"When a Man Loves a Woman" is a movie about a pilot and his alcoholic wife and how they overcome the problems that they faced in their family, especially his wife's alcoholic problems get serious.
Alice, the alcoholic wife, was a serious alcoholism, she always drink alcohol no matter in day time or night time. She cannot control her desire to drink alcohol too. She also mentioned in the movie that if she do not drink, she cannot do anything. Here showed that she already depends on alcohol. In DSM IV-TR, one of the criteria for substance abuse is recurrent substance use resulting in a failure to fulfill major role obligation at work, school or home. In the movie, Alice showed this symptoms too. For example, at work, a girl came to find her because of a boy glance her breast and caused sexual harassment to the girl, Alice cannot really solved the problem for the girl. Plus, the position of her sitting in the office when talking to the girl was not appropriate too. The sitting position might gave a kind of rejection feeling for the girl who is talking to her. Moreover, because of drinking alcohol, she even left her daughter behind in some places, where she cannot even remember.
In this movie, one of the causes of Alice's alcoholism might be genetic, because her father was also an alcoholism. The other cause might be because of her husband, Michael, an pilot. He always fly off to work and do not stay in the house for a couple days. In the beginning of the movie, I thought that Alice drinks because she might feel lonely and helpless when her husband not around. She drinks to get her husband's attention and care more. But later in the movie, when Alice came back from treatment, I can get a fully understanding about the whole movie. The reason she drinks because she always felt weak and helplessness about herself, no matter at work or home. Drinking alcohol makes her feels better and confidence to do things. Fortunately, she able to recover from her alcoholism in the help of her daughters, friends and also the love of her husband.
As the spouse of an alcoholism, Michael, of course, also suffered from some kind of emotional abuse at home. However, he denies the fact. He always do his best to love his wife. Even though his wife is an alcoholism, he still loves her very much. However, maybe because Michael is a professional pilot, he cannot received the fact that he got emotional abuse. When he visits a treatment where alcoholism's family attend, he said that those people are sorry for themselves and rather be an victim than try to fix the problems. In Michael's point of view, any problems can be fix if you try and if anything is scheduled, just rescheduled it. Michael has his own ways of problem solution to his family. Michael's behavior makes Alice feels irritated, because she felt that she is useless beside him and belittled by him. When I saw this scene, I suddenly feel that an overwhelmed love can actually makes one suffer too, in a sense that they just love the other using their own ways, without asking or listening others' opinion.
In the scene where Michael and Alice had a big fight, Michael left home. During the days he left the home, he began to reflects on himself by attending the group therapy for alcoholism family. Alice also doing well too in her recovery treatment, and even give talks to other alcoholism patients. In the end of the movie, Alice said her side of story and also her reason to shut her husband out because she do not want to let Michael see her weakness side. On the other hand, when Alice finished her talk, Michael appeared and reflected himself to Alice, saying that although his wife going through hard times and he helped to solve it, but he lacks listening to her wife, really listening. That is the reason why he made his wife felt irritated and suffering. From here, I also realized one thing that, love requires listening too. In order to maintain relationship, one must love and care for each others, but that also requires listening and tolerant, because if only one-side always giving effort and one-side do not, they will get hurt and will not last long. Fortunately, the movie end in a happy ending, where Alice stops to drink alcohol for 184 days, and Michael realized what he had done and reflect on it. This also showed that one must not escape from reality, but to face it in order to solve any problems.
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