Couples Counseling for Relationships Impacted by Substance Use
When substance use is part of the relationship, the challenges often go deeper than the substances themselves.
For many couples, the visible issue is alcohol or drug use, but the relationship injury is often about trust: what was hidden, what was minimized, what felt unsafe to say, and what each partner started doing to protect themselves.
Substance use can affect a relationship in ways that are not always obvious from the outside. Whether the concern is active use, recovery, occasional use that creates conflict, or the lingering effects of growing up around substance use, these experiences can shape how couples communicate, navigate disagreements, rebuild trust, and feel emotionally connected.
Sometimes, conversations about alcohol or drug use become loaded. One partner worries, monitors, avoids bringing things up, or tries to manage the situation. The other feels criticized, controlled, misunderstood, or ashamed. Both partners become stuck in patterns neither of them wants.
Other times, the question is not whether someone has a substance use disorder. It's whether alcohol or drug use is making conflict harder to navigate, increasing distance, damaging trust, or interfering with the relationship you want to build.
And for some couples, substance use is part of their history rather than their present. Growing up around substance use may have shaped how you learned to manage conflict, uncertainty, closeness, and vulnerability. Those experiences can continue to influence adult relationships, even when substances are no longer a central concern.
Whatever your circumstances, substance use does not have to define your relationship for its impact to deserve attention.
Does Any of This Sound Familiar?
Conversations about alcohol or drug use quickly turn into arguments, defensiveness, or shutdowns.
One partner is monitoring, worrying, or trying to manage the substance use while the other feels criticized or controlled.
Trust has been damaged, and neither of you knows how to rebuild it.
Maybe the substance use has even reduced or stopped, but the relationship still feels lonely because the relationship has not healed alongside it.
Alcohol or drug use makes conflicts more intense, frequent, or difficult to repair.
You're unsure whether substance use is the problem, but you know it's affecting your relationship.
Maybe both of you use substances and wonder whether that contributes to patterns you don't like.
You grew up around substance use and recognize familiar patterns in your adult relationships.
You're tired of having the same conversations without anything changing.
You love each other, but resentment, distance, or uncertainty have made it difficult to feel connected.
My Approach
I work from a harm-reduction philosophy, which means I don't begin with the assumption that someone must stop using substances for therapy to be helpful. Instead, we start by understanding how substance use affects your relationship, what each of you wants, and what has made honest conversations difficult.
Couples therapy involving substance use requires a balance that is easy to miss. We cannot ignore substance use when it affects the relationship, but we also cannot reduce every relationship problem to substance use.
My role is to help you understand both.
Together, we examine the patterns of conflict, trust, distance, resentment, and connection that shape your relationship. We work toward having conversations that may have felt impossible, understanding each other's experiences without abandoning accountability, and creating meaningful changes in how you relate to one another.
I bring specialized training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Substance Use Disorders and Motivational Interviewing. I also have a graduate certificate in substance use counseling and have been working to treat substance use since 2015. I continue to teach other clinicians about substance use treatment and provide supervision and training in these areas. My clinical experience spans residential treatment, treating veterans through the VA with substance use disorders and co-occurring trauma, managing substance use treatment programs at university counseling centers, and working with men and masculinity and how that intersects with substance use and emotional regulation.
That background helps me understand the complexities of substance use, including ambivalence, recovery, relapse, shame, and the ways substances can become intertwined with emotional and relational difficulties.
But couples therapy is ultimately about what happens between the two of you.
The goal is not simply to change someone's relationship with substances. It's to help you build a relationship with greater honesty, trust, emotional safety, and connection.