This is http://www.essayz.com/a8706021.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %CONTROLLER CO-DEPENDENT ADDICTION 870602 Jill has assumed responsibility for controlling Jack's unreasonable behavior. Jack does not have the sense and self control to do what he should do. Jill sincerely believes it is her duty to help Jack, even at great sacrifice to herself; she loves Jack and wants the best possible for him. Jill is subtle. She finds covert ways to manipulate Jack, without it being all that obvious what she is up to. She does not tell Jack outright what he should do. She does not nag him. She is gentle, indirect, and loving; at least that is how she sees her behavior. Jack resents being manipulated, even if it is subtle and loving manipulation. Jack is clever and counters Jill's maneuvers with even more subtle and clever maneuvers which are masked by overt behavior which is obviously unreasonable. Jack controls Jill's behavior by forcing her to take responsibility when she really wants to be free of her duty to take care of him. Jack traps Jill in the tension between her sense of duty and her desire to be free of duty. Jack by his unreasonable behavior encourages Jill to feel her sense of duty, and at the same time to resent what it costs her to fulfill her duty to take care of him. Jill does not realize that while she thinks she is controlling Jack, Jack knows that he holds the trump cards and is in fact controlling Jill. They are not in control of their lives, even though they believe that they should be, and deceive themselves about the level of control they have over the disintegration of their integrity as their addiction co-dependence progress to deeper and deeper levels of despair and depression. Jack and Jill need to admit that they are not in control, can not be in control, and should not be in control of each other. So long as they do not make that admission they will be engaged in a deadly competition to be in control of that which they can not control; doomed to cause each other to fail, and ultimately both failing because neither can win in such a competition. They need to detach from the effort to be in control and to seek honesty and serenity for their own and the other's sake. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================