Understanding the Abuse of Victimhood While Showing Compassion to the Abused

Is there any way to measure the significance of the "ripple effect" of those things published on the internet? When Pastor Wade Burleson first posted an article on his blog about the SBC indirectly slapping my hands for associating their professors with the more extreme followers of patriarchy/patriocentricity (of which Botkin Syndrome is a peripheral tangent), I had no idea how far the ripples would flow across the surface of the internet. Bob Allen wrote an article on Ethics Daily.com and then followed with another, noting my criticisms of Ware's teaching. And the ripples keep moving right along.

Then Dear Dr. Ware spoke in Denton, Texas, stating that women who do not submit properly to their husbands (a concept that could be interpreted thousands of ways) bear some culpability in their husbands actions if they are subjected to domestic violence. Ethics Daily.com published several articles/ responses to this latest teaching. I expect Christian ministers to say that there is a ZERO TOLERANCE policy concerning spousal abuse, in our society but particularly within Christian marriages. Hurting one's spouse physically out of anger should never be tolerated, particularly in light of the popular Ephesians chapter 5. But Ware did something quite subtle but powerful here: he not only opened a door of tolerance for such behavior in Christian marriage but also for Biblical justification of that behavior.

More ripples ensue. Lyn Harris hosts a blog on the Seattle Post Intelligencer website and took note of Bruce Ware's statements in Denton. She noted me in a blog post in association with this issue and offered me an opportunity to post some blog pieces there as she explores the topic of Domestic Violence. The responses have been very encouraging overall, but someone who appears to have had a bitter divorce began to protest in response to this blog item. I mentioned a particular quote (one that appears somewhere on this blog) from Patricia Love, noting her book on the site. This individual offered his response to the title of Love's book:

Posted by Anti DV at 7/18/08 5:05 p.m.

Wow. Another "syndrome" enabling women to further their careers as "victims". What ever happened to taking control of your own life? I'm not saying that it's easy, but life isn't easy, nor is it fair to both men and women. The difference is that men do something about bad situations without making "victims" out of themselves and creating yet another syndrome where the courts and their appointed "professionals" all make their money and extract their blood under the guise of being "legal". Other options? Try getting yourself out of the situation through already provided resources.

This is a total crock.

If you are interested, you can read his other entries that speak of what sounds very much like a bitter divorce wherein he was not satisfied with the process or the outcome. I would like to post my response to him here, as it addresses many problems that people have with the terminology if not the topic in general. It echos the comment to which I responded in an earlier post HERE. I don't particularly like the terminology or the topic either.

My Response:

"Emotional Incest" is not anything "new" but a specific aspect of less than ideal families characterized by bad circumstances, secret keeping to maintain an outward appearance of perfection, very disproportionate balances of power requiring that family members suffer in an attempt to keep the system going in order to survive, etc. It is a core experience that results in a host of family problems including physical and/or sexual abuse (an outworking of emotional patterns), any addictions, eating disorders, cutting (self-injury), etc. I picked up this literature, posting excerpts from authors on this subject, because of the religious group that gleans from the writings of Bruce Ware and his associates.

I've been overwhelmed by the response from a group for grown children who were homeschooled under some of these beliefs, from those associated with an "underground railroad" of sorts who helps get young women out of these Christian homes (where girls in their 20s are not permitted to leave their homes, drive cars, etc.), and from a newer group of homeschooled girls where they are required to be the "helpmeets" of their fathers. They have no viable means of supporting themselves if they leave and are raised much like the FLDS women. They have been taught from the cradle that leaving these families will destroy them because they will be welcoming God's wrath against them and are eternally damned. They have little perspective or standard of comparison to challenge what they have been taught. If you have no personal knowledge of anything such as this, FANTASTIC! You've been blessed with a life that is free of these terrible experiences, but I don't believe that it gives you licence to dismiss those who have suffered these varying degrees of abuse.

I agree with you that there are abuses of the term "victim." Part of the problem rests with the courts that allow such things to be very wrongfully exploited. This is very much its own type of abuse and can be just as deplorable as the abuse raked upon the many women I've worked with, sitting with them in emergency rooms, courts and their otherwise idyllic appearing homes. Your experience bears significance and should not go unaddressed and unmentioned, but not at the expense of all those who have suffered legitimate physical and sexual abuse, let alone at the hands of their husbands or partners.

Both the example of domestic violence and the unjustified exploitation of "victimhood" is a gross miscarriage of justice, but I don't believe it is an either/or issue. Addressing the problem of Christian ministers remotely legitimizing spousal abuse, however remote his listeners may find his message, does not and should not in any way diminish you because of what you experienced.

May you find your own healing. I also hope that in so doing, you also come to realize that you are not so different from those whom you have targeted here, holding them responsible for injustices that have nothing to do with them. You have more in common with them than you realize. If you are speaking of yourself regarding someone "playing the victim" in court, then consider that you were as helpless in that courtroom and without any recourse as was the woman who I spoke with yesterday who was molested by her father and two brothers when she was 13 - 15 years of age. She was able to seek help outside of her home through the help of a Christian ministry called "New Life for Girls." I'm sorry that you were not able to find the resources that would help you at the time (provided that you are speaking of yourself). There are people who can help you if you are willing to look for them and find them. And I pray that you do. [Read the blog and additional responses HERE.]

As disturbing as this topic of spousal abuse proves, I am also bothered by something else here. Lyn Harris who afforded me the opportunity to write on her blog is not a believer. She actually professes to be a feminist. She studies and writes on this topic as well as on the subject of grief and loss (and she has a New Zealand travel blog as well, so please visit if you are interested). When she first contacted me she noted that she has Christian friends who have left their churches because of the effects of these extreme views about women.

It saddens me, almost as much as this topic, to realize that someone who is not a Christian and a feminist to boot has more compassion to offer abused women in Christian marriages than these "culture warriors" in the SBC. I never dreamed that I'd live to see such a day. How my heart breaks!

The Adustments that the Rest of the Family Makes: Keeping the Dysfunctional Family in Balance

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From “The Emotional Incest Syndrome” by Patricia Love with Jo Robinson.

How Emotional Incest Affects Family Members:

From pages 56 – 72:

In this continuing drama, the actions of one family member elicit reactions from everyone else, and every plot development has implications for the entire group.

In enmeshed families such as the ones I've been describing, the interplay between individuals is greatly exaggerated... “the drama where everyone loses.”

• Blood Ties
• Invasive Parent
• Left Out Child
• Left Out Spouse
• Shadow Parent
• Spouse of the Chosen Child
• Inlaws

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Blood Ties

[Describes a research project demonstrating measurable levels and Free Fatty Acids in the blood regarding how children absorb family tension. Salvador Minuchin's study demonstrated that the enmeshed child's physiology became altered as evidenced by the FFA response, coinciding with child's sustained and persistent anxiety level as well. Children without enmeshment did not demonstrate any physiologic response.]

The Invasive Parent

Viewed from the outside, the Invasive Parent – the one enmeshed with the child – appears to be in an enviable position. As we've seen, the parent gets many of his needs met by the Chosen Child who – unlike a spouse – rarely makes demands, criticizes, or challenges the parent to “relate.” The child merely accepts what is given. If Daddy is a little self-centered or irritable or

hits the bottle once too often – so be it. That's the way Daddy is. The child has no basis for comparison.

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An Invasive Parent who is married also gets to enjoy the convenience of having a spouse. Even though there is some unresolved tension in the marriage – otherwise the parent would not turn to the child – there is a semblance of a relationship. For example, the couple may have sexual relations, share household and parenting responsibilities, and have occasional moments of intimacy. When there is more substance to the marriage, the Invasive Parent appears to be sitting in the catbird seat. He or she basks in the adoration and companionship of a child and reaps many of the rewards of being married as well...

At first, it may look like this man has the best of both worlds. But it must be remembered that he, like all parents who are overly bonded with a child, initially turned to his daughter because of a lack of more suitable companionship. After his divorce from his first wife, he turned to his daughter to help ease his pain and loneliness. And even though living with his daughter seemed to satisfy his needs, it was not fully rewarding to him, or he would not have remarried. Like all

parents who are enmeshed with a child, he had an unsatisfied desire, whether conscious or unconscious, for a more encompassing union with another adult. But when he acted on this desire and married for the second time, he had to contend with his wife's jealously. He was being forced to choose between the two people he loved most in the world. He was sitting in the hot seat, not the catbird seat!...

Besides juggling competing claims from the spouse and the child, the Invasive Parent ultimately faces a greater trial – the loss of the child, for in all but the most ingrained parent-child relationships, there comes a time when the child moves away from the parent. It can happen abruptly or it can happen over time, but either way, the loss is often heartbreaking.

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The Left Out Child

It's a fact of life that parents don't respond to their children equally. They may love each other and each one of the, but they invariably find themselves drawn to one child more than the other. In some families, this natural attraction is nto moderated by compassion or fairness but is acted out as favoritism...Added to these blatant signs of favoritism were tens of thousands of subtle, daily interractions that said to the Left-Out Child: “You are not a priority in my life. You are not as important to me as your brother or sister.”

...It is difficult to maintain your self-esteem when you grow up in a family in which you don't feel prized or valued, where the laurels always go to someone else. When a sibling gets all the attention, you ache for your share of love. You want your special gifts to be celebrated and your weaknesses to be met with compassion... The Left Out Child's goal in life is straightforward: toseek a place in the sun... Some excluded children try to cater to the whims of the parent. They become highly attuned to the parent's needs and mirror the parent's interests. Many years later, they are often the ones who volunetter to take care of the aging mother or father, trying to return to the well in search of life-giving love.

In large families where one of the children is clearly favored, it is often possible to see a number of these coping mechanisms being played out. One Left-Out Child may be a people pleaser, another an overachiever, another a criminal, a fourth a member of a religious cult. Outside observers wonder how the same two parents could produce such diverse offspring. What they don't see is that the children are trying to solve the same family problem – parental favoritism – and that they are following one of the unwritten laws of family dynamics: choose a coping mechanism not preemted by other siblings.

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The Left Out Spouse

Of all the members in the enmeshed family, the Left-Out Spouse, the one relegated to the far outpost of the love triangle, is the most commonly misunderstood. Displaced by a son or daughter, the spouse may feel violently jealous. He or she may have a hard time justifying this anger, however, because there is rarely any one incident between the Invasive Parent and the Chosen Child that is blatantly wrong: the relationship in inappropriate only when viewed as a whole and only when viewed against the backdrop of healthy family dynamics. When the Left-Out Spouse reacts to an isolated incident, the whole thing seems blown out of proportion.

The Shadow Parent

I use the term Shadow Parent to refer not to a discrete role in the family but to a personality type: passive, detached, and noninterfering. Either the Invasive Parent or the Left-Out Spouse can be a Shadow Parent. When the Invasive Parent has a passive personality (as in the example of Cinderella's father), the Chosen Child will have little protection from the scorn of the Left-Out Spouse... If the Left-Out Spouse has a passive personality, there will not be much resistance to the parent-child alliance; a potentially corrective force in the family will be missing.

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The Spouse of the Chosen Child

When the Chosen Child grows up and marries, another person stumbles into the quagmire – the spouse of the Chosen Child. I have a lot of sympathy for a person who marries one of us Chosen Children, because we can be “larger than life.” Our joys and problems appear boundless and overrun the concerns of our spouses, and our crazy mixture of high and low self-esteem can drive them to distraction...

If the Chosen Child was allied with a Critical/Abusive Parent, different marital problems can arise. The feelings of inadequacy and low-self esteem that characterize the Scapegoat Child can be difficult for a partner to deal with. The partner may feel the constant need to shore up the Chosen Child's ego and counteract the early years of abuse and neglect. This is a futile task, however, unless the Chosen Child is willing to examine those old parent-child issues. It takes a concerted effort to erase early messages from a parent.

Another spouse who earns my sympathy is the one who marries a Chosen Child who has reacted against an Invasive Parent by developing an impenetrable barrier to intimacy. Although the barrier was erected to keep out the overbearing parent, it also shuts out the marriage partner.

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In-Laws

If a Chosen Child grows up without fully breaking away from the Invasive Parent, the spouse of the Chosen Child has an additional obstacle to overcome: in-law problems. It is not uncommon for the Invasive Parent to dictate how the newlyweds should run their household, to require frequent phone calls or visits, to encourage financial ties between the families, to insist that the couple live nearby – ideally, in the same house – and to dictate the terms of all family gatherings. These demands are a clear violation of the autonomy of the younger couple. If, in later years, the Invasive Parent moves in with the family of the Chosen Child – which often happens – in-law problems occur daily, if not hourly.

The spouse of the Chosen Child appears to have only two ways to handle the invasive in-law: (1) give in to the demands and become an additional source of support, or (2) treat the Invasive Parent as an intruder, a foreign body to be rejected. If the spouse chooses the first option and joins the ranks, the couple will be absorbed into the family and have little personal freedom. Whenever they step out of line, there will be a price to pay. If the spouse chooses the second option and resists the Invasive Parent – watch out: the temperature will rise. Adding an outsider to the boiling pot turns the family into a pressure cooker.

Sometimes the Chosen Child secretly encourages the battles between the spouse and the Invasive Parent, because on some level, the emancipation feels long overdue. But even so, the parent will rarely blame the Chosen Child for the fracas – it's the son-in-law or the daughter-in-law who's considered the outlaw...

Excerpt from
Dr. Patricia Love's
The Emotional Incest Syndrome:
What to Do When a Parent's Love Rule's Your Life
Bantam Books, 1990

Case Study of a Daughter, Sexualized by Her Father

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From ”The Emotional Incest Syndrome” by Patricia Love with Jo Robinson.

More about Marla:

Case History of the Sexualizing Parent

(Continuation of material presented in previous post.)

Excerpts from

pages 21 – 25

of Dr. Patricia Love's “The Emotional Incest Syndrome”:

...Marla, like many Chosen Children, makes a favorable first impression...The only visible sign of Marla's struggle is twenty pounds of excess weight that she alternately loses and regains... By most people's standards, Marla has been very successful in life... She is bright, competent, and vivacious. Yet I have seen her in anguish time and time again. I remember once in my office when she was overcome with self-loathing. Her lovely face became contorted, and she leaned forward with her head down, as if the internal struggle were cutting her in two. “Each day I try so hard to love myself, to care for myself, because at the core there is such self-hatred,” she sobbed. “I find it so hard to believe that I'm okay. I find it so hard to believe that I'm lovable.”

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In Marla's family, the conditions that foster emotional incest were evident in the first year of her parents' marriage. As soon as the glow of the honeymoon wore off, her mother and father lost interest in each other, and their relationship was limited to an occasional sexual encounter and whatever mundane interactions were required to run the household.

Unwittingly, each parent tried to find comfort and companionship by bonding with a child. Marla's mother turned to her first child, Derek. When Marla was born, her mother was too wrapped up with Derek to have much energy for a new baby, so Marla and her father had mutual needs: they both needed someone to belong to, to to bod with to be loved and to be loved by. By the time Marla was 2 years old, she was clearly “daddy's little girl.” Now Mother was allied with Son, and Father was allied with Daughter. Families that split up in this manner are quite common. As Lynn Hoffman writes in her book “Foundations of Family Therapy,” "A boy for you and a girl for me is not just some songwriter's fantasy."

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The bond between Marla and her father strengthened with each passing year. “My father absolutely adored me,” she said, “and took me everywhere he went.” ...When she was old enough to go to school, he picked her up at school every afternoon and took her to the [tennis] club where where he tutored her... Her father was totally devoted to her, and her mother was physically and verbally abusive. “When I was with my father,” Marla told me, “I felt like Cinderella at the ball. When I was with my mother, I felt like an orphan in rags.” ...Marla saw nothing wrong with this arrangement. In fact, she said, “I loved it! My father called me his 'pretty baby.' He let me sit in his lap and he would hug and kiss me. I thought he was wonderful!”

In many families, emotional incest becomes a vicious cycle. This was true in Marla's case. The more attention she received from her father, the more her mother resented her. The more violently her mother expressed resentment, the more Marla was drawn to her father. Soon she and her father were so entwined that Marla had little time, opportunity, or desire to play with friends. After all, what playmate can compare with a doting, sophisticated, powerful adult? Her father took her out to expensive meals and bought her beautiful clothes; he even had a tennis court installed in the backyard so she could improve her game! What girlfriend could compete with that?

...While they were on the road [tennis tournaments], the went to a lot of parties. “I would be my father's 'date,'” she told me. “I would get all dressed up, and we would dance together. He would show me off to his friend and brag about how beautiful I was. It was all very romantic.”

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When Marla and her father returned to their motel room, they would sleep in the same bed. “My father never sexually abused me,” she told me, “he just held me close. I would fall asleep with his arms wrapped around me.”

Like many over involved parents, Marla's father did not set appropriate limits for her. More a friend than a parent, he made no attempts to discipline her. Further, he exposed her to experiences far beyond her years... “I thought I was hot stuff,” she said. “I thought I could handle everything. I pitied children my age because they seemed so young and silly.”

Marla's blithe acceptance of her father's behavior deserves a closer look. While her mother was undoubtedly outraged by his drinking and his irresponsible nature, Marla took it all in stride. She accepted her father for who he was; she made no demands. This is a key difference between a child and an adult: a child is often blind to a parent's faults. With little outside reference, the child simply accepts what is given. A spouse, on the other hand, is likely to have a long list of demands and expectations... A child, on the other hand, will settle for an indulgent, adoring companion.

At 17, Marla had grown into a beautiful young woman and began attracting the attention of boys her own age. Her father, acting more like a jealous lover than a father, did not allow her to date. No boy was good enough for his daughter... “From my senior year in high school until I got involved in therapy,” she said” my drug of choice was a man. Nothing ever made me feel as good as Daddy, so I kept looking for more of the same. But the trouble was that no one could ever measure up to him. I kept going from one man to another, searching for the same high I felt as a little girl when my father seemed so powerful and so much larger than life.” Not surprisingly, many of her alliances were with older men. When she was 21, for example, she dated a man who was 45. It seemed perfectly natural to her. “Older men had more money and power, just like Daddy.”

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As a child, Marla saw her father as a hero. As an adult, and after many years of therapy, her childhood myopia was shattered... “He could be so cruel to people, and he was incredibly self-centered. He acted as if the whole world revolved around him. Anything that got in his way, he destroyed. Although he said wonderful things to me and held me and kissed me and was utterly devoted to me, he didn't protect me. And he didn't allow me to be me – whoever that was. I may never find out. I had to be who he wanted me to be. His champion tennis player. His “pretty baby.”

Excerpt from
Dr. Patricia Love's The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to Do When a Parent's Love Rule's Your Life Bantam Books, 1990