But illusions are stronger than we might want them to be.
—Henri J. M. Nouwen, Reaching Out
A CHILD WHO HAS BEEN A PARENT’S surrogate partner suffers a deep emotional wound. The intuitive sense of self that permits the freedom and trust necessary to make constructive choices in relationships is damaged. In its place, an idealistic illusion develops as to what relationships are and what they can provide. Hoping for a perfect partner or relationship often becomes the criteria by which the covert incest victim makes decisions. Covert incest victims long to fill their illusions and have their intimacy needs met. Since perfection is not possible, never feeling satisfied becomes a chronic emotional response in relationships. Consequently, the ability to make a full emotional commitment to a relationship is greatly restricted.
Typically, the intimacy position that the covert incest victim maintains in relationships is one of ambivalence. “Sitting on the fence” or “having one foot in and one foot out of the door, just in case” are common descriptions of this ambivalence. At the core of the ambivalence is wanting desperately to be loved and fearing it at the same time. The mask or outward manifestation of this fear is the search for the perfect partner. Until the core fear is resolved, the attachment to fantasy remains the only means to attempt intimacy. Tasting the sweetness as well as the bitterness of reality is never realized. Relationships become a string of disappointments that never live up to the expectations.
Ambivalence serves as a way to protect. By holding it as a defense, the covert incest victim stays guarded from the threat of being used and trapped again. Fear of being smothered and engulfed is a core part of the ambivalent commitment experienced. The original pain of being exploited by the parent surfaces in relationships with spouses. These feelings are projected onto the partner, and the covert incest survivor pulls back from the commitment. So, as the initial need for further commitment in a relationship grows, the fear of being used again grows as well. Since the boundaries are often blurred between adulthood and the incestuous wounds of childhood, being able to differentiate between one’s spouse and the incestuous parent is difficult. Consequently, the feelings of being violated become active. Ambivalence shields the covert incest victim from the threat of further entrapment.
It bears mentioning that the ambivalence serves another purpose. Since the parent demanded devotion and loyalty in the surrogate companionship, the covert incest survivor’s primary emotional commitment remains to the parent. Her partner or spouse gets only a part of her as she struggles to juggle the devotion to the parent with the demands of intimacy from a partner. Remaining ambivalent in the commitment allows the covert incest survivor safety from having to break away completely from her parent.
Although the covert incest victim experiences chronic ambivalence in relationships, the beginning of a relationship is often quick and intense. Immediate and total commitment occurs, followed by uncertainty and ambivalence. The tremendous guilt the covert incest victim carries prohibits leaving if the relationship is not working. Instead, she tries to make it right, only to be disillusioned after each attempt. Or if the relationship has potential, the guilt interferes with clearly identifying personal needs and making a legitimate attempt to make the relationship work. Commitment becomes an arena desperately longed for. However, it is an experience that generates fear and confusion.
These hasty and intense commitments are born out of the attachment to fantasy as well as the tremendous neediness experienced by the covert incest victim. Rather than bonding with the person, the bond is to the fantasy that the person represents. Since the fantasy represents the ideal or perfect person, the commitment is immediate. The person may have some of the qualities of a fantasy spouse, but in reality is never seen for who he really is. When the illusions die—as they all do—the commitment struggle surfaces. Now, faced with who the person really is and realizing
the vulnerability of committing so quickly, ambivalence sets in.
The other factor that contributes to hasty commitment is the desperate hunger for attachment felt by the covert incest victim. Having been emotionally abandoned in the incestuous relationship, she has a tremendous neediness for love, which consumes her in her search for a spouse. When this neediness is combined with the ongoing illusion or fantasy, the chances of making a relationship choice rooted in reality are minimal. When it becomes clear the relationship will not fill the longed-for intimacy needs, the feeling of abandonment resurfaces. Additionally, the covert incest victim blames herself for the sense of failure and relentlessly searches herself for fault. She hopes if she is scrupulous enough, she will find out what is wrong with her. Then she can change and make the relationship work. Guilt and confusion over her personal needs become pervasive. The pattern experienced with the covertly incestuous parent is repeated.
The guilt and confusion over personal needs leads the covert incest victim to take cues from her spouse to determine the needs in the relationship. Attempting to fill the spouse’s needs in hopes of getting one’s own needs met becomes a desperate pattern. Resentment, anger, and hopelessness pervade. This pattern has its roots in the covertly incestuous relationship where the sacrifice of personal needs became the means of survival and the hope for love. The identity development of the child—so crucial in developing clear commitments regarding sexuality, needs, values, wants, choices, and feelings—is blocked. The adult capacity for healthy intimacy is lost.
Jim’s Struggle with Commitment
Jim’s story reflects the ambivalent and painful struggle that covert incest victims have regarding commitment.
I was the oldest of five children in my family. My father was an alcoholic and a womanizer. He was seldom at home. When he was, he and my mother fought or were distant with each other. My mother was often depressed and demanding of me. I remember her trying to keep me close whenever she could. I felt guilty and responsible for her. I sort of took over the role of my dad in the house. When I did try to go out with my friends, my mother would often scream at me and hit me. I felt like I always had to take care of her needs.
When I became an adolescent, she would comment on my looks or my body. It always felt seductive and icky. Even though I hated it, it also felt good to be so special in my mom’s eyes. As I began to date, I found that I was desperate to find a girlfriend so I could get away from my mother, although I felt terrified at the same time.
Jim felt hurt and abandoned. He was terrified of his mother’s rage. Consequently, Jim was set up to be unsuccessful in his relationships with women. A successful relationship would mean leaving his mother behind and potentially igniting her fury.
Despite his fears of his mother’s anger, Jim felt desperate for love. He impulsively married Cindy in an attempt to fill the emptiness and to correct and heal this early damage.
I knew after our first date Cindy was the woman I wanted to marry. She seemed stable, clear, loving, and trustworthy. She also had a strong commitment to family life. Cindy was perfect, and I was going to make her my wife, no matter what it took. My life had been a series of disappointing relationships and meaningless sexual encounters. When I met Cindy, I felt ashamed and unlovable. The knowledge that someone like her loved me took away my pain. After all the ups and downs I had in relationships, meeting someone like Cindy was the answer to my prayers.
Cindy’s stability was important. I knew she would be consistent with her love no matter what I did. I had never felt loved as a little boy. My mother’s love always seemed conditional on what I could provide her. At best, her care of and for me was inconsistent. Cindy was the opposite of my mother. I knew she placed a high premium on love. If I married Cindy, my fear of being abandoned would be over. My dream of a perfect marriage and a woman who would never hurt me would finally be realized.
Though I knew we had some important differences, I fantasized that they wouldn’t matter. Loving each other was what was important. In the beginning, I worked hard at pleasing Cindy. I altered my thinking and feeling to some extent so we would have fewer disparities. I was willing to do anything not to lose her love. But soon reality set in. I began to feel resentful. I blamed Cindy, and spewed anger and hate. The very person who was the object of my love became the object of my rage. Our differences became more important and began to matter. Love was not winning out. I felt confused and trapped.
I began to think about finding another woman. But I was married now, and I vowed I would never be unfaithful. I wasn’t going to be like my father. But the pull became too strong.
I began a series of emotional affairs that I would take to the edge by almost being sexual. When I realized what I was doing, I would stop, only to start a new emotional affair. Though I resisted actual sexual contact with these women, the energy I spent controlling the urges left me unavailable to my marriage. I became lost in the fantasies about these women and what they could provide that my wife couldn’t. Masturbation became my primary sexual expression. Masturbation was the way I made my emotional affairs sexual. My anger toward my wife and the ambivalence about my marriage grew stronger.
Finally, the pain became too great. I wanted to save my marriage and try again to live out my dream with Cindy. I entered therapy. I hoped if I could straighten myself out, I could love and feel loved as I had always wanted. In that period, I got my compulsive sexual behavior and fantasizing under control and started feeling good about myself. But my uncertainty about the marriage grew stronger. Did I want my commitment? Or didn’t I? I wasn’t sure I wanted to live with her or be without her. I was angry and confused.
Although I had thought Cindy was perfect for me, I struggled to connect emotionally with her. I began to feel the loneliness I had felt as a child. Our differences, which originally didn’t seem to matter, were clearly more important than I wanted to admit. My confusion and uncertainty increased.
Jim’s anger toward Cindy was about his mother, not Cindy. When the fantasy bond with Cindy collapsed, his anger surfaced. Though he felt Cindy had let him down, it was his mother who had really done the damage. Being with other women was another way he expressed his anger and tried to stay safe. When the boundary between Jim’s mother and Cindy became blurred, being with other women provided sanctuary from the potential of feeling abandoned and engulfed again.
Jim’s terror had also surfaced. The fact that his sexual expression was primarily through fantasy and masturbation indicated his need to stay in control and remain protected. Though Jim felt he needed to escape, he was careful not to give too much of himself away to these women. Jim’s ambivalence reflected the need to not only protect himself from the feelings of the covert incest wound, but also from the reality of the marriage. Jim and Cindy seemed to have important differences that made an emotional connection difficult. Even though he made efforts to love his wife, in choosing someone he was significantly different from, he could remain loyal to his mother by not having a successful marriage. This is an important and frequent dynamic that helps to explain the chronic dissatisfaction that covert incest victims experience in their relationships.
The tremendous guilt and confusion over personal needs that covert incest victims experience prohibited Jim from making a clear choice to stay or to leave the relationship. On one hand, Jim felt guilty when he considered leaving. On the other, he had too much confusion over his intimacy needs to make a legitimate attempt at closeness with Cindy. Jim needed to work at identifying his intimacy needs before he could be clear.
Also, the tremendous emotional dependency on Cindy, left over from Jim’s abandonment in childhood, made it difficult for him to make a decision about the relationship. His story reflects the struggle between the needs of the inner child and those of the adult man. Ambivalence escalates when the needs of the inner child become the priority in an adult relationship. Covert incest victims often transfer the leftover needs and issues with their opposite-sex parent to their spouses or significant others. The next section looks more closely at how this phenomenon gives some validity to the notion that we marry our mothers or our fathers.
Who Do We Really Marry?
As we’ve examined, a covertly incestuous relationship results in many unmet emotional needs for the child. Additionally, unresolved issues regarding guilt, autonomy, and attachment are carried into adulthood. These wounds contribute directly to one’s choice in a marriage partner. The notion that we marry our mothers or our fathers is true when you look at marriages of covert incest victims who have not yet healed from their emotional wounds. In an attempt to work out these issues and heal the wounds, they marry people who are emotionally like their opposite-sex parents. The hopes and illusions are so strong that they prohibit the covert incest victim from recognizing that their needs will again go unmet.
Invariably, when covert incest victims are asked if their spouses are anything like their opposite-sex parents, the response is yes. They list similar qualities that tend to be the very ones these covert incest victims felt injured by with their parents. It is common for them to make comments such as:
“My husband is emotionally absent just like my father was. I can’t believe it; I thought I married someone different.”
“She’s always making me feel guilty like my mother did. If I want to do something with my friends, I get the third degree. She hates me to have any separate needs from hers.”
“I feel like I have to take care of him like I did my dad. My husband’s just like a little boy, and I’m his mommy. I hate it. I was my dad’s parent.”
“She is always criticizing me like my mother did. I never feel like I’m good enough. I’m always trying to please my wife. It seemed I went right from trying to please my mother to trying to please my wife, who is never satisfied no matter what I do. I can’t win!”
When this transfer of needs and issues from the parent-child relationship to the marriage relationship occurs, the capacity for healthy adult intimacy is limited. Sexually and emotionally, these relationships end up feeling like parent-child or brother-sister connections rather than like marriages. These relationships may be passionless or sexually and emotionally volatile. The incestuous bond is created all over again. The separation from the opposite-sex parent never really occurs; instead, the same or similar attachment is transferred to the spouse. Covert incest victims remain little boys or girls in their marriages unless recovery occurs.
Rather than making an adult choice in a marriage, the inner, emotionally wounded child of the covert incest victim does the choosing. It is easy to see how so many unrealistic expectations and illusions are carried into the marriage. The wounded child expects the spouse to be all the parent wasn’t, often expecting perfection and unconditional love. However, the spouse is generally more like the parent than not.
Rather than choosing an emotionally mature adult, covert incest victims choose spouses who have been emotionally wounded in childhood. The result is two adults with childlike emotions struggling to be close, instead of two emotionally mature adults striving to be intimate. The quarreling and bickering in these relationships are sometimes like two children; other times, the partners are like parent-child in their interactions. The relationship rarely resembles two adults interacting. Satisfaction is seldom realized. After all, adults create intimacy, children don’t.
STILL TRYING TO PLEASE MOM
Dave and Marsha’s story highlights the transference of childhood needs and wounds to adult relationships. Initially, Marsha came into therapy to complain about Dave’s inability to fill her needs.
He always has his nose in the newspaper or is watching TV. He’s so uptight I can’t talk to him. I want him to take care of me and love me. But either he can’t or won’t. He is so insensitive to my needs. He’s almost like one of the kids. I feel like his parent more than his wife. Our sex life isn’t that great, either. I feel like I’m having sex with my brother. That’s weird; I don’t understand it. Sometimes I can’t believe I married him. I wish he were different. I want to feel special and important to him. But I don’t.
Marsha’s complaints were endless. Her extreme focus on Dave left her little room to look at herself in the relationship. She was convinced Dave needed to do the changing and growing up. When I saw them together, their interaction was clearly that of a parent and a child. Marsha scolded and Dave got defensive or tried to placate. At those times, Dave was a boy wanting to please his mommy. When he was able to muster any show of power as a man, it was done with rage. Then Marsha withdrew and became silent. In those moments she was a little girl pouting because she wasn’t getting her way. Though Marsha complained of wanting Dave to be more of a man, she clearly was threatened by it at the same time.
Dave, on the other hand, seemed stuck in being a little boy. He described his oldest son as having more power than he did. In fact, the fighting between Marsha and her oldest son was more like two spouses than parent and child. Dave and Marsha also had a daughter who was three years younger than their son. As they described their relationship with their children, it was clear that more of the passionate and emotional energy was directed toward the children rather than toward each other.
For example, it was common for the children to sleep with their parents, or for Marsha to fall asleep at night in her son’s bed with him, and for Dave to do the same with his daughter. They felt they could receive the comfort and closeness from their children that they struggled to get from each other. Even though some young children may occasionally fall asleep with their parents, it is important that parents consider the age-appropriateness of the child and their own motivations. For example, what is cute and secure at two might be too much at eight. In Dave and Marsha’s case, their motivations were self-serving and not necessarily in the best interests of the children. As a result, there were more likely to be problems in the emotional and sexual boundaries with the children, though overt incest was not present. Children are not supposed to be their parents’ companions in bed. Sometimes, when boundaries with sleeping arrangements are not appropriate, the overaroused feelings from the covert incest can be acted out as overt incest between siblings.
When Marsha was not in the session, Dave was more open and shared his feelings about the marriage. Even then he was guarded, as if he wanted to protect Marsha and not complain too much.
Marsha’s got a point. I’m certainly not very open with my feelings. I try to accommodate her and meet her needs. I tell you, if it wasn’t for her telling me that I wasn’t intimate, I probably would never be able to be close. I really depend on her to guide me in the relationship. But there are times when I get mad at her. Although she may be right, she never lets up. She even criticizes me in front of my friends. And I just sit there and take it. I’m afraid if I get angry, she’ll shut down and won’t talk to me for days. She is so damn controlling. It’s like she wants me to be open with my feelings, but on her terms—and that doesn’t include being angry with her. I don’t think I’ll ever please her. Frankly, I’m getting fed up with her complaining.
I have to admit, I feel like a little boy around Marsha. I hate it, but I don’t know how else to be. It’s almost like being around my mother, always trying to please her and be her helpful little boy. I’m afraid if I start being more of a man around Marsha, we won’t have much of a relationship. Sometimes, I just want to put her in her place and tell her to knock off the criticizing and complaining. But I’m afraid I’ll lose her love. She’s so much like my mother! Whenever I was even a little disobedient, my mother took away her love and approval.
As time went on, Dave talked more about his family. Clearly, he was trapped in a covertly incestuous relationship with his mother. He was the youngest of three boys, and his mother kept Dave at her side all his growing-up years. He was mother’s good little boy and helper. As he described his incidents of disobedience as a child, it was apparent they were attempts at autonomy and not behavior reflective of a bad kid. However, his mother opposed any separate behavior and was critical of him as a way to control his separateness. This left Dave feeling guilty about his desire for independence. Dave had been abandoned by an alcoholic father, and he relinquished his attempts at separateness to avoid being abandoned by his mother, too.
Dave was a good kid growing up, never causing any trouble. He did whatever he had to do to please his mother. Instead of going out with his friends after school, he went home and helped clean the house. He hated that, but thought he should do it. Clearly, Dave was controlled by tremendous guilt and a deep sense of shame that left him feeling unworthy of his desire for separateness.
Then Dave met Marsha. Marsha was such a nice girl that his mother approved. Privately, Dave knew marrying Marsha was his only way to get away from his mother, so they married early in the relationship. But Dave never left his mother emotionally. Instead, he essentially married his mother by re-creating the same emotional relationship system with Marsha. There are many parallels between Dave’s mother and Marsha, particularly the women’s critical attitudes and the way they used Dave to fill their own needs without considering his.
Dave’s mother used Dave to fill her need for a husband. Marsha not only wanted Dave for a husband but wanted him to fill the needs not met by her father. Marsha’s father was distant, cold, and preoccupied—much as she described Dave. There actually were intimacy problems between Dave and Marsha, but her chronic complaining and never feeling satisfied were more likely about her father.
Dave and Marsha married their parents in each other. They also passed on to their children inappropriate sexual and emotionally passionate energy—energy meant for each other. Since Marsha and Dave were both children emotionally, an intimate adult connection was a struggle. Connecting with their children became a primary means of experiencing intimacy. The children, in turn, learned that boundaries regarding privacy and safety could be crossed. This is an example of how incestuous relationship dynamics are passed on from one generation to the next. Dave and Marsha both needed to separate emotionally from their parents to correct the boundary problem with their children and have a chance at intimacy with each other. The process of separating from parents and getting needs met are discussed in Chapter 7, “Moving Forward.”
Does this mean that just because you married someone like one of your parents, you should get divorced? No. But it does mean you have to grow up emotionally to resolve the struggle with commitment and to feel satisfaction in your marriage or relationship. It means both people have to be emotionally mature for intimacy to occur. If only one is, the relationship deepens in its parent-child feeling and becomes further removed from the chance of a gratifying partnership.
Marriage should be a celebration of intimacy, rather than an attempt to fill the illusions of the abandoned inner child. It is important for covert incest victims to stick it out in relationships long enough to make sure they are divorcing the right person. Too often, the covert incest victim jumps from one marriage or relationship to another. This is an effort to separate from the leftover emotional bind with the parent, rather than to clearly decide whether the current relationship is not working.
Who Do We Really Divorce?
Another common relationship pattern for covert incest victims is to leave relationships too early. When things don’t work out as expected, or when covert incest victims begin to feel too close, they leave the relationship. They quickly begin to feel dissatisfied due to their illusions about love and romance. They also fear engulfment, and they struggle to sort out how to hold onto their self while in a committed relationship. They don’t stick around long enough to work things out and establish a mature relationship. Instead, they divorce one partner and marry the next, expecting things to be different each time. However, changing partners does not change the inner reality of the covert incest victim.
This pattern is the struggle to remain committed. Covert incest victims never stay long enough to move from the attachment to the fantasy (or perfect) person to the reality of the individual. Instead of trying to bridge genuine intimacy, they bolt from the relationship, looking to bond with a new person but the same old illusion. They successfully avoid the feelings of engulfment and smothering they carry from their childhoods, but fail to stay long enough to work through them so they can finally separate emotionally and sexually from the memory of the intrusive parent.
Covert incest victims need to stay long enough in relationships to allow the illusion to die and to permit legitimate intimacy to develop. Until this occurs, chronic unhappiness and discontent remain. Covert incest victims often find themselves wondering if the relationships they abandoned would have worked if they had just “stuck it out.” This adds to the ambivalence and makes it more difficult to commit to a new relationship.
The underlying issues of separation and attachment are never worked out when a covert incest victim gets divorced and jumps from relationship to relationship. Though poor choice in partners can be the underlying reason for multiple relationships, it can be equally true that the person who leaves is running from an inner struggle, based on the fact that separation from the opposite-sex parent has never occurred. Thus, when she becomes involved with someone, all the pain, fear, and rage meant for her parent resurfaces. Rather than dealing with the feelings, she projects them onto her spouse. Her spouse then becomes the object from which separation must occur. In reality, it is the parent who the covert incest victim is attempting to divorce over and over again, not the spouse.
IS DIVORCE INEVITABLE?
Rachel was in the process of her third divorce. She came into therapy because she was having second thoughts about going through with it.
I don’t know if I really should do this or not. After all, this is my third marriage in less than ten years. I feel like I’ll divorce Alan and find someone else and divorce him. I’m beginning to think something is wrong with me. I sometimes think if I hadn’t had so many unrealistic expectations, my first marriage could have worked. I don’t think I really ever got over my relationship with George. In fact, I was still involved with him when I started with my second husband. But I did have some space between my second husband and Alan. If there’s some way, I’d like to try to work things out in my current marriage.
I don’t want to be divorced again, but I have some real problems with Alan. He’s too demanding and seems clingy to me. Lately, when he wants to be close I just shut down. I don’t want anything to do with him. At other times, I’m furious with him. He can’t do anything right. I want something more out of this marriage and some kind of emotional satisfaction that I’m not getting.
Yet, when we do get close, I’m terrified. I don’t want to be smothered like my dad smothered me. It was the same with each husband. I get too afraid to get any closer, but then I complain that we’re not close enough. I manage to find a way to attack and blame the relationship. Soon, we’re fighting too much, and I’m complaining all the time. Then I can’t wait to get out. Divorce always seems to be inevitable. I keep hoping my knight in shining armor out there will rescue me. I thought Alan was my knight, but now I can’t wait to get away from him. I can’t seem to stay committed and satisfied. I don’t know what to think.
When I asked Rachel to say more about what she meant by not wanting to feel smothered like she was with her dad, she told her story.
My father always had me by his side when I was growing up. I was his little sweetie. He and my mother didn’t have much of a relationship, so I was the object he adored. When I was younger, I enjoyed all the attention and closeness. But when I got to adolescence, I couldn’t stand it. He never liked any of the men I dated, and he always asked me what seemed like an endless number of questions about what I had done on my dates. Even to this day, he’s always prying into my personal life.
He never approved of any of the men I married. It’s like he never let me go. I really can’t stand it. It feels icky to me, like I can’t get away. I feel smothered by him. I just want to scream and run away. It’s exactly the same feeling I’ve had with each husband at some point in the relationship. I start to feel smothered and want to run. And I usually do. I guess that’s why I keep getting divorced. Sometimes I think all of my complaining is a way to justify my wanting to run from the relationship.
Rachel’s story reflects the commitment struggle that leaves covert incest victims regretting past relationships. The regret generally is that the relationship might have worked out if a longer commitment had been established. As Rachel’s story reflects, running from the commitment occurs when a relationship becomes too intimate. At those times, the injury surfaces from the incestuous relationship with the opposite-sex parent and abandonment by the other parent. The pain is so great, and the fear so overwhelming, that running becomes an alternative. Without the framework of understanding, the damage of the incestuous relationship—feeling trapped—is experienced as originating from the spouse. Fear of losing what little autonomy and comfort the incest victim established pushes her out the door. Multiple divorces or relationships are the pattern masking this struggle.
Once the withdrawal from the relationship begins, the covert incest victim uses the old illusion of finding the perfect partner to mask the pain and justify the withdrawal. In Rachel’s situation, she was looking for her knight in shining armor. Her desire to divorce Alan could have been the beginning of another confusing, regrettable ending. However, divorce was not the best alternative given Rachel’s history. Instead, she decided to stay with the pain and abandonment created by the incestuous relationship with her father so she could separate from him. She also needed to let go of the false illusions and expectations, as well as work through the fear of engulfment. Only then could acceptance and reality become the building blocks needed for intimacy. Letting go of the illusion has a grieving process of its own that adds more pain to the pain of the incestuous injury. This is a difficult, but necessary, period for covert incest victims.
Afterward, Rachel was able to work through her struggle enough to commit to Alan and feel satisfied and comfortable, an experience she had longed for all of her life. As part of her process of recovery, Rachel had to say a clear good-bye to George, her first husband. Essentially, she had started an affair with her second husband and never finished her relationship business with George. The unfinished business added to her confusion and inability to commit to Alan. Being involved in affairs adds another false set of realities and expectations to the struggles the covert incest victim has with commitment and a desire for intimacy.
THE FALSE PROMISE OF THE AFFAIR
Becky was dissatisfied in her marriage for most of its duration. She never knew what was normal in relationships and assumed her dissatisfaction was typical. She and her husband were high-school sweethearts who married right out of high school. He always treated her like a princess and was the sort of guy she always dreamed she should marry. Becky’s father always treated her like his princess, so marrying Dan seemed right. During her therapy sessions, Becky acknowledged that marrying Dan was the only way she could get out of the house and away from her father.
Becky loved her father’s attention when she was young, but as she grew into adolescence, she began to resent it. In fact, his attention became entrapping. She always felt guilty when she wanted to do things with her friends or when she started liking boys. She always felt as if she had to be at her father’s side. Her father frequently made comments that left Becky with more shame and guilt. She recalled that when she met boys, her father often commented, “Nobody’s good enough for my princess!” When she met Dan, Becky feared her father would not approve. But he didn’t disapprove, so Becky stayed with Dan.
Becky described the marriage.
Throughout our courtship and most of the marriage, Dan treated me like a princess the way my father did. He gave me everything I wanted and things he thought I should want. He was there for me at all times and made few demands. The only demand I sensed was an implicit one: “If I treat you this well, you are mine. I own you.” Though he never said this to me, I always felt the expectation. It was the same expectation I felt with my father. I felt controlled. As time went on, I began to resent my husband’s excessive attention to me as I had my father’s.
Becky entered recovery for adult children when she sensed she had grown up in a dysfunctional family. She soon realized her dissatisfaction in the marriage was not normal. Becky also began facing the fact that her marriage was dysfunctional in similar ways to her parents’ marriage. Becky met Frank at one of the adult child meetings and they soon formed a close friendship. They had long talks over coffee after the meeting and talked to each other over the phone between meetings.
I couldn’t believe how I was beginning to feel for Frank. He was everything my husband wasn’t. I was able to be myself. Frank never put any pressure on me. I was able to communicate and be intimate in ways I never had before. I fell in love with Frank. I eventually divorced Dan and continued my involvement with Frank. However, as time passed, our once free-flowing and intimate relationship became a battle. Frank stopped being the open and supportive person he had been. He became scared and ambivalent. In response, I became desperate and clingy. We often fought without any sense of resolve. I couldn’t understand how something so open and loving could turn out to be such a struggle. I felt trapped again, this time by my own desperation and fear of abandonment.
Having an affair is a way to be relieved of the struggle with commitment felt by covert incest victims. The affair becomes a place where they can be open and intimate in ways they have never been before. It is a means to escape the confusion and pain of the primary relationship without having to bring clear resolution. By moving out of the primary relationship into an affair, the original abandonment and separation issues are not engaged. Since commitment is not part of an affair, one’s relationship issues do not surface. That struggle remains in the primary relationship, which is why affairs seem so carefree, open, and intimate.
Since one’s family-of-origin issues are not engaged, the affair becomes a relationship for which covert incest victims long. It’s free of the burden of resolving the commitment struggle. But as reflected in Becky’s story, the struggle with intimacy surfaced in the affair once the commitment in her marriage was severed by divorce. Her desperation for intimacy, as well as the feelings of abandonment that were created in the covertly incestuous relationship with her father, carried over from the marriage to the affair. In a different way, Becky felt she had been trapped again. She had been seduced by the affair into believing there was a possible state of burden-free intimacy with Frank. It falsely promised her that she would not have to deal with the drudgery of relating that she had experienced with her husband.
Does this mean Becky should not have divorced Dan? Not necessarily. Does it mean it would have been in her best interest to resolve her issues with her father and her husband first, before moving on to another relationship? Absolutely. Doing so provides clear resolutions and allows healing from the abandonment, which is necessary to begin and maintain healthy and functional relationships. It frees one from having to deal with the possibility of regret for leaving someone with whom you might have been able to work it out. The fact that Becky found herself in the same bind with Frank as she had been with her husband was a heavy burden to carry. So was constantly second-guessing herself about divorcing Dan. Also, she may find herself repeating the pattern of having an affair as a misguided attempt to resolve her inevitable ambivalence. By not resolving her family-of-origin issues, she prevents herself from moving on in life, and instead adds to the ongoing state of ambivalence that covert incest victims experience with commitment.
These stories have shown how critical it is for covert incest victims to separate from their seductive and entrapping parent in order to be able to fully commit to a romantic partner. Only then do successful and loving relationships become possible.