DM has gone absolutely nuclear with me about moving away...

You've got to go. If you don't, your future is laid out for you - you'll be unpaid carer to your dad and at your mum's beck and call. It will be awful.

It's not your role to do this and your mother - clearly a giant narcissist - has no right to assume you'll be her servant.

Get away and don't look back.

You can't put your whole life on hold for other people. The time is almost never 'right' if you try to factor in everyone and everything. Your mum is manipulating you about something she already opposed anyway. Go, and don't regret anything except having a mum that doesn't wish to support you.

I don't know why pp are saying she's worried about caring for ops dad. She's been arguing against a move for 13 years, it's just given her something else to guilt op about.
It doesn't matter ops reasons for moving either she and her dh have wanted to do it for years so they've clearly considered it carefully and know it's what they want.
You need to do what's best for you and your family op. Your dm will either get over it or she won't.

Down south? Australia or Surrey?
We left for other side of the world when the DC were very small. Inlaws were gutted but we didn't let it get in the way of our decision.

Sounds like a good decision to move away from her manipulation

Go and don't look back!

Stick to your guns @YourWittyLion

I have a very transactional relationship with my mother and now in her 80s she is a bloody nightmare as she is so cantankerous. My father died and she played the grieving widow part to Oscar standard- they divorced over 20 years ago as my father felt trapped and unhappy.

You must focus on your own family and do what is best for them in the long run. Given you and your DH have had the southern move as a goal for sometime just crack on with it.

if you give in now it will be far worse for you in the future. You will end up being at her beck and call until she dies. My mother has driven people away with her over-inflated sense of entitlement ‘I gave birth and raised you’ so you have to do this or pay for this’. She has scared away family and friends over the past 5 years. The last set she was nasty to was the nephews ‘I helped look after you when small so you must take me out to pub restaurant for lunch/dinner every week’

Just move ….. before she grinds you down.

I have been in a very similar situation to you and things I wished I had done that or am glad that I did do are as follows:

1.Stepmum kept using the threat of suicide as a way to manipulate me, until I stood up for myself. The manipulation worked many times and then one New Years Day when I was with my husbands family 250 miles away from her, she demanded I came to visit her as she was lonely (she had received many offers for NY, including from me and declined them all, so we made other plans) and used suicide as her bargaining card (again)! I had never reported these threats previously as I didn't want to waste social services or the 999 services time but when I was explaining to her GP how manipulative she was, they told me to ring and report it as a safeguarding issue when she did it again. So this NY, I rang social services and raised a safeguarding issue, they told me to ring 999 and the paramedics turned up. It was embarrassing for us both to be honest. I was initially made to feel like I had abandoned a lonely old woman and this was compounded by the fact I refused to attend for the Paramedics visit (well I couldn't, I was 250 miles away and do not drive). She told them she had no intention of committing suicide, she was just trying to get me to visit because she was lonely. So they left her at home, she was embarrassed, particularly as she had to explain to her neighbours when they came to check on her and she did not try that again for a long time. But it got her on social services radar that there were coping issues.

Its also important to note that my stepmum had a natural daughter, who she never wanted to bother as she was busy, it was always me she rang. But I worked full time too, did not drive (stepmum was 80 miles away from me) and what you need to read here is that I was easier to manipulate. You need to set boundaries and stick to them.

2. As hard and divisive as this may sound, when you talk to your Dad and he tells you to follow your dreams and why, record it and save it. You will need this to remind yourself that your Dad supported you. There were private conversations of a similar nature I had with my terminally ill father about how he wanted things to play out for me that were contrary to my step mums take on things, that my step mum and family disputed afterwards and whilst I knew what my Dad wanted for me and stood firm, I often wish I could listen to my Dad and "comfort " myself. Your parents raise you to have a life of your own, in an ideal world we all want to follow our dreams and your Dad clearly does but your Mum is clearly concerned and fixated on what happens in the future. But she wants to continue working? How old are your parents?

However, I do think you need to sit down with your siblings and discuss the future needs of your parents and how you can all support them, be it on the ground or at a distance. You have every right to follow your dreams, but have a care for the fact that the siblings who are local to your parents will bear the brunt of what sounds like a highly demanding Mother, and you need to be honest about that and offer what you can from afar.

I agree with this. Op as someone who lived a four hour journey from my parents as their health declined (I had moved away long before it became a problem) who moved closer partly because of this, I think you do need to give some serious thought to how stressful it can get, for everyone, you included. That long drive on the motorway when a parent is ill, it’s really hard with young children in particular. It also means that the siblings who live closer have to take up all the slack which can understandably cause resentment.

Talk to her about visits, it will be more quality time. She can visit and stay, I’m sure you and family will visit.
Dad might need nursing home care down the track.
I hope you enjoy your move and mum comes to accept it.

Can i ask what the draw of the south is? We are looking at swapping our very normal 4bed for a huge house with land up north…
But besides that, it’s your life to live as you see fit. Your DM will come round in time, it’s just she had a vision of how the future was going to be and you’ve swept it away. It’ll all be okay in 5 yrs, maybe 10! 😀

She’s a cracker, you lose work (and money) looking after your dad so she doesn’t have to!

Shes forced your hand really. If you stay now you will be at her beck and call until the day she dies. You’ll never be able to put your own children first.

You’re moving a few hundred miles away (assuming you mean the uk) not thousands. You might not be a day trip away but definitely a weekend visit a few times a year.

Im a southerner born and bred. I love it in the south, the weathers better. I’ve been known to moan about the drop in temperature at Oxford!

Your priority is the wellbeing of your own family and your own, not your parents.

Your mother sounds manipulative and immature and frankly it is a good idea to put some distance between you and her...

It is surely the best thing for you and your kids to move away from her. If she threatens to harness herself call for help. We have a mental health crisis team here as well as the option to call 999.

You do not owe a parent anything for being brought up and provided for. They chose to bring you into the world for themselves.

You know you would never want your sons' lives and dreams curtailed for you when you are older.

I feel terrible for your dad, sister and brother but your siblings need to come to their own decisions about how to handle their relationship and contact with your Mum. This will make it more difficult for you all to support your dad but that is your Mum's doing not yours.

Like @LittleMidlander i too wonder what you mean by moving south?

are you already south but want to move to the coast? I can’t think of any other way you would potentially get more for your money and have a better quality of life

if you’re “up north” and moving down south, your house will be tiny and expensive

I say this as a confirmed southerner here, who would saw off her own limbs rather than move up north, but I wonder what your life will be like if you move. It needs to dramatically improve and not just by escaping your narc mother

(also in possession of ‘tricky’ parents myself 🤣)

This was my thought, too. This does sound like it's an emotional manipulation tool, but erring on the side that its not, it sounds like the needs support with her own mental health. Wishing you all the best OP.

@YourWittyLion It sounds like a very tricky situation all round.
How old are your kids, OP?
Does your DM have a close relationship with them; has she done a lot of childcare over the years? If so, this may be a reason why she may have been feeling secure in the fact that you would be around to support her and DF as they got older, if she has given you a lot of help.

I moved away to University at 18, and never moved back home, it has meant not having the support of close family with my kids, and now that parents are older and frailer, it means tha life is very tricky with regular travel to stay / help out / share the caring.

I think if there is not a compelling (external) reason for you to move away now (eg job or whatever), then it may appear to your Mum to be in direct response to her / their increasing need for support, and your wish to avoid this - even if this is not true, it might appear that way to her, so may have caused a much more panicked and emotional response than she should have given.

You should tell her that you'd been feeling guilty and nervous about the move, but her reaction has very helpfully clarified everything for you and you no longer feel any guilt and are looking forward to getting away! Really, you should be thanking her for the clarity her response has brought.

Live your life OP. And if that means going no / very limited contact with your batshit selfish mother so be it.
No one should be having kids as their insurance for old age. Vile woman

@YourWittyLion You will find that people who know what you are dealing with will get your decision, and people who don't will tell you it's unkind and you owe your mother and what about her feelings and blah blah blah.

It sounds like your mother has on her own devised her long term plan for dealing with old age, and it's you. You didn't get any say in this and it was probably put in place a very long time ago, possibly even in childhood, because you've said you have people pleasing tendencies and it's clear that she's still exerting quite a significant degree of control over your life choices. Lots of emotional guilt tripping and selfish nonsense. Even without that, caring for someone with dementia takes a team and your father may not even want you to take on the burden in the first place.

Children do not exist to serve their parents. We're not servants, therapists, PA's, emotional support dogs, general dogs bodies, or there to provide them with someone they can safely bully. Sadly a lot of people struggle to grasp this, and that's why the cycle continues through generations. It takes courage to break the cycle. You have to be able to bear the weight of guilt and other people's expectations and to say no and mean it. You have to be able to step back and say yes, that work needs to be done and that support is required but I am not the person to give it. Find it from someone else.

I did move from north to south about twenty years ago, BTW, and have never regretted it. I have a much better quality of life here and I've been able to discover and reinvent myself away from the expectations of family, which are that I would always be the one to clean up their mess. Funnily enough, once I withdrew my services, the family very quickly reorganised to find themselves a new dogsbody, so although I was made to feel like no-one could do it but me, that simply wasn't true.

FWIW, the initial move from north to south came about because my mother had moved south and I faced a constant barrage of whining and complaining that I was too far away and she didn't see her GC enough. We quadrupled our mortgage to move and she complained that it was still too far away (less than an hour). She made this huge fuss about it, about how she wanted to be a hands on grandmother and I was denying her that. And then, after all that, after we took on this huge debt and moved half way across the country, she sold up and moved abroad without a moment's hesitation.

I don’t have advice, but I will tell you that at 20 I had a bit of a breakdown following the death of a friend. I went for counselling and other things got explored, and it became very clear my mam was a narcissist and a difficult person who I needed to get away from in order to recover and be happy.

It’s tough because I do love her, but she is only nice when like you say things are transactional and she’s in control/getting what she wants.

Anyway at the age of 20 I transferred my uni course locally to one four hours away and she went absolutely ballistic. Said all sorts of things to me about how selfish I was, how I was going to fail etc. I remember being so hurt but just knew I had to get away. We didn’t speak for two weeks but hats off to her she eventually cracked.

Since then I’ve actually moved country and over the years embedded boundaries she detests and sulks at. I won’t go home for Xmas ever (it’s a hour flight) because it’s never about my husband and our son; we’re expected to slot in to whatever she wants to do even if it doesn’t work for us. If I say anything remotely against these plans she starts crying. You get the jist.

it’s hard and at 38 years old, I am still so sad that this is my mother. I look back on my childhood now I’m a mum and realise so much of how she raised my siblings and I was always focused on her needs.

But the peace I have has always been worth the wars. I had to accept my mam a long time ago and while I’ve largely healed it can still be tough when her horrible ways raise their head. But it’s been the making of me and my mental health moving away from her.

So I would say continue with your move, ignore the war of words and just live your life for you and your kids. On the low days where you are full of guilt, maybe speak to someone (counselling has been great in enabling me to accept my mum; understand her and also justify the need to be away from her). Just remember that you are doing all this for you and your kids and their happiness.

Sending hugs and love your way x

OP, I agree with PP who have said call the police to do a welfare check. Also, you can report them to SS if you have concerns for their welfare.

Also, it sounds like your mum would benefit from counselling to deal with her life.

It is hard on her if you move, but if you don't do it now, you never will.

Stand firm and follow the plan that you and DH want. As I was an only child my mum also went nuclear when I moved to Hong Kong for 3 years to take a contract job a few years ago - so glad I ignored her and did it! Your mum also has no right to expect you to pick up the slack with your Dad. Probably, due to your Dad it is best you move anyway - otherwise she'll want you to pick up that extra work. I also have adults DCs now, and I want them to take opportunities and live their lives to the best.

My advice would be stop consulting them and talking to them about it - just get on and do it!

If your DM decided she wanted to up and move she'd probably do it without asking for permission.

No idea of your DC's ages but go while you're all young enough to settle and enjoy your years.

As I always say life's no dress rehearsal, we only get one chance.

I don't think you should change your plans at all. After all, this is your dream and you can't sacrifice your own lives. Most parents would miss their children but want them to be happy.
Your DM is obviously very fearful about the future so I would keep discussing your plans so that she knows it's definitely going to happen, but at the same time address her concerns about the future - where help will come from, how often you could visit her, etc etc. so that she comes to realise she will be able to manage. If you don't go when you said you would, it will just be worse later on, or you'll never go.