'You have broken my heart'

Oh well done! Quite frankly, the person who has had their heart broken, OP, is you. I hope you get back to therapy, because it can be very hard to see that what you accepted as being normal, was in fact anything but, and very much not okay.

I hope so much you can start living your life for you, and your DC's. These are the people that deserve your love, your time, your energy and your care.

Well done op!

Leave the ball in DMs court. Don't engage in this frankly absurd childish behaviour. She's an adult woman, it's ridiculous.

And give yourself a break, physically! I had keyhole GB surgery last year and was in bed for a week, then barely hobbling about the 2nd week, I struggled to even get upright with all the incisions! Have a rest!

Fabulous !!!!

You didn’t move away did you op, you escaped.

The faux sympathy, the stead fast decision to never ever help me in an emergency are not really the actions of someone really kind are they

This. You could find an excuse for almost all the rest. But ignoring you when you’re ill and recovering from major surgery is disgusting. Don’t waste any more time in her, OP. You have decent people around who love you.

@ny20005 nice crosspost ;)

Don't engage any more. I'd block her number & archive WA chat.

She's destroying you & will do this to your dd. I'd be tempted to block her on your dd's device to so she can't try to manipulate her.

Enjoy the break & feel the weight lifted of your shoulders

I also forgot to text my MIL yesterday with DDs
GCSE result and got an angry text late afternoon. I however do not feel guilty. I’m busy and she has had little involvement with my kids - except to gather ‘boasting rights’ with her friends (who are under the impression she’s a very involved GP!). The kids see it and have lost respect/interest, which is sad. They reap what they sew.

That hope that deep down she gets it and deep down she is loving and so on is what keeps you stuck. I needed therapy to accept my mother wasn’t very nice and didn’t actually want good things for me. She loves me in some sort of basic way i’m sure, but it really means nothing if her need to be horrible overrides that.

All i can say is accepting it was painful but life got a lot better after. Still hurts now to not really have a relationship with her, but that pain is like a little flicker compared to the pain she was causing when in my life.

You poor thing. I sympathise so much, going through something similar at the moment myself (have a thread about it). I have blocked my mother and suggest you do the same, even if just for a while.

The more I think about my mother's behaviour towards me, the more I realise that this is not how a loving mother behaves towards her children. I'm a few years older than you and have only realised this in the last few years due to being referred to therapy following a different matter that arose. Luckily I got a really good therapist who drew my attention to the fact that the way I was treated from a very young age was not only not the norm, but it was unacceptable.

Your mother, like mine, only "loves" you conditionally. She has no problem withdrawing her "love" when you "misbehave".

As already suggested, you would probably benefit from therapy and from reading books like Toxic Parents. It is a strange comfort to know you are not alone. So sad that so many of us have toxic parents.

StepUp, wishing you a smooth recovery going forwards
And HUGE congratulations to DD

Your DM is horrible. She did not forget. She likes to have a stick to beat you with, that's all.
I'd go back into WA and delete the messages I'd sent, if she doesn't want to read them.
I hope you find the strength to go NC.
Sending a sisterly hug.
Hope the sun shines for you when you are away.

You seem to understand your mother very well; I think talking about it is helping scales to fall, and is bringing you closer to accepting reality. This is great, because then you can make reasonable and rational decisions about how you can deal with her, put together a long term strategy, work our your realistic objectives (perhaps something along the lines of minimising the ability to be hurt by her, minimising her ability to hurt your dcs, whether and how much you want to see her if at all).

I'm so sorry your mother is like this, and sorry your childhood must have been very hurtful so often. Your dad is beyond the pale btw, not much can be said about him, vile. I hope your dh cherishes you. Congratulations on breaking the cycle with your own children, they are lucky to have you. Oh, and huge congratulations to your dd on her results!

Your parents are wrong, were always wrong. You always deserved, do now deserve better.

I'm familiar with this behaviour OP.

I"d be tempted to send one last message - via your DF if you have to - and then block her whilst you are in cornwall.

Mum

It's a shame that this this has escalated to such a drama - especially as this is meant to be about DD celebrating. Nobody is annoyed that you forgot it was results day, but we are all surprised at the nasty turn things have taken and the unnecessary spite directed at me.

DD loves you very much as do I . However, I won't have tolerate you guilt tripping us because you are still - twelve years on - bitter about me moving away for work. I can assure you that DD enjoys being close to you and we would all hate for that relationship to sour because of your misdirected blame.

We are off to Cornwall now. I can't wait to rest up following my surgery and so I'll probably have my phone off for most of the time.

Let's catch up when we're back.

Love you.
Steup x

She sounds like a total narcissist. It’s the kind of thing my mum would do/ would have done before I broke contact with her for similar behaviour.

When I got a degree as a mature student she berated me for not showing her my Masters certificate. Despite me having asked her if she wanted to see it…. And her raising am eyebrow as if to say ‘really you think I want to see that’. She also used the words ‘you just keep on breaking my heart’.

My mother is a narcissist and I moved 1000 miles away from her. I used to get postcards through the post that JUST said ‘this is a picture of a Margaret Hepworth In the Tate… what your children are missing living where you do!’ No names no ‘from grandma’ nothing. Just passive aggressive crap.

Do yourself a favour and ignore that shit. Life is too short. YANBU.

Passive

It is really hard to face the fact my own mother, the person who gave me life may not be a very nice person? It is easier said than done staring at that possibility, because I have always thought deep down she is a really decent person that cares, that but really nothing she does indicates that. The faux sympathy, the stead fast decision to never ever help me in an emergency are not really the actions of someone really kind are they?

I'm so sorry - it is horrible. People have various parts to them and it's likely that part of her is indeed the decent person that cares, but other parts expect that a relationship with you never changes, and that she will always be top dog in it. In reality, you are a mother now and your daughter has every right to your time, consideration, etc., as well as your own self needing some self-care and recovery time.

I think it's when you get the Mum hat that you start to see dissonances between your understanding of something and your own mother's, either in the here and now, or from years ago. My DM has had a lot of fallings-out, some permanent, with her family in the past, before I was born. I didn't think anything of it until I started to see the resentful side of her, that the DGC bring out in some ways and did so even from when they were tiny and immune to 'atmosphere'.

Being sad about this is ok. No easy answers, no need for a quick fix, and not all down to you.

I hate the idea that people are pressuring the OP to text the mother because it only takes 30 seconds to text. I hate texting and I hate the thought of being beholden to announce events in real time. Some people are good at multitasking and breaking up their activities into jumpy little units, some people can only be present in one place and one activity at a time. It's not as if she waited a month to tell her parents. And if everyone in the country knew that this news was coming out, they could have asked the girl or her mother directly.

Mixed feelings. Your mum could have contacted you and DD. But equally I know some people her age and they might have been waiting for you to call them - I appreciate in this situation your mum forgot.

My mum would have been one of the first people I would have called - but that’s because we are close. So maybe your mum is just sad that you aren’t.

She’s obviously being a bit unreasonable in her reaction, but I suspect her emotions are a bit all over the place. She wants you near and she’s showing that in the wrong way

Has your mother ever worked?
Her dreadful attitude to something so mundane as an adult child moving away is batshit, to be honest. Especially as you’re only about 100 miles away. It’s hardly abroad.

I can’t believe you’ve accepted her awful treatment of you for this long. How on earth you haven’t told her to F.O. before now, I don’t know.

You’re a positive saint!!

I say this as an older woman with adult D.C. and GDC and we live abroad from them.