Chantal Jauvin - Love Without Martinis: How Couples Build Healthy Relationships in Recovery, Based on Real Stories

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR

Regardless of where a couple is on their recovery journey, Love Without Martinis is essential reading. Couples impacted by one or both partners recovery often struggle to find a path forward. Love Without Martinis provides a clear and practical approach that couples can implement to work towards peace, trust, and happiness. This book doesnt just talk the talk. It also walks the walk in sharing moving, honest stories of real couples who have worked hard and found their way together. It is the rare book that both teaches and inspires.L ISA S MITH , author of Girl Walks Out of a Bar

The author brilliantly balances her personal experience and well-researched information on this topic to create a much needed handbook appropriate in clinical settings and for the general public. The ASCENT Model provides an organized and practical plan for goals and action towards healing. In the end, readers are left with hope and a sense of connection to stories of the couples who have supported each other in finding meaning along the often confounding road to recovery.S ARAH A LLEN B ENTON , author of Understanding the High-Functioning Alcoholic: Breaking the Cycle and Finding Hope

Love Without Martinis is brilliant! This is an important read for couples who are interested in rewriting the story of recovering love together. This work gives life to the idea that addiction is not just personal suffering, but a family issue that must be addressed by all parties involved. This work is a long overdue resource for couples who are valiantly braving the work of recovering love and healing. Too often recovery books are centered on the individual rather than the relational dynamicwhich for many is the most central part of their lives. The ASCENT approach offers a skillful map of healing practices to guide couples in a dynamic journey of recovery in a way that is easy to follow and immediately accessible.K ATHLEEN M URPHY , Executive Clinical Director, Breathe Life Healing Center

Love Without Martinis goes right to the soul of the haunting issues that couples in long-term recovery face and provides useful tools to overcome them. These strategies go above and beyond the actual substance abuse to tackle the underlying feelings of shame, fear, and guilt that so many of us grapple with. Forgiveness and love are always waiting on the other side, and Chantal shows us its all possible through these powerful stories of hard work and hope.D APHNE W ILLIS, singer/songwriter (Sony/ATV) of hit song Somebodys Someone

Sometimes we think that our relationships, if meant to be, shouldnt need as much attention as our recovery, or our physical health or our work. This book dispels that notion and provides a straight forward and joy-filled set of practices and principles to grow our relationships. Kind of like growing a garden, the tools in this book can function like sunshine, water, nourishment, weeding, and pruning to keep our relationships healthy and strong in recovery.D R . C ASSANDRA V IETEN , Executive Director, John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation

Love Without Martinis captivate readers with dynamic case studies in the form of stories that demonstrate a clear systems approach to engaging loved ones in the recovery process. This book is beneficial for all who face and treat substance use disorders!D R . G REGORY H OBELMANN , MD, Senior Vice President, Chief Medical and Clinical Officer, Ashley Treatment Center

Finally a book to recommend to couples facing the debilitating effects of alcohol on their personal lives and relationships. We dont always see the full picture ourselves, but we can often identify with stories. This book offers the unique opportunity to witness addiction and the journey of recovery through the lens of each partners experience in six very different couples.D R . M EGAN F LEMING , leading sex therapist and relationships counselor for national media including shows anchored by Anderson Cooper and Lawrence ODonnell

Unflinchingly honest and remarkably candid, Love Without Martinis invites us to grapple with the lessons of romantic relationships and recovery and to see that the point is not sobriety, since sobriety is never enough, but true recovery, which calls us to rebuild and re-ignite the passion and love in our relationships.A NNIE G RACE , author of This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life

Chantal Jauvin astutely explores addiction as a disease of emotional isolation. She captures the power of narrative to reveal the opportunity of committed relationship to deepen the recovery of the participants. The reader is offered a lucid lens into the essential building blocks of emotional intimacy. Couples can immediately apply the material to the construction of workable boundaries, the honoring of desire and to hold the tension of diverse needs and beliefs with compassion and generosity.D R . P AUL D UNION , author of Shadow Marriage: A Descent into Intimacy

Love Without Martinis is an important and very readable book. The authors introduce the ASCENT Approach to support couples, helping them navigate some pretty rough waters that occur in intimate relationships when addiction occurs. Their approach is specific, manageable, and written by two authors who have earned their expertise through personal and clinical experience. Knowing that being vulnerable is one of the essential ingredients necessary for successful treatment, both authors are terrific role models.D R . D AN G OTTLIEB , Host of Voices in the Family and author of Letters to Sam and The Wisdom Were Born With: Restoring Faith In Ourselves

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. So begins Tolstoys Anna Karenina. With a novelists skill and precision, Love Without Martinis details the unique ways that six unhappy couples struggle with addiction and how their struggles enrich them with humility, courage, caring, and a wisdom that make them all more whole human beings. These stories are inspiring because they are true. They show us that the work of recovery is soul work. This book will be a wonderful help to those in recovery, those who love them, and those who help them.D R . R ICH B OROFSKY and A NTRA B OROFSKY , Co-directors, Center for the Study of Relationships

I highly recommend this book to all therapists with clients in early recovery! The power of stories and the healing insights of these stories will help couples and individuals relationally repair core family systems. Love Without Martinis transcends not just substance abuse, but mental health as well.M ICHAEL B LANCHE , Co-Founder, Ethos Treatment

Love Without Martinis contributes much to the field of addiction treatment, and particularly to the sensitive dynamics that arises in both the addict and their partner in early recovery. Each couples narrative highlights an important aspect of the need for transformation, change and a healthy social connection in the recovery process for couples. This book should be required reading in every treatment center!D R . W ILLIAM H ERAN , CEO and Co-Founder, Providence Treatment Center

Love Without Martinis is vivid, detailed, nuanced, and evocative. Jauvin has a novelists eye and heart, and the language to express them. The stories would be meaningful for anyone in a long-term partnership, even one without addictive problems. For Jauvin to recruit these couples was a small miracle in itself (and their gift to us needs to be acknowledged). Then each account was structured for maximum benefit by Jauvins story-telling artistry. The ASCENT model, for organizing the change process, also makes a meaningful contribution. For a couple grappling with addictive problems, whether they embrace 12-step fellowships, methods such as SMART Recovery, or any other pathway, there is much to learn here.