Healing Defective Relationships

Healing Defective Relationships

What can we learn from those who have battled addiction? Here, the RAW Recovery Podcast turns the spotlight on one of the toughest areas of sobriety: relationships that got damaged along the way.

Host Dion talks candidly about what the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions call “defective relationships” and how they can be “an immediate cause of our woes, including our alcoholism.” Instead of blaming everyone else, he walks through the uncomfortable work of asking, “What was my part?”—whether that showed up as jealousy, control, dishonesty, or emotional withdrawal. You’ll hear Dion share honestly about ex-partners, family, grandkids, and friends, including those connections that may never be fully repaired.

He points out that healing isn’t about taking all the blame, but about owning your side of the street and changing how you show up. As he puts it, “There’s only one true amend… it’s changed behaviour.” The episode also touches on emotional sobriety and dependence on others, especially partners. Dion talks about needing his wife’s calming presence while also learning not to lean on her for everything.

There’s humour too, like his riff about feeling like “some old wicked witch of the west” over a cancelled wart-removal appointment, showing how anxiety and self-criticism can still creep in even after years in recovery. Along the way, he unpacks how harm is often more emotional and mental than physical, how trauma still plays out in current relationships, and why some connections require permanent distance.

For anyone working on Step Eight, or just trying to stop repeating the same painful patterns, this conversation offers practical, lived experience and a reminder that “healing defective relations begins when we stop asking only who hurt us.” If you’re ready to look at how you show up in relationships, what might your own patterns be trying to tell you?