Building Healthy Relationships in Recovery

Chantal Jauvin is the Author of “Love Without Martinis: How Couples Build Healthy Relationships in Recovery, Based on Real Stories”

About the book: Weaving dialogue, emotions, and introspection, Love Without Martinis shares the fears, joys, setbacks, and triumphs of couples as they find their way back to each other. In the tradition of storytelling, the readers follow the couples in recovery from substance addiction as they rebuild healthy and loving relationships. The common thread that runs through their experiences shows that true recovery requires much more than sobriety; it demands personal development and growth. Love Without Martinis also offers practical tools to readers to help them on their own recovery journey.

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Chantal has an extensive background in the law business and has worked In big law firms and became general counsel at a fortune 500 global company, and then general counsel at western union, negotiating ventures and deals in big banks. Chantal is asked how she maintained humility and not haver been overtaken with greed or ego. Chantal says she just tries to love life and be grateful that there is so much adventure and so any experiences out there. Chantal says there are so many people to meet and she just loves life.

Chantal met her husband in a swimming pool in Ghana, Africa at a company event. After the day they met at the pool that began a long friendship because he’s also Canadian, they would meet at company events three or four times a year to eventually end up in Denver, Colorado, which is the corporate headquarters of Western Union. Chantal explains that eventually the friendship turned into romance, Chantal said that she did not really know much about substance use disorder and did not know that Bill had a dependence on alcohol. She explains that it look the better part of a year of them living together to realize that this dream life they were living together was going to go up in smoke as a result of his addiction.  Chantal says she could not understand the tension in the relationship until she discovered he was drinking very early in the morning and hiding it.

Chantal says she turned to books, as an attorney she felt like she could pick up some books and see if there was anything she could find out because she felt like her role was to help him stop drinking even if she hadn’t really had the conversation with him about it. But what Chantal found out was that this is much bigger than she ever could have handled by herself. Chantal said that she could close a multi million-dollar deal but this was bigger than she could ever handle. Chantal says not being able to fix her husband was a lot of absorb and she did not have a concept that it was a disease, she also did not have a concept that it was affecting her although it was affecting their relationship. So the next step she took was she looked to see if Bill would be willing to go to couples therapy. They did a few sessions, and the therapist referred him to go see an addictions expert, which was in October and it took until February for him to accept that he needed to go for treatment. Chantal says that was a long four months of her life.

Chantal says she started going to Al-Anon a week after she discovered that Bill had a drinking problem. From all the books Chantal read once she found out her husband had a drinking issue, she heard a lot of references to Al-Anon and support groups for families of people who use substances. Where Chantal lived in Philadelphia there were many support groups. Also when Bill went away to treatment, Chantal participated in their family education program which she says was amazing, it was a three day program, and that also helped a lot of her comprehension of what was happening to them as a family. In February Bill took 12 years in recovery.

About the Author

About Chantal: Chantal proudly supports her husband’s sobriety. She is an alumni of the Caron Treatment Center Family Education Program. Her pathway to recovery includes Al-Anon, individual and couples’ behavioral counseling as well as numerous personal growth workshops. Chantal and William celebrated his ten-year recovery in February 2019 with a cycling trip in Myanmar.

Chantal is an international corporate attorney. She launched her career with Gowlings, a leading Canadian law firm. Her expertise grew from trade law to corporate and financial services law eventually taking on the role of General Counsel at a Fortune 500 global company.

Chantal embraced early legal assignments in Mexico, Cambodia and Russia. Keen to be more actively involved in decision making, she completed her MBA in the UK and joined Conair Corporation in the United States where she handled matters ranging from free trade zone manufacturing in Costa Rica to the sale of fast-moving consumer goods in Europe. By the time she became General Counsel at Western Union, she had negotiated a joint venture with La Poste in France, a deal with Banco do Brazil and new regulations with the Central African Banking Commission while living in Austria. She won the Creating Shareholder Value business award at Western Union conferred for the first time in the company’s history to an individual in shared services. She has mentored attorneys from Dubai to Mumbai.

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