Hello, is this the Vent About Your Bloody Mother room?

[UnquietDad]

If so, I need oxygen.

I will be back in about two hours. Someone get the drinks in.

[PersonalClown]

I'll bring the nibbles.

[harrisey]

I've got the dartboard to pin the photos to!

[mankyscotslass]

There is a nice brick wall over there , after the first three times my head did not hurt nearly so much

[mankyscotslass]

BTW, the mini fridge is over there, beside the chair ....

[UnquietDad]

Sorry, I know I have done this before, but we had a Letter. My mother writes Letters when we have agreed to Leave A Subject, but she intends to have the last word before doing so.

And I left it two weeks before phoning her. Which didn't go down well.

It seems I can't even, now, have a conversation where we agree not to mention something again. She kind of agreed to do so (ostensibly) but on her terms - on the grounds that we will "learn" when we get older. I wanted to go in and lay down the law - "if you say that kind of thing again in front of my children we will LEAVE" - and she wasn't having any of it. Again and again she tried to finish the conversation with her being the one to give the ultimatum.

And I'm sorry, but I wasn't having it. It was my call, my deal, my terms.

I have marginally lost the moral high ground because I famously Lost My Temper when we were last there. Losing One's Temper is something which makes my mother make a sort of clicking "well-that-just-shows-it" noise and look smug. She now has that as a stick to beat me with inn every argument, despite the fact that DW and I have bitten our tongues 99 times this year when we could have responded to her inflammatory comments about immigrants, "the way things are", the reason society is going to hell in a handcart, how "respect" has been lost, and her pet theories (with no economic basis) on why NHS funding is allocated in the way it is... Believe you me, losing one's temper once with her is in patience-of-a-near-saint territory.

It also doesn't help the blood pressure that she makes a little "Ah!" sound (imagine finger wagging, sitting back in seat with smug nod) when she feels she has made an unanswerable "point".

[UnquietDad]

I know. I'm lost for words too.

[eemie]

UQD

SHe's lucky that you still go and see her. It's magnanimous of you.

Have you seen www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXT6Hs113ZA

It helps a tiny bit

[NotQuiteCockney]

Oh, she does sound wearying.

Any chance you can see her as a sort of dinner theatre, a piss-take of idiotic arguments? And pat her on the back of the hand, and respond as if her arguments were amusing parlour tricks by a precocious (ok, racist) two-year-old rather than the idiotic reasoning of an adult?

Could you see her as someone else's mother? Or be v v proud that you're who you are, given that this person raised you?

You will probably have to actually do the leaving, when she talks this way. Calmly, cheerfully even. Personally, I'm a big fan of brisk cheerful unavailability - ending phone calls if they are difficult, breezing off, suddenly being too busy to cope with someone who is annoying you. Direct confrontation does not work with this sort of person, as you are seeing.

[NotQuiteCockney]

My MIL can sometimes be a bit like this ... she described a bus as being 'like the united nations'. I smiled brightly and said 'oh, that sounds lovely'.

There's a lot to be said for intentional stupidity, tbh.

[NotQuiteCockney]

Oh dear god, sobernow. I can't imagine how I would have been.

[hildegard]

Sobernow, I am cringing in sympathy.

[NaeDanger]

not along the same lines but it is about my mother and she is slightly insane (and a drama-gramma)

my sister is pregnant for the first time. after much fertility problems. many issues between her and i. blah blah blah. ANYWAY! last night my mom says to me:'i hope this won't change OUR relationship' WTF?!

[moodlumtheHOHOhoodlum]

Oh this is a great thread and one I have been needing for a while now.

when cleaning (despite specifically being asked NOT to) my kitchen, she accidentally turned the gas on the hob on, and left it for five minutes before DH and I came downstairs and noticed before the house exploded (there was a candle burning in the kitchen, so we were literally seconds away from fireworks...)

Did she a)apologise profusely get embarrassed, look sheepish or b)just look defensive, not say anything, and then eventually ask where I got the candle from "because it smells lovely".

She and I have a difficult relationship at the best of times but incidents like this tip me over the edge...

Here's to not turning into your mother.

[needmorecoffee]

Unquietdad, you sure you're not my brother? My mother never stops at how its immigrants bringing this country down/responsible for waiting times on NHS/gangs/drugs/bad buses. You name it, and its immigrants.
This from a woman who was a singl parent (and therefore another favourite target of the Daily Mail). But because she's 'english', why then she desrives whetever the tax payer will pay for.
I bite my tongue because seriously there's no arguing with her

[moodlumtheHOHOhoodlum]

PS UQD - we get Letters from my parents and I think that ignoring them is by far and away the finest way to deal with them. Because my view is that if your parents are retired, like mine, they spend days fretting about the letter, then days "drafting" (oh yes..) the letter and then send it with the Greatest of Significance. So, by ignoring it, you're not taking The Bait.

[cmotdibbler]

I have a book called 'Kiss my Tiara', and one of the chapters is on dealing with the family. Our favoured suggestions are the Family Olympics (thin ice skating round subjects, long track for when they never get off a pet subject etc) keep score, and make awards in the car on the way home, and dinner theatre. Has helped immensely in DHs relationship with his parents as now we can both smile sweetly and saw nothing, whilst mentally holding up score boards.
We had to institute this after the Christmas where I threatened that if there was any behaviour like that again from fil or DH, I would never visit again.
Doesn't help them that my grandmother played the sort of game your mum does, so I grew up in a family of defusers.

[finknottle]

Sobernow
NotQuiteCockney - oh yes to "brisk cheerful unavailability"
Time and distance v helpful.
Also gin.
UQD - she seems to thrive on it. May be incurable but thought that in my case too. Then after years of non-stop war of attrition with MIL I have finally achieved a state of immunity.
I tried loads:
appeasement/ignoring/change my reactions as can't change her behaviour/anger/reason/sulking/screeching rows/Letters/tongue-biting/sarcasm/self-righteousness/silence/patient understanding/martyrdom/bubble shield of calm...

Can't pinpoint what it was in the end but I am now and irreversibly immune. Witness Sunday her stunningly dramatic outpouring of infantile pouting was to me as the proverbial water & duck's back.
There is hope

[perpetualworrier]

UQD - are you my husband?

My MIL doesn't have a view on anything that isn't straight out of the Daily Mail.

I once sat round a dinner table listening to "what is this country coming to" with PIL and FIL's cousin, who has a very German name, as that side of the family emigrated here from Germany after the war. I so wanted to say "but aren't your family immigrants?" but behaved myself and bit my tounge. I have regretted it ever since.

This country would improve no end if the Daily Mail was banned.

[rantinghousewife]

Ha, my Sil goes on about Romanian immigrants all the time, guess where my Dad's from!

[UnquietDad]

Sobernow - eeek! I would have died of embarrassment! I have yet to be in a position where my mother says any of this kind of thing in public.

Thanks, everyone, for messages of sanity. There are only so many times you can have this conversation without thinking, "is it me? Am I actually being a horrible son, and being unreasonable?" She said "Do you even like me any more?" last night.

She has had a terrible year with my dad in hospital, then nursing home, and will always turn on the "poor me I'm so lonely and frightened about the world" when she feels she is losing the argument.

I tried to hang up without actually "hanging up", if you see what I mean, but it was difficult. She is an expert at the "but anyway" school of argument, possibly the most irritating rhetorical gambit known to (wo)man: "The country is full of these people, we can't take any more, they are draining the resources of decent people who have paid all their lives. But anyway, I saw Maureen the other day and she gave me the recipe for that marmalade." Etc. So, unless you want to let her get away with it, you are forced to go back if you actually want to counter her point, otherwise you are stuck talking about someone called Maureen and her fucking marmalade for half an hour.

The other thing she does is to be unable to believe that anyone (especially anyone younger) has alternative evidence or facts that may cast a different light on things. She thinks that, if you don't agree, it's because you haven't understood her argument, and can't grasp the concept of understanding it, putting it in context and moving on. So she will say something and then say it again, more loudly. (AGAIN, MORE LOUDLY.) And of course, she is "not making it up." (NOT MAKING IT UP.)

[finknottle]

I came belatedly to the conclusion that mil is the living embodiment of how when people believe something, it is the Truth. Unalterable. Once I coped with that revelation, it took the steam out of me as I realised I can't win and I was literally wasting my time.
Fortunately, mil keeps her opinions on Germany's woes to herself as far as immigrants go - she prides herself on her tolerance. Is none too please with her foreign dil who speaks English to her grandchildren tho
But on every other subject, she Knows Best.
Sending you a bubble of calm. It is, I know, absolutely infuriating and worse, methinks, in your own mother.

[rantinghousewife]

With my in laws, I have perfected the art of the 'eye roll'. I've come to the conclusion that they are at best, ignorant (this doesn't include MIL, she keeps her prejudices to herself, Fil and Sil don't) and that it's really quite sad for them that they feel this way tbh.
The 'eye roll' indicates that I quite frankly, find them too stupid to even bother to comment and funnily enough, it shuts them up.

[clumsymum]

UnquietDad,

My sympathies. Look, as far as 'hanging up, without actually hanging up' is concerned, then just invent some minor disaster so you can say "must go mum, the dog has just been sick on my feet" or some such white fib. Also keep a recording of crying child by the phone, which you can use occasionally as an escape.

I also find it's a good move to phone my mother about 5 mins before a favorite TV programme, so she draws the conversation to an end.