When I was in my early 20′s I worked through some aspects of recovery from being raised in an alcoholic home. Somewhere in my reading at that time I came across the term “emotional incest”. At the time I thought the label seemed harsh, a hyperbolic description of being forced to carry adult burdens and adult responsibility as a young child. Older and wiser now, having lived with the repercussions and bitter fruit of the unhealthy boundary violations of my childhood, I no longer think “emotional incest” is too strong a term.
My assumption was that the risk of emotional incest is limited to children in homes where parents have serious problems like alcohol and drug addiction. Wrong! This morning I read a disturbing quote from RC Sproull Jr.’s book “When You Rise Up” on Cindy Kunsman’s “Under Much Grace” blog. This is about a “homeschooled” 9 year old child:
QUOTE:“She doesn’t know how to read, but every morning she gets up and gets ready for the day. Then takes care of her three youngest siblings. She takes them to the potty, she cleans and dresses them, makes their breakfasts, brushes their teeth, clears their dishes, and makes their beds.” … But this little girl was learning what God requires, to be a help in the family business, with a focus on tending the garden.”
This little 9 year old child was having the weight of the household put upon her shoulders. She’s a child. How is this any different than what alcoholic parents do to their children? shifting way too much adult responsibility onto their children and robbing them of their childhood? Its emotional incest.
The most disturbing thing to me about the quote is the apparent blindness to the “problem in paradise”. This situation is PRAISED rather than recognized as a serious chronic boundary violation against this little girl. 
This part just grieves me intensely:
this little girl was learning what God requires
What a horrible “god”!
Being a child of alcoholics has an advantage. At least there was no mistaking my parents’ shortcomings for GOD’s “requirements”.
Charis,
That story is very sad. Parents have to allow their chilren to be children, and we need to be reminded of that, often.
Sure, it’s important to teach our children to be responsible, to help in the home, and to take on age-apropriate responsibility. This little girl has been given too much to carry, I think, and especially for very wrong reasons.
I don’t believe God requires that little girls learn mainly to be “keepers in the home”. Little girls, as well as little boys have to learn to “pull their weight” around the home, happily. But this is no substitute for a good education.
I can’t tell by the post you linked to whether that little girl is a victim of emotional incest or not. I wouldn’t say that emotional incest is bearing more responsibility than a child should. That is definitely child abuse, but not incest.
Emotional incest occurs when a parent makes a child their “surrogate spouse”. A parent shares intimacies with the child that are not apropriate. They use the child as an emotional partner, but the abuse is not overtly sexual, although they may be overly interested in the child’s sexuality.
I believe my husband is in an emotional incestuous relationship with his father. His dad calls him “his life partner”. Their relationship resembles one of a married couple where the father is clearly “the boss”, that sometimes “yields” to the “temporary boundaries” set by the son.
The relationship appears, at first, as one of an overly loving father who only wants the best for his son, but when you look into it a bit more, you find that the father cannot live without the son.
The son feels responsible for the father, especially when the father’s marriage is crumbling, or when the father is struggling. He will leave his family to go see him (even a few days after the birth of one of his children), will move his family to be closer to the father, and will put his family in financial jeopardy in order to care for his father.
The father knows his son will loyally stick to him, regardless of what he does. He will go with him “through thick and thin”. The son will always defend him, even from his own wife, even if his wife is right.
Both are unwilling/unable to break this relationship. They are unwilling/unable to see the enormous damage it’s causing in their marriages.
It’s like a leach sucking the blood out of the son, who is unable or unwilling to face the truth of the relationship. It’s like poison to all of the son’s relationships. For his father, he will break any other relationship. If people don’t accept his father, he will dismiss them. If they accept them, he will adher to them.
Emotional incest is much, much more than overburdening a child with more chores than he/she should be carrying at their age. IMO.
What do you all think? You got me thinking Charis, because I might be wrong….
You are probably right, Ruth. I was the oldest daughter and my mother’s “confidante” about their marriage issues- even sexual issues and my father dressed me up to look older and womanly and took me on “dates”. I distinguish those- the first is “emotional incest”, the second is “covert incest”. I’m not even sure that the way I distinguish them is a distinction a professional would make. I became aware of the first as “abuse” in my late teens, but the abuse by my father did not register as abuse until I was in my 40′s. I was treated “special”. Part of the light dawning in my 40′s happened when my sister reflected upon our childhood- that she was always very uncomfortable with that whole dynamic in our household, how dad treated me and how my mom was jealous and hostile about it, how my dad would kiss us girls on the lips…
My dad did dump my mother when I was 18 to marry a 22 yo. When I was 14 I was shipped to boarding school. I think he was very tempted to sexualize me and did so in his head but did not act out on it (to his credit) but even “mental adultery” crosses boundary lines and does damage. (Jesus: “if you even look upon a woman with lust, you have committed adultery”)
When I read the post about the little girl, I immediately thought “emotional incest”, but I suppose one would need to know some more details about the family dynamic. It definitely crosses boundaries, robs her of her childhood, and turns her into a “miniature adult”. That she was “homeschooled” and not able to read but performing all manner of “servant” functions really disturbs me. Smacks of child neglect and exploitation.
Hi Charis,
I am banned from John’s blog and he has just posted on complegalitarianism and I wanted to talk to Molly about this. Her blog is closed too so I was hoping we could chat here.
John has stated that woman on man abuse is almost as common as the other way around. But the literature makes it explicit that this is measured by who initiates an event. In terms of damage and injury man on woman abuse far outmeasures the other.
This relates to the concept of coercive control. If a man can by a threat or action force a woman to do something because he has more strength then he wins. It is really terrifying to know that you are vastly less capable physically, basically don’t have a chance.
I have a lot of pity for men who really are in emotionally abusive situations. But typcially they are not the kind who go around saying men should have authority.
Hi Tamar,
Sure, I’ll open a new post to hash this out together….
Stay tuned…
I notice he’s not posting on compegal anymore.
Guess he’s had enough of us there.
I feel bad about that. I like the guy even if I don’t always get the guy.
Mara,
Same here. Sometimes he talks straight over my head, but he adds some “spice” to the chat over there.
I know it’s probably not funny, but don’t you all think blogland is a bit like the playground at times? Johnny won’t let me play in his fort, can I play in yours?
I think he was very tempted to sexualize me and did so in his head but did not act out on it (to his credit) but even “mental adultery” crosses boundary lines and does damage. (Jesus: “if you even look upon a woman with lust, you have committed adultery”)
Charis,
I am so sorry this happened to you…. What did you read/ do to start recovery? Did this affect your marriage? Did you ever feel “tempted” to latch on to one of your children when you marriage was unfulfilling?
I’m afraid the pattern will just repeat itself if my husband stays in denial.
The relationship he has with his dad makes me jealous. Just the smell of his perfume and tobacco in the passenger seat of our car puts me off driving the car. I only drive it when it’s absolutely necessary, and if it’s not too cold I open a window. The smell makes my stomach lurch.
ps.
Could you edit my post earlier and make it anon too? I’m feeling a bit nervous sharing this….
I was thinking about your hubby, anon. He does need to recover from this, break the generational curses. My grandmother was very over the line with my dad, I think. Not sexually, but using him as her surrogate partner, leaning on him emotionally, looking to him to meet emotional needs which her husband should have been meeting….
How was my recovery initiated? The realization was set in motion by the screening and interview for an application with a mission board, The mission board required psych testing and the man who interviewed me about my results kept asking me if I had been sexually abused. It really bothered me because I did not identify anything that happened to me as “sexual abuse”, but the reality is that my psych profile showed the same damage. I mentioned it to my sister on the phone and she expressed her discomfort with the way I was treated. It was like someone turned on a light switch. The first reaction is intense grief and betrayal.
Sue,
I posted a little bit along those lines over at John’s blog. I’m up for talking more about it, of course. Shoot.
Btw, I love Mara’s name for us…what was it called again, Sisters of the Wound? lol… I will bring oil and wine and you bring the bandages.
But it’s also good to remember that an examination of the beaten person is what has to happen first. Finding all the wounds and noting the severity is important. Otherwise you’ll spend twenty minutes working on one spot while the patient bleeds on from a more severe wound on the other side of the body. So despite what others say about it not being healthy to discuss this stuff, I believe it is. If I’m still here in ten years saying the same old things, well, then, that’s different.
I appreciate you all so much. Thank you. ((hugs))
As for temptation to latch onto one of my children… I was abusive to them in some ways, but not that way. I was the modesty gestapo. I was repeatedly molested by random people throughout my teen years I was so afraid that would happen to my daughters that when they got to be about 12 I had walls around them so high it was abusive. I used to search their drawers and confiscate objectionable clothing. Its not the having standards was bad, but I was extremely harsh and suspicious of them as if they were “being bad” for having a tank top. I was also exposed on those “dates” with my dad to inappropriate nudity in movies. So I was always scared and very controlling about media. Their dad does not have the same reservations and when my son was a teenager he liked R-rated movies with a lot of bad language. Again, I was very angry and felt powerless because my husband allowed this stuff in our home (remember, my son is the second of 8 children, so there were children of very tender years exposed to media which just drove me up the wall emotionally).
Hey Molly,
I made a new thread, but I couldn’t find anything recent by John on compegal. Guess I need to go look at his blog…
Here is the place to continue the discussion with Tamar (et al)
Abuse- Can We have a Discussion?
Heck, Charis!
That’s awful.
I was also exposed on those “dates” with my dad to inappropriate nudity in movies. So I was always scared and very controlling about media. Their dad does not have the same reservations and when my son was a teenager he liked R-rated movies with a lot of bad language. Again, I was very angry and felt powerless because my husband allowed this stuff in our home (remember, my son is the second of 8 children, so there were children of very tender years exposed to media which just drove me up the wall emotionally).
This is not responsible, IMO.
My FIL has taken his children to see the life of the homeless, drug addicts and other destitute. In itself, it’s ok, but you have to be careful.
He also believes children should see films that contain unappropriate scenes along with their parents. He explains what’s wrong and why, but they are still seeing things that are not age appropriate.
We had a situation when we were living upstairs from my FIL where a woman whom he met on the street was visiting him and she exposed herself to me and my children.
I guess I’m not too strict when it comes to nudity. I try not to make a huge issue out of it, but I try to make sure our children know what is and what isn’t appropriate.
For example, when this woman exposed herself, I said that was totally unappropriate. I don’t think they registered what happened. I hope they didn’t.
I think my husband has to get to the point where he is ready to see his relationship with his dad as destructive to all other relationships. Regardless of whether he sees the emotional incest or not, he has to see it’s destructive. But he will do/say anything to protect it and keep it.
Have you read any books on the topic that you would recommend?
In my father’s defense, these were not “porn” but typical R-rated movies. I remember the first time I ever saw a woman totally nude *besides my mother)– was when I was 12 on a “date” with my dad (just him and me). It was a James Bond movie with full frontal nudity. It was so intensely uncomfortable, but it did not even register to him how inappropriate that was. He also had a lot of reading material which I would freely borrow and lots of it had very inappropriate stuff too (this was not porn with pictures, it was some detective series with extremely sexual sections).
Living in Europe, I don’t know how you could be very strict about nudity. Hubby said at the hotels in Germany they give him awful dirty looks when he is the only one with swimming trunks on in the pool. And he said it was common on TV there too. I think you are handling it appropriately. Honesty and transparency are good, cultivating an atmosphere where they can talk to you if something is bothering them.
I can’t think of any books specific to emotional incest? Some of the regulars here may be annoyed with me, but I think “Wild At Heart” could be helpful? If you want, you read it first and see what you think. It talks about father wounds which is what your husband needs to see that he has and grieve over. (IIRC you weren’t too impressed with “Captivating” on femininity- which was personally quite healing for me BTW. WAH is the companion book on masculinity)
Just for the record, I loved WAH.
I saw it in a discount store. The cover called out to me. I ignored it. Regretted ignoring it all week. The next week I bought it.
It may have been written to men about masculinity but it was speaking to ME about something else.
Sorry John Elderidge. But God has called ME to be wild at heart. I never read Captivating. It may be good too. Just don’t know.
But really, what I needed to hear from God through WAH was that God is calling me to a wild freedom I never knew existed.
The words free and freedom have been so overused in Christian circles that they have lost their meaning. They are worn out. But the phrase wild at heart was a new way to think of freedom. It meant something more than the same-o same-o. And this is why I balk at restrictions put on me by men claiming to speak for God. How can they be speaking for God when God has been working so hard on me to get me to step into a new place of freedom?
It was for freedom that Christ set me free. Therefore I should not subject myself again to a yoke of slavery.
This includes the forms of bondage well meaning but misguided, gender obsessed people want to bring on me.
I may have even borrowed the term sisters of the wound from Mr. Elderidge, except that he used the word brothers instead of sisters. Can’t remember.
I don’t talk about WAH on CBE Scroll because they don’t like it so much. And I suppose if it is used to free men and not women, I’d have a problem with it too. But reading set my feet on a road toward finding God’s best in the area of total freedom.
God can use the strangest things sometimes.
Another wound book that is spiritual but not Christian is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Help for the Family by Herbert Gravitz.
It’s not about emotional incest. But it was a tremendous help for me talking about the woundedness caused by living with a person with a disorder.
My dear one doesn’t have OCD. At least not as bad as his ADHD. I may have gotten sisters of the wound from that book. Don’t know. But it talks about being wounded, being healed, and becoming a healer of others because of the wounds we’ve endured.
Ha!!!! I loved WAH too, Mara, for that same reason!
It was awesome for *me.*
But then I hated it when my husband read it a year or two later, because he heard something very different from what the author was saying and used it to justify getting very violent and angry, asserting his right to do so when I objected, and claiming I was now trying to squelch his masculinity. It was horrible.
Wow, Molly (Do you want me to call you molly or molleth? I’m starting to get confused with every one else calling you molleth.) We have come down a similar path.
I regret the day I tried to get my husband to read WAH. He didn’t get very far, no where near the part about the wound. All he saw was what he wanted to see.
His take away from that book was that, yes, he’s a man. That means he could be as rude as he wanted to be because that’s what men are.
Totally missed the purpose of the book.
I almost felt like writing John Elderidge in tears and explain how much I loved the book and how sad I was that my husband misused it. Of course I didn’t. What would be the point? It was not his fault. It was my husband’s insecurity and fleshly nature looking for an outlet with a Christian stamp of approval.
Because of my husband’s take on the book, I never recommended it to another man. Just can’t bring myself to do it.
But I can recommend it here to the ladies. Shhh. Don’t tell Elderidge.
WEIRD.
I went from loving the book to hating it. Yet admitting that it’s not the book’s fault…because, just like with the marriage books, the guy’s eyes could only see things that validated his need for power and control (and rage when thwarted). So the message he got out of that book was used as an excuse to do some very painful things to me…
Did you ever read his Waking the Dead? It was a lot of the same things that were in Wild at Heart. I liked Waking the Dead a lot better, actually…and, heh, I don’t recommend WAH to men either. *laughing groan*
lol, btw. You can call me Molly. Molleth is just what I signed up on wordpress with, sort of laughingly KJV-ing my name. But I think the joke didn’t work and it just sounds like mollusk.
My husband has read WAH.
As a result, he took a boat from his father and insisted upon building it, and bought a gun for our five-year-old.
Every man has a dream and boys are naturally violent.
((((sigh))))
over all of these husbands who read it without “getting it”
Hey, the bright side of this exchange is that I see my husband as a tad more discerning. He didn’t read the book, but we had a speaker from that ministry come to our church once and my husband’s comment was that he “doesn’t fit their stereotype of masculine”. For instance, the guy assumed men don’t like a certain kind of movie which my husband does like.
So, my husband wasn’t willing to say- “Well this guy says ABC is masculine and he’s an authority figure so I best get with the program, deny who I REALLY am, put on a mask, and play the role laid our for me.”
Frankly, when I first started “Captivating” I was turned off by the Pocohontas Indian Princess adventurer and danger theme as well as by their frequent use of quotes and plots from movies to connect with the readers. I am sick to death of adventure (having moved 25 times). To this day, I have recurring nightmares about moving boxes and travel. I am just a homebody who wants security and stability and to stay put. And I don’t watch movies so they lose me every time they mention one. Nevertheless, once I got over the hump, I found the book ministered to me deeply. I have collected the quotes which were most meaningful here.
Ruth,
Perhaps the Boundaries material from Cloud and Townsend would help your hubby? There’s workbooks to go with those too. You could do the “Boundaries in Marriage” one as a couple study and perhaps he would make the connection with the need to use the same principles with his dad?
Keep praying. God is able to get through to him somehow and I expect- as his help MEET- you will be part of that. I would caution you to avoid like the plague getting between him and the natural consequences of his foolishness, don’t rescue him, that will just make the necessary wake-up call more drastic and painful!
…which reminds me of Gary Thomas in “Sacred Influence”
Charis,
That quote from “Sacred Influence” has stuck with me. It’s soooooo true…
RE. rescuing. I think I still have a lot to learn. It’s hard to watch at times.
IMHO the 9 year old girl isn’t a victim of emotional incest. She IS a victim of some form of child abuse. That little girl is going to have some serious problems growing up into a healthy woman.
What kind of a man does it take to not recognize child abuse when it’s staring him right in the face? Rather than seeing the little girl as an abuse victim who’s being emotionally and intellectually squashed, Sproul sees her as the model of the ideal daughter.
I can’t help but wonder if it’s likely that his ideal of the perfect daughter carries over into his own family? I’d expect so.
I recently read the article below and it really blew my mind, especially the comments that relate to Sproul. There’s some really twisted thinking on Patrio Planet, and it’s the children who always seem to be hurt the most by their twisted parents. God help us.
http://federal-vision.blogspot.com/2008/03/serial-pdophile.html
Thank you Brita. That’s sad
You are right. Our children suffer when we twist things. I wonder if they suffer more when its GOD’s Word that is twisted? Its not a new trick. Satan has been doing it since the garden.