When The Strong One Breaks

You can be the one who pays the bills, calms the kids, manages the lies, and still feel like you’re disappearing. I’m talking to the person partnered with an addict who keeps it all together so well that nobody thinks to check on you, and the quiet truth is you’re running on fumes.

We dig into how this “strong one” identity forms over time and why it so often turns into codependency: the pull to fix, manage, and control what your spouse won’t face. We name the real cost of living in constant crisis, including anxiety, sleeplessness, physical stress, emotional shutdown, and that hollow feeling of functioning without actually living. Then we talk about the moment the dam breaks, not always with fireworks, but sometimes in a car when a song hits and you start sobbing because you can’t carry it anymore.

We also go deeper on grief and faith, especially the painful grief of losing a person who is still alive, plus the regret of “wasted years.” From a Christian perspective, I walk through 2 Corinthians 12:9 and why God’s grace meets us in weakness, not in our ability to hold everything together. The shift I’m inviting you into is simple and challenging: stop making your whole life about fixing the addict and start letting God heal you, one honest step at a time.

If you heard yourself here, share this with someone who needs it, subscribe for the rest of the series, and leave a review so more partners of addicts can find real support. What would change if you told one trusted person, “I’m not okay”?

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Transcript

A Word For The Strong Ones

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I want to talk to the strong ones today. You know who you are. You're the one keeping it all together in the midst of the chaos. You're the one that is covering for the addict. You're the one telling the kids daddy's okay, he just needs to rest, or mama's tired, she just needs a break. You're the one that goes to work, cries in your car before you go in, and then go to work and act like everything's fine. Only to come home to make dinner and try to be there for your kids, not knowing what's going to happen that night. You're the one that continues to stand up to figure out how you're gonna make the next move to control the addict. Nobody checks on you. Because you've never given them a reason to check on you. You've never shown any vulnerability. You're the tough one, you're the sacrificer, you are the one that is gonna be the superhero. That right there is the loneliest place in the world. I feel it. I know it. I lived it. And we're gonna talk about that today on this episode.

Series Context And What’s Ahead

SPEAKER_00 1:15

So why don't you come on inside? Welcome to Reclaiming Your Identity. A podcast dedicated to providing hopefully healing support for every individual whose spouses have an addiction. This podcast offers Ivan Challenges of Adiction. Let's walk this journey together. New identity podcast. I'm Steve, your host. I'm super excited that you're here today. We are in our pretending is over series. We're in episode number four, when the strong one finally breaks down. Yes, we're gonna talk about that today. And what happens when the one keeping it all together for so long finally just breaks down? Well, we're gonna get into that, but if you haven't listened to the episodes prior, which is the foundation of the whole series, I'm gonna go back to episode number one and just work your way back to here. But I am super happy that you're here today. And would you please like, subscribe, share this with everybody that you know that is in some kind of relationship with an addict, partnered with an addict, married to an addict, has kids, maybe doesn't have kids, but everybody knows somebody that is touched by somebody with addiction. It is my main goal to try to help those that are partnered with addicts. So please help me out, like, subscribe, do all that good stuff.

Community Support And Free Resources

SPEAKER_00 2:52

So before we jump into this episode today, I want to invite you into partnersofaddicts.com. Partnersofaddicts.com is the place that has the entryway to the community, the online community I created that is a place of healing, hope, and transformation. It is everything I walked through for the 12 years that I was breaking apart from codependency, detangling from my ex-wife who was an addict, and everything I learned through counseling, life experiences, through what God has taught me. Everything is in this community, and it's a safe place, and it's a place where you can start to gain clarity on how you move forward in your relationship with the addict. There's a bunch of other good resources on the website. It holds our three guides the navigating the love, the ten truths unspoken, and the kids' guide, what is damaging your kids while you are in this chaos. So those three guides are available for free download. Also, there's information there on two courses that I have. Number one is the You're Not Alone course. It is a deep dive weekend course. That course is $47, but it will get you on the road to healing. It will really open your eyes. I promise you that. Plus, you get a coaching session with me. I have another mini course called Why You're Stuck. It's $25, and it will also be very beneficial to you. And you get a one-hour coaching session with me with that one too. So go check all that out. It has a bunch of information about the podcast and all about the walk right community. So please, again, partnersofaddicts.com. But let's go ahead and jump in to this week's episode, When the Strong One Finally Breaks

How Care Turns Into Codependency

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Down. You see, this didn't happen by accident. This isn't something that you just kind of stumbled into. And most people that I work with got married, had dreams, had this great plan, had a future, spouse was included in all these plans, and it was just going to be this fairy tale of a wedding. And at some point, your partner just broke down and became addicted to something. Some unhealthy habit, any unhealthy habit, depression, anxiety, overeating, pornography, drugs, alcohol, any unhealthy habit. But that kind of came in after you were married. So you didn't happen to start doing this stuff by accident. You didn't happen to be the strong one by accident. You didn't just wake up one day and said, you know what? I'm just gonna go ahead and carry all this chaos and I'm gonna control the whole thing, and it's gonna be fine. You didn't you didn't wake up to do that. This came to you slowly. This is something that was trained into you just over a period of time. What starts out as genuine care and love, and I really want to help this person because I love them, turns into an obsession, turns into an addiction yourself, turns into codependency, and it just slowly over time destroys you because you're just living in this chaos and you're trying to control this chaos. Codependency creates this pull, it's weird. Every time your spouse falls into chaos, something in you tightens up to where you have to be in control of this. It turns into, I'm going to fix this, I have to fix this, we're gonna get this on track. And every time there's a crisis, you move towards it, not away from it. Every time that they fell apart, you felt like you had to be there to pick it up. When did it become your job to manage what they couldn't? When did it become your job to pick up all the pieces that they couldn't pick up? It just slowly happened over time. The longer that you do this and the longer you've been doing this, the more that your needs become more invisible. You don't even know who you are anymore. You don't have any feelings anymore. You stopped noticing you're exhausted. You stopped noticing you aren't happy, you stopped noticing that you put on a mask every day and you're fake to everybody. Because all you do is think and are consumed about this addiction and why it's not getting better. You're afraid to feel your feelings because you think if you do, the whole thing's gonna fall apart. Because you can't go, wait a minute, I've got to take care of myself too. You'll feel like everything will fall further apart. So you don't feel at all. You don't. You just function. You just function because feeling is something you can't do anymore. My friend, that is not strength, it's survival. And I say that with the deepest respect. I really do, but I lived it, I walked it, I know it. And there's a huge difference, and let me try to explain this. Strength is what God puts in you and builds in you when you allow Him to. Survival is doing everything on your own because you don't allow anybody inside. Those are two big differences, and we want to kind of break those down a little bit today.

The Hidden Cost Of Holding It

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Look at me for a second, if you're watching on YouTube, or listen to me for a second, if you're on the podcast platforms. You've been surviving for so long. It's time to start talking about what it looks like to actually live. So this next part is gonna be really important for you to listen to. Because we have to be honest about the cost of this. We have to be honest about what this is truly costing you, and if you have kids, this just multiplies what the cost is. Because being the strong one is not free at all. There's a cost, it costs your body, it costs your soul, and it's costing you in all your relationships. The physical aspect of it, you're always stressed out, your body's tense, you don't get no sleep, you have anxiety, you worry all the time, it's just eating you up. Maybe you have heartburn, maybe you just can't eat. You're just you're just a complete mess physically. It's exhausting to be in survival mode. And spiritually, spiritually, you're bankrupt. You're wondering if you're a follower of Christ, you're wondering where God is. Why isn't he fixing this? Why isn't he doing anything? He's really sucking at this point because nothing is moving. It feels like it's getting worse. You're just deprived of God's spirit, and you're just really pissed off about it. And emotionally, you fly off the handle, you take all your anger out on your kids, you don't know how to handle the situation, so all that anger comes out on them, and then you have remorse for that, and you feel condemned and have shame. Emotionally, this is just killing you, too. You've shut down in so many ways. You laugh, it doesn't reach you. You love, you don't know how to feel it. You're just an emotional wreck.

What A Breaking Point Looks Like

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Everybody's gonna find a breaking point, and hopefully you step out of what you're in before you hit the breaking point. That's why I'm here. That's why this platform's here, that's why the community's here. Hopefully, this wakes something up inside you so you don't have to hit the breaking point. But at some point, if you've been in this for years, I mean years, at some point it's gonna break. And it's not gonna happen like you think. It's not gonna be some big dramatic moment. It's not gonna be this big fireworks show and uh da-da, and it's my breaking point. It doesn't happen that way. Sometimes it just happens like this. You're in your car and you're driving. You pull into the grocery store because you have to go get groceries, because you still gotta maintain a family. And that song comes on, just a certain song comes on, and you just start weeping, and you start bawling uncontrollably for no reason whatsoever, but you really know the reason. You really know the reason. It's just all piled on top of you, and you just can't hold it anymore. And you just let it go. And that's usually the way we break down and fall apart. However, it comes, I want you to know something. In that moment, it's not weakness, it's not a weakness that you have, you're not selling yourself that you're a failure. It's just the moment your soul is trying to tell you, the spirit is telling you, you just can't carry this anymore. There has to be a change. But listen to me. Because usually when that happens, it's almost gone too far. And it's gonna take a lot for your kids to recover, it's gonna take a lot for you to recover. It's gonna take a lot to put the pieces back together. But you can do it. I am proof you can do it. I was in it for 13 years. Have a wonderful wife now, have a wonderful life now, have a wonderful family now, even though some of my kids are stuck in the things that I helped cause. But there is victory on the other side. But I want to help you before you get to the breakdown.

Grief, Shame, And Lost Years

SPEAKER_00 12:54

We've talked in a couple episodes about grief, and when you hit that point, grief's gonna set in. You're gonna grieve the person that you lost, you're gonna grieve the person you dreamed of, and all those things that we talked about at the beginning. You had this dream of a fancy life, and everything that you were gonna do, and all these things and goals, and you were gonna do all this stuff together. You grieve because you lost that. You grieve because you lost the person who's still living, you lost that person. The person you fell in love with, you lost. And you're gonna grieve with that. You're gonna grieve with all the time you wasted. You're gonna grieve and feel bad because you wasted so much time and you went nowhere. And that's probably the biggest thing when I talk to people in counsel and coach. That is the biggest thing. People are like, oh, I'm so stupid. Oh, why did I waste so much time? And I could have been out of it. Yeah, you could have, but you didn't. And it's okay. Grieve it and move on. Grief is not the opposite of faith. A lot of people even feel even more condemned when they grieve. Because, oh, my faith isn't strong enough. No. We talked about in the other episode Jesus wept. Grieving is real. And God is waiting for you to cry. It says in the Bible that he's collecting up all your tears. God is waiting for you to get to the point to turn to him. He's been standing there the entire time from day one, wanting to fix you, wanting to help you. Your spouse and God have their own relationship. Your spouse and God have to work out their things. And of course, you can pray for your spouse, but when it becomes an addiction and you're like, God, you gotta fix this, God, you gotta fix this. Father, why don't you fix them? Please fix them. Jesus, please help them, fix them, fix them, them, them, them, them, them. It was never about you. It was never about you. You never opened up to let him come in and fix you. It was always about the addiction or the addict. Whether you come to a point where it just overloads and you break down. Or maybe you are listening to friends or maybe this podcast or something along the way, and you start to go, wow, duh, I need to get help.

Why God Meets You In Weakness

SPEAKER_00 15:42

However, that happens, hopefully it's not the breakdown, but however that happens, you have to know that God needs to break you. Because even though you don't come to a crashing point in the relationship, say you got out and you got some help and you went to a group where you, you know, you finally clicked a little bit and started to get some help, you're still going to crash in recovery. There's still going to be a point where you break down in recovery. And God needs you to break at that point. Here's a hard truth and a beautiful truth at the same time. As long as you're holding all this together, everything holding it all together, you're not letting God hold any of it. Codependency tells us that that's what we have to do. Codependency creates that illusion of control. Codependency creates that illusion of Savior, I'm going to fix it, I'm going to be the hero. How many lies have you believed? If I manage this long enough, it'll be better. If I love a little bit harder, it's going to be better. If I do a little more things, it's going to be fixed. Maybe this time it's going to be different. How many times have you said that? Only to be stabbed in the back by it. All those illusions keep you in the driver's seat, but it keeps God out of it. I want to go to the Bible for a moment. We're going to be in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 9. And it says this my grace is always more than enough for you, and my power finds its full expression through your weakness. So let me explain this a little bit and how this works in your life. Before chapter 9, Paul was talking about this vision he had on how heaven works, on how the kingdom works, the principles of the kingdom, not leaving here and going somewhere, but how heaven here on earth and how God works in his kingdom, he's the king, how it works here. He was shown that how heaven works is working through people's weakness. And Paul goes on to say, hey, you might know this. I've asked three times for you to remove this thorn. We don't know what the thorn is, we don't know what it was. We can only speculate. But he asked three times for it to be removed. And God said, No, I'm not going to remove it. I'm not going to remove it at all. Because my grace is always more than enough for you, and my power finds its full expression through that thorn, through that weakness. God wants to meet you through your weakness right now. God wants to meet you where you are right now. He wants you in this weakness because that's where grace comes full force into your life, and you have to start releasing stuff because that's what grace is for. You have to start releasing some of this stuff in your weakness for him to come in and work to start the process of healing. But when you act like you got it all together and you act like you are the one in control, you're just blocking him out and you're not allowing anything. And then you end up getting mad at him because you think he's not doing anything, but you're the one that's not allowing him in to your weakness to help you. And you've been asking God to remove the thorn. Maybe it's the addiction, maybe it's your exhaustion. Maybe I don't know what it is. Maybe it is just a way of fixing the addict, but you have a thorn, and you've probably been asking God to remove it. And if you haven't, maybe you should start because he's gonna say no, because I need to be in your weakness because my grace is sufficient to move there. I did not know this, and it's important. God might just be answering my prayer, but not the way that I think. And this happened to me, and maybe, just maybe, God did not want to fix or remove the thorn. He just wanted to meet me in it. You see, if he would have removed the addiction from my ex-wife, oh, things would have been great, right? I still would have had codependency. I still would have never healed from my trauma. I still wouldn't have never healed from being sexually molested. I wouldn't have healed from being abandoned from my mom. I wouldn't have healed from living with an alcoholic father. I wouldn't have healed from any of that. That wouldn't have fixed the marriage. She would have got fixed for her addiction, but I would have still been a wreck. Wearing the same mask, thinking everything's okay. It's just the addiction that's okay. I wasn't okay. God wanted to meet me in that chaos of hell, that addiction, trying to control the addict, in the midst of all that codependency. He wanted to meet me there in that weakness because that's where his grace started to work in me. And that's where I started to find the healing. That's where I started to find the transformation. That's where I started to find how worthy I was and how much I was loved.

Stop Praying To Control The Addict

SPEAKER_00 21:16

So you have to stop praying for the addiction to stop. You need to start praying for God to come inside you in that weakness and help you. And what Paul is saying in that verse basically is that God's power is in the weakness, not around it, not above it, not abelow it, not after it, in it. And that's what we have to take away today. You have to allow God into your weakness in order to get to a point of healing. Before you come crashing down, before all that falls apart. Try to do it before then. Let me finish with this breaking down is not the destination.

unknown 21:59

Breaking

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Breaking down is the door into the next chapter of healing. Breaking down allows you to start the healing process. If you allow God in and let Him work, that door will open up, and there's such a wonderful, wonderful victory on the other side. I say this all the time. I don't know how it looks for you and your spouse or your partner. I don't know if that means you're together and God works a miracle on all of you. I don't know if that means you're starting a new life like I did on your own. I don't know. That's between you and God. I don't push either way. I allow God to be the director of that. But all I can tell you is that for you personally, you, me and you, right now, looking at me, listening to me, there is victory on the other side for you. And how that looks beyond that, I don't know. But I'm telling you, you can be transformed, you can live life. There's a life worth living once you get beyond that door. Doesn't happen overnight. It could, God's that good. But it gets easier and easier. I describe it like this. You've got all these layers of clothes on. Hundreds of layers of clothes on, and you could barely move. And you're struggling walking, you're struggling moving forward. But as you slowly allow God into your weakness and allow Him to transform you, you slowly start taking off one layer at a time. And then another layer, and then another layer, and you keep walking and walking. And the next thing you know, it's getting easier to walk, it's getting easier to live, it's getting easier to get through each day, and you just keep taking off these layers. Until there's no more layers to take off. And you're completely naked, made whole in the original identity that Jesus Christ made you in. That is freeing. That is transformation. And that's what I can promise you right now. I can promise you that. If number one, you allow God in, but number two, if you do the work. Because it's not easy. You have to do the work. That's why the community's here. That's why the courses are designed. That's why the guides are there to help you start identifying with this.

One Small Step Toward Help

SPEAKER_00 24:44

There's victory on the other side, my friends. If you heard yourself in this episode, there's a whole community waiting for you. If you heard yourself in this episode, I want you to do one thing. Just one thing. Doesn't have to be big, doesn't have to be some glamorous thing. I want you to do one thing. I want you to reach out to somebody you trust. Could be me. Reach out to somebody and say, I'm not okay. I can't do this anymore. I'm not okay. Open that door. I promise you that right there will allow you to start breaking down. If you honestly go to somebody and say, I'm not okay, I want you to be okay. I want to help as many people as I can. So if I just help one person today, praise God. I want to thank you for hanging around with this episode. I know it was another tough one, but needed. And I invite you into this community, partnersofaddicts.com, check it out, pass it around. Let's stop the chaos of trying to control addicts. They've got plenty of places to go to heal for themselves. You can't surrender for them more than they want to surrender themselves. So stop doing it and just get healing for yourself. And I want you to come back for the next episode. Part five. We're going to be talking about something that nobody really likes to talk about. And that is you trying to do this alone. It's going to wrap up the whole series. It's going to end on a such a strong, powerful note that I hope you come back and listen to it. And if you haven't listened to the other ones, please go back and listen to them. And as always, know this. You're loved, you're holy. I'm excited to see you in the next episode. I'll see you soon. God bless. Bye-bye.