Codependencyis a condition whereby one person in a relationship takes up a lot of the responsibilities over the other person in a relationship. This makes the relationship one sided. A codependent person exhibits certain characteristics in a relationship. One characteristic of codependency in person is the tendency to do more than their shares. This characteristic is clearly bought out in the movie “When a Man Loves a Woman” (Mandoki, 1994). Michael, the husband in the movie, tries everything to help his wife overcome her drinking problem. He is faced with huge responsibility between his job as a pilot, taking care of the home and children and taking care of his alcoholic wife. Despite, this growing burden Michael still remain comfortable in attending to all these duties and still maintains the efforts of helping the relationship. This characteristic proved detrimental to the relationship because as Michael took on more responsibilities including those that did not belong to him, he made his wife more careless. Therefore making the condition of his wife’s drinking problem to move from bad to worse.
Another characteristic of a codependent person is a tendency to feel hurt when people don’t recognize their efforts. Michael feels aggravated when her wife does not respond to his assistance and instead opt to go to a rehabilitation center. Michael has good intentions to help his wife recover from her alcohol problem but in the process he becomes dependent on the being needed leading to him becoming angry when his wife moves into a rehabilitation center. Michael angers emanate from the feeling that his efforts are not being recognized and this nearly ruins the relationship as it leads to a separation. Because of codependency Michael’s good intentions to help his wife serves to wreck the family more.
Codependent person also have fear of being abandoned or being left alone. It is this fear that makes codependent persons to put up with difficult conditions and heavy responsibility brought about by the misdoings of the substance abuser. Michael for fear of being alone puts up with his wife drinking behaviors even though they seemed unacceptable. He was willing to go an extra mile to fill in the gap left by his wife’s irresponsible behavior and to cover up his wife’s mistakes. All this was because he did not want a situation were his wife would have to leave. When he heard that his wife was moving into a rehabilitation center he was devastated and felt a sense of loss. This characteristic had detrimental effect on the relationship because for fear of being left alone Michael decides to shoulder all the responsibilities and got to a situation where he forgot his own needs while caring for the needs of his wife. This made his wife to have little or no responsibility worsening her condition. It is only when Alice, the wife, began to work out her problem did the family begun to heal.
When a core dependence person is in a relationship with a person involved in substance abuse the codependent person will start taking up responsibilities neglected by the substance abuser. The codependent will also try to cover up for the substance abuser’s behaviors thinking that they are helping him/ her. As time moves on the codependent person will start trying to change the substance abuser’s behavior but this situation only get worse. This is because as the codependent takes up more responsibilities while the substance abuser is left with little or no responsibilities. The codependent person becomes more concerned with the substance abuser’s needs that he/ she forget his/ her own needs.
Reference
Mandoki L (Director) (1994), When a Man Loves a Woman (motion picture), U.S.A
