Emotional Incest

There are times when a connection between parents and children go beyond the healthy bounds of a healthy parental –child boundaries. Men grow up but they are unable to become true husbands and fathers because they have failed to clarify healthy bounds with their mother. Girls grow up but do not become stable wives because they do not learn to be independent of their enabling parents.

There is even more damage done with the over dependence of these unhealthy relationships when a mother endures decades of a physically abusive relationship and uses her son to supplement her broken marriage. When a mother chooses to use her son as her confidant and friend in the absence of that in her marriage there can be no positive effect. To show and discuss bruises and emotional abuse with a child. He is groomed to become her protector as only a husband should. He understands without saying a word that he is now responsible for her in a way that even his father was not.

When a young woman comes along she becomes the mother’s competition for “her man” and not the future daughter or daughter-in-law. This young woman has naively stepped into a fight with someone poised to destroy in order to sustain what she has created to make her life livable. This situation is not improved when the young woman has her own brokenness and an inability to set good boundaries.

This has been my story. I married into a glass house. Unknowingly, I fell in love with a beautiful man with more brokenness in his family than I could have imagined. Preacher’s son, a house filled with physical abuse and a mother-in-law who has chosen to complete her marriage with her son’s affection and protection. Add to that my being a daughter groomed by an enabler, I did not run when the veil was being lifted. I saw only who he could be not who he was choosing to be. Countless years (14 year to be exact) of fighting for his attention, competing with a mother-wife and never truly afforded the opportunity to be the number one woman in his life. I do not blame her or him. She coped and she is proud that in spite of more than two decades of physical abuse, she stayed married. She is still the preacher’s wife and she believes that her glass house is still intact. Her son believes he is a good man because he does not beat a woman as his father did, emotional abuse and neglect do not count. Oh, the instance of pushing his wife, he resolved that she misinterpreted being pushed pregnant and almost going down the stairs. What did his mother say, “Oh you don’t love him enough to get over him putting his hands on you.”

Fast forward, to a healthier space. The choice to leave a marriage that fidelity was never option, being the number one woman in his life could not be and being a primary provider for his wife and children was never truly considered. I take ownership for choosing this relationship. I forgive myself for fighting for what was rightfully mine and should have been given freely. I should have chosen me sooner and not settled for less. I choose to pursue something genuine. Not looking for greener grass just looking for real grass.

Below are resources that can be used to better understand this dilemma. Understanding and building yourself up is the opportunity of a lifetime and it begins with gaining new knowledge.

“Opportunities are missed by most people because that come dressed in overalls and look like work. “

– Thomas Edison

I personally recommend the first two books. These books helped me understand what I had been fighting and how to stop fighting a battle that I would never win.

http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Blackmail-People-Obligation-Manipulate/dp/0060928972/ref=pd_sim_b_4

http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Anger-Changing-Patterns-Relationships/dp/006074104X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308405463&sr=1-1

The resources I have briefly perused and find them to be informative.

http://www.donnawilliams.net/emotionalincest.0.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_incest

http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Incest-Syndrome-Parents-Rules/dp/055335275X