, frightened you, abandoned you, struggled with addiction, or become someone you no longer recognize, you may have been told some version of:

You need to let go.

Forget about them.

Move on.

Why do you still care?

But complicated love does not disappear on command.

And healing does not require hatred.

You are allowed to grieve what happened.

You are allowed to be angry.

You are allowed to establish boundaries.

You are allowed to protect yourself.

You are allowed to remember beautiful moments.

You are allowed to miss the person you once knew.

You are allowed to hope they heal.

You are allowed to love them.

And you are allowed to build a beautiful life anyway.

Those things do not cancel one another out.

I am learning that myself, one backyard evening at a time.

I do not know exactly what my life will look like from here.

But I know this:

I do not have to stop loving him to start saving myself.

And neither do you.

— Lisa Franco Alexander

Founder | Heart's Renewal

Life After Complicated Loss™

Rediscover Peace · Purpose · Wholeness