"The disease he has is addiction," Nina Renata Aron writes of her boyfriend, K. The disease I have is loving him." Their love affair is dramatic, urgent, overwhelming-an intoxicating antidote to the long, lonely days of early motherhood. Soon after they get together, K starts using again, and years filled with relapses and broken promises follow. Even as his addiction deepens, Nina stays, convinced she is the one who can get him sober. After an adolescence marred by family trauma and addic-tion, Nina can't help but feel responsible for those suffering around her. How can she break this pattern? If she leaves K, has she failed him? Writing in prose at once unflinching and acrobatic, Aron delivers a piercing memoir of romance and ad-diction, drawing on intimate anecdotes as well as academic research to crack open the long-feminized and overlooked phenomenon of codependency. She shifts between visceral, ferocious accounts of her relationship with K and introspective analyses of the part she plays in his destruction, as well as defining moments in the history of codependency, from the temperance movement to the formation of Al-Anon, along with more recent research in the psychology of addiction. Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls is a blazing, bighearted book that illuminates and adds nuance to the messy tethers between femininity, enabling, and love.

ISBN: 9780525576679