Post by lucy on Aug 18, 2004 6:27:22 GMT -8
Introductions are always hard - and part of what makes this so difficult is that I must remember to tell MY story of bieng married to a covert incest survivor. He has his own story - one that I am very familiar with but do not need to retell on his behalf. What I need to do here is tell my side of the story.
To say that I had no idea of the wierd dynamics within my husbands family of origin is an understatement. I was not clueless to the fact that the family was anything but healthy - I knew that his mother was an alcoholic who no longer drank (not really in recovery, more in denial) and that his father is still an active alcoholic.
What had me completely snowed was the "picture perfectness" that his mother spends her life painting - its sort of like a Norman Rockwell view on life where everything is "perfect" Oh how I have come to hate that term "perfect"
Visits to their home town have been boldly declared "perfect! couldn't have been a better visit!" on departure, but the reality of how my MIL felt about me and the visit turns out to be different later on. She has spent her life making an emotional spouse out of her son (in lieu of having a real emotional relationship with her own husband who is a traveling salesman/alcoholic) undoubtedly this has set my husband up for a role he cannot fullfil - that of keeping mother happy and trying not to upset his (too understanding wife)
For quite some time I thought that I must just be mean and evil - I mean, after all who can begrudge a gray haired old lady who has little pleasures in life........until I began to see the depth of her manipulative behavior which constantly pitted me against her - and how desperately my husband would try to not hurt her. I don't think that he intentionally set out to hurt me, but MOTHER always seemd to come out on top, and at times she reminded me of that, by pointing out how her son had put her first and then gloating about it.
I know that its not me that she has a problem with on a personal level. Im convinced that any woman in her sons life would get the same treatment. She most likely wishes that he would devote his life to caring for her - just as her brother did, caring for his own mother his entire life, to the degree that he never married. Emotional incest in this case is multi generational in the family. Because that was how she saw her own brother care for his mother, she thinks that is normal. On our wedding day, rather than embracing me and telling me how she felt like she was gaining a daughter, she told me that she felt like she was losing her son. She has openly admitted feeling jealous of me - and I gently told her that she had no need to be - her son was still her son and that being married to me didn't change that.
She has even conceeded that she has made my husband an emotional husband for herself. How did that realization not make her run screaming?, that she had done that to her child? I can't figure. Its so wrong to incest your son to the degree that it has caused him incredible struggles with intimacy on both an emotional and physical level. How selfish can a mother be, that she wants that from her son?. Mother's are supposed to protect their children and want the best for them. Not use them
One of my biggest struggles is not understanding how as a mother she would not wish for her son to have a big, exciting life. Not to mention the abuse and neglect of the childhood, which she denies, but how she would rather keep her son in a box, readily accessible for her needs, rather than seeing him succeed. I say this from the perspective of being a mother myself - I have a teenage daughter from a previous marriage, and know that my job in life is to launch her off to go and have a bigger, more exciting and rewarding life than me, and I have had a pretty good one so far. My wish for my daughter does not mean that she will fulfill MY dreams - rather that she will chase her own, fully aware that I support her in living her own life.
The uncovering of the covert incest has been a gradual, peeling at the onion process. And yes, onions make you cry along the way. All kinds of unhappy things have surfaced during this process, some of which I am not ready to write about, as the pain is still so deep. There have been several occasions where I really believed that there was no hope for my marriage, yet I have the incredible fortune of having chosen a marriage partner that despite the baggage, was willing to work on it. We are currently in joint therapy with an amazing therapist - and my husband remains comitted to working through this. Of course, it can't happen fast enough for me, and I must remind myself to be patient - the abuse and neglect that he experienced as a child went on for years - and shaped much of how he sees the world. Miracles do not happen overnight - I don't want to wake up in that Norman Rockwell painting - where everything is "perfect" because it does not happen that way, it would be nothing more than sweeping another generations worth of stuff under the rug. I am willing to support my husband as he does the work. He is an incredible man and we will get through this.
Thanks for reading
To say that I had no idea of the wierd dynamics within my husbands family of origin is an understatement. I was not clueless to the fact that the family was anything but healthy - I knew that his mother was an alcoholic who no longer drank (not really in recovery, more in denial) and that his father is still an active alcoholic.
What had me completely snowed was the "picture perfectness" that his mother spends her life painting - its sort of like a Norman Rockwell view on life where everything is "perfect" Oh how I have come to hate that term "perfect"
Visits to their home town have been boldly declared "perfect! couldn't have been a better visit!" on departure, but the reality of how my MIL felt about me and the visit turns out to be different later on. She has spent her life making an emotional spouse out of her son (in lieu of having a real emotional relationship with her own husband who is a traveling salesman/alcoholic) undoubtedly this has set my husband up for a role he cannot fullfil - that of keeping mother happy and trying not to upset his (too understanding wife)
For quite some time I thought that I must just be mean and evil - I mean, after all who can begrudge a gray haired old lady who has little pleasures in life........until I began to see the depth of her manipulative behavior which constantly pitted me against her - and how desperately my husband would try to not hurt her. I don't think that he intentionally set out to hurt me, but MOTHER always seemd to come out on top, and at times she reminded me of that, by pointing out how her son had put her first and then gloating about it.
I know that its not me that she has a problem with on a personal level. Im convinced that any woman in her sons life would get the same treatment. She most likely wishes that he would devote his life to caring for her - just as her brother did, caring for his own mother his entire life, to the degree that he never married. Emotional incest in this case is multi generational in the family. Because that was how she saw her own brother care for his mother, she thinks that is normal. On our wedding day, rather than embracing me and telling me how she felt like she was gaining a daughter, she told me that she felt like she was losing her son. She has openly admitted feeling jealous of me - and I gently told her that she had no need to be - her son was still her son and that being married to me didn't change that.
She has even conceeded that she has made my husband an emotional husband for herself. How did that realization not make her run screaming?, that she had done that to her child? I can't figure. Its so wrong to incest your son to the degree that it has caused him incredible struggles with intimacy on both an emotional and physical level. How selfish can a mother be, that she wants that from her son?. Mother's are supposed to protect their children and want the best for them. Not use them
One of my biggest struggles is not understanding how as a mother she would not wish for her son to have a big, exciting life. Not to mention the abuse and neglect of the childhood, which she denies, but how she would rather keep her son in a box, readily accessible for her needs, rather than seeing him succeed. I say this from the perspective of being a mother myself - I have a teenage daughter from a previous marriage, and know that my job in life is to launch her off to go and have a bigger, more exciting and rewarding life than me, and I have had a pretty good one so far. My wish for my daughter does not mean that she will fulfill MY dreams - rather that she will chase her own, fully aware that I support her in living her own life.
The uncovering of the covert incest has been a gradual, peeling at the onion process. And yes, onions make you cry along the way. All kinds of unhappy things have surfaced during this process, some of which I am not ready to write about, as the pain is still so deep. There have been several occasions where I really believed that there was no hope for my marriage, yet I have the incredible fortune of having chosen a marriage partner that despite the baggage, was willing to work on it. We are currently in joint therapy with an amazing therapist - and my husband remains comitted to working through this. Of course, it can't happen fast enough for me, and I must remind myself to be patient - the abuse and neglect that he experienced as a child went on for years - and shaped much of how he sees the world. Miracles do not happen overnight - I don't want to wake up in that Norman Rockwell painting - where everything is "perfect" because it does not happen that way, it would be nothing more than sweeping another generations worth of stuff under the rug. I am willing to support my husband as he does the work. He is an incredible man and we will get through this.
Thanks for reading