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Confusion in early family relationships
can lead to confusion throughout life, and
burden the lives of partners and children. Here is help for relationship
disappointments.
Solutions for Covert Emotional Incest Part 2
Go to: Emotional Incest Part 1
Covert emotional incest is not just immature love or pampering children.
Emotional incest means that a relative loves a child as if the child were a
partner, forcing the child to behave more like a partner.
This usually happens when adults cannot to fulfill their needs for
adult companionship and adult love through quality
communication and mutual respect. Instead they hope that immature children will
fulfill their needs. This is often done thoughtlessly, but the consequences for
the children can be heavy.
Covert emotional incest is especially dangerous when the parents lack a
healthy partnership, and seems most common if a child lives with a separated
adult of the opposite sex.
When Parents NEED Children
Relatives who use children as a source of love are trying to
fulfill their emotional needs. When this happens, adults
usually bond to a child of the opposite sex ... it seems that a father more often bonds to
his
youngest daughter while a mother more often bonds to her oldest son. Many other
combinations are possible, for example between siblings or an uncle bonding
with a nephew or niece.
If a parent feels rejected or alienated, he or she might focus on a child. Sometimes an entangled parent-child
couple may treat the other parent as a child, especially if the other parent
is immature or sick.
Children who try to support adults emotionally share feelings and
responsibilities, help decision making and may care for other children.
Children who feel like substitutes for adult partners
often develop complications that last for years - if not for life.
Such children often seem to lose their personal identities. Younger
children may try to become special or perfect, while adolescents
and teenagers may become rebellious and spiteful. Some children appear to
develop an existential internal conflict.
(Bipolar Disorder seems to be an example of this).
Most parents who abuse children in this way try to maintain these bonds,
even when the children are adults. They use different types of manipulation
and often show jealousy or contempt to the adult child's partners. They
may try to alienate their children's partners or make those partners look bad.
Consequences
Expect children who are expected to repay their birth and
care to feel enormous guilt, although such feelings are usually too strong (and
too dangerous) to be considered consciously. The feelings become taboo! Such
guilt is compounded if the child takes a wrong position in the family -
displacing a parent.
People who were raised by entangled parents usually consider this kind of
behavior normal and justified. As adults they rarely set boundaries or search
for emotional maturity ... until they have suffered enough.
These
patterns seem to be more common in relationships between mothers and sons, than
between fathers and daughters or other combinations. It might be that in the past
men were more distant from their families, seeking recognition and approval outside,
while women were bonded within their families, looking for emotional support in them.
It may have been rare to share emotional support with a partner.
Many women confirmed that they experienced this when the partner and
relationship were subjected to their partners' mothers. Other common
consequences are that a male partner may:
- spend too much time with his mother
- allow his mother to criticize or humiliate his partner
- allow his mother to be overly and rudely involved in their partnership
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My mother gave me life and she has priority over everybody
else ... anybody who dares
to say anything against my mother must leave my house! (Milan,
Italy)
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How About Your Partner?
If you are in a relationship with a bonded person, you already know
the consequences to your family and marriage. Ask your partner about
the feeling of owing something to parents; and how it would feel if he or
she stopped trying to please parents and expressed true feelings to them.
And, if you are a partner of such a person, research your own habits. What
attracted you to this person? What did you stay? People who are bonded to parents
are usually strongly attracted to people with similar habits, and
in a marriage may exchange the roles of parent and child with each other.
Over time, however, they may become irritated by their partner's behavior
(You are just like my father / mother!) Or they feel so much guilt for
leaving their parents that they emotionally withdraw and sabotage their own
intimacy. This leads to games of victimization and dependency ... patterns of
suffering that are usually passed on to the next generation.
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What would you have to believe to partner an adult
who acts like a child?
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If you wish to change, consider emailing us. A first step is to take
responsibility for yourself and your own happiness. If a partner
definitely does not want to grow up, there
is not much that you can do, except perhaps to explore why you want
to stay in this relationship. Or wait, pray and hope.
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Maybe ask : "What will my life look like in a
few years if I ignore this?"
and "What will my life look like if I invest in my own maturity?"
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If covert emotional incest is ignored - whole families may suffer. We often
dissolve emotional incest between parents and children. Two common symptoms are
feeling special - people believing without evidence that they are
extraordinary or exceptional; and identity loss - lost access to
qualities, resources and emotions. These consequences are often accompanied by
addictive relationships and
passive aggression.
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Many people take drugs to try to solve the consequences of
emotional incest. |
Guidelines for Abusive Parents
If you used children to fulfill your emotional needs,
deliberately or not, your children may feel entangled with you. They
may sabotage their lives and withdraw into distractions or depression.
If they realize exactly what you did to them - with whatever your good
intentions - they may avoid you.
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People who fixate on their
parents may be unable to maintain healthy partnerships!
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Entangled people often feel overwhelmed with unpleasant
emotions and self-criticism ... or empty. Children often recreate their parents' drama
unless they can free
themselves of those habits, beliefs and emotional baggage.
They may believe that it's normal to feel so bad, and that most
other people feel the same way. They may feel discouraged, and resigned to living with their
problems. They may fear that misery or even insanity awaits them or that they
are somehow destined to feel alone and misunderstood.
Don't ask or expect emotionally abused children to
forgive their abusers.
Does any of this resonate with you? We coach people to
clarify their relationships, sort out their emotions, redefine their beliefs,
recover their sense of self and build healthy relationships.
Do you want to free yourself of your parents' emotional baggage?
Online Coaching
for Emotional Incest
Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Kosjenka Muk
2003-2012 All rights reserved.
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