Boundary violations and mistakes plague my life, from me paying for my husband’s professional school loans to my friendship with a priest who sexually abused children. Learning not only to recognize boundary violations, which was easy, but also how to handle them, which was not easy, has been a lifelong journey. Now I know the name for what I went through: coercive control.
That journey began in a dysfunctional childhood.
I was wounded not only from coercive control in my marriage, but I was also wounded by my own less-than-sanguine childhood that involved a couple of episodes of child sex abuse as well as date rape. Both my parents were decent people, but both suffered wounds as children.
My father’s parents were stern, although he described his mother as the more loving parent. Since my son is on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, I wonder if my father was too. He could be kind and friendly, but I don’t think he had good insights on interpersonal relationships, for example, he had five wives. My two brothers and I, his only children, were products of his fourth marriage. His fifth wife, our stepmother, clearly wished we had never been born. She kept on confiding to me that she thought my brother should be written out of my Dad’s will. I could not help but wonder if she confided the same about me to him. She threw tantrums to get her way, and she excluded us children from our father’s bedside during his dying days. But whatever stepmother’s flaws, she was an amateur compared to my ex-husband’s second wife when it came to meting out coercive control.
My mother struggled with depression to the point of not being able to function repeatedly throughout my childhood. She died of cirrhosis of the liver, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, and heart failure when I was 28. After her death, my cousin revealed to me that she was sexually abused by our grandfather. Her symptoms throughout my childhood were consistent with that.
So I was not the happiest child growing up. My parents, who did not have good coping skills themselves, could not teach me how to care for myself. In fact, I was very much a caretaker. First, I cared for my mother, the alcoholic.
I cleaned the house, did the laundry, and made my own dinner in hopes that if I took the stress off her, she could stop drinking.
It did not happen. Eventually, I moved out of my Mother’s house and into my Dad’s.
I did not stay. My stepmother was annoyed that I left clothes not on the floor of my room, but on the floor of my closet. She was annoyed that she had to ask me to dishes and that I went off with friends without cleaning up after myself first. I was invited out by friends so rarely that I wanted to take advantage of the one or two opportunities offered to me.
She would take my father into another room and talk to him.
After a month or so, my Dad moved me into my own small house.
Now I had to cook for myself, and nobody cleaned up after me but me. I handled that well enough.
Later, during college, I went to live with my Dad during the summer so I could earn money working in a tomato cannery, but this time I stayed in a room in my Dad’s plant buildings and not in the house.
I loved chocolate cake and one day I had off from work, I went to the store to buy cake mix, butter, cocoa and confectioner’s sugar for frosting. I made a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream frosting.
Then I went to bed to sleep during the day because I worked at night.
That evening, my stepmother informed me she had taken the cake to her daughter’s house.
Boundary violation and coercive control. Even though I bought all the ingredients myself with my own money, I had used her kitchen.
I spent more and more time in my room. It was the one place that was mine.
My stepmother complained that I went on to study Range Management and education after earning a BS in Zoology.
Truthfully, she had a legitimate complaint. My brother had become a highly paid engineer, but I had only a series of temporary jobs. That was why I studied education. I thought I could have some stability as a teacher, but the classroom discipline proved too challenging for me, so I became a Foreign Fisheries Observer instead.
I loved that work, but as the fishery was Americanized, it was no longer for me.
I would have to share my room with a cigarette-smoking American instead of having my own private non-smoking room on a Russian fishing vessel. I retreated to land and to a job at a science museum.
By then, my Dad was 80. He and my stepmother needed my help caring for him.
My Dad’s Parkinson’s Disease and the fact that he did not care for my Stepmother's relatives, meant she needed my help to care for my Dad so she could visit her sister in Utah. My Dad, who studied physics at Cal Tech, did not have much in common with my stepmother’s pleasant but high school-educated Mormon relatives. They lived close to extraordinary geology, but did not visit it much to my Dad’s chagrin. They preferred to stay at home and chat about various family members. My Dad, whose favorite television program was Cosmos with Carl Sagan, was extremely bored. So every year, I spent ten days or so caring for my father while my stepmother went to visit her family in Utah. At first, my Dad and I would meet my Dad's cousin in Monterey, the town in California where my Dad grew up. We stayed together in the available rooms at Asilomar, the state convention facility facing the Pacific Ocean. We visited my other aunt, who had a home in Carmel, and visited Pt. Lobos State Park, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and ate at fish restaurants at the wharf. My father remembered when Monterey was a fishing village of 5,000, always bemoaned what had become of his hometown with far fewer trees and ever so many more houses and cars. Even since my childhood visits to my grandmother's house in the 1960s, I could remember the ever-expanding housing developments and roads, but who cannot love Monterey? Enough of the natural beauty remains for the town and its environs to be magnetically beautiful.
But as time passed, my father’s ability to walk and get around deteriorated. He required a walker to walk. He was too stubborn to accept a wheelchair. He had a Handicapped Parking rearview mirror hanger, but my stepmother always took it with her.
One visit, I asked for it so I could more easily care for my father.
My stepmother replied, “You can have it when I am not using it.”
(Coercive control abuse of both me and my father.)
So, I parked where I could without the handicapped parking permit and patiently walked the distance with my father across the parking lot to wherever we wanted to go.
My father also had a visit from a Visiting Nurse during that week, my stepmother was away. The nurse seized on the opportunity to have someone follow instructions that my stepmother would not follow. She had me bring over some of my Dad’s equipment so my Dad could putter in the house without having tp walk with his walker over to his plant buildings in the cold and rain of winter or the endless and intense heat of California summers.
The visiting nurse implored me to use whatever influence I had to persuade my stepmother to follow the nurse's advice.
I told the nurse that I had no more influence than she did, probably less. But I was a nurse myself. I found it challenging not to obey her advice.
Under the visiting nurse's instructions, I also removed the poisonous cleaning supplies my stepmother had stored under the bathroom sink, next to the mouthwash, and placed them in boxes in another room. The nurse had witnessed my Dad removing Clorox or some other cleaning fluid first when he wanted to use the mouthwash.
I realized I was doing too much in a situation I could not change. I wanted to care for my father so much. I loved him deeply, but I knew I had to care for myself. But I didn't need to worry about my father; my stepmother was furious when she came home. She never again asked me to care for my father, although I agonized over what to do.
This was the agony of being a caretaker, but by then, I had my husband to care for, and I became his caretaker.
(I traded one relationship characterized by coercive control for another.)
When my father passed away and I inherited $222,000 from him, the first thing I did was pay off my husband’s professional school loans to the tune of $68,000 without a pre-nuptial or a post-nuptial agreement. When he tried not to pay my son child support and then he and his extremely emotionally abusive second wife forced my daughter from his house a few months before her 18th birthday, I knew that I was still the caretaker. I had learned nothing. My ex-husband had taken me to court to take physical custody of my daughter away from me. The law assumes that the parent with physical custody of a child will also support that child through college. For example, because my son was legally in my custody, the government used my much lower income to determine if my son needed college loans and grants. My daughter, despite being made unwelcome at her father’s house, because she was in his custody according to court documents, would have had to use her father’s much higher income when applying for college grants and loans. Moreover, her father cut off contact with her so that she was not even able to ask for the $12,000.00 plus college funds he was saving for her per our divorce agreement. I was the custodian of my son’s account and had also managed to save $1,000.00 for my daughter. I just gave my child their college funds automatically when they needed them.
But what I had done for my ex-husband did not end at me paying for his professional school education. I also bought him his first car, helped him buy our third car, put down $71,000 for our house, put in money to pay down our house mortgage, and put about $35,000 towards remodeling our home—all without pre-nuptial or post nuptial agreements. If I had done right by myself, I would have come out of our divorce about $100,000 ahead of where I came out.
If I had known ahead of time that my ex-husband would not help my daughter through college, and would try not to help my son, I would have had both Pre-Nuptial and Post-Nuptial agreements guaranteeing that I would be compensated by putting our house in my name as compensation for all the financial help I gave him. His college loans carried an 8 percent interest rate over thirty years. I figure I saved him $300,000 by paying the loans off after my father died. My ex-husband complained about all the child support he paid to me and my son over the years, but that money came out to much less than the money I saved him.
In addition, not only did I not protect myself financially when I married my husband, but I also did not care for my time and my ability to fulfill myself through my own professional work life.
I worked as a Foreign Fisheries Observer on Soviet, Japanese, and Polish fishing vessels in the 1980s. I loved the work, but it consisted of 11 temporary working cruises on ships fishing off the coasts of Alaska, Oregon, and Washington. Later, I worked as an Exhibit Assistant at a science museum. But that two was a series of low-paid part-time or temporary jobs. I needed a career. I knew I loved working abroad, that I didn't mind not living with all the modern comforts, that I was good at learning languages, and that I was happy among people who didn't share the same culture I grew up in. I decided to become a Registered Nurse with the goal of working in an underserved area in the Third World, either with an aid organization or as a volunteer after natural disasters.
I was introduced to my ex-husband when he was in professional school and I was in taking pre-requisites for nursing. I soon gave up my dreams to marry him. After our children were born, I just spent my time caring for them and for him. My son was on the Autism spectrum and was not able to adjust to daycare, pre-school, or kindergarten, so I just homeschooled him. I started teaching Sunday school classes at our local Catholic Church so I could give my son a chance to experience classrooms in a situation where there would be no consequences if he failed to adapt.
Every morning, I rose before my husband, made his breakfast and lunch, and ironed his shirts. In the spring, when the sun rose at 5 AM, I brought our restless children into my bed (I did not sleep with my husband due to his incessant and loud snoring) to keep them quiet while their father slept. Of course I did not sleep.
When Dad was at work, I either read books with my child as they learned to read or helped them with math. Or we would go to the local science museum or the mall for lunch and a visit with the animals in the pet store.
I was the woman who had traveled and worked around the world, and now my life revolved around caring for my husband and children.
I loved my life, but that didn't mean there were no holes. Once, when the UPS man made a delivery at my house, we chatted for twenty minutes about a radio talk show host neither of us liked.
Church relieved some of my isolation. I had new friends—a spicy former nun and a meek but very faith filled older woman who wanted to become a nun. I also became friends with a former teacher who was now the stay at home mom of three children who bracketed my children in ages.
Still my life revolved around other people while I put whatever goals I might have had for my own development on hold.
When the clergy abuse scandal enveloped my church, that became my cause. The priest who had baptized me and my children Catholic was removed because he had abused children.
He had groomed my son and me, which caused me to become overly fond of him.
Another boundary violation on his part caused me to blur my own boundaries.
But not only had my son never been alone with the priest who primarily targeted boys, I had, despite the blurred boundaries, kept a careful distance from the priest.
I was very fond of him, yes. I wrote to him many times after he was removed, but when he was our pastor, I only approached him after Mass only if no one else was waiting for him. Which is to say only very rarely as he was a very popular priest.
I did ask him for spiritual direction and met with him three times over the course of a year. Beyond the usual hugs he gave, there was no extra physical contact between any of us.
I would not have developed an attachment to the priest had he not made an effort to wave to me, or speak to me, or even welcome us (because where I went, both my children went) to his office for the spiritual direction.
But it was a blurring of boundaries. I had become extraordinarily fond of a man not my husband, despite the fact that nothing untoward had ever happened.
But my husband’s reaction was extreme anger and jealousy. Before I met the priest, my husband would shout at me for forty-five minutes, three times a year, over things that should not have elicited such a reaction, such as speaking to another man in Russian.
These incidents were also boundary violations, but they were few and rare, so I discounted them.
After the priest was removed, my ex-husband began shouting at me three times a week for two hours at a time.
The incident that provoked this was more than the priest’s removal and my support for the priest; it was the fact that I let a man from my church babysit our children.
My ex-husband shouted..... didn’t I know men abused children much more than women. It was OK for me to be friends with women, but it was not Ok for me to be friends with men.
This time, I could not ignore the boundary violation.
We were in marriage counseling, but we were never able to resolve our differences.
My husband could not understand that the wife who had traveled around the world alone and worked on fishing vessels with so many men, who were just friends, found it normal to be friends with men.
That I had to keep my distance from an abusive priest was understandable, but I did not expect to see him more than two hours a year or one e-mail a month.
In time, I realized that the priest’s abuses were much more in number and severity than the church had admitted to. I realized that it was a serious mistake for me to take my children to see him. But neither he nor the church revealed the truth. I had to hear it from the media.
Boundary violations have plagued me all my life.
Sometimes you have to care for the other people in your life. You have to give your life over to your baby, or the baby dies. Your older parent may someday require assistance with activities such as eating or using the toilet.
In these situations, all you can do is try to do is carve out time for yourself. The rest of the time, you have to ask what is appropriate for another person to ask you to do something for them, if it is appropriate.
But even if we fail, life provides us with learning opportunities. My attachment to the priest caused me to ask the questions no one else asked about the clergy abuse scandal.
I wanted to know more about the scandal and his case, and learned that the church knew about his abuses for twenty years before he was removed.
For twenty years, they had blurred boundaries they should have kept, and put a man they knew had abusive proclivities out among families with children.
Because of what I knew, I switched sides from supporting the abusive priest to supporting the survivors who had come forward and had their abuse denied.
Another boundary violation.
You don’t want a relationship with someone who knowingly places you in harms way.
So even when we make mistakes, we can learn from them and use that knowledge to help ourselves and others.
So the message is this:
Keeping careful boundaries keeps you safe from harm.
But if you make a mistake, don’t take it out on your self esteem. Learn and do good with that knowledge.
I don’t know how to give rules for exact boundaries as there are times when we should help other people.
The most important rules I can think of include:
If you are uncomfortable, listen to you own tuition. You probably should not do what someone else is asking of you if you have a nagging feeling that what they are asking is not good for you.
If you need help, ask for it although I remain terrible at this.
If what someone else asks of you harms you, you should not do it,
Do not assume you will be happily married forever as I did. Get the pre-nuptial and post-nuptial agreements to protect your own assets. Don’t simply pay for the house and your spouses education with no strings attached.
Protect your children in divorce as your spouse might not care for them when they need college or other help.
