What on earth is my mother doing??

Ah cross posted!

No idea if this is good advice but personally I would answer each message by the same thing every day. I love you -> If you did you wouldn’t side with the man who abused me since I was a child. Every time she sends the same message, send the same answer.

As PPs have said, I suspect she is doing it to feel good about herself and pretend all is well, your answer would prevent her from lying to herself.

This. Absolutely appalled by the posters telling the OP to have sympathy for her 'poor mum' etc, etc.
How absolutely disgraceful to tell a victim to put their abuser first.

It’s a copy paste? Super. Work out your own reply, and copy paste that. Each time.

100% agree with this.

My father also didn't want children, my mother lied to him that she couldn't have children, then 'oopsed' him and they ended up having myself and my two brothers within 5 years. My mother is Catholic.

'Luckily' for me my father removed himself from family life when I was 9 to work abroad. For the following decade or so we rarely saw him, and after one attempt to abandon us on the other side of the world when I was 12, he finally left my mother for another woman when I was 21 (he'd been unfaithful the whole 23 years they were married).

Like your mother, mine had plenty of opportunities and the resources to leave my father at any time. She came from a very wealthy family who repeatedly offered to support us if she left. My mother however always put her marriage/wealthy ex-pat lifestyle first, and had no hesitation in completely wrecking our childhoods to do so.

I'm now 55, went very low contact with my mother 25 years ago, and live on the other side of the world from her. I've not seen her in 15 years. Neither myself or my two brothers have had children of our own.

To this day my mother is defensive to the point of being nasty whenever I try and discuss any of the above with her. She accepts zero personal responsibility and blames everything on my father. She also blames me for him having his exit affair, as I made him 'feel old' by getting married and leaving home - he was 42.

"It’s also okay to grieve the relationship you wish you had with your mother. She may not be capable of giving you the support and love you need, and that’s a painful reality to face"

This post is so true. Your mother is now panicking that your father is going to die and she is going to be left alone...which frankly, she deserves to be.

You reap what you sow.

Absolutely spot on. Block her on everything, you and your family are the most important thing now.

You have tried to do what you can and it isn't enough, it will never be enough unless it's on her terms and her terms only.

Concentrate on you.

What my therapist was unable to do was offer a solution.

OP it's a basic tenet of therapy - and of life - that you cannot control/change what anyone else does. You can only control/change your own responses to that person.

You have two choices here, either let her carry on, with all the negative feelings that brings, or detach from her and accept that although you feel like the parent she is an adult who has made her choices for herself.

I think you would benefit from person centred therapy to work through your feelings of responsibility, why you still feel such a deep love for her despite everything she's done and said. And come to a way of letting go of her, and with it letting go of the guilt. She is not going to have a moment of Damascene awakening when she suddenly becomes the mother you want her to be. You need to find clarity in your own thoughts and feelings so that you can make a decision that is right for you and your children, not for your mother.

Why the fuck would you offer to house her?
You were not only the child of an abusive father but that of a neglectful mother, abusive by proxy. She watched on whilst your father destroyed your childhood. She did nothing whilst your father physically abused you.
You owe her nothing. I would have zero qualms about cutting off both of them. They have already stolen your childhood, stop letting them steal your adulthood and spreading their toxicity to your children as well.

In which case block her on everything and get on with your life.

You have made your choice and she has made hers.

Time to cut this all free and get on with your life

I just want to clarify I am not no contact with my mother but low contact. She too has punished me for this and pushed and pushed against every boundary.
I tell myself I am prioritising myself so I can prioritise my children. That helps me stay firm- not being constantly in ptsd distress makes me a better parent. Could reframing it so you are helping your children help you help yourself?

There are times OP when we have to accept things can never be fixed no matter how much we try or want them to.

You OP are amazing. You are much stronger than you give yourself credit .
To recognise what is happening is wrong takes strength. To protect your children and move 300 miles to save them from the awful things that happened to you , shows great love and resilience.

You are 100times better a parent than you Mother ever was. You put your children 1St always and move mountains to keep them safe.

You are enough OP. Those kids are incredibly lucky.

Im going to disagree with some posters and say stop making excuses for your Mother. She’s as Bad , if not worse than your dad because she knows you were abused but continues to excuse and perpetuate the mental heartbreak you went through.

She doesn’t deserve you. Stop tearing yourself apart wanting her to be something she will never be . A kind loving Mother. Surely her actions by not contacting you and supporting you when you were I’ll demonstrates this ?

Block her , mute her , just stop feeding this cycle of abuse.
Go back to therapy and focus on your self and your kids.

Your Dad , Brother and Mother are not and never will give you the Love and support you deserve. That’s their loss.

Stop wasting your energy on them and focus on what’s really important yourself and your family.

I highly recommend a book called Discovering the Inner Mother by Bethany Webster.

And another one called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.

I have a parent/child dynamic with my own mother, but having therapy and reading books like the above has helped me approach my parents as adult to adult rather than child to parent or vice versa. It has helped me see the limitations of what our relationship has and helped me seek what child me needed from elsewhere.

Good luck OP.

Edited to amend book title

It's a bit beyond that though, surely?

Obviously MN's not a hive mind, but IME the cries of "But family ...!!" are pretty generally reserved for lower level offence where simply talking it out might work, rather than appalling and longstanding abuse like this

The truth is I have given up on myself in some ways. It is too late for me now. I am way too broken to be save. I recognise I am still in the cycle of abuse myself, because I am completely unable to protect myself and walk away from my mother. I have no ability to walk away or to leave her, I don't know how to. So in some ways I am still stuck and she knows this. I can't leave her for fear 'something will happen to her'

So I remain where I am. A rudderless, helpless feeling where she pulls the strings as and when she pleases.

Your situation isn't your fault OP, but managing it is your responsibility.

You have enough insight to identify FOG, and to recognise the patterns that facilitate you holding yourself in place so they can hurt you again and again.

Organisations exist to help people who are victims of abuse, to learn how to get out of that relationship and identify what kept you there in the first place.

I just gently wish to remind you of your power. You have the power to choose to have nothing to do with them any longer. You may choose not to exercise that power, as is your right, we all get to make our choices about who we keep in our lives and who we let go. But it is a choice you're making.

It's important to remember the messages we're sending to our kids and the lessons we are teaching them.

Your parents may wish you to feel you're helpless, but you're not.

From your insightful words OP my heart goes out to you.
If your mum was really alone with your dad and had no one and was not in contact with anyone then your approach might be different.
But if she’s calling other relatives regularly, she’s not that isolated.
I am wondering if in childhood your mum had a bond with you that your father was extremely jealous of and then proceeded to take punish you for? As it seems you have been singled out, and she’s sending these messages as a way of appeasing her own guilt.
They don’t mean much after everything you have been through.
You are grieving a mother you longed to have. And still want, but sadly this woman cannot be that loving parent for you.
Well done on removing yourself away from your father and protecting your own DC.
Counselling would really help you work through your experiences, and building your own life and memories with your own family matters most now.
You don’t have to go NC, but muting these messages as PP have suggested would be a huge help.
Your life is for you and those who love you now. Don’t let your parents (they don’t deserve the title!) steal
any more of your time.

@Hummingbird75 OP just because your mum didn’t physically abuse you doesn’t mean she didn’t abuse you and she facilitated your father to do it .

i think you came here to be told to go NC with your mum too

It’s time to move on from the past . Your mum has made her choices.
Close the door on then both a d get some Counseling. .

I struggle with the throwing about of the term narcissist. It sounds to me like trauma bonding of the parents and it's about generational relationships and expectations of behaviour and marriage post WW2 when the entire nation was traumatised and feminism was yet to arrive to rescue women.

I find this a distressing thread for personal reasons so I haven't read all of it but OP, I'd say you need to cut contact with your mother but then you will need to do the work of grieving the parents you haven't had and needed. No one has mentioned grieving and it's very important. It's like letting go of a toxic relationship of any kind, it's hard work. As long as you keep contact with your mother, you won't heal.

I spent most of my life estranged from my abusive older brother. He couldn't listen and in the end, to get rid of him, I had to send him a violently angry and explicit email, it did the trick and I was so glad to have him out of my life. I heard he died recently and I was momentarily sad for the relationship I might have had but I had not a moment of regret for cutting him off.

I can relate to that feeling of feeling unable to protect yourself, due to conditioning. Of knowing something in your logical mind but being unable to put it into action.

I'd recommend looking into Internal Family Systems therapy. The idea is that there is an adult part of you that is strong and wise - and it's clear from your posts that you have those qualities in spades. But there are also younger parts of you that hold the trauma, and those parts make leaving feel impossible. IFS is about being able to help those younger parts of you.

I've read a few replies and I must say it's refreshing to see people say to OP 'you should cut your mum off too' rather than the age old 'but faaaaamily' guilt trip people often receive on here when they need to distance themselves from abusive relatives.

Your post is really triggering for me as I am so like you. I know what it feels like when someone has trained you to serve them then they go no contact in order to punish you. What utter cruelty. Then they exonerate themself by sending nice texst that they can show to people: "see, look how loving I am to her." I am so angry for you and for me. It is so hard to extricate yourself from these people even though they are so cruel because cruelty is all you have known of love. The miracle is that, despite all this, you do know how to love others. So do I. I am trying to put all that love and servitude to better use by giving it to myself, one day at a time. I hope you can do the same.

I had a similar issue. For me my line in the sand was my mother choosing to stay with him over having the relationship she claimed she wanted with my children.
It is devastating to know your mother will never choose you, to be scapegoated by your siblings because you won't sweep everything under the carpet and play happy families.
My mother choosing him over my children made me angry, angry enough to change the dynamic and protect myself finally.
I am sad, even when he dies I will never be able to forgive her. But being sad because I've given up on our relationship ever being right is infinitely better than the pain of trying to be enough for her and being triggered constantly.

It was hard to draw boundaries and set my terms, and I still feel guilty but it has brought me peace to heal.
Good luck- it is a hard and lonely place

Sadly OP, your mother doesn't love you as much as she loves your father.

All of the tragic backstory aside, she is ignoring your request to stop messaging and continuing to do it because it suits her, even though it hurts you.

Honestly at this point I have to wonder whether you'd be better off mentally and emotionally cutting contact with both of them: as long as your parents are together, contact with your mum will trigger your memories and reopen your wounds from your father, and it sounds like she is creating wounds of her own with you and simply doesn't care, or lacks the capacity to care.

Your father is abusive, but I'm not sure if you're aware that your mother is too.

It's tragic when someone chooses their abusive spouse over their children, and I'm very sorry. You sound like the loveliest person and like a daughter any parent would love to have. They are so lucky to have you and they have no idea. They certainly don't deserve you in their lives.

I would think long and hard about no contact with the pair of them. Yes it will hurt, but it will hurt in a way you can eventually process and move on from. If you keep her in your life you will be freshly hurt again, and again, and again, until they die.