rethinking "available"

[focusedbody]

Thanks to a lot of hard work and support here, I'm starting make progress on speaking with my family.

In the back of mind, however, is a spectre that I can't quite release or make peace with. Part of it has to do with how I understand women. I hope that respondents will please excuse my inability to say more about that right now. It's probably because of earlier deficits in my development.

What looms for me is what happens when I bring up the subject of covert incest with my mother with other women. A couple of times that I have done so, the response has been understanding but with a particular perspective. When I describe how my father was allowed to have other lovers in his life, I get the response that I was therefore "available" to my mother to fulfill her needs.

This is of course disturbing and distressing. It's also difficult to stay grounded in the specifics of the interaction and relationship.

What's good is that my mother and I are at a point now where emotions feel a lot safer. I have support to stay present with her and make sense of what is happening, although there is still more to explore and understand.

What would help now is to keep working on reframing my description of the problem. This might include finding a response to the perception that I was "available" to her. Perhaps what I am looking for is some kind of healthy response to that perspective, something that engages who women are without hostility.

Any and all comments are welcome. I tend to stay focused on the problem and deaf to anything else.

FB

 

[DaiseyLady]

FB,

I would not think any compassionate woman would use the term "available" as if she were holding you accountable for said availability.

 

[Mishka95673]

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[focusedbody]

Mishka95673:

Thanks for your thorough and thoughtful discussion.

Your thoughts on forgiveness are very apt and useful. I agree that it's difficult to forgive when you feel confused. Understanding and sorting through what happened aids the healing and forgiving process. That is basically what I meant when I stressed the importance of staying "grounded in the specifics of the interactions and relationship". By working through what is understood, it becomes easier to empathize and forgive. Recently I have begun to feel a place where this might lie.

To answer the question of what "available" could mean is helped by your options. I would say that most specifically the answer is 3. I was my mother's pillow.

That being said, there is a danger of trying to nail this on the head too much. For one thing, my mother would never fully admit her grief. I think it might fly in the face of what she understood as her strength. It would follow from that if there was a need for comfort, it would be expressed unconsciously.

My trouble has been that there are times when she seems to have little knowledge of who I am. It is in these moments when our relationship, especially our physical relationship, has been wrought with tremendous anxiety.

For this reason, your first answer could also be relevant. There is an area in which the anxiety between us takes on a sexual nature, as if she expects something from me. While you describe that as "unusual and unexpected", I will be bold enough to say that you are in some ways inaccurate in that perspective.

There is in our culture a kind of lack of understanding of childhood sexuality. We behave as if we know exactly who children are and what they need. What we don't do is discuss in a healthy way the sexual energy between adults and children. I think we're not sure how to talk about it.

While you might believe it is outrageous to consider that an adult's sexual needs fall to children as you state, that way of thinking may not be as old as you suppose. Even now, more and more is being understood about childhood sexuality. For this reason, to assume that we can easily grasp all of how a parent and child interact on a sexual level may be presumptuous. I think it is better to remain a little more open-minded and try to get the full picture.

For instance, while trying to be describe abuse in simple terms can help, it is also good to be open to the idea that the abuse is constellated (a term that I came upon here). To me that means that there are multiple abuses of different kinds in the midst of a relationship with one person. There is more than one kind of interaction that becomes problematic.

The fact that injuries can be constellated seems consistent with result being a dissociative identity disorder. More than one aspect of the psyche is affected. Repairing the wound involves looking at the variety of injuries. Acknowledging the pain of how they complicate one another is helped by the acknowledgment that there is constellation present. Only then does it become possible to accept the difficulty of looking at them one at a time.

I hope my honesty doesn't put you off. Your description else where of how a relationship is full of different kinds of interactions and protections of vulnerabilities is a god-send. I've been thinking this way for a while and am beginning to see that close relationships involve these kind of dynamics.

One reason for this post is to understand the deeper meaning behind some of the things we all want to protect in each other. The more I understand it, the better chance I may have in undoing the distance.

FB

 

[tbkkfile]

During the period of my CSA outside of the family home my parents marriage fell apart, my Father continued to live in the same house, my mother would bring home her boyfriends and my Father would go to bed and leave them downstairs. I was expected to live almost a double life, with my Father part of the time and with my Mother and her latest boyfriend the other (One of her boyfriends was also one of my perps).

During these times my Mother son relationship became very unhealthy, like you FB I was available to my mother. I've never had the courage to tell anyone other than my T and part of it to my wife, I feel soiled by it.

I try to make excuses I guess on her behalf in many ways to minimise what happened, we still visit and she still makes inappropriate comments (she's 87) I guess I will never square it with her and at some point she will die so why ruin the last years for her - I was trained well FB

I'm not sure that I can give you an answer about your perception of being available to her as every time I try it sounds like I'm minimising it, providing excuses to something that should never have happened to a child, to put it bluntly, my Mother was an adult the blame lies with her.

All I can say FB is that I truly understand how you feel, sorry it's not more constructive.

Wishing you peace and healing

David

 

[Mishka95673]

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