When Your Partner Still Uses
When Your Partner Still Uses

Recovery Recharged with Ellen Stewart Pushy Broad from the Bronx

What do you do when you're getting healthy, but your partner isn't? This episode dives into living sober in a chaotic environment while untangling codependent patterns that keep you stuck. We explore real tools, real boundaries, and real decisions you...

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28:59•13 May 2026

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When Your Partner Still Uses: Keeping Your Sobriety in a Wet House

Episode Overview

Your primary role in any relationship is to protect your own recovery and health before trying to care for someone else.
Support means healthy encouragement, while enabling removes consequences and keeps harmful behaviour going.
Codependence shows up when your mood, decisions and self-worth depend on someone else’s behaviour, or you constantly rescue them.
Tools like “what’s mine is mine, what’s theirs is theirs, and what’s God’s is God’s” help you stay in your lane and stop trying to control others.
Avoid making big relationship decisions during crisis; pause, seek outside support and give yourself time for clarity instead of reacting from fear or anger.

“"We put someone else's needs before our own and interpret that as love, which it certainly is not."”

Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This straight-talking episode of Recovery Recharged centres on one brutally honest question: what happens when you're getting healthy, but your partner keeps drinking or using? Ellen Stewart, the Pushy Broad from the Bronx, brings her trademark mix of humour, warmth and no-nonsense coaching to a rapid-fire Q&A format, with producer Emily feeding her the questions many people in recovery are too scared to ask out loud.

The focus stays firmly on people trying to stay clean and sober while living in what Ellen calls a "wet house"—a home where substances are everywhere and chaos is the norm.

You’ll hear Ellen tackle the biggest mistake people make in these situations: "We put someone else's needs before our own and interpret that as love, which it certainly is not." She clearly breaks down the thin lines between support, enabling, control and codependence, calling codependence a "relationship addiction" where your mood and self-worth rise and fall with your partner’s behaviour.

Using memorable tools like "What's mine is mine, what's theirs is theirs, and what's God's is God's," she shows how to "stay in your lane" and stop trying to be someone’s probation officer, therapist or mother. Practical ideas include creating a safe space in a chaotic home, limiting exposure to triggers, and setting one clear boundary—then noticing how often you want to break it.

Ellen also stresses why big relationship decisions shouldn’t be made in crisis, urging people to pause, seek professional support, and explore more than one option before acting. If you’re trying to protect your sobriety while your partner still uses, this episode offers straight talk, real tools and a reminder that recovery is about not losing yourself. What boundary might you be ready to set for your own peace of mind today?

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