Covert incest

[randomletter_uckface]

Hi Everyone!

I'm so glad to be here, I got the link to the podcast from a friend in my support group and have been listening to a few episodes and still have a lot of episodes to look forward to.
I was struck by how covert incest is pointed out, it really opened my eyes to how this has affected me.
When Paul describes how SA- survivors often get promiscuous and pull away in serious relationships I felt like what I've been doing actually is a thing, that it counts.

My dad died when I was too young to remember and mum remarried 6 months later to my stepdad.
I was 7 when they divorced and my bossy mum decided that I was going to live at his house together with my two sisters every other week, my stepdad was a big people pleaser and too weak to protest so he just accepted it.
And thus I became "the woman of the house" since he was mentally a big child and a sloppy bachelor at heart who didn't understand kids needs.

Besides the physical, mental and emotional violence from both my mother and stepfather there were a lot of poor boundaries and I remember being stressed about feeling responsible and teaching him all the things that mom did for us kids. Like how to wash my sisters hair properly and getting in between his bad temper and my sisters, trying my best to guilt him into not being abusive.
It worked sometimes but when he got really angry his eyes turned black and he would just not care any more.

He was always in great need of reassurance and would monologue his thoughts and expect us to hum and agree or disagree, we had to join his internal discussion and he would do this relentlessly. A week of this and we were mentally exhausted from not being given any space to think or feel for ourselves as he would follow us around the house or come into our rooms and be like: "I'm thinking I should boil some potatoes or maybe I should take out the trash first, hmm.. it might be better if I start to marinade the meat. Do you think rosemary might be a good spice? I dunno.. no, we don't have any rosemary around the house. Maybe I should go and buy some?.." etc etc

I protested once as an adult and he flew into a fit of rage and screamed at me that it was just a normal conversation.
He would usually feel hurt when we tried to set boundaries as his intentions were good and he felt misunderstood and made to be a villain by us who perceived him differently.

He wouldn't buy new clothes for himself that often and in the mornings he would usually walk around the house in his too tiny briefs and an open bathrobe.
In the summertime he would be in the garden dressed like this and even have conversations with smirking neighbours, it was so embarrassing and I told him to put some clothes on but he didn't think much of it and said: "yeah yeah, I will, I just have to fix this thing first" or something in that manner and then he'd forget it 2 seconds later.

I found his porn when I was about 9 or 10, I can't remember.
It was a gold mine for my sex addiction.

My mum would try and stop me from touching myself in the shower as a kid and shame me greatly and blaming my yeast infections on my masturbation. So I had to suffer in silence from the burning and itching until I couldn't take it anymore and pleaded to go to the doctors. (and we did and it got resolved somehow, can't remember).
She would also tell my stepdad to interfere but he would stick to knocking on the door and not entering the bathroom, I was about 8-10 years old when this went on before I learned to be more discrete.

At 13 and 14 I remember two occasions when I wore tight fitting clothes on that enhanced my figure and my stepdad would compliment me greatly, it was so awkward as he never noticed when we got haircuts or removed braces.
I was wearing a short dress and high boots when I was 13 at my graduation and i remember sitting in a chair in the garden and him kneeling down and taking pictures of the family with me dressed like this. He did this especially because I "looked so nice" and I remember my sister and me giving each other a look and kinda joked about how excited he was all of a sudden.

I remember not wanting to wear too much of a cleavage or minding my ass crack if i bent down since he could often stare and not realise how inappropriate it was to get his eyes stuck on my private areas.
One time I had ill fitting jeans and a thong and I remember bending down to fix something and realizing that my butt probably was hanging out and that he was standing very still behind me. I didn't even have to turn around to know what he was staring at.
It always made me super uncomfortable and there were a lot of moments like this but I would often brush it off as I felt like he was so childish and innocent and didn't realize what he was doing.
As if good intentions are all that matters.

I've found nude pictures of him and women he have been with when I was snooping around as a kid, he used to develop his own pictures back in the day.
One of them shows a woman laying flat on her back and it doesn't look like she wants to be there as her head was turned away, she looked a lot like my mum.
It's very obvious to me that he is a voyeur.
Even in the later days when I was staying with him as an adult when I was between jobs I found a nude picture of his girlfriend on the computer, she's only a few years older than me. (He only had one laptop and we were allowed to share it and the picture was uploaded into the main gallery).
He also had a camera set up in the bedroom pointed to the bed. In his mind it didn't seem suspicious how the camera was angled, he was just "storing it in his bedroom".

My mum used to "serialdate" and I met a lot of men once that I never saw again from the age of 7 and up, there were periods of men coming and going and then some longer dry spells in between.
I hated all of her long term boyfriends intensely as they stole the attention she never gave me and she were often mad about this and how rude I was.

She would be abusive and a few days later she wanted a hug because she was feeling love towards me as I was her little doll but she was puzzled when I recoiled from her touch. Actually we both were and I didn't really understand why I didn't feel like hugging my own mother, no one stopped to think that the problem didn't lie with me.

Once when I was a kid we snuggled on the sofa and she put her hand far down on my belly, I remember pointing out how weirdly close to my private parts she was but she said something about it being a nice feeling to have a warm hand there. I remember feeling uncomfortable but holding out for a bit and then finding a reason to get up so that I could escape her touch.

When I was a teenager she got jealous and thought that I wanted to try and seduce her 50 year old boyfriend just because I happened to change into a short skirt when he was visiting. I used to wear short skirts a lot at one period that showed a little too much.
She was pleased when I recoiled with disgust at her claims.

She would often shame me and my sister for dressing like whores and not thinking about the signals that we sent out to boys (as if it were our fault if we got assaulted).
But one time she had a date that stayed one night and only left the fumes of their lovemaking behind, I remember my sense of victory that mum got played and that she was no better than us.

I could probably go on but I don't want to rehash all this too much.
I'm thankful that the podcast has made me realize that my feelings were valid and that it wasn't nothing.
I've often formed my relationships based on good intentions as it seemed to me that intentions were all that mattered and I actually pardoned a guy who raped me last year because I knew that he meant well deep down and happened to make a mistake due to being impulsive.

But as one of my former dysfunctional friends once said: "The path to hell is paved with good intentions".