She has boundary issues. Has always been one to buy unasked-for expensive presents, things she would like for herself, for others - and then talk a lot about how no-one would buy the same thing for her, and how kind she is for having bought it for the victim other person. If at any point subsequently the other person disagrees with her over anything, she will bring up how kind she has been in buying expensive presents, and how the other person just doesn't care about her. Ditto if the other person buys her a present that isn't good enough (even if the other person's budget is significantly different from hers).
I realised this was bonkers when I was about 5 - leading to me never wanting to engage with her over presents. She has massively codependent relationships with other relatives over this kind of thing.
I've learnt - after trying to reason with her, years back- to just say "no thanks" and change the subject. But she follows me round and round having the same conversation several times a day when I'm visiting. She wants to buy things like Royal Doulton dinner sets, furniture, bed linen etc. "because you've said you don't want it, and I just want to see you go mad, you ungrateful little pain". In front of DF, she gets the tear in the voice that I won't go shopping with her like a normal daughter should go shopping with their dear, kind mother who just wants to shower their loved little girl with gifts. DF will attempt to tell me I'm being nasty. I will raise an eyebrow at him and say I think we've discussed this before. He will quietly leave. She'll then go into a long diatribe about how I must be a disgusting dinner party hostess if I can't serve food off a proper dinner set, or provide proper towels in the bathroom, etc. Then she'll threaten to just buy stuff and have it delivered "just to get your goat".
She really isn't being a lovely kind sweetie of a mother, is she?
AIBU?
to think my DM's attitude is a bit weird?
pomBearPooPouffe · 12/08/2015 21:22
Have had WWIII over these questions often enough over the years to not be arsed having it again - my idea of a great night's entertaining with friends is charity shop china/cutlery holding steamed buns, stir fried vegies, green tea; 3 or 4 sets of feet on the coffee table; and a bloody good rant about bloody interfering bonkers relatives 
DF has his own boundary issues. Most of the time if I try to discuss it with him, without her there, he'll get the letterbox-mouth catsbumface furious look, glare at me, leave the room slamming the door so hard something falls over. Very occasionally he'll have a rational discussion. But increasingly rarely these days 
Minicaters I do the (admittedly slightly passive-aggressive) Oxfam goat every birthday with her and all the other materialistic twats in my family... pisses them off no end... and someone who actually needs something gets something out of it too
I think she suspects that I have a fulfilled and relatively ineresting life beyond the smotheringly boring 1950s trousseau of an existence that she's had and has driven my sister into. She can see that I have no great need to go and buy stuff: when I get bored or dissatisfied, I just read a book or go running/walk up a mountain or do some music or something. That's why she gets so pissed off when I ask for a £12 subscription to the London review of books for Christmas... instead of the 25 things my sister will want at £250 each...
Actually the more I think about it, the more I really need a way of saying
"What would make me happy, dear mother, would be for you to have some CBT and work through your issues with feeling that other people don't appreciate you enough. I'd be absolutely delighted to have an adult-to-adult relationship with you, as we have a lot in common. What I don't want is this false parent-child relationship that -despite you attempting to be an overbearing parent - is based around you, the unloved child, crying out for attention from all the apparently uncaring adults around you"
I did try to say something along those lines to DF once. But he was unloading the dishwasher, and slammed a plate on the stove so hard that it shattered, before storming out and slamming the door. I don't really understand why voicing these things is just so unacceptable to their generation.
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