Why Children of Alcoholics end up Marrying Alcoholics.

I’m not a psychologist.

I’m not a certified addiction therapist nor a licensed relationship counselor. If you want psychobabble, this is not the article for you.

But I live my alcoholic marriage every day. And I study what alcohol has done to the relationships of hundreds of people. And ever since alcohol destroyed my confidence and proved most of my projections about my life false, I have been a better than average listener.

I have often asked why the children of alcoholics so often marry alcoholics themselves. It is one of the many counterintuitive aspects of this wretched disease.

Children of alcoholics should know better than the rest of us. Logic would dictate that they would never form serious, dependent relationships with people locked in battle with the toxin that rained chaos and isolation on their childhoods. But that’s not what happens.

Children of alcoholics seem to run back into the fire, and I wanted to know why. So I asked, and I listened intently. And I have consistently received the same two answers.

Many behavioral sciences professionals and adult children of alcoholics report that the kids of alcoholics marry alcoholics themselves because they have unfinished business. They were unable to…