Momma’s Boy(toy)?

I am in a very peculiar situation. I am a 37-year-old housewife and I live alone with my 17-year-old son because my husband has been working abroad for the last fifteen years. As an only child, my son has been a pampered quite a lot. He is very affectionate with me. From childhood onwards, he has been sleeping in the same bed as me. He kisses and hugs me very often, and he also likes to touch and fondle my body. I had always assumed that this was just childish innocence. However, one night I woke up from my sleep to find him masturbating while clenching my breasts. I continued to lie there as if I was sleeping, but I was shocked inside. The next day I checked his computer and found out that he had been visiting many incest sites and reading incest erotica. I am completely dumbfounded. I don’t know what to do. How do I handle this situation? Should I tell my husband about this?
–Don’t Want A Momma’s Boy

I suppose I don’t have to tell you this, but you’ve got a serious problem on your hands. I think the very fact that you let your son touch you this way in the first place is a problem. What on earth were you thinking? Physical affection is one thing, but allowing your child to feel you up cannot just be chalked up to “childish innocence” unless he or she is still an infant. You need to sit your son down for a frank talk about all of this, and to hell if it makes him feel embarrassed. And yes, you need to involve your husband in this conversation as well. First of all, it’s very important as a parent to draw boundaries. If your son “fondling” you makes you feel uncomfortable or distressed, you need to tell him right upfront. No one has the right to touch you without your consent, not even your child. Second of all, you have to tell him you found his incest porn and that you were awake while he was masturbating. It’s important that he recognize that none of this is a secret. Finally, you need to get both him and yourself into therapy. Seriously, it’s that important. It sounds like you’ve fallen into a weird codependent relationship with your son and now it’s time to create the boundaries that should have been established much earlier. Your kid is all confused about his love for you as his mother and his own burgeoning sexual desires, and you haven’t done much to help him by allowing him to have his way with you for so many years in so many small, but significant ways. Enough’s enough. It’s time for you and your son to get some professional help so that you can disentangle the threads of this very complicated problem and start rebuilding your relationship as mother and son, not as weird sexual codependents.