My mother, who is long-widowed, lives quite close to us. She has no friends at all in the whole world. The other two relatives that she has are an aunt and a cousin. She has no contact with the aunt and some sporadic contact with the cousin, who lives 200 miles away. She has had long term issues with mental health - largely depression but severe enough to require psychiatric help.
I am an only child and my mother feels that she has a right to pass comment about every area of my life. Those comments are usually negative and usually expressed either to my husband, my children or both.
These negative comments range from the mild such as finding some reason to dislike my house, television, car etc to the frankly emotionally harmful.
So for instance she will tell DD1 that I don't love her (DD1) as much as I love DD2. She will genuinely say this in front of them. I have no idea why she says this - it's not remotely true and it's incredibly hurtful to me - but imagine the sort of problems this can cause a child? I've already experienced DD1 screaming at me that I don't love her as much as DD2 and I bloody well know where that little gem has come from.
It all came to a head this weekend. We had a friend come to stay. We had a family outing (minus granny but plus a family friend) which was cut short because Granny insisted that DD1 go around to watch some Formula One race thing. DD1 tried to explain that she didn't want to go, but relented. I heard DD1's end of the phone conversation and it sounded like the other end was pure emotional blackmail. We took DD1 around to her Granny's house.
DD1 knew that she had to be back at our house in time for dinner, as we were being joined by the family friend plus two others. I was trying to cook and entertain but had to drop everything to go and pick DD1 up, and DD1 wasn't ready as Granny had suggested making a birthday card for one of DD1's relatives. The birthday card-making suggestion happened exactly 3 minutes before I was due to collect DD1.
DD1 and her Granny tried to make me wait for them but I just couldn't. I had lots of food on the go. I'd already had to be flexible in terms of taking DD1 around and picking her up when that simply wasn't in the plan for the day. So her Granny agreed to bring DD1 back to our house whilst I went back home to attend to the food.
But then Granny didn't bring DD1 back! I waited until just before serving up and called and asked where DD1 was. I was told that 'She'd already eaten' (at Granny's)
that 'She might as well stay with me because you don't seem to like her very much' and to cap it all 'You're only bothered about entertaining your boyfriend' angry] . I have no boyfriend btw. I have a long-standing husband. The boyfriend she was referring to was the family friend. But she said all this to me on the telephone while DD1 was IN THE ROOM LISTENING.I just went around and collected DD1 myself, shouted at my mother that she was emotionally abusive and ran.
I haven't shouted at my mother for around 30 years. I've long concluded that the way of dealing with her was just not to engage. I am furious with myself for losing my temper but so much more furious with my mother for her behaviour.
Who is being unreasonable? Me? Her? Or both? And what do I do now?
