When you get married, 30 percent of your sexual energy may still be with your [mother] and you got 40 percent for the woman you’re with . . . she’s got about 40 percent with her father and maybe 20 percent left for you . . . that’s not enough.
—Robert Bly, Power and Purpose in Men Workshop, 1988,
Oakland Community College, Farmington Hills, MI
THE PRIMARY TASK for covert incest survivors is to separate from the opposite-sex parent. This is not an easy step and may take years. The fact that so many covert incest survivors remain inappropriately bonded well into their adulthood suggests a tremendous struggle to let go of the parent. This separation will not be given to them. Real emancipation cannot be given to them: it must be taken. Emotional maturity cannot be realized until the covert incest survivors emancipate themselves. One cannot be an adult man or woman and simultaneously hold onto mommy or daddy. For a marriage or relationship to work, full access to one’s emotional and sexual energy is necessary. Even then, it’s tough. But, as Robert Bly’s quote suggests, a relationship cannot fully be functional when leftover sexual energy is tied to the opposite-sex parent.
In their book The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts, Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee present their findings from interviewing fifty couples who reported happy marriages over many years. They list nine tasks of a successful marriage; the first task on their list is: Separate yourselves from your family of origin. The authors claim that in doing so, one is able to invest fully in her own marriage and redefine the lines of connection with both families. Marriages impacted by unresolved covert incest have little chance of accomplishing this task. Because the lines of connection are dictated by the parent’s implicit or explicit demands, the spouse ends up in the role of second fiddle. As a result, all other necessary tasks for a good marriage are negatively prejudiced by the failure to invest fully.
The other integral part of the separation is to heal the relationship with the same-sex parent and allow a connection to develop. In fact, this needs to happen to separate from the other parent. Identification and spending time with the same-sex parent is necessary in order to stand separate from the opposite-sex
parent and to feel more powerful as a man or a woman.
However, most covert incest survivors have it confused. They are still trying to feel good about themselves by identifying with the energy of the opposite sex. This cannot work. If a man is going to be able to love a woman fully, he needs first to love himself as a man. This begins with his father’s love and continues with the support and nurturance of other men. The reverse pattern is the case with a woman, who must bond with her mother and other females to nurture her identity. However, covert incest survivors stay stuck in trying to please the opposite-sex parent, spouse, or partner as a way to feel like a man or woman. (There are different considerations when, for example, the man is gay and has been his mother’s surrogate husband. Those issues are addressed in Chapter 8, “Frequently Asked Questions.”)
One of the patterns common to covert incest survivors is the seduction and abandonment of the opposite sex. This pattern leaves in its destructive path broken relationships, confused and hurt partners, and lost chances for love. Generally, this is done unconsciously. It is a way to get back at the seductive parent and gain a sense of separateness, control, and power. However, the attempt to break from the seductive parent by seducing and abandoning members of the opposite sex can’t work. The separation must be directly from the parent. Following are some suggestions to help you foster the process of separation from the opposite-sex parent and begin healing with the same-sex parent.
Let go of addictions. Addictions rob you of your sense of power and personal authority. They block you from your feelings and your inner reality, which are crucial to the process of recovery. Get help for your addictions in a specific twelve-step program. Whether you’re addicted to sex, food, alcohol, drugs, or anything else, begin by making a commitment to attend a meeting specifically for your major addiction. You will need as much access to your sense of power as you can get to make the separation.
Let go of your idealized image of the seductive parent. Your parent’s excess attention to you was largely for his or her own gratification. Acknowledge that the attention you received was violating and abandoning. You will also need to grieve the loss of this idealized relationship. Expect feelings of sadness. Be prepared to deal with contradictions in your feelings for this parent. He or she may have been your only source of comfort in an otherwise neglectful or abusive family system. However, if you insist on only seeing your incestuous parent as “doing the best he or she could,” you miss the opportunity to explore the full range of your authentic feelings. You will likely have both positive and negative feelings. This is okay. Learning to manage contrary feelings is part of the maturing process. It allows the development of specific skills that help you manage the disappointments that occur in all relationships.
Acknowledge your anger toward the seductive parent. Find ways to express your anger that are constructive but allow for some discharge of the pent-up energy. For example, you could write a letter to your parent, telling about your anger and your feelings of violation. It is usually best not to send the letter, since it can be harmful—and this is not the goal of your anger. It is also important for you to write the letter without any sense of restriction. You want to feel free to let out as much anger as possible. Knowing your parent will receive it might inhibit you. Writing a letter is a productive way to deal with your anger if your parent is deceased. Go to the grave site and read it aloud. This can be very healing.
If your seductive parent is alive, begin to set boundaries and separate. This is a crucial step. For example, if your parent continues to tell you about personal problems with the other parent, say you are no longer willing to listen. Be prepared to set these boundaries more than once. Long-term boundary problems require a consistent and clear position on your part. Feeling icky, enraged, or burdened by your seductive parent’s request or conversation are feeling-cues that you’re being drawn into the incestuous role. Respect those feelings and set boundaries. If you feel guilty, which is likely, remind yourself that it is not your job to be your parent’s spouse. It is a violation of your boundaries and even abusive for your parent to expect it to be your job. You may need to have no contact at all with this parent for a while. That’s okay. Give yourself permission to do so if that’s what you need. (For other helpful ideas, see The Importance of Setting Boundaries and How to Set Boundaries sections later in this chapter.)
Deal with your feelings toward the same-sex parent. Again, writing a letter can help. Deal with your anger of being abandoned by this parent and being left to be the spouse for the other. This situation always invokes a deep sense of anger. It is important to differentiate anger from the hate and contempt you feel. Generally, hate and contempt are the feelings that the opposite-sex parent felt toward the same-sex parent and were inappropriately transferred to you. Those feelings needed to be dealt with directly by your parents between each other. You were caught in the middle and carried feelings that were not yours to begin with. Hate and contempt keep you from feeling an attachment to the same-sex parent. Begin to let go of those feelings by acknowledging they weren’t yours in the first place.
Spend some time with the same-sex parent separate from your other parent. If this parent is deceased or too abusive to be with, find someone else who can serve as a surrogate or mentor. Often, a sponsor in one of your twelve-step groups can serve this function. You may also have to deal with contradictory feelings with this parent as well.
Learn to manage guilt feelings. Setting boundaries and dealing with your intrusive parent is likely to stir feelings of guilt and disloyalty. Covert incest survivors carry a tremendous amount of inappropriate feelings of responsibility and loyalty to the incestuous parent. Those feelings were inappropriately transferred to you. It was your parent’s job to take care of herself (or himself), not yours. Her loneliness and dissatisfaction with her life and marriage should have been discussed with an adult, not with you. Her need for companionship and comfort from her loneliness needed to be filled by an adult, not by you. When you begin to confront burdens, you will likely feel a strong sense of guilt, find yourself minimizing past violations, and declaring loyalty to your parent. Remind yourself that these feelings were placed on you inappropriately. Challenge them and get support.
Get involved in a support group. Here you can talk about your process of separation and receive support. Belonging to a community of fellow travelers helps reduce guilt and sustains you on your journey to independence. Lessening guilt helps break the bond from the opposite-sex parent and supports you in your growing sense of being a man or woman. Often, when turning to family members for help, your relationships with them may become strained. They may have a need to keep your family system intact. You may not get the encouragement you need. (See appendix for a listing of support groups.)
These suggestions are not linear steps, but they reflect aspects of the process necessary for covert incest survivors. In time, as you work through these feelings and set appropriate boundaries, your feelings of love and compassion for your parent may return. You can begin to see your parents as injured adults—as children who did not get their needs met either and were likely violated as well. Forgiving and letting go, so you can get on with your life and create working relationships, is hopefully where your process will take you. It is important that you not forgive too soon. If you forgive before you work through this process, it isn’t forgiveness at all, but denial of the truth.
The Importance of Setting Boundaries
Covert incest survivors have not developed a sense of boundaries with others. Since the intrusive parent inverted the parent-child relationship for his or her own needs, the child learned that others’ needs are more important. As a consequence, they have not learned how to set a boundary that establishes a sense of separateness with others. They often feel devoted and loyal to others at a cost to themselves. For example, someone may demand something of you that you are uncomfortable with, but you agree to do it anyway since you struggle to say “no” or “I’d prefer not to.” Sometimes, these moments of apparent passivity and dependency have significant consequences, like agreeing to a marriage or a job you don’t really want. In adulthood, covert incest survivors struggle with expressing needs, wants, and preferences without feeling guilt.
The most critical boundaries you must set are with the parent with whom you have the surrogate companion relationship. These boundaries should focus on frequency of contact, answering phone calls, texting, topics of conversation, physical touch, and money. Some covert incest survivors struggle not to feel “on call” with their parent and not to answer every call as if it is an emergency. In such cases, I encourage survivors to let voice mail pick up the call and then wait twenty-four hours before answering. You may also need to reconsider your participation in social networking (such as Facebook) where your parent will have “access” to you. This can be very difficult because of the guilt that comes from inappropriate loyalty and devotion.
Another important consideration is to begin setting a boundary of having no discussions with your parent about her dissatisfaction in her marriage, her loneliness, or her need for someone to listen. Since marital strife is the most frequent topic that the intrusive parent has burdened the child with, it must be stopped and redirected. You are not supposed to be your parent’s companion or counselor. The boundary should also include no refereeing your parents’ marital discord. If they fight in front of you and try to draw you in, say “I’d prefer not to be involved or around when you two are fighting. I’ll come by later after you work this out.” By saying this, you are making it clear to them, and to yourself, that refereeing is not your responsibility. You may have to set similar boundaries with your siblings, who may also try to draw you into “taking care of things.”
There are many situations that will require you to set boundaries so you can be clear on who you are and what you need and want, in relationship with others. This is the most important part of your healing process, allowing for the unfolding of your true, authentic self as opposed to playing the role that was defined for you by your parent. This new defined self will be the compass that directs you in moving forward in your life.
Relationships
What’s clear by now is that covert incest survivors struggle to have a satisfying, committed love relationship. A core issue contributing to this struggle is the confusion resulting from reacting to your spouse as if he were your parent. Developing an inner boundary allows you to distinguish between these two relationships. This is a necessary step to establish a working relationship for yourself. The separation process just described goes a long way toward that end.
In fact, I recommend that you establish a sense of separateness from your parent before you make any major decisions about your relationship. Your emancipation allows you to be more available to yourself and your relationship. If you’re single, you’ll be more likely to choose a mate based on adult intimacy needs rather than those of the violated and abandoned inner child. If you’re considering divorce or letting go of a relationship, the separation process helps make it clearer that you are leaving the right person. The following are other relationship considerations that covert incest survivors must make:
1. Let go of your fantasies. Remember, the abandoned and hurt little child inside you has likely created a rich fantasy life about love, sex, and romance as a way to cover your pain. If you continue to attempt to create adult relationships out of your fantasies, you will add to your sense of abandonment and your chronic feelings of dissatisfaction. Keep working toward acceptance of the reality of yourself and the reality of your partner. You stand a much better chance at establishing a workable relationship. Allow yourself to grieve the loss of your fantasies and illusions.
2. Learn to identify and manage your projections. Covert incest survivors often project feelings toward their parent onto their partner or spouse. For example, a spouse may innocently want you to check in while on a business trip, and you may react angrily, as if it were your parent making demands. Own your feelings from the past, and be responsible for their expression. Do not put them onto your spouse; they will create distance with her and keep you loyal to your parent. The ultimate declaration of loyalty to your demanding parent is to shield her from your true feelings and never have a successful romantic relationship.
3. Make a full commitment to stay in your relationship if you judge it to be good for you. Separate the insatiable needs of the inner child from the realistic intimacy needs of the adult. Regrettably, all the developmental needs lost to the incestuous relationship will not be met fully in any one partnership. The sooner you accept that, the less likely your victimized inner child will project demands that are inappropriate to adult relationships. Those demands destroy relationships that might otherwise be good for you.
4. Burn your bridges. One of the patterns that contributes to relationship ambivalence is keeping a couple of relationships going at once, or “keeping the door open” on past relationships—just in case you have to make a run for it. The underlying fear behind fully committing is, “I will be used and betrayed again, as I was with my incestuous parent.” At stake is the fear of losing your sense of self in the relationship. Additionally, you avoid deep feelings of pain and anger by keeping yourself in this pattern.
If you are going to resolve your ambivalence toward commitment, you need to burn your bridges by letting go of relationships that are designed to keep you on the run; that may mean no contact. You also need to grieve the loss of those relationships. Remember, you deserve a healthy and intimate love relationship with one person—and you are capable of one. But you have to let go of old, self-destructive behavior patterns before you can be open to intimacy.
5. Set boundaries and make your personal needs a priority in your relationship. The fear of losing yourself in a relationship is usually founded in truth. The incestuous relationship teaches you to sacrifice your needs in adulthood for the love of your partner. Though this is needed at times in all relationships, you may experience a loss of choice and do it chronically, hoping that maybe your needs will finally be met. This doesn’t work, and the seeds sown for deep resentment eventually help erode the relationship.
It’s okay to do what’s good for you and not be concerned with pleasing your partner all the time. Boundary setting needs to be concrete, even though you fear it will displease your spouse. You must begin to develop a tolerance for allowing your spouse to be angry or displeased with you. If not, you’ll stay stuck in the incestuous pattern of trying to please in the hope of getting your needs met. At this juncture, it is no longer your parent betraying you—it is self-betrayal.
You’re likely to feel guilty in these attempts. Your guilt is the result of being violated in the incestuous relationship. Allow yourself to be outraged over being burdened with so much guilt. Your sense of outrage helps you set boundaries. Adults who grew up with functional parents who did not use them to gratify their own needs do not feel enormous guilt when the adult child attempts to get their needs met.
6. Say good-bye to your relationship if necessary—even after all this work. Not all relationships work. You may discover at some point that it is not your parent you’re attempting to leave or are dissatisfied with, but your spouse. As you come into your own sense of self and gain some perspective, you may realize your relationship is not good for you. Again, your sense of guilt may be tremendous. You may want to hang on so as not to hurt the other and to avoid dealing with feelings of abandonment. If leaving is what you need to do, you are not a bad person.
Your sense of outrage at being in another guilt-ridden bind may be what you need to have the presence of mind to let go. At the same time, it is important not to act out this outrage against your spouse by blaming or attacking. Don’t be a victim by thinking, “This has happened to me again, and it’s my spouse’s fault.” Take responsibility for your choices, feelings, and decisions. If you don’t, you will have a larger blind spot when it comes to the intimacy traps in your next relationship.
7. Watch your seductive behavior. Keep your seduction in check. You don’t do yourself or anyone else any favors by engaging in behavior that results in hurt, confusion, and emptiness. Remember, your pattern of seduction and abandonment is a way to experience feelings of power and control intended to help you overcome the sense of victimization as a child. But it doesn’t work. If your seduction is part of a pattern of sexual addiction, get some help.
Seductive behavior also has the purpose of hurrying relationships along to avoid your underlying fears and fulfill your fantasies. The seduction greatly distorts your sense of reality of the relationship and of the person you are involved with. Once reality comes into focus, you may begin to withdraw because you realize you have gone too fast and have become too vulnerable, or you may realize that this is not somebody with whom you should be vulnerable. By all means, when beginning new relationships, go slow, stay rooted in reality, and allow the relationship to unfold as it should, not as you would attempt to control it.
Dating
If you are not in a relationship and are beginning to date, there are important considerations for you as you begin your journey. Because the parent demanded excessive loyalty and devotion, covert incest survivors often declare loyalty and commitment quickly, even if they do not want to be with the person. They may also get involved or marry someone who re-creates the parent-child bond—a spouse or partner who is demanding, possessive, and never satisfied. They have a hard time sorting out who will be best for them in a dating situation because they often get “involved” rather than date. They create quick and unhealthy dependencies rather than develop successful partnerships.
Dating is meant to be a sorting-out process, a time to slowly get to know someone to see if that is the kind of person or relationship you want to develop. Make a list of characteristics you seek in a mate and use it has a guide. You should also make a list of boundaries—under what circumstances you should be sexual, how many times a week to have contact, how often to phone or text, and so forth. The more you can hold to a set of boundaries that keeps you from quick dependencies, the more likely you are to create a successful partnership when you are ready and to lay a foundation that helps keep the fear of commitment in its place.
Loving Yourself
One of the consequences of being victimized is feeling objectified and used, not loved. As a result, you also relate to yourself and others as objects to be used. You probably struggle to believe you are worthy of being loved. This makes committing to and loving someone else difficult. Learning to value yourself as lovable is an important part in your ability to love someone else.
A committed relationship is about building and nurturing an enduring love between two people. Because you were never nurtured by your parent, you may have difficulty receiving love and nurturance. Or, you may resent giving love and consequently hold back.
Your journey of recovery needs to include learning to develop a tolerance for self-love. You do this by making simple statements of affirmation on a daily basis. For example, “I love myself unconditionally” is a place to start. You might try this while looking into your eyes in the mirror. You can develop any number of statements to affirm your feelings of self-love. You can also increase your tolerance by doing more acts of self-nurturing, such as cooking your favorite meal, going to a favorite restaurant, walking, talking to friends, taking a warm bath, reading a good book, and so on. Do more of whatever makes you feel a greater sense of self-love, provided it doesn’t become self-destructive. (For example, eating disorders and sexual addictions begin as ways to nurture but become self-destructive.)
Another core injury is the damage caused by never learning to trust your own intuitive sense. The covertly incestuous relationship never permitted you to know and trust in your feelings because you were so preoccupied with your parent’s feelings. The inappropriate dependency inhibited you from taking personal risks crucial in developing trust in your intuition.
As a child, you needed your parent to provide a safe haven where you would be nurtured when you took personal risks of autonomy. The incestuous relationship prohibited that from occurring. Your parent needed you too much to permit you the freedom to take risks. Being robbed of the freedom of autonomy is what interferes with developing trust in your intuition. Not trusting your instincts is a crucial factor in creating ambivalence about commitments. Ultimately, you need to be able to trust your gut feeling about a relationship to know what is best for you. When you mistrust this, you may overrely on your intellect. This can distort your intuitive sense. The split between the two helps create the agony of ambivalence.
Begin teaching yourself to take risks and to trust your intuitive sense. Begin with small issues and decisions—base them on your gut feelings. Keep practicing and returning to this process. Remember, it is okay to do what is right for you.
Finally, keep nurturing your abandoned inner child. No one else can do it for you. Carry a picture of yourself as a child or hold an image in your mind and look at it daily. Tell your child all the things he needed to hear but didn’t. Reassurance. Affirmation. Encouragement. You deserve it!