How do I get over my mum telling lies about me?

I’m really sorry you’ve had a similar experience @ironflan (and to everyone else here who’s shared theirs too 💐)

Yes, she’ll make it all about her and about how she isn’t involved enough, and about how ‘normal daughters would…’

The thing is, I’m now finding the strength to say ‘well, d’you know what, normal mothers wouldn’t behave like this.’

@Penniesdropped she wanted me to tell her that I loved her because I was moving an hour away to live in a houseshare in DH’s hometown to do my teacher training, aged 23. Prior to that moment, she had bombarded me with texts, phonecalls and emails, to the point where I would have multiple of each before 8am. I had asked her to stop bombarding me with messages as it was unnecessary.

She ‘got counselling’ by speaking once to the school counsellor at the primary school where she was chair of governors, who apparently advised her to write me a letter. It was in that letter (email) that she told me that if she walked in front of a lorry tomorrow, I would regret not seeing her more. I pointed out at the time (aged 23) that this was emotional manipulation, at which point she phoned me telling me to stop being silly.

I was summoned to her house where she cried all over me and that’s when she begged me to tell her I loved her. She then told me I was ‘cold and unfeeling’ and said directly to me, looking me right in the face, ‘I know you hate me’.

Do you think that is normal or stable behaviour for someone whose daughter has moved an hour away at the age of 23 to live near her then-boyfriend (now husband) to train for a professional job? Because I didn’t then and I still don’t now.

Have I said bad things to her? 😮 @Penniesdropped, have you read the rest of the thread?

My mum made my entire childhood and early adulthood all about her and her feelings, to the point where there was absolutely no room for my own. She shouted and screamed at me or gave me the silent treatment for doing perfectly ordinary, age-appropriate things. She threw hot cups of tea across the room when she didn’t het her own way.

She had zero boundaries and essentially trained us that our own feelings could not be trusted and our sole purpose was to serve hers. This has led to a huge amount of people-pleasing, trust issues and unhappiness for me in adulthood.

Yes, I only have one mum and I bloody wish she’d behaved like one at some point in the last 30 years.

Thank you @LiveAtVillaVillekulla, it’s been a real work in progress! For a really really long time, I thought it must be me (as we all probably did, because when you grow up like that, it’s too scary to think that it’s your parent who’s in the wrong).

Thanks so much to everyone for your advice and perspectives. I wish we didn’t have to think about this! Otherwise my pregnancy has (so far 🤞🏼) been really smooth and easy, this is the one issue in it, and the issue is my own mother.

I’m going to try and channel the new-found strength and will not tolerate her drama around my child (or me in the later stages of pregnancy). We need space and time to become our new little family unit and she’ll have to lump it if she doesn’t like it (which she won’t 🙃)

Thank you @BruFord that’s really wise. Yes, my gran is getting older now so you’re right, I shouldn’t add to her distress with any more about mum’s behaviour. She’s already anticipating though that my dad will drive down to her house with mum at some stage because he doesn’t know what to do with her.

I’m glad that your mum was able to protect you from your dad’s struggles. My dad has never seemed/been able to protect us from her behaviour.

He was raised in a family where his dad was very strict (probably too strict) and his mum did everything with the children. And so even though he said our mum ‘couldn’t do emotions’ (his words), he just left everything to do with us to her. He worked a lot as well, to try and be fair to him, he did a huge amount of shift work when we were very small. But everything at home was mum, and she was just volatile and scary.

It makes me really sad for those little children in us that we were brought up like that and nobody protected us then, and even now we’re supposed to put up and shut up and forget about it.

My step-grandad (who’s known her over 30 years) said that he thinks she’s struggled with different identities - becoming a wife, becoming a mum, etc. I’ve interpreted this to mean that she can’t cope with anyone’s thoughts and feelings beyond her own, and it’s not so much the identities as having others (e.g. small children) dependent on her and she was just incapable of thinking of us as separate people.

Everything revolves around her, in her head. One Christmas, I was chatting with my sister on one side of the room, my mum and gran were talking between themselves on the other. I’ve no idea any more what my sister said to me, but I was thinking about something and just touched my nose as I was thinking, and suddenly mum shrieks across the room ‘WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY NOSE?!’ We hadn’t even been talking to or about her.

She’s deeply deeply damaged and insecure, but I am not responsible for that. Thank you for the space on this thread to write it all out (much of it not for the first time, but the anger is relatively new for me, and the strength that I can feel coming from that anger is newer again).

You’re right - if I’m being 100% honest, the reason I remember so clearly that DH told her when the scan was is because I wished that he hadn’t. I was content with telling her ‘oh it’s at the end of June’, and when she brought it up again in front of DH, he got his phone out and told her (and dad) the exact date.

Prior to that, I’d noticed that they’d both come in to the kitchen and looked at my wall calendar, so perhaps they arrived with a bee in their bonnets about the date and were determined to find out. There was nothing written on the calendar because I’ve stopped writing on it, because whenever they come over (once a month or so), they stand and have a good look. So it’s just a picture on the wall now tbh.

Same with my shopping list/meal planner, mum will stand and read it and make comments about it.

We were always going to share the scan picture after the fact (hoping of course that all goes well). It’s the obsession with knowing that I don’t get. It’s entitlement, isn’t it?

When I moved into a houseshare in DH’s town 7-8 years ago (allegedly without having told them where I was going 🙄), I got a message from mum saying she wanted to ask me something ‘without me getting angry’ (I’d never felt anger in my life until about 2 years ago, I was physically incapable of it), ‘why don’t you want us to see where you now live?’ Even the turn of phrase makes my skin crawl.

When I offered that she could see it if she wanted, she responded ‘we would love to’, but it has never ever ever been about love, it is her feeling of pure entitlement to my space, my body, everything. She genuinely seems to think I am some extension of her.

Thank you 🙏🏼