Like a flash of lightening, it struck me this week that Enmeshed Emotional (non-physical) incest between a loving parent and their adored child may be the only abuse where the parent can say honestly, from their heart, so-help-them-God that they did not know they were abusing their child. I can say from experience that the child can honestly say that they did not know they were being abused.

But they did. And they were…regardless of whether they knew it or not. And it sucks.

Enmeshed emotional incest  is  predicated on the assumption that if “close” is good, “inseparable” must be better. Right? Right?

Yeah, no.

Having been around the block with enmeshed emotional incest, I know from experience that this closeness taken to extremes may seem nice (with some awkwardness and angst) at the time but looking back you find yourself cringing and filled with resentment, struggling to undo the psychological harm.

It starts out innocently enough. Little children need parents who are devoted to them and sensitive to their needs. That is as it should be.

Then come the teen years when parents traditionally begin to loosen their grip and help their children achieve age appropriate milestones and gain adult independence. While normal parents loosen their grip, emotionally enmeshed incestuous parents double-down and tighten their grip. The relationship goes from “close” to the cringeworthy BFF thing. “If you’re feeling dizzy, it’s because the tables have turned.” (TBBT) Now the parent’s needs are trumps. Maturity? Milestones? Independence? Freedom? Ain’t happenin’, Honey.

Almost the worst part is that the now-grown child doesn’t know what’s really going on and certainly doesn’t know why. All they know is that the person who loves them the most needs them to be a certain way.

Who can resist devoted, almost slavish, love?

Certainly not I.

So when normalcy failed to happen for me, I blamed myself.

Here’s a classic example. When I was in my early twenties, my mother peevishly demanded that I stay within eyeshot of her in stores. Flummoxed, I assumed I had somehow failed to make the grade. That mom couldn’t trust me to be alone in a retail establishment, just as she didn’t when I was little and she feared me being kidnapped.

Only later did I find out that I was not the problem. In actuality, I was her agoraphobia security blanket. If she could always see me while shopping, she wasn’t afraid of having a panic attack.

In families of multiple children, it’s not unusual for the mother to be enmeshed with one child while her husband in enmeshed with another child. The spouses may be functioning as spouses should in practical, even sexual ways, but their social/relational needs are actually being met by their child-of-choice.

If you’re an only child…Congratulations! You’ve won the enmeshed emotional incest jackpot. You’re now the pseudo spouse of both parents. It’s even worse if your family is cultish. Isolated. Friendless. I know because I devoted Tuesdays and Sundays to my father’s social needs and every Saturday and my rare days off from work to my mother’s social needs.

Conspicuous by its absence is…what is it called? Oh, right. “Me time.”

I’d always been close to my mother, preferring her sunny disposition to Dad’s depressions and rages, his I’m-so-funny act in lieu of authentic personality.

So it wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I also began to be entangled with my father. Looking back, it all began when I was about twenty-four and decided to learn to play fiddle. Where he had tried to play violin, I succeeded. He took out his jealousy by becoming controlling, making playing music full of angst for me.

Rather than suffer his attitude during father/daughter jam sessions, I turned the tables and made him play my violin instead. Screech, squawk. That’s when he started demanding I rush home from work every Tuesday evening to play music with him (“You can eat supper later.”) in the basement with an encore basement performance on Sunday afternoons, no matter how exhausted I was from my “Me Time” Sunday morning coffee shop jam session with friends.

Between tunes, he would always pat me…and complain about his wife. I was also struggling under her control of my life and menopausal vagaries.We had some in common. Over time,  I began to feel like Mom was the whole problem. That so many of our problems were caused by her. For the first time, the father I had never particularly liked (and still didn’t) had found a way to bond with me. He was a lot nicer by then, having been humbled and calmed by cancer.

Mom was suspicious. We could hear her quietly opening the basement door,or a heat vent to try to eavesdrop on our conversation. Gossip isn’t right but neither is eavesdropping. After our jam session, the interrogation would begin. “Were you talking about me?” she’d always me ask.

“No,” I’d say to spare her feelings.

Looking back now, I’m horrified…about everything. The enmeshed emotional incest is so obvious. I’m heartily ashamed of the part I played. My sole comfort is that I didn’t start it, I didn’t really realize what was going on and I would’ve been very happy to miss out on most of those music-gossip-and-paw-at-Lenora sessions. If I could turn back the clock and live my twenties differently, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Sometimes people angrily say, “Don’t be such a victim! Don’t blame your parents! Take responsibility.”

Thinking back, with the information and brainwashing at my disposal in my twenties, I would probably do the same things. But this one thing I do take responsiblity for. I feel very guilty and regret my role, enmeshed emotional incest.

That’s why I have such a fire in my belly to call out enmeshed emotional incest for the abuse and harm that it is. There’s nothing cute or loving about it. Even though the participants may be happy, or think they’re happy now, it’ll come back to bite ’em on the ass, just like all abuse.

Perhaps the biggest trigger that magnifies the harm of enmeshed emotional incest comes when the adult child/pseudo spouse meets someone wonderful and wants to have a normal romantic relationship with a spouse of their own. Oh the jealousy! Stand back and watch the sparks fly!

But that’s much too important of a topic to dive into now. I plan to delve into it next week so have your airsickness bag ready.

Thank you for reading and have good weekend!

Thank you for reading. For happier, more lighthearted fare, please visit my food blog, Reluctant Cook, Cheap Foodie.

Photo by mattchamb16