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Substance abuse disorder wreaks havoc on a relationship with trust being one of the first to erode. Chantal Jauvin, an attorney and book author, joins the podcast to talk on the ASCENT approach which couples in recovery can practice to make their recovery journey successful and reignite the love that may have been lost due to addiction.

Chantal, for all her expertise which made her General Counsel of a Fortune 500 company, did not know how to save her husband from the grips of addiction or building a relationship while in recovery. It took years of soul work and interactions with other couples to produce her second book, Love Without Martinis, to share the lessons she learned along the way.

In this Episode 

• 03:59 Chantal learns about substance use disorder and collects couples' stories to share to others as a learning tool. 
• 06:12 Recovery covers three aspects: The one suffering, the one who loves them, and the relationship itself.
• 13:50 Couples can recover successfully from substance abuse with the ASCENT approach.
• 18:09 A: Assess readiness to change. Shift focus from what cannot be done to what can be done. The Stoplight Method makes it smoother to move areas that are red to yellow and eventually green.
• 28:07 S: Structure your time. This creates accountability, a key aspect in building trust, and conveys what matters to you and what you truly value.
• 31:33 C: Create your community. Addiction creates trauma and emotional baggage, so meeting new people, it provides a fresh start without the guilt associated with past behaviors. It also teaches you on how to set healthy boundaries.
• 34:43 E: Engage in your life. To feel the joy of living, to get fired up, you need to assume responsibility for your own life. Engaging in what makes you happy helps your own individual growth, as well as the growth of the couple itself. 
• 38:47 N: Nurture your spirituality. This allows each partner to pause and become self-aware to break the chain reaction of action and reaction which is so prevalent in substance abuse disorder. 
• 41:24 T: Treasure your partnership. A touch, smile, or compliment says, “I see you” and creates meaning.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Pushing is counterproductive. If one partner is not yet ready to engage in change, the other partner's duty is to give time and space to allow this change to happen. 
• The Stoplight Method is collaborative. It sends clear signals between partners on what they can work on together and when. This facilitates healing in a safe place at a pace which is comfortable with both parties.
• Return to your hobbies. Addiction can sap away your time from doing the things you love, a very human need, that you need to grow and feel alive. Engaging in your favorite hobbies can lead to more joy in life which then inserts joy back in the relationship itself.  
• Take a pause. Addiction so often causes a cycle of action and reaction that it seems like you are having the same conversation over and over again. Pausing realigns what it is you really want to do and refocuses your efforts into what really matters.

Mentioned

Chantal's website

Chantal's Facebook

Chantal's Instagram

Chantal's LinkedIn

Love Without Martinis Amazon page (*Amazon Link)

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About Today's Show

Chantal, thank you for joining us today.

Thank you for having me on the show. I look forward to our conversation.

Yeah, me too. I think this is such an important conversation in supporting people in relationships that are in recovery from substance use disorder, or alcoholism, addiction. And you're really helping people look at the relationship piece. Is that right?

That's correct. I am really focusing on couples. The reason I've chosen to do that, is because there really is very little literature available. There's not very much focus on the couple, particularly in early relationships that's in early recovery. So, I felt there was a need to address that component for people who are romantically involved when they begin their journey of recovery.

No kidding. And you have your own personal journey with this. That really prompted you to offer this more to people in the world. Is that right?

That's correct. I personally had not had much exposure to substance use disorder. My knowledge of it was really limited to what I've seen in the movies, at least knowingly, no one in my family or among my friends had struggled with substance use disorder so that when my husband went to treatment, I felt I really needed to learn a lot. I turned to books. I'm an attorney. I love to read. And that is always my first instinct is to turn to books.

What I found in many very useful books about the process of individual recovery for both the people who love someone who is in recovery and also for obviously, all the fellowships, whether it's Al Anon or AA or smart recovery, as you know, many pathways to recovery. But I still couldn't find anything that addressed the process of the couple. So, I didn't have that resource. And now that my husband and I have celebrated 12 years of recovery, just last February, I thought, you know, we could give back. We could share our experience, but not only at our experience, I interviewed many couples, and wanted to hear from different perspectives. Whether it's a couple with a young family, whether it is a couple that retires. Tim and Chuck, who are in a partnership of many years. And so, I thought we relate to the story, right? I don't know about you but I love to read stories. Stories are a way to learn from other people without getting hurt. Without needing to necessarily try it ourselves, we can learn by what other people have done. So, that is what set me on this path is to use storytelling to create narratives that other couples could refer to when they enter recovery.

And is there anything just as we're starting this conversation in how you view recovery as it relates to relationships?

Yes, absolutely. I believe that really, there are three recoveries that are happening simultaneously, which is why it makes this area so complex. First, there is the person who is entering early on sobriety. Now, because the first step is really, the person who has a substance use disorder needs to find sobriety. So, you have that person's recovery. Then you have the person who loves them, their own recovery. And often, that person’s life has become very chaotic. Many of us, including myself, go from being fiercely independent to quite codependent. And our own behavior changes. And so, there's the recovery of that person. But then there's the relationship. The relationship has suffered a lot of traumas. There's trust that's been eroded. Intimacy, both in emotional and physical intimacy may have disappeared or be very low in the relationship. So, there's a third entity there, which is the relationship which also needs to heal. All these three entities, we don't necessarily heal at the same rate. We don't necessarily heal in the same way. I think it's important to recognize.

Do you find that this is a paradigm shift for people? Because I hear so often from not only the person that's using or drinking, but also from the partner, that it's the person that has the alcoholism or addiction that needs the help. Right? And it's a shift to think of the whole system in recovery.

Absolutely. You really need a holistic or a systems approach to the relationship. When I began the journey of writing the book, I turned to experts in the field because I am not an addiction expert myself. I had a conversation with Doug Tiedemann who's the CEO of Care and Treatment Centers. He's been in the field for about 30 years. In his experience, the couples he's seen come to a treatment, he says, there's really three categories of relationship. The first one where there's a partner in recovery, and the other one is not. That can mean that the loved one just doesn't feel like they have anything to do with your work. You got sober. Now, you go do your soul work. And when you're ready, I’m here. That's sort of one category.

Then, the second category is, it's great that you're in recovery, I'm going to be supportive, but I'm really fine. I have my friends. I have my world. I’ll support you. And then there's the third category, which is where both partners embrace recovery. These are the stories of the couples in this book. My own experience with both person and their relationship, recognize that they have their own soul work to do. And those are the relationships that really get the benefit of the recovery. What we found anecdotally, because I interviewed many couples, and there seems to be two sorts of, I'll call them hotspots in the relationship in terms of danger of the relationship unravelling. There is a moment where the person enters treatment and it can be the go-to rehab or they join a fellowship or they make a commitment to their sobriety. And very shortly thereafter, the person who loves them who's been through a lot of chaos and sees their partner be in sobriety says, “You know, this has been great. Now, you're sober. Now, you're solid. I have no more energy to give the relationship. And now that you're safe, I withdraw from the relationship because now I need to go take care of myself.” And the relationship doesn't survive, which is very confusing to the person who's now in sobriety because they finally achieve sobriety and their partner leaves.

The other hotspot is about four to six years into recovery, where the partners have done some soul work but they haven't engaged in healing the relationship. Somewhere in that four-to-five-year period, one of the partners, and it can be either the one who is in sobriety or the person who loves them says, “Is this as good as it gets?” Because what they've done is they've learned to live a life where there's not necessarily alcohol in their home or their socializing. But they haven't reconnected, they haven't healed the past, they haven't rebuilt the trust, so they're not getting the full benefit of their recovery.

And so, those are two junctions in the relationship that can be really in trouble, if both partners do not engage in a recovery.

This seems to circle back or point to what you were just describing around the three elements of recovery, the two individuals and then the relationship, because if one and/or both partners are doing their individual work, that's amazing and profound, and we don't want to take anything away from that. But that doesn't allow necessarily for the healing, and the repair, and the recovery for the couple that can gain this deepening of intimacy, and this trust, and this security together.

It's interesting. As you're talking, Chantal, I'm thinking about, perhaps even another tough spot would be where one person is in recovery and is sober and are somewhere in their sobriety but the other partner hasn't been using a substance in the way of drugs or alcohol but perhaps overeat or has another form of altering their state through food or through TV or through social media, whatever the thing is that helps them cope. Right? That maybe doesn't get the same focus so it's kind of hidden, if you will. Have you seen that at all, or heard that being discussed?

Yes, of course. That is why the relationships that do rebuild in recovery require both partners to be in it to be involved. In my research for the book, I came across this one author who's a pioneer in the field of recovery, Ernie Larson. He has this quote that I love, and I'd like to share with you because it speaks to what you're saying.

And so, if there is a co-occurring issue, whether it's behavioral or another disease or another presence that is interrupting the intimacy of the relationship, that has to be addressed. Otherwise, the relationship will not be able to become a healthy one.

Yeah. These are things that are running interference, right? And again, as we look at these coping strategies or these tendencies, or even substance abuse or disorder that it really is underneath. There's some real pain, typically, whether or not it's trauma or wounds or some type of difficulty that as a human, we're doing our best to function and we lose ground. And so, to be able to peel back and really work with the deeper layers to then live from this more authentic place, and then be able to have two people doing that are seeing each other and supporting each other. I mean, it sounds like the goal.

It is. What I learned from interviewing so many couples and then speaking to experts in the field, is that there are habits that the couples who have managed to rebuild and reclaim their relationship from the chaos and the trauma of various addiction. I focus on substance use and in terms of alcohol, but there are some habits that the couples who rebuild that intimacy engage in. There wasn't really a roadmap. They develop those prompts because they had support from fellowships, from therapists, perhaps spiritual guidance. But there was definitely some overarching theme.

And so, that is where I joined forces with Dr. Jeremy Frank, who is an expert in the area of addiction and recovery. We created this, The Ascent Approach, which is a set of six practices. They are practices. This is what we learned from the couple. This is collective wisdom. They're not steps. They are not sequential. These practices are there, whether you are following a fellowship, or you're seeking advice from a therapist, or you have another pathway. Ascent stands for, because this is just an acronym to remember these six habits. And I think if you have a moment, I'd love to go through them because I think it speaks to how the couples really can address other issues in their relationship together.

Of course, I would love to hear that. And just to kind of clarify, it sounds like through all of the interviewing and consulting with experts, it's almost like a meta-analysis, if you will. You were able to see these themes that emerged of these couples that had gained recovery not only individually, but as a couple and this collective system, that you're then able to really help provide a roadmap of not so much steps, but practices that really assist in recovery. Is that what you're saying?

Yes, exactly. There were three components to developing this. First, there was what I would call the portion that's evidence and form, which is where I did the research and went back to the work, for example, of Brown and Lewis, which is a seminal work. That is the alcoholic family in recovery. And so, that informed my questioning, my thinking, regarding the family unit and recovery. Then there is a component of Dr. Jeremy Frank, who is a clinician who has been working with couples and individuals for over 20 years. And then there was the anecdotal part, which was all the interviews with the couples. There are six couples whose stories are shared but there were many more that were interviewed. So, it is. As you say, you refer to it like a meta-analysis. I like that word. But yeah, it is the themes and the learnings that emerged from all of that.

Nice. Okay. We love to hear the ascent approach.

Great! Well, the first one is, assess your readiness to change.

And now, we need to change that. We are doing individual work and we may not be ready at the same time to address the same issues. If I use an example from my own relationship, early on, I want my husband to tell me about his relationship with his children from his first marriage. It was important to me because I really wanted us to have a blended family. Bill was not ready. He himself was early in recovery. He did not really know himself well enough. He wasn't ready to start sharing the relationship with his children with me. I thought he doesn't trust me, because trust is a big issue in recovery.

And so, this step of assessing your readiness to change would lead Bill and I to have a conversation about how ready are you to have a conversation surrounding your children with me? And if he says, “I'm not ready”, then my work in our couple is to give him time to be ready. It doesn't help us if I keep pushing and pushing. It's not a question of his desire to build trust with me. It’s that he doesn't have the ability at this moment to do so.

I'm so glad you just named that too because as you help him in creating safety and supporting his time and being ready, perhaps there's also the part about managing any anxiety or worry about his desire, like you just said, of creating family together, right? Because that can be difficult to tolerate when we make meaning around when somebody is not doing X, Y and Z. Right?

Exactly. I think it's easy to use a tool that we all know and is very simple, which is the traffic light. Because we can quickly communicate our level of readiness without necessarily having a lot of conversation that we're not ready for. And so, I love the conversation that we have where I said to my husband, “I really would like to talk about this issue. Let it be the relationship with your children.” And he would say to me, “No, that's really a red area for me. I'm not ready.” And now, that's a signal to me that I have to give him space. As a couple, we check in regularly. And then hopefully, at some point, he says, “Well, either I've received support from my therapist or spiritual advisor, and I feel I'm making progress so I'm on yellow. I think just give me a little bit more time.” And then what we can do is say, “Okay. Well, is there an area where we're both clean? Is there an area where we're both willing?” And so, what you do is you shift the focus away from what cannot be done to what can be done. And so, for us, that was really important. We were both very much willing to focus early on our physical intimacy because we had missed it. And so, we engaged in some workshops and some personal time because that was an area we were green. When you build a sense of collaboration and joint effort in one area, then it becomes easier to move an area that is red, into yellow, and then eventually into green.

Yes. Because you have some resource of that green that allows that bond and that sense of goodwill and connection, and that there's safety from that, that we can expand and perhaps start to access more as readiness increases.

Chantal, I'm curious. The first couple in your book that I spent a little more time on. I'm wondering if you can speak to how readiness fits with because what you're describing is really explicit and really conscious that as a couple. I love that we're focusing on the couple because that's usually why people are listening to this show, right, to increase their skillfulness in a relationship.

And also, part of what informs that is our own awareness around what's going on for us. So, with Tom and Carol, I love it. I was so moved by this when in his process, right, he was going to therapy, and he was doing all this work. I don't remember what the timeframe was but it seemed like a long length of time that he was engaged in AA and therapy. Particularly, therapy. Like, not really going to deeper levels around his upbringing and different things. And then, there was a point where he turned a corner and he really did get vulnerable and he did go there and the transformation that occurred. But I wonder, as far as assessing readiness, can you speak to that aspect of like, resistance and maybe, you know, doing other layers of work. Would that just be we're not ready?

Well, exactly. It is. And again, this is, I think, what I like about this approach is that it now creates a roadmap. These couples, they didn't have the ascent approach. This is something that was created on the basis of their experiences. And so, the beauty of this tool is that now couples can say, “Oh, we can use this tool and it's easy. We all know the traffic light.”

I like the example of Dave and Leslie because Leslie was very much in denial. She was not the person who had the substance use disorder. It was her husband. They had been married for over 30 years. And so, she could not come to terms initially with the fact that he had a substance use disorder. So, there was a lot of denial. She thought it was related to health. She thought it was related to his retirement. And so, she was not ready to do her own work until much longer after Dave came home from attending treatment. And even early on, it is Dave who says, “Let's do family counselling. Let's attend with a couple’s therapist.” And that's not successful. And so clearly, there was a long process for Leslie to move from red to yellow, to green to understand that there was a family disease at work and she needed to look at herself. She needed to do her own soul work.

I guess this brings a question. Who is doing the assessing? Is an individual assessing themselves? Are we assessing her partner? Are we assessing the couple? Can it be on all levels?

Well, I think it depends on the issue. The couple comes to a dialogue to say, “Okay. We are going to talk about what it is that is not working for each of us in the relationship at this moment.” And this isn't done in a vacuum. As I said, this is to supplement the work that couples are doing.

And so, in their individual recovery, they would be getting support and understanding what areas that really they need to address so that when they come together, say, well, as I mentioned earlier, I want to work on trusts. And my husband says, “I want to work on physical intimacy.” And so, then we have a conversation of, “Are you ready to engage in a change of behavior?” So, it really is a joint assessment of where do we both stand in relation to an issue or challenge in our relationship?

Yes, I love that. That creates so much more safety because it's just a wee conversation. I think as I'm talking with you about this, even if someone's not conscious of how ready they are, or to what extent they're ready, I think it becomes clear as you engage in that dialogue. And that's okay, right? I mean, I love what you're saying because it really allows permission that it's okay to not be ready. There's a process.

Right. And I like the traffic lights because the yellow allows you to signal to your partner that if it is trust and you're doing some work with your therapist or your sponsor, what it may be, and you feel like you're growing in that area that you are personally addressing those challenges. You can turn to your partner and say, “I've moved from red to yellow. I'm making progress. Just give me just a little more time, but we're moving in the right direction.”

And then, if a couple finds that they are red on every single issue that they identified, then I think that's also a moment to say, “Okay. We really need to bring some professional help in. We really need to get some support because we cannot find, we cannot identify an area where we are both ready to tackle. And if we want to recover, we have to grow. We have to find an area that we are able to work on together.

I love that. I love that. I mean, if we want to recover, we have to grow. That's so beautiful. I know our time is limited with you. Can we switch to the S in Ascent?

Yes, absolutely. I think the others are more straightforward. Structure your time. It's very logical. Early in recovery, we all of a sudden have a lot more time on our hands because we are not engaged with our substance, with our addiction. And so, now we have a lot of free time.

Because what we're doing is, first of all, we are creating predictability in our relationship. When I say I will be going to have coffee with my friend at such and such a time and I will be home, what I am doing is I'm making myself accountable to me, to the friend I am meeting, and to my partner. And when we create accountability, we begin to create trust because addiction is chaotic. There is a lot of lying and there is no place for accountability. And so, that structuring of time is the first step. It is like a container for that. But what we're also doing is we are saying these matters to me.

And when I say to my partner, on Wednesday morning, I will go to the gym, I'm structuring my time but I am also saying my fitness and my wellness is important to me. And so, I'm setting time aside for that. And then when I say that also to my partner, “Let's have a date night on Saturday.” I'm saying to my partner, “You are important enough to me to set time aside to spend time with you.”

So important. So, you're conveying what matters and what's a value as well as building trust by following through and being accountable. I wonder too if there's an aspect of finding life, finding joy, finding wholeness and wellness that when we're using, we're out of touch and disconnected with that that brings some generation too.

Absolutely. And that's why these are practices, they overlap. We'll quickly move through the E which is engaged in your life. And that is part of generating the joy, the interest, and what really fires us up in life.

In terms of just to conclude on structure, I love the story of Sherry and Larry. That's for Larry on whose wife had had numerous reoccurrences and had gone to various treatment centers. The fact that now their arrangement was that she was there for breakfast, and she was there for dinner for the family, that structuring of time started creating a lot of trust in the couple because every evening that Larry came home and he saw Sherry was there and she was ready to have dinner with the family. That structure was occupying her time as well so that she didn't have a recurrence but it created trust.

And so, that really then takes us to the C, which is create your community. I think this one is very important because in addiction our behavior causes a lot of traumas, a lot of emotional baggage. And when we meet new people, it's like we get a fresh slate. We get to show up how we are today in our recovery. And that's really beautiful to be able to show up where we are without necessarily having all that guilt associated with past behavior.

And having people see us through a lens of how they've known us in the past.

Exactly. And then when we have new social interactions, we tend to be more curious. We listen more. We're asking questions. We want to learn. Let's say a new cycling friend. We want to learn about them so we ask questions and we learn to listen. We also learn to set boundaries because it's much easier to say to someone that you don't know, “No, I'm not available on Saturday.” And so, what you're doing is you're practicing listening, you're practicing boundaries. And then, you can take those skills back into your relationship.

So powerful. Right. Because when we can practice in smaller ways, we're building that muscle memory to be able to flex or perhaps use in more demand, right, when there's a higher risk dialogue with someone we love.

That is a powerful driver to staying the course of our recovery when we create connections.

I can see how these practices are so helpful when practiced together or worked together because I also know that when one person who's in recovery is accessing community and building, we even get probably dopamine hits by the newness of learning about someone new or learning a new activity or doing something new as a group. But what gets fostered in that bonding can feel threatening to the other partner who maybe isn't experiencing that relational bonding, right? If you don't have the structured time and you're not building trust, but then one partner is going to these different events and being supported and feeling resourced by these outside connections can feel, “Well, what about me?” Or, “What about our intimacy?” So, I can see how this is all important and how it all supports each other.

Right. And then, that's when you go back to the S and say, “Well, what about me?” Then you say, “Well, let's plan some time together. Let's plan a joint activity.” And so, you fall back on the S for structure your time with your partner to make sure that you are keeping some balance in your relationship with your partner and your community.

This brings us to the “engage in your life” because this is what we want after all. We want the joy of living. We want the fulfilment. We want that sense of being fired up. When we engage in our life, we are saying, “What am I doing to grow individually? And what are we doing to grow as a couple?”

Yes.

And what's important about this also is that we now begin to assume responsibility for our life.

We forget to create meaning together with our partners by sharing activities that we love.

For this practice of engaging in your life, I really enjoy the story of Tim and Chuck because Chuck works in IT management and help desk. Through his partner's addiction, Tim, he really let his own hobbies drift. And if you think of it, he's predisposed. We hit the phone when nothing is working out to reach IT, which happens, as you know, regularly. So, he's really predisposed to be at, you know, Tim's beck and call for anything he needs in the course of addiction. But in recovery, Chuck basically goes to the garage, dusts off his tools and starts woodworking. And goes back to that hobby he used to enjoy when he didn't have to be on call for Tim all the time. And so, he finds that joy.

And Tim, who's a complete extrovert and he’s very artistic, decides he's going to start hosting paint nights again. So, they're both engaging in what is important to them. That instance doesn't have to be together. They're two individual activities. But what's important is they are resourcing themselves, and then they can come back into their relationship with the joy of having engaging something they like. And then looking to, “Now, what do we do? Because we are having fun individually, now, what do we do for fun together?” And then the couple can grow that way. That's where you challenge each other.

And it feels like too, as you're talking, that it's accessing very human parts of ourselves that are needed to grow and to be more alive, right? When we talk about addiction and substance use period that it dulls. Like you said, it becomes chaotic and dominant. It has this overlay that is again, dominating. We're usually disconnected from that sense of life. Like the quote you read earlier of just being really alive. And so, this being creative and being in community and feeling engaged and having time, it just feels so healthy.

Exactly. Exactly. If I can intercept one other quote, which I think really captures this, it's from Harville Hendrix. It says that the most fulfilling love relationship is one in which two people are intimately connected with each other yet keep a respectful distance apart by acknowledging each other's recovery.

Well, yes. I love his work. That's so well said.

Yes, absolutely. And I think this is what we're talking about in this instance of Tim and Chuck respecting each other to engage in what gives them joy in life. And in this case, that happens to be very different. And so, they can respect that and then they can come together as a couple and do other activities that create meaning for them as a unit.

And then, of course, with all that said, we also have to look at the next practice which is nurture your spirituality. This is, how do we feed our inner peace? How do we nourish our serenity? Because certainly nowadays, we hear a lot about this concept of mindfulness, self-awareness. And whether it's through prayer and religion, whether it is through spirituality in a broader sense of nature, really what is important is that each of us in the partnership find a way to nurture our inner tranquility so that we can pause. Because in that moment of pause, we become self-aware.

An inner recovery. That is so crucial because what we're trying to do is break that chain reaction that we've been engaged in in addiction, where I do something, my partner reacts, I react, and then we go down that rabbit hole. It feels like we're having the same conversation every time. Even if we're talking about the laundry or getting together with our families or who's responsible for the finances, essentially, we're having that trigger that we're really not engaged with each other, we're just bouncing off, we're reacting to each other.

Nurture the spirituality allows us to calm down, take a pause. We lessen our reactivity to each other. That's for me in my relationship with my husband is, you know, Bill and Chantal 101 is what I call it. Something happens, it makes me feel insecure. I react with anger. And then, my husband reacts to my anger with guilt. There we go. Both for me. It's nature, it's meditation. When I'm quiet inside and something happens, I can now acknowledge that I'm hurt and I don't have to become angry. My husband can see that in me as well because he is engaging in his own spirituality, his own inner peace that he can see what's happening to me and he can pause that trigger reaction.

So beautiful. Thank you for sharing a personal example. It's so, so helpful.

And then we get to the last one, which is to me the most fun from a relationship point of view, which is treasure your partnership. That's when we create meaning together. A smile, a touch, a compliment. But what it is also is we're saying, “I see you and I want to know you.” Nowadays, when we're so busy with our screens and multitasking, it's very powerful to sit across from your partner and just look into each other's eyes and say nothing. In that moment we're saying to him or her, “I see you.” That's very validating

Such a simple practice to give that undivided attention and focus and presence. And yes, it is difficult to access to really carve out but it sends such a clear message of what you're saying of that priority and that treasuring.

Yes. I think from there, because you are rebuilding your trust, you want to create meaning that is specific to you and your relationship. I love the way that for us that manifests by all the languages that we've developed. That just means something to us. For example, one of our experience expressions is, “Oh, let's have some jungle time.” That sounds silly to anybody else but to us, we're saying, “Okay. That means we want some time alone together.” And what you're doing is if you think about addiction, there's so much trickery and deceit and secrecy. And now what you're doing is you're turning that on its head, and you're connecting to your partner with code words that are just for you and your partner. We all know the old expression, “Oh, well, let's turn the lights off. That's fine for the kids not to come home.” It doesn't matter what it is. It's just that it's yours and it's unique.

Yeah, so powerful when two people have that shared, like inside language and bond, the inside jokes or whatever that is that you guys do that sends that message that we're taking time together and we're cherishing that, and we're investing in that. It's so, so important.

Yes. And what it does then is that it transforms the focus of the relationship, where you are able to deal with the past and now you live in the present. Meaning, you are creating but you also are now able to create a vision for your relationship into the future because now you have predictability, now you have accountability. And so, the relationship is transformed through these practices because you are able to grow together.

I love the story of Luke and Nadia, where their vision was to create a home for David, their young boy, and they wanted to homeschool him. They're both entrepreneurs. They were able to do that because now with recovery, they could agree that that was the vision they wanted. This is the kind of family life they wanted. And so, that is a great way to treasure your partnership when you can create a vision that directs your relationship.

Chantal, it's so sweet to talk to you and what you're bringing to this conversation. I can tell the research and the breadth of knowledge that you've gained in this discovery and collecting and packaging in the way of the book Love Without Martinis. It's so nice to have your voice to really support people and navigating recovery and couple hood. Because as you said, there isn't enough out there.

I will say, in reading your book, I read a lot of personal growth books. I do really resonate with the narrative and the story because it's so much more engaging. I found myself like, “I want to read more.” Not that I don't like reading the personal growth but it's much more compelling to have story. I think you did such a beautiful job of really helping people learn through the story, which I think is so human and important for us in learning.

Thank you! I believe storytelling is really an essential activity. The harder the situations that we face, the more essential it is to tell our stories for that reason. It makes it relatable for people and it creates hope. Recovery is not linear. We take a step back. When we grow, well, sometimes we stumble. And so, when you read the stories of these couples, for me, I find it inspiring, and it gives me hope. And today we celebrate 12 years of recovery. But these practices, they're still very much part of our life because recovery is a lifelong journey.

Yes. Well, how can people access the book? Is there anything else that you're wanting to encourage people to do to learn more or to engage in this more?

Well, certainly the book Love Without Martinis is available at all the normal places at Amazon, Barnes and Noble. It can be ordered through your independent bookstores. You can follow us obviously on social media. I have an author page on Facebook, Chantal Jauvin. I'm sure you'll have that in the notes for your listeners because it is a French name. And you can follow us on Instagram.

I know that's one of the things I just was like, I hit home so strongly and I just feel like it's been such an important message. And thank you for being the voice for this in the world.

Well, thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about this. It's so important for us to take the stigma out of recovery. We hear so much about the memoirs of the challenges of addiction but what's really key is we have to talk much more about recovery. And it's fun, recovery. I love the hashtag #SoberIsSexy. Recovery is fun. It's not stay at home and isolate. It’s quite the opposite. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to have the conversation about recovery.

Signing Off

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