That's What You Get

Image credit: Photo by Rakka on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

I love House, not just because it's a clever, funny show, but because it does such a fabulous job of capturing some of the intimacy problems related to addiction. Regardless of the substance, addiction causes general problems in relationships, as active addicts shut the world out and give their hearts over to their first love: the high.

Like so many active addicts, House is depressed and can be mean, controlling and self-centered, but he can also be (like so many addicts) clever, strangely charming, reluctantly vulnerable and (at odd moments) even caring. He has walled himself off from true intimacy, but he tantalizes us with the possibility of what he could be if only... And that possibility — that glimpse of the sensitive person inside the addiction, inside the self-made shell built to protect them — is one of the aspects of addicts that has been so attractive to codependents like me. I'd tell myself that no one else has been able to break through and free the prince or princess trapped inside, but I'd be able to do it with the magic specialness of my love. Or they'd be able to do it for the love of me.

So, I seeing Cuddy play the role of the spellbound codependent in this week's episode really resonated with me. On the brink of an emotionally intimate moment, poised for a kiss, House crudely grabs Cuddy's breast instead, sending her storming off. Then Cuddy finds that someone (presumably House) has tracked down an object of great sentimental value to her and installed it in her office, but when she goes to his office to thank him, she finds him with another woman.

It's a pattern that has played out over and over again in my own relationships. He seems ready for intimacy but pushes it away. He show incredible sensitivity and thoughtfulness one moment only to demonstrate a selfish disregard for me the next. And I was always under the delusion that each sensitive, intimate moment signaled permanent change. "Now," I'd think, "that barrier is finally down and from now on he's going to be the real, loving man instead of the one that hurts me." It has taken me a lifetime to see that ebb and flow as part of a pattern and a whole: one that repeats without change until recovery breaks the cycle.

So, as my husband and I watched Cuddy walk off at the end without saying a word, we both laughed in recognition and said, "Yep, that's exactly what you can expect when you get involved with an addict."

---

This post was originally published at The Second Road.