"Covert incest happens when a parent, usually an opposite-sex parent, makes the child a surrogate partner or spouse, most often when bonds of sexuality and intimacy have been or are breaking down between the child's parents themselves. The child, feeling loved and put into a privileged position by the opposite- sex parent, becomes a confidant and advisor, an object of intense affection, passion--and preoccupation by that parent. Appropriate boundaries between parent and child are blurred or obliterated and the child does not realize that he or she is living to meet the needs of the parent rather than his or her own. The parent develops a dependency on the child and the opposite-sex parent's relationship with the child increasingly becomes more possessive, jealous, demanding -- all the time chipping away at the child's personal boundaries. Not unlike the victim of overt incest, the child increasingly feels manipulated, used and preoccupied with the parent's needs, whereas the parent's "love" begins to feel more intrusive than nourishing and more demanding than giving. The parent-child relationship becomes structured to meet the needs of the parent, so the child feels embarrassed to have needs of his or her own. Should the child try to have those needs met, he or she feels at risk of losing the parent." (From Silently Seduced by Kenneth Adams)
I hadn't heard this term until my therapist explained that this is what happened to me as a child. I could never put it all together—there was no outward sexual abuse, no outward verbal abuse, nor physical. So why did I feel so messed up? Why did I hate myself so much, believe I had to put myself last always, be swayed by one person’s opinions, so affected by one person’s moods that I didn’t know what I was feeling? Why was I obsessed with performing to please this one person? I didn’t know what I was good at, was interested in, what made me happy or sad—in fact, I couldn’t recognize any of my emotions. I was completely enmeshed with this one person. If his day was bad, so was mine (even if it wasn’t); if he was happy, I was in heaven! Since he was a psychologist, I decided to be one too…until I started recovery.
I was a nonperson, a ghost, a replicate. His approval meant the world to me, his anger made me feel like dying. I walked on eggshells if he was angry, afraid to emerge from my basement room even for food—going entire afternoons through the next morning with nothing to eat or drink.
I didn’t have a sense of me at all. I lived for him.
I was a little girl who just wanted to be happy and loved. I discovered that I could earn his love by doing what he wanted me to do, by pleasing him. And I also learned that if I didn’t please him, I would be punished: silences that lasted for days to weeks, being ignored as though I weren’t alive, and invasions of privacy in which he would barge into my room (the door being shut and sometimes locked) and yell for extended periods of time, the accusations moving from the present—what I didn’t do or say—and flowing backward to things I had done to “hurt” him in the past. And I was only a child.
Most of the details are a blur in my mind. I can’t remember specifically what I was punished for or accused of, although I did keep journals my entire life. I plan to go through them and blog about some of these details at a later date. What I do remember was crying, apologizing, begging for forgiveness for my “sins,” and if the accusations didn’t stop, giving up and dissociating, my mind floating near the ceiling, watching below as this poor child cowered and sobbed.
However, two specific episodes do stand out in my mind. One, when I brought home a D in typing class. I was not good at that, obviously. Typing without looking at my hands was virtually impossible (nor was it that important in the long run!) and I failed for that reason. But dad was furious and I remember that he stopped talking to me and refused to acknowledge my presence for at least a week, probably more. I was a good student in general, As and Bs, very conscientious, and I felt like an utter failure in life, ashamed to be alive from that experience.
The other, and I’ll have to go back to my journals and reconstruct this, was when I turned 16. All I remember of that is pretty pink packages sitting next to the fireplace, my mother silently creeping around the house, my father lurking somewhere in the house, an angry, dark presence, not wanting to see me or speak a word to me. At the end of the day, I sat down in front of the pretty gifts and opened them, as tears flooded down. It was the saddest memory I have. Becoming a woman. I felt as though I were being punished for growing up and becoming a woman.
The other issues that sparked blowups that I can recall were leaving crumbs on the kitchen counter, not finishing a project—a dollhouse we were building and furnishing together became a source of terrible strife. My hands shook during daily piano practice because I knew he was listening and would be quite angry if I didn’t perform well. Every chore I did I constantly double and triple checked myself to make sure I made no mistakes, which would come back to haunt me in those invasive yelling sessions.
On the flip side, when my father was pleased with me, he loved me like he loved no one else. He was so proud when I accomplished something. He loved hugging me and treating me as though I were his princess and confidant. Only I never knew when the loving would change to anger. I was constantly seeking this love and blaming myself when I did “something wrong” that caused him to fly into a depression or an angry spell. His moods were my fault, and I was never disabused of this belief.
Life with him was like walking on eggshells with tiny soft patches in between.
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