Top Highlights

• Emotional sexual abuse occurs when one parent has a relationship with a child that is more important to that parent than the relationship with the spouse…It
• high degree of enmeshment…it
• when the relationship with the child exists to meet the needs of the parent rather than those of the child.
• To the child, the parent’s love feels more confining than freeing, more demanding than giving, and more intrusive than nurturing.
• is characterized by the following: (1) triangulation; (2) breach of the intergenerational boundary; (3) surrogate, substitute spouse or confidant role; (4) objectification.