Dear Leanne:

I will post you twice this morning, first post will be about him, and the following post- about you.

First post is about “a Mama’s Boy” and his Mama: you were 18, he was 24. “I met him about seven years ago and we had a short love affair when he visited my hometown”, and then he went back to his mother, with whom he’s had a 24 year love affair by that point.

Five and a half years later, he returned to your hometown and swept you off your feet. “He came down and made me feel extremely loved, nothing like I’ve experienced before. He’s still very gentle and kind to me”- he had 24 years of experience making his mother feel as loved as she could possibly feel: she trained him to be very gentle and kind.

Two years after his short affair with you, at about 26, he moved in with her so to support her because she was “majorly depressed” following her divorce. They lived together, just him and her, for about 4 years before you joined them to a new location where she started a new job, “a fresh start for her”, and the three of you lived together for about a year.

While living together, you “were obligated to make sure she had plenty of attention”- he was trained to make sure that she got plenty of attention from him, and he delegated some of that responsibility to you.

“If we wanted to watch a movie it was all of us together. She began telling us we can’t go to certain restaurants without her because she wants to be there to experience it together”- she was experiencing a romantic/ intimate relationship with her son by proxy, meaning through a substitute, the substitute being you.

“She shows signs of manipulation and guilt tactics towards him and he’s so kind and loves her so much he has no idea”- it may be difficult to manipulate and guilt-trip a grown man who is not so inclined, but there is no easier job than that of a mother manipulating and guilt-tripping her young child. A manipulated young child grows up to be a manipulated man with..  no idea.

“It’s the weirdest dynamic I’ve ever seen.. Not only that they text 24/7 when they are away from each other. I love you-s, and miss you, constantly, it  kind of grosses me out”-

Emotional incest is indeed a weird dynamic and it is gross. Wikipedia has an entry on Covert Incest. It reads: “Covert incest, also known as emotional incest, is a type of abuse in which a parent looks to their child for emotional support that would be normally provided by another adult. The effects of covert incest on children when they become adults are thought to mimic actual incest, although to a lesser degree…Covert incest was defined in the 1980s as an emotionally abusive relationship between a parental figure and child that does not  involve incest or sexual intercourse, though it involves similar interpersonal dynamics as a relationship between sexual partners…

“Covert incest is described as occurring when a parent is unable or unwilling to maintain a relationship with another adult and forces the emotional role of a spouse onto their child instead. The child’s needs are ignored and instead the relationship exists solely to meet the needs of the parent”.

Dr. Kenneth Adams wrote two books on covert incest (books you might want to suggest to your boyfriend or ex-boyfriend): Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners, and When He’s Married to Mom: How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men Open Their Hearts to True Love and Commitment.

In Psychology Today. com, you can read an interview that a Robert Weiss, Ph.D., had with the author of these two books. Here is some of the interview: Weiss: “In the simplest terms, what is covert incest?”

Adams: “Covert incest describes a relationship between a parent and child in which the child feels more like a romantic partner. Typically the parent is motivated by the loneliness and emptiness of a troubled marriage, so he or she turns the child into a surrogate partner.. The boundaries are such that there is an incestuous feeling. The child feels used and trapped”.

Weiss: “In Silently Seduced, you use the word ‘icky’ to describe how covert incest feels…” Adams: “Yes, it just feels like it’s too close… it feels icky. Later on, covert incest victims tend to continue functioning in the role of a surrogate partner where they’re overly enmeshed with the parent.. even though they may have long forgotten the icky part that was present early on.. Basically, enmeshment describes the nature of the ongoing relationship; covert incest defines the earlier sexual inappropriateness… Basically, what I see with men, and women too, as a result of covert incest is that they never quite feel free to be who they are.. their relationships elsewhere are affected”.

– there is plenty you can find in the website: overcoming enmeshment. com/ dr- kenneth- m- adams (no spaces) including a list of zoom workshops.

In your second post you wrote: “That makes me extremely uneasy to think emotional incest. I knew this wasn’t normal. He also texts her every morning before work to tell her he loves her and to have a good day. I feel they are more in a relationship than him and I”- yes, they are more in a relationship, a very long term one, and a sick one.

“psychotherapy isn’t really an option for him”- maybe the zoom workshops in that website are an option for him (in-person workshops were cancelled because of Covid). Reading the books I mentioned or blogs in that website may be a beginning for him. But I don’t know if he will be willing to consider any of these things, and he may feel that because not everything in the books and blogs fit his experience exactly- then none of it applies to him.

anita