inappropriate sexual behavior towards child HPD parent

MOVED BY MODERATOR TO SIGNIFICANT OTHERS FORUM, WITH SHADOW THREAD IN HPDHas anyone out there raised by an HPD parent ever had that parent act sexually inappropriately towards them?

Thanks for posting this, spackle. I have had questions along these lines but was hesitant to ask, even in this anonymous forum.

I will be a bit vague and say this: I discovered that my former female friend who I suspect is HPD (with a bit of NPD thrown in) had sexual contact with a young woman a few years ago. At the time, the girl was 15 and my HPD friend was 28. Where we live, the age of consent is 14, unfortunately. So while I consider the HPD's actions unethical and inappropriate (not because of the same-sex issues, but because of the girl's age and the nature of the girl's connection to her), they were not illegal and there was nothing I could do about it when I found out. But it really changed my opinion of her. Like, if she thought it was okay to do that, what other behaviors does she think are okay? And -- combined with my observations of her dramatics, attention seeking, manipulations, vicious game playing, etc. -- that discovery is what made me start to wonder if she had mental health issues.

I am almost non-contact with her. I do my best to ignore her calls and messages, but I am compelled to keep some sort of connection to her -- through mutual friends, on social networking accounts, and so on -- because she has three children, two of whom are now teenagers. I feel the need to keep an eye on those kids from afar, just in case, because I am one of only a few people who know what happened with the 15-year-old girl. So far, I see no signs of sexual wrongdoing with the kids. But I worry because, like I said above, she is not the person I thought she was and I have no idea where she thinks sexual boundaries should be drawn.

I am very interested in others' responses to your question and will be following this thread closely.

Hi. Thanks for replying. I really dont know what to make of your friend so I dont want to offer an opinion. I would be curious to know if she ever acted out inappropriately with her kids in a sexual manner which is why I launched this thread. I know HPD people are known to be overtly sexual with strangers, but have not seen much on that behavior with their own kids. I was raised by a single HPD mother, and while she never sexually abused me she would do things that definitely crossed the line. She was herself sexually abused by her father when growing up and would tell me about those experiences in waaaay too much detail. In true HPD form when I calmly asked her to not share that information with me she went berserk and tried to make me feel as if I was being unsupportive and a bad son. I told her she needed to see a Psychologist but she refused. She said that is what family is for. Translation = me as her shrink at 14 years old. But one thing she would do that made my skin crawl when I was a teenager was to make me give her massages. I had just started dating girls, and at that age emotions are already running high. I would return home at night with images of the girl I had just been out with swimming in my head. I would be in a heightened sexual state and deep in puppy love and she knew it. I would try to sneak in as quietly as possible but she would be awake in bed waiting for me to return so she could force me to go into her bedroom in the dark and massage her shoulders which just destroyed whatever feelings I had had from my date. This is what I mean when I say being just short of physical molestation. I should add that my mother also has NPD as did her father.

She can't have both, just a single personality disorder that manifests signs of both.

AnDread wrote:I am almost non-contact with her. I do my best to ignore her calls and messages, but I am compelled to keep some sort of connection to her -- through mutual friends, on social networking accounts, and so on -- because she has three children, two of whom are now teenagers. I feel the need to keep an eye on those kids from afar, just in case, because I am one of only a few people who know what happened with the 15-year-old girl. So far, I see no signs of sexual wrongdoing with the kids. But I worry because, like I said above, she is not the person I thought she was and I have no idea where she thinks sexual boundaries should be drawn.

AnDread- this is really not serving the purpose of no-contact at all. In fact I'd guess that she is using your sense of responsibility towards those kids to keep you involved. Even if not, it is certainly working out that way -- it is keeping you involved in her world and indirectly, keeping her in your thoughts.

I'm not being critical, though; I see where this is a really difficult situation and am wondering how you are doing with the occasional contact?

Hi again, spackle

I’m sorry that happened to you. I can only imagine what a very disturbing and confusing thing it was to deal with, especially at that age.

What your mother did sounds like such extreme HPD-like behavior! You were at an age where you wanted to go out and to have fun and explore the world and your sexuality. But because you were pulling away from her, she had to get your attention back -- without regard to how her actions may have affected you.

Sexuality is only one weapon in a HPD’s attention-getting arsenal, so it seems strange to me that she would use it instead of other manipulation tactics. But that is kind of what I was getting at in my previous post. It seems to me that HPDs have problems with setting and/or respecting sexual boundaries.

On this board there are so many stories of HPDs having liaisons with people who are generally considered to be “off-limits”: their spouse’s friend or sibling, their friend’s or neighbor’s spouse, their boss or their boss’s spouse, and so on. So maybe some HPDs take it a step further, and don’t see anything wrong with acting out sexually -- either explicitly or implicitly -- to get attention from a family member, or a person who is barely legal age, or, like in your case, even their own child?

This is why I mentioned my friend, because she saw nothing wrong in seeking sexual attention from a young person. I found myself having to explain to her why a boundary should have been set. She couldn’t grasp the concept that while what she did wasn’t legally wrong, many people would see it as morally wrong. That is why the age of consent varies from place to place; it’s a grey area that’s open to debate. Also, just because one can do something, it doesn’t mean that one should. But she wasn’t getting that concept at all. It was as if she could think only in blacks and whites (legal/illegal, and getting caught/getting away with it), and the part of the mind that considers factors like morals, ethics, compassion, and propriety just wasn’t working.

Hopefully other posters who have experiences with HPD family members will be able to share their insight.

Hi caro,

caro81VA wrote:AnDread- this is really not serving the purpose of no-contact at all. In fact I'd guess that she is using your sense of responsibility towards those kids to keep you involved. Even if not, it is certainly working out that way -- it is keeping you involved in her world and indirectly, keeping her in your thoughts.

You are absolutely right, and I was just thinking something similar yesterday. She posted a status update that served the dual purpose of slandering her estranged (soon-to-be ex?) husband and trolling for sympathy. By the comments she received back, it seems that she achieved both ends. This made me furious because what she said was quite damaging (and untrue, in my opinion) and because I can’t understand why people believe her victim stories when she has a different crisis every month and even recycles the most effective crises. But then I took a step back and realized that if I didn’t have her as a “friend” on social networking sites, I would not have read her update and stressed myself out. And, realistically, do I really believe I'll be able to tell if there's anything wrong with the kids from this distance? Maybe I'll have to trust that others who are closer to the situation are keeping an eye out. But it's really, really hard for me to drop all connection to those kids. I worry about them growing up around all that commotion.

caro81VA wrote:I'm not being critical, though; I see where this is a really difficult situation and am wondering how you are doing with the occasional contact?

When I first decided to back out of our friendship, about a year and a half ago, I considered cutting all ties but decided against it for two reasons: (1) the kids, whom she uses as pawns in her games (you’re right about that too!) and to whom she exposes many adult situations/conversations, and (2) the drama that would ensue (she would have likely caused a scene by asking all our mutual friends why I cut her off).

So instead, whenever she called I used what I think of as the “play dead” tactic. (Luckily, she moved a one-and-a-half-hours’ drive out of the city, so I don’t have to worry about in-person encounters.) The tactic involves making myself very boring to her by refusing to give her a reaction she can feed from. This means no shocked reactions to the drama, no sympathy, and no offer of advice or help -- but no negativity, either. So any time she’d call complaining about her horrible neighbors, family members, teachers, ex-husband, or whomever was on her hit list that week, I’d respond with a matter-of-fact acknowledgment of her complaint and then immediately follow up with a positive diversion: “That’s too bad. So how’s your grandmother doing?” or “Oh, I see. So how’s school?" or “Sucks to be them. So what’s new with the kids?”

The very first time I tried this tactic, she got off the phone after only 15 minutes, which was unheard of. Usually she’d want to rant for at least half an hour and then pump me for advice/sympathy/affirmation for another half hour, and I always had to be the one to make repeated moves to get off the phone. And then after a few similar conversations, the frequency of her calls steadily dropped, until at one point she didn’t call for about 4 months! Now she tries to contact me via phone or message perhaps every 2 to 3 months when she thinks she has something really big to shock me with or brag about (like she’s trying to “poke” at me to see if I’m still “playing dead”), but she’s easy to ignore now and doesn’t persist. I am quite boring to her now, plus she’s made new friends in her new town who don’t know what she’s really like yet and appear to be giving her much of the supply she needs.

spackle wrote:I would try to sneak in as quietly as possible but she would be awake in bed waiting for me to return so she could force me to go into her bedroom in the dark and massage her shoulders which just destroyed whatever feelings I had had from my date. This is what I mean when I say being just short of physical molestation.

I wouldn't say it's short of physical molestation. The context in which she's putting it (her waiting in bed for you? wtf?) makes it sexual harassment at the very least. I'm sorry to hear that you endured such creepy treatment, from your mother of all people.

AnDread wrote:So instead, whenever she called I used what I think of as the “play dead” tactic. The tactic involves making myself very boring to her by refusing to give her a reaction she can feed from. This means no shocked reactions to the drama, no sympathy, and no offer of advice or help -- but no negativity, either. So any time she’d call complaining about her horrible neighbors, family members, teachers, ex-husband, or whomever was on her hit list that week, I’d respond with a matter-of-fact acknowledgment of her complaint and then immediately follow up with a positive diversion: “That’s too bad. So how’s your grandmother doing?” or “Oh, I see. So how’s school?" or “Sucks to be them. So what’s new with the kids?”

Sounds like this is another one to add to the HPD Survival Guide. Maintain polite contact but just don't give them the supply they're after and they'll move on to the next tasty mortal.

As a teen, my mom would act like I was her lesbian girlfriend from time to time. Arm around me, kissing me on the cheek for show. If she got any attention she would only do it more. I would spend the whole night begging her to stop.

Irrespective of whether or not the people concerned are HPD, the inapprorpriate behaviour described on this thread is peodiphilia and a seperate issue in itself. lt is disturbing and seriously repugnant behaviour and there are no excuses. Period. To the people whose own mothers abused them in this way l would say to you urgently please get therapy and report this behaviour. There are no excuses.