What do I call this?

June 5, 2011 1:44 PM

Some things happened to me when I was a child and I'm not sure what to call them but I think they were abusive?

For a long time I have had problems with sexual intimacy. I dissociate every time I'm sexually intimate with someone else. Every time. My mind just sort of goes somewhere else. I explained it to a partner once as watching myself feel pleasure instead of actually experiencing it.

This is me and I'm not sure anymore that I wasn't abused. (I am, however, confident in my sexual orientation, so please don't suggest otherwise.)

My parents were divorced when I was a child, maybe around the time I was entering early puberty. I was closer to my dad than I was to my mom, and I remember he was the parent I told when I started getting weird body hair. After their divorce, when he moved out and I stayed with my dad, he got . . . weird . . . sometimes. Walked around in his underwear a lot, had a not-well-hidden stash of porn and a very big selection of Jack Olsen-type sex and true crime books. He would sometimes try to get me to sleep in my underwear, too, even though we never did that before then. Or sometimes he, would, like, get in bed with me. Not touch me, but get in bed with me even if I didn't want him to, and fall asleep. Or hugs lasted too long. Or he would ask me if other men (like the building super my sibling and I liked to go visit--totally innocent) were touching me. (This is not, like, recovered memory stuff. I never forgot that this stuff happened. I just never, ever talk about it and didn't associate it with my sexual health.)

Then he died, so nothing else happened. Sometimes I'm glad he died when he did because I'm afraid it would have gotten worse.

Was this stuff abusive? I mean, would you call it that? Am I making a big deal out of nothing? I'm afraid maybe something worse happened that I really don't remember, or maybe this was bad enough. (Yeah, I'm in therapy, we're talking about it, etc. I've been working really, really hard.)

Throwaway/alias: [e-mail]

posted by anonymous to Human Relations (19 answers total)

Your father created an environment where you felt objectified and unsafe. You were relieved when he died, and you may feel guilty about that feeling that way.

By the way, early puberty is not exactly childhood.

It would probably behoove you to keep talk about your feelings surrounding these experiences. Also, you might find James Ellroy's memoir "My Dark Places" interesting. He wished his mother dead, she was murdered, and it took him decades to deal with his conflicted feelings about this.

For what it's worth, I would call what happened to you abuse.
posted by Scram at 2:01 PM on June 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

I would consider that abuse, and I don't think you are making a big deal out of nothing. I hope the therapy helps you with this.
posted by Specklet at 2:23 PM on June 5, 2011

I can't really define abuse with a solid white line, but this was definitely not normal parental behavior. That you're already talking about it in therapy is a great thing, but you'll need to convince yourself that this ok now, and that nobody's going to hurt you. A therapist can't do it for you. Recovered memories are no longer the point here - the ultimate goal is to start being your real self and loving your current life and intimacy.
posted by Gilbert at 2:24 PM on June 5, 2011

Am I making a big deal out of nothing?

It makes me sad when people ask if they're overreacting to something because it tells me that they cannot trust themselves - almost always, it turns out they were betrayed by someone else when they were young. Your father betrayed you, and now you can't trust your own assessment of the situation. It doesn't matter what you call it - abuse, inappropriateness, objectification, incest - your feelings are real and valid, and the result it has had on your life is real. You do not need to justify your reaction. Your feelings - whatever they are - are OKAY.
posted by desjardins at 2:46 PM on June 5, 2011 [58 favorites]

I'm unsure whether this crosses the line into abuse or not. However I think it's a pretty obvious trust violation. In some things you couldn't trust your father that he was only doing things for your well being. He did things that were uncomfortable, and the imbalance of power between parent/child prevented you from being able to address the situation (even if you knew how to address it being rather young). And now you have intimacy issues and probably still feel uneasy when situations come up that feel like how you remember.

I've always felt that emotions create their own validity. If you felt threatened by something, even if you don't feel like there was anything serious to be threatened about (ie nothing really happened), it doesn't mean that you can't feel how you feel or that you had no reason to feel to that way. It's more like you feel an emotional fact. This is how you feel and so whats next?
posted by everyday_naturalist at 3:11 PM on June 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

That is weird behavior. Imagine another adult coming by and seeing any of that - would they have thought it harmless?
posted by elektrotechnicus at 3:13 PM on June 5, 2011

I'm a mandated reporter, and if a kid I was seeing in therapy told me that was happening to her, while it doesn't seem (from the info you gave and my state's reporting laws) to be a 100% black-and-white "you must report" situation, I can't imagine myself NOT reporting it to try and protect that child from anything further, or from an escalation of that undoubtedly inappropriate/violating behavior by a parent.

But as desjardins said above, it doesn't matter what anyone else calls it--it's how you are affected by it. It was IN NO WAY your fault that this happened, and it is just not fucking fair (um, clinical term) that you have to be the one to work so hard to overcome the effects. You can begin to take more and more control over how you feel about this, with time and support (from a therapist, from your partner, from whomever you choose to talk to about it). Keep up the good (hard) work.
posted by so_gracefully at 3:15 PM on June 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

If it makes you uncomfortable and it's clearly borderline/creepy behavior at the very best, I give you whatever permission you think you need to call it abusive/wrong/whatever. There are situations where other people might try to convince someone that things they're fine with are actually abusive, but this isn't one of those times, so I think you have nothing to fear form trusting your feelings and categorizing it as such if that helps you.
posted by SMPA at 3:17 PM on June 5, 2011

What stands out for me is that his behavior changed. It would have been just as simple for your dad to continue not sleeping in your bed, wearing all of his clothes around you, and hiding his porn/sexually explicit material. IMO it was neglect and abuse--subjecting you to inappropriate materials/sexualized situations. Something that makes you uncomfortable matters and is never "nothing". Parents are supposed to protect their children from many things--even if this was just weirdness, he should have taken steps not to have subjected you to such.
posted by marimeko at 3:18 PM on June 5, 2011

I can empathise with the questioning and doubt that accompanies you when you're trying to decide if you've been abused or not. It always seems so clear cut in the movies! And life is so messy and ambiguous. Also, you might be afraid that if you call something abuse, others will disbelieve you or your feelings about what's happened.

I think there can be a lot of strength in acknowledging abuse, in that it lets you say to yourself: "Something happened that hurt me, perhaps continues to hurt me, and was serious."

For me, running the sentence, "I was abused" through my head felt like a way of letting myself admit (and accept) that what happened - whatever it was exactly that happened - was not okay. It was a Bad Thing, I don't have to try and trivialise it, brush it under the rug, or pretend that my conflicted, up-and-down feelings about this thing are black and white, subdivide-able little plots. I'm not in a court of law, I'm not sending anyone to jail; I'm just acknowledging, in myself, that something happened to hurt me, and that I'm still not really okay about it.

I think that's the best part of thinking about something as abuse. I felt like I was free, in a way, to finally feel my feelings, despite the doubt or whatever. Sharing this information more widely with my family etc has been a far less rewarding experience. Reactions have not been worst-case scenario, but they haven't been... well, I don't know what I wanted, but I haven't got it whatever it is for various, understandable reasons. This is still something I have a lot of trouble with and this is the first time I've really ever spoken about it publicly.

I guess what I'm saying is that if it helps you, call it what you want or need to. Don't expect everyone to agree with you (even if you desire it). For me, it helped me move on from a black hate and hole in my life regarding that person to a - in some ways more troubling - ambiguous and tentative future. It's helped me put it in the past tense, I guess you could say. I was abused, and now I'm not, I'm something else. Don't know what yet, but I'll get there.
posted by smoke at 3:53 PM on June 5, 2011 [6 favorites]

This behavior certainly was inappropriate and irresponsible, and you're not making a big deal out of nothing, as it obviously affected you deeply. I don't think that I would personally jump straight to definitely classifying the behavior as described to be sexually abusive, but then again, I don't have the full story, I'm not your therapist, and I'm not you.

I think that a huge red flag is whether this behavior was part of an overall manipulative streak regarding your self-image. The suspicion about other men touching you while he was crossing lines of intimacy/privacy sticks out to me -- if he was keeping you confused about your own instincts and reliant on his skewed view (maybe to encourage codependency), I'd certainly consider that emotionally abusive.

Or maybe you'll decide based on the greater context of your father-daughter relationship that he was just confused and emotionally fucked up following the divorce, and you were an unfortunate recipient of some collateral damage.

But if it was abuse, you're entitled to call it abuse -- you don't need to suffer the Worst Abuse Ever to apply for a license to use the term. Likewise, if you don't feel like it meets your definition of "abuse," it doesn't mean that it was no big deal and you're obligated to let it roll off your back as nothing. Regardless, I can imagine that this could affect a person's sexual health and views of intimacy, depending on how it fits into other views like expectations for what emotional engagement during sex is supposed to feel like, comfort with vulnerability, etc.
posted by desuetude at 3:53 PM on June 5, 2011 [5 favorites]

Again, it doesn't matter what we call it. I know you would like a clear-cut answer, "Yes, this was abuse."

Because what you are hoping comes from this is, "...and that is why you dissociate during sex, and once you tell your therapist about it, you can just do X and you will be better!"

And I wish I could give you that solution, but people are generally more complex than just x=y.

What I am sure of is that if you feel that you were abused, that's all that matters. I personally see some red flags in the way your Dad acted with you (the sleeping in the same bed, too-long hugs and let's all wear underwear especially), and processing your feelings about that would be a healthy start to figuring out what's up with these emotional barriers you put up during sex.
posted by misha at 4:19 PM on June 5, 2011

What do I call this?

The term of art you are looking for is emotional incest^, also called covert incest or psychic incest (subsitute sexual abuse if incest is not appropriate for a case). Even if no actual sexual contact takes place, this describes cases where a parent[al figure] inappropriately elevates a child to a peer role in their relationship. Obviously, in many ways your dad used you to provide the comfort of a partner he could not find. This was something you weren't prepared for and struggling with it as an adult is not something you need to be ashamed of.

Any competent therapist in the field should be able to recognize this and offer treatment options. At the very least, I have given you google terms to exploit.
posted by dhartung at 4:25 PM on June 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

Was this stuff abusive? I mean, would you call it that?

I would call it abusive. When you say "Sometimes I'm glad he died when he did because I'm afraid it would have gotten worse," that is a big sign to me that you were being abused.

I keep writing and erasing things, because nothing seems as important to me as that one line. Most preteen and teenage girls do not feel a sense of sexual relief when their fathers die. Most fathers successfully create environments in which their daughters do not feel sexually afraid of them. The fact that you felt sexually afraid of your father is abusive of itself.

Whatever was actually going on in his head about the inappropriate states of undress and the too-accessibly porn and the strange questions and the inappropriate touching and the trying to get you to wear less clothing when you slept and sleeping with you against your will, you'll never know. But he wasn't doing it for your benefit; he was doing it to meet his own needs. He may have believed that it wasn't harming you; he may even have thought some of it was for your own good (such as the strange questions.) But he didn't go to sleep in your bed -- his pubescent daughter's bed -- when you didn't want him there for your benefit.

He might have been horrified to learn that you weren't sure where he would stop. He might have been intentionally or unintentionally getting you used to having your sexual boundaries crossed because he was getting ready to go further.

But whatever was happening, it was sexual, it was wrong, and it happened to meet his needs in violation of yours.

I don't think you have to call it abusive if that isn't useful to you right now, but I think it was. I think you were hurt. I think you were scared. I think that if a pubescent girl described this behavior to you, you wouldn't tell her she was making a big deal out of things.

If it is important to you, I was unambiguously sexually abused as a child. My personal experience is that I thought that what was happening to me was "normal-ish". I was an adult before I really understood that most teenage boys don't try to fuck their little sisters. One of the things abuse does is screw with your sense of what's normal.
posted by Iphigenia at 4:30 PM on June 5, 2011 [13 favorites]

Mod note: From the OP:

Thanks, everyone. Just actually explaining all of that helped give me some clarity and helped me with two other salient details:

that within a year or so of my dad's death I found myself very, very close to play-acting sexual activity with a younger sibling--though I remember thinking very clearly, "this is not right" and stopping before anything happened. I was embarrassed about this for a long time, but I sort of just realized that that kind of thing is what an abused child would do.

and, after the divorce, I got really, really fat. I was already overweight, but I gained A LOT of weight. I'm sure some of that was about the divorce, but I think some of it was also about this stuff, too.

He was sloppy about his boundaries before this, but it definitely started after my parents had acknowledged that they were separating.

Thanks for your help. I can't say that enough.

posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:09 PM on June 5, 2011

Your question reminded me of another one where the poster had really similar-sounding issues with his mother. This was absolutely abuse.
posted by nanojath at 6:39 PM on June 5, 2011

If dhartung's suggestion strikes a chord for you and you're interested in more reading material on this topic, try Toxic Parents and Emotional Incest Syndrome. Believe me, what you're wondering about is out there, written in black and white. Your father may have had emotional/sexual/intimacy needs that were going unmet, but it was still his responsibility to figure this out in an adult way -- not act them out with his daughter.

Keep doing what you're doing - finding truths in your life, even difficult truths. Believing this stuff is normal is part of the lie; realizing you were safer once he was gone is true.

If you want more suggestions for materials, feel free to Mefi-mail me. Good luck OP!
posted by human ecologist at 5:55 AM on June 6, 2011

I do think this meets the definition of abuse. It is unambiguously emotional abuse, for one thing. I also think it amounts to sexual abuse. However I can see why you would be reluctant to describe it that way as it evokes something less ambiguous and you might visualize trying to explain it and then having the imaginary person object "yeah but what actually happened?" Curse those imaginary people... but this raises a very important issue about the language we use to talk about these things and how use of language can be unfair to those who've been maltreated.

But that's not exactly your problem to solve. You could say - if only to the imaginary people (I argue with them all the time, the awkward sods) that your father was "inappropriate" with you. Then you would be saying something unambiguously true, and evocatively creepy. I always find that having a brief description of an issue is very important to my peace of mind.

So yes, abuse, but you could also usefully describe it as inappropriate. Fathers are NOT supposed to be "inappropriate" with their daughters and calling it that really gets across how very abnormal it was.

So sorry you were put through this. One day you will be healed.
posted by tel3path at 11:44 AM on June 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

I do envision that similar things could happen within a healthy father-daughter relationship -- as a dad struggles with his 'baby' becoming a woman and/or a sexual being in her own right. For instance, I remember putting my hand on my niece's chest, or nibbling her ear lobes -- these were normal expressions of affection when she was little -- but I remember the day that I realized she was becoming a grown up and these things were now creepy. When she was 2 or 4 it was cute, when she was 8 or 9, it was weird . . . but to me she wasn't a random 9 yr old, she just my 'baby niece'. I don't know if I'm explaining it well, but I know it's even harder with my own kids -- they are crawling and you don't even dream of being able to close the bathroom door lest they get into god-knows-what and you're sucked into daily life and years pass and you suddenly realize that your 'baby' not only doesn't need to access you when you're in the bathroom, but they SHOULDN'T come into the bathroom when you're in there. So I think there can be a weirdness that has to be worked out within the parent's mind during this whole growing up process.

However.

The stack of porn is just wrong. The books are questionable.

But the big thing to me is that you were afraid it would get worse. I see that as your gut screaming that something very wrong was happening -- the actions could be viewed on paper as innocent or merely quirky, but something inside of you saw the nuances and the big picture and was afraid. Some people may judge, but no one else can have the full perspective you had . . . and while every family is unique, being afraid of your father's behavior getting worse is not within the confines of healthy. It was inappropriate, and I think the fear was a sense that it was out of control.
I'm sorry this happened.
posted by MeiraV at 7:17 PM on June 11, 2011