Post by movingforward on Feb 15, 2020 20:41:46 GMT -8
Hi all.
I recently, in the last six months or so, realized through therapy that my mother was covertly incentuous to me growing up. As a 28 years old, this has been a long shocking process of repressed memories coming up and old memories and continuous patterns gaining a new unfortunate meaning. A part of this is a great loss that I feel towards my relationship with my mother. What I mean by this is that what made my relationship feel "special" with my mother previous to this realization is now tainted. The "closeness" I had/have with my mother now feels dirty, like it always has deep down, but now that dirty feeling is at the surface for me instead of lingering underneath.
Lately life has been feeling like a horror movie, where at the end of the movie, the characters you thought were the good ones end up being the villians. Thats the best way I can describe everything I'm going through right now. I always knew my father was an abusive alcoholic POS. I saw him abuse my mom and he never physically abused me but did so in other ways, covert incest included. I don't feel the need to talk about my father here but more so my covert incest experiences with my mothers because they are been more pronounced and prolonged.
Basically, my mother made me a surrogate partner. My dad was like I said an abusive alcoholic from the time I was born (he did get sober when i was 18 but is still a unpredictable and angry/violent person). I have memories of my father choking my mother and the interference of me or my brother would make him stop. This gave us children a very powerful role in the family dynamic.
My mom slept in the same bed with me until the age of 13 or so. I had to tell her I didn't want her sleeping with me anymore and it was met with some resistance. The reason I didn't want her sleeping in my bed anymore was because, to be honest, I was going through puberty and wanted to start masturbating at night. That obviously couldn't happen if my mother was sleeping next to me constantly. It just goes to show you how much of a sexual undertone there is to a parent sleeping in the same bed as their child for that long, which is what covert incest is all about and why IMO it's so difficult to pinpoint- the feeling is there but so suppressed you could go an entire lifetime never acknowledging it.
My mother did very inappropirate things while I was growing up. She taught me how to "shimmy" in 2nd grade, which is when you shake your breasts back and forth in a sort of dance move way. She was also very interested in my body, always commenting on my weight gain or loss even as a 7 year old. She would always tell me my "legs and butt look like JLO". I came across a picture of me in 3rd or 4th grade, maybe younger, where I am posed by the TV. I remember my mom posing me and telling me things like "oh yeah your body looks good in that position" type of stuff- sexualizing me at a very young age.
As a surrogate partner, I was also her emotional baggage dump. She told me every financial problem my dad and her were experiencing, all the details of his failing business, that the IRS was coming to get us etc from the age of 7. I even remember her telling me things about the sexual dynamics between her and my dad. Things like "I like to be dominated", "Your father and I aren't having sex right now" etc. Information like this would usually happen during "mother-daughter days" she would call them, where she would call me off from school to spend the day taking me shopping, buying me lunch and disclosing all this information. At the time, I thought it was so cool that my mom was willing to take me out of school to do fun stuff, but now as an adult I look back on those experiences and feel sick to my stomach. How could a woman in her 30s feel it acceptable for a child to be hearing things about finances, marital issues, sex etc, especially when it concerned my father?
During those "mother-daughter days" she would also go in the dressing room with me while I was trying on clothes. She always would brush this off by saying "Oh I won't look" but I always caught her sneaking a peak at my naked self.
When I hit puberty, my mom insisted that she needed to see my breasts and vulva to make sure I was "developing properly." I was always so weirded out and offended by this but she would pressure me and make it seem like it was for my best interest. At one point I finally did show her my breasts willingly but I remember feeling so weirded out and in a way a bit comforted. The feeling being, wow I can be so open and honest with my mom how great, type of feeling. I can now see where my lack of boundaries as an adult stem from as I type this.
My mom would also insist I "model" new clothes I had for my dad. Like she would encourage me to "strut my stuff" type of thing. And I completely fed into this by doing what she would tell me to do in front of him. I would see how both of their eyes would light up while walking like a model and swaying my hips etc. I admit that I played into this dynamic feeling grossed out by it but also it was normalized so thats just "what I did."
She would do other invasive things as well. She would come into the bathroom without knocking if I was showering/going to the bathroom. Since this was normalized I would also do that when she was in the bathroom/showering. And honestly, even in the last year I have gone to the bathroom right in front of my mother and the other way around. She would also read my diary and use what I wrote against me. I'll never forget she blamed it on me saying "Oh well you left your diary on your desk, I assumed you wanted me to read it, like a cry for help." F*CK THAT. That makes me so mad to think about right now because she KNEW that was bullsh*t but was gaslighting me in order to take the blame off her. She would smell my underwear growing up to "make sure it was dirty" when doing my laundry. I've caught her peaking into my bedroom, cracking the door to pear inside. She would also insist that I shouldnt have a lock on my door because "what if there was a fire.?" Now that I think of it, she used a lot of gas lighting manipulation tactics in order to justify her invasive behavior.
Something a lot of people talk about on this forum is the fact that these covertly incestuous relationships usually also include the parent keeping outside relationships away from the child. This isn't exactly my experience with my mom but she has gone to the opposite extreme where she will verbally comment on my partners looks right in front of them and also touch them. The first time she met my current partner, literally the first thing she said to him was "Nice hair" and ran her fingers through his hair. She also told him he has nice legs. This christmas I brought my partner over and at one point she just reached out and grazed his face with her hand with no context whatsoever. Just did it in the middle of conversation. I felt so weirded out by that. She has also asked how sex with my partners is and how big their penis's are. I've always overshared this information with her. And like I said, these conversations added to our feeling of closeness that we shared, but now that I see this through a lense of an ongoing abusive pattern, I feel a huge loss of that seemingly sacred closeness as well as grossed out by the whole thing entirely.
I'm 28 years old now, and my mom still crosses boundaries and says inappropirate stuff. This one time recently she called our family dinner a "dating game." She also recently told me that she "thinks of me everyday every five minutes." It's so weird to me that shes so obbsessed with me and it concerns me because she doesn't have hobbies and is addicted to shopping and Xanax (in my opinion). She is also still with my father which is the saddest thing in my world to me. Even though he's sober they still have a very abusive dynamic, always trying to one-up each other with the insults. "Scorekeeping" as my therapist calls it.
Due to this abuse experience, I struggle with addiction, and sometimes I wonder if I have a sex/love addiction. I consider myself a polyamorous person, and sometimes I wonder if that's just a fancy word for love addiction in my case. I have been in risky sexual situations- meeting men off the internet who I've never met before in hotels, craving more and more sexual partners etc. I also have had deep feelings of shame when being attracted to people and have deeply buried the part of my sexuality that is attracted to women as well. I struggle with an eating disorder which I attribute to my mothers constant evaluations of my body ever since I was a child. I am learning that I am severely co-dependent and look for my identity to be defined through other people. It makes sense though because being a surrogate partner ever since I was a child, my whole identity was always about my mothers needs, not my own.
Anyway Ive written a lot and theres even more I can share. I always knew my mom was "different" but I never qualified her behavior as abuse until the current therapist I am seeing introduced me to the concept of covert incest. Reading all these stories has been very eye opening and comforting in a lot of ways, just knowing that other people have experienced this from parents and how damaging it is. I border between wishing I never learned about covert incest and being extremely thankful for it. It has made so much of my disordered personality make sense in a way it never has before. We are all on healing paths and are so so strong for seeing this abuse for what it is and working through it so we don't pass it on. Peace and healing to you all, we will figure out a way to overcome this and be more self-actualized people because of it. <3
~Moving Forward
I recently, in the last six months or so, realized through therapy that my mother was covertly incentuous to me growing up. As a 28 years old, this has been a long shocking process of repressed memories coming up and old memories and continuous patterns gaining a new unfortunate meaning. A part of this is a great loss that I feel towards my relationship with my mother. What I mean by this is that what made my relationship feel "special" with my mother previous to this realization is now tainted. The "closeness" I had/have with my mother now feels dirty, like it always has deep down, but now that dirty feeling is at the surface for me instead of lingering underneath.
Lately life has been feeling like a horror movie, where at the end of the movie, the characters you thought were the good ones end up being the villians. Thats the best way I can describe everything I'm going through right now. I always knew my father was an abusive alcoholic POS. I saw him abuse my mom and he never physically abused me but did so in other ways, covert incest included. I don't feel the need to talk about my father here but more so my covert incest experiences with my mothers because they are been more pronounced and prolonged.
Basically, my mother made me a surrogate partner. My dad was like I said an abusive alcoholic from the time I was born (he did get sober when i was 18 but is still a unpredictable and angry/violent person). I have memories of my father choking my mother and the interference of me or my brother would make him stop. This gave us children a very powerful role in the family dynamic.
My mom slept in the same bed with me until the age of 13 or so. I had to tell her I didn't want her sleeping with me anymore and it was met with some resistance. The reason I didn't want her sleeping in my bed anymore was because, to be honest, I was going through puberty and wanted to start masturbating at night. That obviously couldn't happen if my mother was sleeping next to me constantly. It just goes to show you how much of a sexual undertone there is to a parent sleeping in the same bed as their child for that long, which is what covert incest is all about and why IMO it's so difficult to pinpoint- the feeling is there but so suppressed you could go an entire lifetime never acknowledging it.
My mother did very inappropirate things while I was growing up. She taught me how to "shimmy" in 2nd grade, which is when you shake your breasts back and forth in a sort of dance move way. She was also very interested in my body, always commenting on my weight gain or loss even as a 7 year old. She would always tell me my "legs and butt look like JLO". I came across a picture of me in 3rd or 4th grade, maybe younger, where I am posed by the TV. I remember my mom posing me and telling me things like "oh yeah your body looks good in that position" type of stuff- sexualizing me at a very young age.
As a surrogate partner, I was also her emotional baggage dump. She told me every financial problem my dad and her were experiencing, all the details of his failing business, that the IRS was coming to get us etc from the age of 7. I even remember her telling me things about the sexual dynamics between her and my dad. Things like "I like to be dominated", "Your father and I aren't having sex right now" etc. Information like this would usually happen during "mother-daughter days" she would call them, where she would call me off from school to spend the day taking me shopping, buying me lunch and disclosing all this information. At the time, I thought it was so cool that my mom was willing to take me out of school to do fun stuff, but now as an adult I look back on those experiences and feel sick to my stomach. How could a woman in her 30s feel it acceptable for a child to be hearing things about finances, marital issues, sex etc, especially when it concerned my father?
During those "mother-daughter days" she would also go in the dressing room with me while I was trying on clothes. She always would brush this off by saying "Oh I won't look" but I always caught her sneaking a peak at my naked self.
When I hit puberty, my mom insisted that she needed to see my breasts and vulva to make sure I was "developing properly." I was always so weirded out and offended by this but she would pressure me and make it seem like it was for my best interest. At one point I finally did show her my breasts willingly but I remember feeling so weirded out and in a way a bit comforted. The feeling being, wow I can be so open and honest with my mom how great, type of feeling. I can now see where my lack of boundaries as an adult stem from as I type this.
My mom would also insist I "model" new clothes I had for my dad. Like she would encourage me to "strut my stuff" type of thing. And I completely fed into this by doing what she would tell me to do in front of him. I would see how both of their eyes would light up while walking like a model and swaying my hips etc. I admit that I played into this dynamic feeling grossed out by it but also it was normalized so thats just "what I did."
She would do other invasive things as well. She would come into the bathroom without knocking if I was showering/going to the bathroom. Since this was normalized I would also do that when she was in the bathroom/showering. And honestly, even in the last year I have gone to the bathroom right in front of my mother and the other way around. She would also read my diary and use what I wrote against me. I'll never forget she blamed it on me saying "Oh well you left your diary on your desk, I assumed you wanted me to read it, like a cry for help." F*CK THAT. That makes me so mad to think about right now because she KNEW that was bullsh*t but was gaslighting me in order to take the blame off her. She would smell my underwear growing up to "make sure it was dirty" when doing my laundry. I've caught her peaking into my bedroom, cracking the door to pear inside. She would also insist that I shouldnt have a lock on my door because "what if there was a fire.?" Now that I think of it, she used a lot of gas lighting manipulation tactics in order to justify her invasive behavior.
Something a lot of people talk about on this forum is the fact that these covertly incestuous relationships usually also include the parent keeping outside relationships away from the child. This isn't exactly my experience with my mom but she has gone to the opposite extreme where she will verbally comment on my partners looks right in front of them and also touch them. The first time she met my current partner, literally the first thing she said to him was "Nice hair" and ran her fingers through his hair. She also told him he has nice legs. This christmas I brought my partner over and at one point she just reached out and grazed his face with her hand with no context whatsoever. Just did it in the middle of conversation. I felt so weirded out by that. She has also asked how sex with my partners is and how big their penis's are. I've always overshared this information with her. And like I said, these conversations added to our feeling of closeness that we shared, but now that I see this through a lense of an ongoing abusive pattern, I feel a huge loss of that seemingly sacred closeness as well as grossed out by the whole thing entirely.
I'm 28 years old now, and my mom still crosses boundaries and says inappropirate stuff. This one time recently she called our family dinner a "dating game." She also recently told me that she "thinks of me everyday every five minutes." It's so weird to me that shes so obbsessed with me and it concerns me because she doesn't have hobbies and is addicted to shopping and Xanax (in my opinion). She is also still with my father which is the saddest thing in my world to me. Even though he's sober they still have a very abusive dynamic, always trying to one-up each other with the insults. "Scorekeeping" as my therapist calls it.
Due to this abuse experience, I struggle with addiction, and sometimes I wonder if I have a sex/love addiction. I consider myself a polyamorous person, and sometimes I wonder if that's just a fancy word for love addiction in my case. I have been in risky sexual situations- meeting men off the internet who I've never met before in hotels, craving more and more sexual partners etc. I also have had deep feelings of shame when being attracted to people and have deeply buried the part of my sexuality that is attracted to women as well. I struggle with an eating disorder which I attribute to my mothers constant evaluations of my body ever since I was a child. I am learning that I am severely co-dependent and look for my identity to be defined through other people. It makes sense though because being a surrogate partner ever since I was a child, my whole identity was always about my mothers needs, not my own.
Anyway Ive written a lot and theres even more I can share. I always knew my mom was "different" but I never qualified her behavior as abuse until the current therapist I am seeing introduced me to the concept of covert incest. Reading all these stories has been very eye opening and comforting in a lot of ways, just knowing that other people have experienced this from parents and how damaging it is. I border between wishing I never learned about covert incest and being extremely thankful for it. It has made so much of my disordered personality make sense in a way it never has before. We are all on healing paths and are so so strong for seeing this abuse for what it is and working through it so we don't pass it on. Peace and healing to you all, we will figure out a way to overcome this and be more self-actualized people because of it. <3
~Moving Forward