Self absorbed mum

My mum who was so brilliant in so many ways became like this in her 60s. She was so hard to be around. She had always liked to hold court, true, but any conversation no matter how it started simply became a prompt to talk about an anecdote about herself you had heard many times before.
She was diagnosed with dementia at 75 and I often think of this now as the precursor. Losing touch with reality, the ability to engage, and clutching on to things she knew and topics she felt safe with.

Wow, are you my sister!?

That's a pretty trite response in a thread where many women are describing the deep hurt of being unable to connect with their mother at all due to her complete disinterest in things that don't affect her. This hurt extends to grandchildren too.

I don't expect these women are going to ever look back with fondness on those conversations where they reached out for a bit of empathy and were batted away.

Mine majes everything about my nephews...if I say my DS team won a football Match....she immediately replies with X is brilliant at football.
I told her a story about how my DD's manners were complimented at a party the other day, she replies with Y has lovely manners too.

It's always about my sister, always as and always will. Maybe narcissism by proxy or something, is that even a thing? 😂🙈

Why are we unable to point out quite clearly to our parents that these stories are irrelevant, not interesting, and are mostly depressing

One day these stories that are irrelevant, non interesting and are mostly depressing you will smile about as the person that told them are no longer here. Point them out while the person is here of that makes you feel better.

My MIL would chat shit a lot of the time and that was ok. Did it annoy me at the time? Of course it did. Do I miss those daft chats and comments? Every day.

Parents aren’t always perfect, nor are children, a little bit of tolerance goes a long way.

YEP. It's comforting to know it isn't just mine.

My mum was like this. She would just talk over the top of me and go on about topics that interested her. Mum once complained of a friend who would just talk at her, the friend would just talk with no back and forth conversation. I thought it was a good way to describe time spent with my mum. She knew nothing about me or my kids.

Why are we unable to point out quite clearly to our parents that these stories are irrelevant, not interesting, and are mostly depressing.

I have actually lost my cool and done exactly that, on like the 100th repetition of the same irrelevant fact, and mum will raise her voice and say I'M JUST TELLING YOU! and keep going. So she literally doesn't care that she's already told me something a dozen times, she's going to finish telling me again.

It makes me feel like she doesn't see me as an actual person, I exist only as a listening appliance.

I have family members with real, diagnosed ADHD and they do not do this.

God, this thread is turning into therapy

My cat died."
"That's awful. I remember how hard it was when I lost mine."
THEN bat it back to the original speaker.

^ I think the above is really typical of people with ND who are willing and able to mask.

My cat died."
"That's awful. He was a lovely boy. You must be missing him" etc is more authentic less self referenced empathy.

I don't think that's necessarily an ADHD marker, it's a common way of empathising. You just have to be careful not to go off on a long thread about it. i.e,
"My cat died."
"That's awful. I remember how hard it was when I lost mine."
THEN bat it back to the original speaker.

Unless you're my Mum, who keeps taking over and telling us the minutiae of the life of someone none of us have ever met, no matter how the conversation started.

You described my mother to a tee, OP. Our relationship is quite superficial as a result.

I call/see her as infrequently as possible because I dread the conversations. She tells me every little detail of her life - all of which she has told me before - then asks a couple of token questions about mine, all things I'd spoken about before, but she'd switched the topic back to herself so swiftly she hadn't taken in what I'd said.

In a group setting, e.g. family dinner, if the conversation dares to veer into a topic that she can't engage in because she has no personal experience/opinion to talk about, she starts huffing and fidgeting, won't make eye contact with who's speaking, and will eventually start a side conversation with the person next to her.

I've found my tribe! My Mum will bore on about people we've never met and barely know until we are all dead from boredom,. When she finally askes how you are, you have the floor for 0.2 seconds before she's off again. She doesn't read the room, she's doesn't care if her stories might be relevant or interesting, she just keeps talking and we all politely listen, whilst trying not to go to sleep.

I think mothers sometimes hold their daughters to a higher standard than their sons, partly because they think their daughters should be as competent /beautiful /capable /good a housekeeper /good with budgeting/ good at putting up with male incompetence / whatever as they themselves are or were. Not necessarily in a competitive way, just that they recognise themselves more in their daughters than their sons.

The set in their ways thing for my parents who are like yours but not as bad, is that they're tired of the mundanities of life and don't have the energy or brainspace to reinvent the wheel. They've found a routine that works and not much is worth the upheaval of changing it. Add on the various illnesses and ailments, failing eyesight and not wanting to drive at night, diminishing patience with devolving public services etc, and it's really much easier for them to stay at home where everything works smoothly.

I could have written this exact post about my Dad

I read a book recently that made a lot of sense out of what my mum is like. It's called "Adult children of Emotionally immature parents" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adult-Children-Emotionally-Immature-Parents/dp/1626251703/ and it really resonates with me, that my mum's emotional but not emotionally mature to handle complex and adult emotions. There's been a few times especially in the last year when she's really disappointed me in how poorly she's empathised with people and tbh it's making me see how really she's not deciding to be mean, it's that she grew up in a repressed strict brethren family in the war and no one really taught her to manage her emotions properly. But yes omg to all the bloody stories about the plumbers sons wife etc... I do not give TWO HOOTS! Why are we unable to point out quite clearly to our parents that these stories are irrelevant, not interesting, and are mostly depressing. It's like their Eastenders!

Omg do we have the same mum? Similar things happened recently with us (but my sis getting the diagnosis) and she just kept banging on about other people who have had cancer and died.

Not my mother but my MIL . She had 3 sons no daughters and I think they all just did what they were told. She was a good mother in the traditional sense of being focused on the boys well being but I always thought it was for the praise or gratitude. She defined other women as being a good housekeeper or great baker . I thought she was joking the first time I heard this and got in trouble because I laughed. Suffice to say then her conversation was hugely tedious and boring . Not a crime but hard to bear . But it ramped up when DILs got pregnant as all we heard was how she was, what she bought, how much she knitted. All this at least 40 years ago . Seemed jealous of the attention we got . Then there were the health issues . All her problems were extraordinary and doctors were amazed she was a very special case . And told anyone who would listen , once told a waitress at Sunday lunch that she couldn't drink as she had no spleen. I had to leave to go to the loos as afraid to laugh again 😅 The look on the 18 year old face !
Long dead now but her craziness lives on in family folklore .

Yes but I strongly suspect undiagnosed neurodiversity/ ADHD which makes it make more sense and also realise its not deliberate. It's gotten worse as she gets older too. And TBH I struggle myself with listening to things and remember to show appropriate interest in what people are saying when it's not something I have an interest in. It's a conscious effort on my part as I know its good manners, it doesn't come naturally.
And sympathising by sharing a similar story is a trait I know is a annoying but is definitely one I struggle to resist.

Signing in. My mum was exactly the same. As mentioned above, maybe it is age related because she was always self absorbed but got a whole lot worse as she got older. She couldn't tell you what my degree was in, nor my job title. It was a chore visiting her because it was the same old shit over and over again all about her and how wonderful her sons were (spoiler: they weren't wonderful and all emigrated the moment they got the chance)

This is interesting as I have been wondering about my mum and ADHD too!
She constantly interrupts, doesn't listen to what I'm saying and repeats herself endlessly.
She's sometimes almost borderline manic, jittery and anxious.
I try to be patient, but find it really triggering / reminiscent of my childhood.

So reading all of these messages, I'm also thinking it's age related. Like reaching a certain point in life where little things seem like a big deal and people get lost in their (maybe quite mundane) routines?

we often joke about how my mum and dad are SO set in their ways. Coffee needs to be at 11am, has to be a roast dinner on a Sunday,
can't go away for a long weekend because Zumba is on a Monday etc. and their whole life fits around their dog; to the point that their prioritising the dog has caused arguments around their grandchildren's birthday events (where having dog present was not ideal with crawling babies present).

my mum and I have always had quite a difficult relationship as I truly think I'm a disappointment to her as a daughter (I'm not a super tidy, super feminine, housewife type. I cohabited before marriage, I didn't get married in a church, and haven't had our children baptised). She has never hidden this disappointment whatsoever.

now at 39, with my own family, she doesn't really know what I do as a job, doesn't really know any of my friends (if I say a name, she'll hazard a guess with "is that the blonde one?" [no]) and I think values her relationship with my kids over her relationship with me (based on how easily she will give me the silent treatment). there's no end to the stress that her moods and manipulation can cause.

with a busy routine with the kids and home life, I don't often get a chance (or feel in the mindset) to call her, particularly if the conversation lacks any interest in to what is going on for me personally.

my brother however... she knows all his friends (as in, could identify them in photos etc), knows his shift pattern at work, his colleagues and very clearly what he does, and talks of how proud she is of him (he's a doctor). she knows I'm a nurse, but any comments around that are things like "you could've been a doctor too. You're clever enough" - rather than any pride or interest in to the career I have chosen.

wow sorry that turned in to a bit of a rant on my part. It's tough sometimes.... but this thread has shown me that maybe there's a bit more to it sometimes, so maybe I need to not take it so personally.

My mum will always play devils advocate. My dad used to say ‘she’d defend Hitler this one!’ Cos no matter what she’d show empathy for everyone but her own children. My first boyfriend was toxic & physically violent to me (I was 16) and when I eventually told her years later she said ‘oh well he did come from a troubled background the poor lad’ when I split from my ex husband who I had to get a non molestation order out on she still spoke to him & suggested we get back together ‘cos marriage is for life & I’m sure he didn’t mean it!’

Does This happen with age or something?? My mum (72 now) will always relate anything I say - to HER life … I’m in perimenopause -she’ll go on and on about how she felt, that no one helped her, etc etc. same with any topic -all about her / her not getting help! So maybe you’d think she’d learn from it and HELP me but no she wants to complain and moan about how bad it all was for her (at the time I was young and didn’t know she had all these apparent issues) and to be fair she had a very good life but she seems to like drama!

I've wondered if it's an age thing.

My mil is lovely but as the years have gone by she's become more and more self absorbed. As her world has shrunk she seems obsessed with her own self, a few neighbours and my sil life in particular.

For instance we had to give her some bad news about her son, my dh. He'd been diagnosed with cancer. We went together to explain the diagnosis and answer any questions she might have. We expected that she would be very upset naturally. The conversation went like this. " well mum I've had my test results and it is cancer unfortunately so my treatment starts end of the month...." she then cuts him off and says "ooooh Francis who owned the newsagents in the village, her sons wife had that, died after a year, lovely family, such a shame". (Obviously changed some names there lol). And then was more interested in how his dsis would cope with the news as she was already worrying about an interview for promotion.

I literally just sat her down and said do you realise what we are telling you, your son could probably do with some love and sympathy here. She replied that of course she was upset then blabbered on about acupuncture. Honestly mind blowing.

Mine is like this. She did the eulogy at my brother’s funeral and the entire focus of everything she said about him was a roundabout way of her showing off what a great mum she is and nothing really about him at all.