Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves . . .
—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
DURING MY LECTURES and therapy sessions, I have frequently been asked many questions that I would like to address in this chapter. It is a chance for me to clarify aspects of covert incest that may not have appeared in the text. I hope that this added discussion furthers your healing journey.
I acknowledge that many of you are looking for answers as you proceed with certain aspects of recovery. I will attempt to clearly answer certain questions to provide you direction; however, do not underestimate the questions themselves. The fact that you are questioning your relationship with your parent means you are bringing about awareness and activating the process of change in yourself. By increasing your awareness, your own intuitive healing journey has begun. Trust in time for answers that are not yet clear, and love the questions themselves.
Q Isn’t it good to be close to your parents while growing up?
A Yes, absolutely it is. When the relationship is primarily based on the needs of the child, children are free of the burden of inappropriate guilt and obligation to the parents. This early attachment becomes the gateway to successful adult relationships. Children are able to trust their own instincts and know their needs, which enable more healthy choices in friends and romance. But in a covert incest relationship with a parent, being close means feeling excessive responsibility toward the parent. Children lack the freedom needed to know their own needs and desires. The parent’s needs become incorporated as their own. Constantly torn between demands from the parent and their own wishes, children learn to sacrifice themselves to satisfy the parent and temporarily escape the burden of excessive guilt and anxiety. This becomes a path to frustration and disappointment in adult relationships, particularly in romance. In the case of covert incest, being close with your parent is not in your best interest.
Q How can a relationship with a parent be considered incestuous without actual sexual contact?
A This is an important question. Many people are confused by the concept that a parent who uses a child as a surrogate partner, even without sexual touch, still crosses incestuous lines. When we think of incest, most people think of being sexually intruded on and violated, which results in having sexual (and other) problems in adulthood. In a covert incest relationship with a parent, the child becomes the companion and trusted “lover.” Children feel icky, too close, and enmeshed in the adult world of the marital and sexual frustrations of the parent. In adulthood, they do not feel free to sexually pursue the “love of their life”; they must declare loyalty to the parent. Their own sexuality is encased in overstimulation, confusion, and feelings of disloyalty. They are more likely to create a sexual fantasy world in which to retreat than to boldly pursue a partner of their own choosing. They become their parent’s emotional or psychological lover and companion. Here, no physical touch was necessary for sexuality to be intruded on and violated. They are victims of covert incest.
Q Can someone experience both covert and overt incest with the same parent?
A Yes, someone can play the role of a surrogate companion and also be sexually violated by the same parent. There are some different results for the victim between the two roles. Overt incest victims often report intrusive smells, touch, and other sensory recollections (described as flashbacks) that intrude on daily functioning. Overt victims tend to feel more lost, having had to create compartments or different aspects of themselves in order to survive the overt incest. On the other hand, covert victims tend not to report the same level of compartmentalization or intrusive recollections. They will report being stuck playing a role in life, struggling with expressing their true selves. They mistake their roles for their identities. In this sense, the role has become a compartment used to survive. Both overt and covert survivors will report feeling engulfed and smothered by the parent. Recovery requires attention to both issues if they have occurred to the same person.
In some instances, a mistake that incest survivors and professional therapists make is to treat the surrogate partnership role as a minor issue compared to the overt incest. They may also assume the presenting problems are only a function of the sexual touch and subsequent violation. Some survivors will report the direct sexual touch as only a brief part of the ongoing overt-covert relationship. The covert incest aspect, and its damaging effects, may continue for years after the overt touch as stopped. Throughout the therapy and healing process, it is critical that both be thoroughly explored for recovery to have its most useful impact.
Q My mother was the only parent there for me. I feel so guilty thinking of having my own life. How can I abandon her?
A The goal of recovery from covert incest is not to abandon your parent. The purpose is to reestablish relationship boundaries, define your level of participation, and identify your needs. Feeling guilty about leaving your parent behind as you live your own life is common.
Let’s clarify some of the issues here. First, one of the duties of parenting is to have children who eventually leave and lead their own lives. A parent who entrapped you in the role of a surrogate husband or wife has burdened you with excessive feelings of responsibility and guilt about their marriage or their life; those are not your responsibility. Those problems are not your fault and not something for you to solve. Second, you are not abandoning them. Adults are responsible for themselves. Certainly, elderly parents need assistance from loved ones, but the covert incest burden is different. Covert incest is designed to prevent you from leaving. It is critical that you begin to see the trap you are in and challenge the guilt you carry. Your ability to have an independent life and a successful romantic, sexual relationship depends on it.
Q How do I set boundaries with others without them feeling hurt or being angry with me?
A Reestablishing how much and the way you participate with your parent, siblings, friends, and spouse or partner will be necessary. Setting boundaries around topics of conversation and time spent together are common places to start. You will need to tell your parent that you are no longer available to them on an “on call” basis, and that your priority is your spouse. You may also need to tell your siblings that you don’t want them being the messenger for your parent who is not happy that you are setting new boundaries. Your role as caretaker with friends, and even your spouse, will likely need to change. You will want to assert preferences and opinions that begin to reveal more of your true self. Yes, your friends and family may not understand and may even feel hurt or angry that you are changing the relationship. This will be particularly true for your parent, with whom boundary setting is critical to your ability to have your own life. Setting boundaries with others does not require their consent and understanding. Don’t leave it to others to grant you freedom to state your needs!
Q I can’t seem to make a decision for myself or state opinions. Is that common with covert incest survivors?
A Yes, it is. In healthy family systems, we develop a sense of our needs, wants, and preferences by being validated and seen for who we are. We carry into adulthood a feeling that we have value that allows us to stand up for ourselves, state opinions, and make decisions that are in our interest without feeling unnecessary guilt. In the covert incest relationship, your identity was dependent on organizing around your parent’s needs and validating her. Little validation was available to you unless it served the needs of your parent. You would have learned early on to experience others’ needs as yours, leaving it difficult and confusing when needing to sort out decisions for yourself.
Q Why is it so hard for me to commit to a romantic partner?
A In covert incest, your parent treated you like her companion and needed your devotion and loyalty in order to avoid her own emptiness and loneliness. You became the preferred partner over your other parent. This special and privileged position likely felt empowering, but at a terrible cost. When it came time to seek out your own lover, you likely became aware of the conflict about feeling free to do so. Torn between your natural desire to find love and your parent’s need to keep you close, commitment to a lover of your choice became a struggle. You likely sought out a compromise, giving some, but not all, of yourself to a lover. This arrangement usually results in loss and disappointment. You keep your parent, but lose your lover. You must confront in yourself the bind you experience and come to terms with whose life you plan to live out—yours or your parent’s.
Q I can’t stop my womanizing. Is it related to my covert incest with my mother?
A There is more than one dynamic behind why men womanize. In the case of covert incest, it is a causative factor. A critical dynamic is your need to constantly re-create the covertly incestuous feeling that you are the special one by repeatedly gaining women’s attention. This feeling is quickly satiated with womanizers, and they must move on to the next conquest. Also, if you have been your mother’s companion, you probably carry a great deal of anger along with a desire to push away and reject your mother. Unable to do so with mom, you do it with successive lovers. You most likely take the solicitous and attentive behavior you learned with your mother and treat each new woman like she is “the one.” The women feel adored and charmed by your attentive behavior, but then confused and at fault when the relationship ends for no apparent reason. When you encounter your own buried conflict around loyalty to mom and your fear of being trapped and engulfed, you abandon the lover to find a new one. This pattern gives you an illusion of freedom that you cannot have with your mother—the ability to reject and declare disloyalty. These patterns can often be addictive. One’s efforts during recovery from sexual addiction become a critical part of the healing process.
Q Are there different issues for a gay man who has had a covert incest relationship with his mother?
A There are many similarities for gay and straight men who have experienced covert incest, such as feeling excessive guilt, struggling with clarifying needs, feeling overly responsible for others’ problems, fearing engulfment, avoiding commitments, and sexual problems and compulsions. One difference lies in the fact that a gay man may identify with his mother and not feel it as an intrusion to his identity. He might be her “friend” in a very normal sense and not feel as compelled to separate from her as the straight man might. Yet, it is critical that he be emancipated from her and that the relationship is not used to replace his father. He must also look to identify some with his father. This doesn’t mean he has to embrace the image of the macho man, but clearly knowing and accepting himself is crucial to fully investing in his life and his romantic relationships. He may be his mother’s loving son, but he must become, first and foremost, his own man. A last point of clarification concerns the worry some gay men have that their enmeshed relationship with their mother caused their homosexuality. There is no evidence of this. Many heterosexual men have had the same type of relationship with their mothers and are erotically attracted to women. Similarly, if a heterosexual man struggles with approaching women and being sexual, it is not a sign that he is gay. It is more a function of the emasculating feelings and avoidant behaviors that resulted from the covert incest. In general, there are more similarities than differences between the gay man and the straight man who have both experienced covert incest.
Q Are there any differences when a daughter is the surrogate companion to her mother?
A Yes, there are. A woman is more likely to come in for help under the auspices of codependency without identifying the surrogate companionship as a factor in her codependency. In fact, the covert relationship with her mother is where she learned to value someone else’s needs and feelings over her own, make someone else’s problems hers, and feel of value only when she can “be there” for someone. Also, although there is no overt sexual tension between mother and daughter, she will still have the same issues of being unavailable for a full commitment to a romantic and sexual partner. She will fear engulfment as well. She will most likely take on her mother’s anger, mistrust, and contempt for her father and then transfer that to other men. This makes it difficult for her to navigate a love relationship with a man successfully. She finds fault with men and stays loyal to her mother.
Eating disorders are common here, too, especially compulsive overeating. Like sexual addiction, it is a misguided attempt to declare freedom—“You can’t trap me! I can eat anything I want!” A daughter who has been her mother’s surrogate husband must separate from her. This means declaring freedom by not participating in the role of surrogate husband or companion, reestablishing the boundaries of participation, detaching from feelings and perceptions about her father that belong to her mother, recovering from her compulsive or addictive issues, resolving to make her needs a priority in relationships, and claiming the desire for romantic and erotic love.
Q I tried avoiding men like my father all my life, but I seemed to have picked another just like him—demanding, jealous, controlling, never satisfied, and always making sexual remarks toward other women. This time I married him. How did that happen?
A In contrast to covert incest survivors who avoid entering romantic relationships, some survivors feel compelled to commit quickly to romantic or sexual overtures. Even when there are warning signs or troublesome behaviors about the man, a sense of obligatory guilt compels you to try to understand and to “make things work.” Unconsciously, you have re-created the relationship with your father by finding a man who is controlling and sexually inappropriate. This choice may be part of a larger pattern of choosing men who offer intrigue and having less interest in men who would be more stable. You may hide your own ambivalent feelings about commitment by choosing a man who has more obvious trouble with loyalty and commitment. Until you are willing to examine the covert incest with your father, you may be compelled to continue this pattern of re-creating the past. Underlying this pattern may be love- or sex-addiction issues that cause you to override warning signs. This also will need examination and require your willingness to give up your addiction for recovery to occur.
Q I am married to a man who is his mother’s surrogate husband. I am always second to her when he sorts out his priorities. How can I get him to see that he is hurting our marriage? How do I decide to stay or go?
A First, unless he is willing to see that there is a problem in his relationship with his mother and seek help, you will likely always feel second choice. It is his responsibility to stand up for you with his mother, set boundaries, and let her know you are his priority. For example, if she makes negative comments about you, he should intervene. However, unless he sees this as an issue he may blame you for being the problem. If you attempt to request changes, try a clear and gentle approach that appeals to his love for you and the desire you both have to make things work. If this fails to motivate him to make changes or to seek help, you have two choices: either accommodate his inability to fully commit to you, with his mother remaining his primary choice, or consider moving on. It is never easy to leave someone you love, but to be second choice after his mother will result in a lifetime of dissatisfaction. You may ultimately need to be prepared with the bottom line of ending the relationship if he can’t or won’t change.
Q Is it possible that I could pass on this covert incest to my own children?
A Yes, it is possible to pass on covert incest to your children. You learned, through your parent’s exploitation of you, that it was normal to comfort yourself by turning to your children instead of your spouse. Given your tangled commitment and loyalty issues, you probably find it easier to relate and be intimate with one of your children than your spouse. You may, for example, find yourself overbonded with your child and driving your spouse out of the marriage. Your spouse likely feels tremendous frustration that she can never compete against both your mother and your daughter. As a parent, it is critical that you do not involve your children in your disputes with your spouse or allow them to provide comfort in place of your spouse. Set boundaries with your child by saying, “You don’t have to worry about me—your mother and I will work it out. You just go along and play.” Be sure to work on the marriage so she sees that the marital bond is primary. A strong bond between you and your wife will bring reassurance to your child and a sense that she doesn’t have to worry. Both partners in the marriage must make an effort to invest fully and keep their strong union as the hub in the wheel of the family. Building a strong marital bond will keep your children from feeling compelled to rescue you, and will keep you from using the children for inappropriate comfort. Seek marriage counseling if problems persist.
Q What if I am a single parent?
A Single parent families are not necessarily dysfunctional or ripe for inappropriate boundary crossing. However, single parent families may bring a vulnerability to children who are drawn to play the role of a surrogate husband or wife. The empathic, sensitive child will notice your potential loneliness and naturally want to assist or rescue you. This is a normal feeling of love that children feel. They may feel an extra burden to “watch over” you. I remember doing a radio show with two single mothers as the hosts. After I discussed the subject of covert incest for a while, one said, “Now I know why my adolescent son told me to hurry and get married. He wanted to feel free to go off to college soon.” If you’re a single parent, make sure you acknowledge your child’s love as a positive trait, but seek your companionship needs with adults and provide your child with the message that you will be fine and not to worry. Provide them healthy adult mentors. For example, if you have a son, it is important that he has an appropriate and safe adult male in his life. This should be his father if possible. If your child is inclined to comfort you in your loneliness, reassure him that it is not his responsibility. Give him the freedom to grow up without feeling burdened with your troubles.
Q I’ve identified with many of these characteristics, but can I really be happy and content?
A I like the thought that happiness is a byproduct of a life lived with meaning and not attainable by pursing it directly. By fully investing in our lives and finding meaning, we can certainly be assured of some happiness. The liability for covert incest survivors is that if you are too invested in your parent’s life, you cannot invest in a life of your own filled with contentment and happiness. From this perspective, you can see how critical it is that you separate from your parent and from the impact of covert incest. Being in therapy for a period of time will likely be necessary. Covert incest is an insidious process that will require a trained professional to help you steer through the labyrinth of confusion caused by your parent’s need to keep you too close. Be sure your therapist understands covert incest and the necessary elements of recovery. Make sure he or she is familiar with the groups listed in the appendix as well as the books in the bibliography. It is important that the therapist neither pushes you to separate too quickly from your parent nor claims that it is “normal” to be so close. Learning to manage your inappropriate sense of guilt, feelings of overresponsibility, and fears of engulfment will provide you with the freedom you deserve to fully invest in your own life and find the contentment and happiness you desire.