Post by junior on Aug 29, 2017 10:46:31 GMT -8
Hello all!
Finding out about covert incest made much of my childhood intelligible to me. My mother, newly divorced and saddled with raising three young children in a foreign country, burdened me with adult information from the time that I was nine years old. [NOTE: I was the youngest child - her 'chosen, special one' whom she said was 'most like her'] I became her emotional support, the one whom she was confident would embrace her perspective that her now ex-husband and his family were worthless and not to be trusted. She cut us off from family on both sides and essentially adopted a 'trust no-one' policy.
My siblings escaped as best they could. My brother reacted by forming himself into what he felt a man should become and actively distancing himself from my mother, while my sister moved out as soon as she could. I, the baby, was stuck with mom. She had no close adult friends and used me as a receptacle for all of her musings.
I used to think that she and I were close, but now I understand that we were anything but.
Fast-forward to adulthood: I'm married now, with two young sons. I suffer with depression and very low self-esteem - which seems to be at odds with my 'success (e.g. a published author, university lecturer, considered to be highly intelligent, confident, handsome and articulate)'. I'm also come to realize that my dysfunctional interactions with women and my profound inability to intimately connect with and be faithful to a woman, which manifested as numerous, unsafe sexual encounters - encounters that I once chalked up to just being a typical man - were a form of sexual compulsion/ addiction that had its roots in the covert incest that blighted my childhood.
Now, my marriage is in crisis (earlier this year, my wife found erotic pictures that two women had sent to me. The discovery triggered her to recall an earlier sexual indiscretion that I had disclosed to her and ask troubling questions about what really happened between me and the woman with whom I had been unfaithful. Ironically, I was not in a sexual relationship with either of the women who sent me the pictures, but had not addressed their overstepping because I felt good about receiving their attention and approval. In addition, for some years I had been engaging in inappropriate conversations with and receiving erotic pictures from several women with whom I'd previously had sexual contact). Through therapy, I'm confronting what happened to me as a form of child abuse that created havoc in my adulthood, scuppered my self-esteem, made me feel unlovable and helped to mould me into and emotionally underdeveloped man. I feel stuck and alone. I'm tired of living in the shadow of my childhood trauma - a trauma that has brought me to the brink of divorce.
Question: are any others who struggle with sexual compulsion/ addiction that is rooted in covert incest?
Finding out about covert incest made much of my childhood intelligible to me. My mother, newly divorced and saddled with raising three young children in a foreign country, burdened me with adult information from the time that I was nine years old. [NOTE: I was the youngest child - her 'chosen, special one' whom she said was 'most like her'] I became her emotional support, the one whom she was confident would embrace her perspective that her now ex-husband and his family were worthless and not to be trusted. She cut us off from family on both sides and essentially adopted a 'trust no-one' policy.
My siblings escaped as best they could. My brother reacted by forming himself into what he felt a man should become and actively distancing himself from my mother, while my sister moved out as soon as she could. I, the baby, was stuck with mom. She had no close adult friends and used me as a receptacle for all of her musings.
I used to think that she and I were close, but now I understand that we were anything but.
Fast-forward to adulthood: I'm married now, with two young sons. I suffer with depression and very low self-esteem - which seems to be at odds with my 'success (e.g. a published author, university lecturer, considered to be highly intelligent, confident, handsome and articulate)'. I'm also come to realize that my dysfunctional interactions with women and my profound inability to intimately connect with and be faithful to a woman, which manifested as numerous, unsafe sexual encounters - encounters that I once chalked up to just being a typical man - were a form of sexual compulsion/ addiction that had its roots in the covert incest that blighted my childhood.
Now, my marriage is in crisis (earlier this year, my wife found erotic pictures that two women had sent to me. The discovery triggered her to recall an earlier sexual indiscretion that I had disclosed to her and ask troubling questions about what really happened between me and the woman with whom I had been unfaithful. Ironically, I was not in a sexual relationship with either of the women who sent me the pictures, but had not addressed their overstepping because I felt good about receiving their attention and approval. In addition, for some years I had been engaging in inappropriate conversations with and receiving erotic pictures from several women with whom I'd previously had sexual contact). Through therapy, I'm confronting what happened to me as a form of child abuse that created havoc in my adulthood, scuppered my self-esteem, made me feel unlovable and helped to mould me into and emotionally underdeveloped man. I feel stuck and alone. I'm tired of living in the shadow of my childhood trauma - a trauma that has brought me to the brink of divorce.
Question: are any others who struggle with sexual compulsion/ addiction that is rooted in covert incest?
