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Men's treatment must focus on developing relational skills
Over the past two years we have been training and speaking with addiction professionals around the country in an effort to rethink how the addiction field can provide effective treatment services for men. Our work, with a strong emphasis on how men navigate relationships, already had us thinking about the idea of male codependency. When we were invited to speak last April at a conference sponsored by the Indiana Association of Addiction Professionals on the issue of male codependency, it required us to flesh out a framework for our emergent ideas.
In this article we offer a brief description of this concept, with the primary interest of generating dialogue and inquiry into how addiction professionals might think differendy about men and codependency. We propose the following for consideration:
* The traditional notion of codependency pathologizes behavior that is intrinsically human and even healthy at times.
* Codependency can be viewed as existing on a continuum of relational behavior.
* Men engage in codependent behavior as frequently as women do.
* Codependency manifests differently according to gender and is a product of gender-based socialization.
* The masculine expression of codependency may include dominating and violent behavior, which is a compensation for shame and lack of relational skills.
Men and relationships
Core to our message is the notion that supportive and healthy relationships are critical to long-term recovery. Further, we believe that while most men have little difficulty getting into relationships, they often are not equipped with the requisite skills for maintaining relationships.
These skills are rarely taught and modeled by fathers, brothers, coaches, teachers, or other adult males. In fact, boys are generally encouraged to devalue and scorn many of the skills that we identify as central to the process of developing intimate relationships. This results in many boys and men acting as though connection and intimacy are not important to them.
Some might, therefore, conclude that relationships are not important to men, or that men are somehow inherently incapable of engaging in relationships to the same degree as women. We could not disagree more. While the manner in which men engage in and talk about their relationships is often different from the way women manage...