‘90s FAMILY : A Sobering Look at Marriage

What’s Playing: “When a Man Loves a Woman,” an intense R-rated drama, in selected theaters.

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Family Portrait: Alice Green is a school psychologist who has a daughter, Jess, from a prior relationship. Alice’s husband, Michael, is an airline pilot. Together, Michael and Alice have a 4-year-old daughter, Casey. (See Calendar story, F1.)

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Back Story: Michael, Alice and the girls seem rapturously happy in their San Francisco Victorian house. But Michael’s job keeps him away from home, so he is slow to realize how much Alice drinks. Her drinking precipitates a family crisis.

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Fuse Time: As bad as the drinking was, the trouble between Alice and Michael really begins when Alice faces up to her addiction and gets treatment. Instead of solving their problems, Alice’s sobriety seems to compound them.

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Telling Quote: “It was so much more fun in the old days,” Alice sarcastically tells Michael in the midst of a screaming argument. “I’d get drunk, I’d fall apart, and you’d put me back together.”

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Prescription Pad: Sobriety doesn’t guarantee a happily-ever-after marriage, said Martha Rogers, a clinical forensic psychologist whose practice in Tustin frequently involves problems that arise from drug and alcohol addiction.

“Alcohol serves as a way of avoiding dealing with certain problems,” Rogers said. “And when you come out with sobriety, there is often going to be enormous pain and difficulty from those things that have been avoided for so long. That’s why many people fall off the wagon.”

Alcoholism can also define how a two people deal with each other in a relationship, she said. As in the movie, spouses of alcoholics are often not aware of how they’ve accommodated the addiction.

“There may be problems in shifting the balance after the need for accommodation is gone,” Rogers said. “If people can’t negotiate a change in the power and dynamics, they can go down in flames, even after they’re sober.”

* Media Monitor examines the family issues raised in current films, books and television shows. It appears regularly on the ‘90s Family page.