Reddit reviews The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to do When a Parent's Love Rules Your Life

Relevant book: The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to do When a Parent's Love Rules Your Life.

Get it. Read it. Hand the book to him and see if HE will read it. If he reads it, then you guys would have a good basis for re-assessing this relationship together.

If not, at least you have a good basis for making decisions about your future together because you have the info which explains all this.

I can relate to a lot of this. The bathing thing... I never realized that wasn't normal, until I started reading about it here. My mom would tell me to take a shower with her to "save time/water".

Both parents were both emotionally/covert-ly incestuous with me in different ways. This book helped a lot: The Emotional Incest Syndrome

Agreed. And with situations in which one parent is abusive, it’s very normal for the other parent to over-bond and “enmesh”. I strongly recommend both group therapy for the three of you and individual therapy.

I also recommend this book. Don’t be put off by the title, there’s a lot of good stuff on enmeshment as a means of over-compensating for abuse.

The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to do When a Parent's Love Rules Your Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/055335275X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_h9iZAbH55AYRZ
(In your case, substitute “child” for “parent” but also be aware of how your own baggage may contribute to the situation).

Either way, it sounds like you may need to spend some extra time focusing on your daughter, I’d just be sure that’s not seen as a reward for her bad behavior. She needs to learn that your boundaries, especially bodily boundaries, must be respected.

Read this book on emotional incest, then run. I dated a man who had the same kind of unnatural obsession with his daughter. It made my skin crawl. A friend gave me this book. That cleared up for me exactly how toxic my BFs relationship was with his daughter. https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Incest-Syndrome-Parents-Rules/dp/055335275X

I really liked The Everything Guide to NPD just to give me an idea of what the whole thing was, plus books about emotional incest. That topic focuses a lot on boundary issues, which was a big problem in my family. The ones I've found useful are The Emotional Incest Syndrome and Silently Seduced. These three books were all recommended by my therapist, but if you have one, he or she could probably recommend others!

It's a late response, so I'm not going to include my story, but I'm in pretty much the same boat.

I'm reading 'The Emotional Incest Syndrome: When a Parent's Love Rules Your Life' very slowly because it hits pretty close to home and I end up ruminating if I read too much at one time.

I also have this one on my bookshelf (well, under the mattress) that I haven't started yet, 'Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners' so I can't vouch for it yet.

Hopefully, one, or both, of these might help you out.

This book may be of great assistance to your husband... The Emotional Incest Syndrome

The Emotional Incest book

Adult Children of Alcoholics (surprisingly relevant regardless of alcoholism)