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Why does love hurt? Many couples are struggling with codependency, and they will never know it.

In spite of myself and in spite of my endless preaching here, I gave this book its eclectic title, The Symbion Pandora: The Unorthodox Undeniable, Unofficial Truth About Codependency, to draw attention to two things. The first is the symbiotic nature of the relationship between the two persons in a codependency cycle, in that despite the unhealthy pattern that exists, each partner is still dependent on the other. Addicts tends to love someone who willingly goes out of their way to take care of them, and the caretaker, of course, needs someone in trouble to care for.

Further, the two parties in a codependent relationship do feed off of each other in their dysfunctional way, which led me to kick around "Symbiotic Dysfunction" as the erstwhile title to this book. But that was way too clumsy a title for me, at which point I stumbled across the Symbion pandora - and thank you, Internet, for distracting me from my work one more time. I don't accept or prescribe to the monster/victim scenarios, but I fell in love with the image of a huge, oily-green, hard-shelled lobster as the host to this micro-organism that can only survive attached to a lobster's lip. It was too good to pass up.