Mum turned nasty to me as a teen. Struggling to look after her now. AIBU?

This is awful to read op. Sadly abuse takes many forms and without a doubt your mother was absolutely abusive growing up. Your father complicit if he didn't intervene.

Good to hear you've got a lovely family now to love and cherish.

You'll never 'right' this in your mind, no amount of excuses would exlain her terrible behaviour. Some people are just horrible by nature.

Keep your distance and put yourself first

Completely agree it's not ok but I will say my mother was lovely when I was a little girl and doted on me and she turned into a right bitch when I was a teenager. She's ok now I'm an adult but I can't spend too long with her. I remember lots of screaming, shouting, throwing things and really nasty comments about my body. She says the menopause made her hate everyone and she really believed I was trying to be as difficult as possible to make her life hard. I'm sick of women saying they can't help being vile to everyone around them when they're menopausal/on their period/peri/insert stupid hormonal excuse here.

It was absolutely within your control WHERE you threw it even if the urge to throw it came from nowhere. You could have thrown it on the floor or at the wall. You chose your husband as a target.

I should be clear this was once and it took me as much by surprise as it did my husband. I seriously could not control it, could not have predicted it, did not see it coming. Once I had calmed down and we talked about it, I stopped the HRT there and then by which I mean I removed the current patch and never used another. Before I experienced it, I thought the same as you and agree that its never ever acceptable but with the caveat that once unheralded is not the same as repeating ther behaviour even once more. I didn't go and find something to throw, it happened to be a tube of toothpaste that I was holding at the time.

It's absolutely insane the amount of people here saying abusive behaviour is beyond your control during menopause. Get a fucking grip women. You are wholly responsible for your actions whatever your hormones are doing. The woman who physically assaulted her husband "because of the menopause" is a disgrace.

Yeah I don't mean ask her about treating you badly. I mean asking her what happened at the time and listening to her answer. It might help you to know what she thought was happening and open up an opportunity to tell her what happened from your perspective. Which she won't like obviously, I'm not suggesting it will heal the relationship.

Ultimately though I don't think people have a duty to look after parents who abused them but I do think these things are complex emotionally and that washing you hands of her will not necessarily do YOU any favours in the long run. So you can squash the angry feelings down and deal with them later or you can try to investigate them gently now using your mother as a means of information. Sometimes the other view helps you see what else was going on and it might help you understand a bit more. No excuses for the abuse and I'm not naive enough to think you'll get an apology or anything. It probably wouldn't be enough even if you did. But information/ clarity sometimes helps.

You absolutely can control throwing things at people. That is abusive behaviour and unacceptable.

You can't control the rage, the uncontrollable urge to scream and shout and sometimes throw things but you can absolutely choose to throw things into space instead of at people or find the self awareness to storm out of the room and scream into an empty room instead of at people. You can't control the rage but it's important to acknowledge you can control where you channel it because throwing things at people is not ok.

I've had those moments while going through IVF pumped full of insane levels of hormones and had artificial menopause inducted for endometriosis. I've woken up wailing and sobbing in the middle of the night and screamed the place down so I know the feelings you're talking about but it's really important people know that it's not out of their control to not assault people and it's not ok. Just like abusing children because of mental health struggles or menopause is not ok.

Unfortunately in real life it doesn’t.

What she did to you was horrific. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I'd cut her out TBH.

Exactly. Surely a good specialised care home beats family care in the latter stages any day. There is a difference between never seeing the person and putting them in a home because that is the best standard of
care

I’m glad you are getting angry at how she treated you. You’re right - she treated you very badly.

menopause, new baby and jealousy are all mentioned here not to excuse her behaviour. We are on your side. It’s more to help you cope with what you went through. It’s entirely possible that she could hold it together for others but take it out on you. Meno, narcissism etc can all come out on the person they think will not fight back.

time now to focus on YOU OP and your loving family. If you don’t want to engage with her drop the rope and walk away from
her. Tell people ‘we don’t get on’ and repeat as needed.

It sounds like she was extremely psychologically threatened by having girls becoming women - competitors to her position- in the house, and maybe your sister’s giving birth did trigger some kind of reaction. Which is all kinds of fucked up of course. You don’t mention your dad much but he too failed you badly.
who was the father of your sisters baby? Is that a factor, eg was it a respected family friend?

I’m really sorry you’re going through this.

I’m not sure what advice I could give but my mum died when I was 19 and I’m still angry at her for some of the dreadful life choices she made that affect life now even 30 years later.

It’s ok to be angry and to dislike her. She abused you. Shes lucky you are looking after her. I wouldn’t.

Does she have mental capacity for you to ask her about what happened at that time from her perspective?

I doubt you will like or agree with her account but it might be useful to hear it, if that's possible.

A lot of people I know who grew up in the 70s/80s particularly had abusive parents to some level. Seems it was an era when sexism, racism and abuse (under the guise of discipline) was normalised.

What complete and utter crap!
It is no-one's duty to look after our elderly parent. We do not fail as adult children if we prioritise our own sanity and wellbeing.
Fuck the inheritance and there's nothing wrong with using care homes if you cannot cope physically or emotionally with an elderly parent, especially if they were abusive throughout your life!

Exactly !

I’ve had counselling and said this to my therapist and she said ‘no! Your mother had a choice . She chose to abuse you. There’s no excuse’ she then said to me imagine you’re peri/menopausal would you do the same to your dd? When I said no she said - ‘see no matter how awful you feel you wouldn’t do it. Your mother isn’t a good person ‘

I think this is really interesting. I also experienced the being woken up in the middle of the night and made to clean the house thing.
Gen X/older millennial are probably first gens to experience living as a child with a mother going through menopause as a cohort. Assuming mums tended to have kids a bit younger in the past and kids would have usually flown the nest by that point or perhaps there would be significantly older siblings who could take a bit more of a parenting role.
Also our mothers were among first gen balancing work with real parenting pressures.
It would be interesting to see a psychological study on the impact and how that affects parenting choices today.

My mother was the same. She kept me ‘ugly’ for as long as possible. Awful
clothes and haircuts so bad I cried. At 15 I realised I could fight to not allow her to touch me / my hair and I wore what I wanted and she detested me. Used to get photos of herself out and say she was thinner / prettier etc etc. she was hateful to me. She’s unwell now and my siblings have to do all the care and I won’t do anything at all. Don’t care about inheritance so they have not been able to blackmail me with that.

@godmum56 you assaulted your husband. A medication didn’t make you do it.

Have you read into Narcissism? I know that word is thrown around very liberally on MN, used to describe every person who behaves like a dickhead. But I realised as an adult that my Mother is very likely a narcissist. She loved having babies, toddlers and young children - she could control them, manipulate them, they listen to her, looked up to her and she could make them do as they were told and told them how they thought/felt and they complied. As soon as we all hit teens she was just vile to us - desperate to control us, humiliate us to get us back in line, she hated us having friends and tried to ruin that for us, she deliberately dressed us in clothes that weren’t suitable so that we would get bullied at school and then laughed about it. She hit us, force fed us or starved us, depending on what mood she was in. I could write a book on the mean and selfish things that she did. Essentially she couldn’t cope with the lack of control over us (and we were all terrified teens who behaved at school, never had a detention, wouldn’t have dared answer back because we got hit, never came home a minute after our home time etc) but she couldn’t control our thoughts and feelings and we didn’t think the sun shone out of her any more. We didn’t love adore and respect her because she behaved so cruelly towards us and didn’t deserve it - yet she thought she was God and everyone should bow down to her every whim.

Reading up on narcissism and its effect on children, particularly daughters, really helped me to understand it and realise that none of it was my fault.

Im very low contact with her now. Unsurprisingly she acts like the sweet grandma to my young children when she sees once or twice a year. I would never provide care to her if elderly. And to the person who mentioned inheritance (that made me laugh) I wouldn’t accept a penny from her, I’d give it straight to a children’s charity.

I’m sorry to everyone who experienced this.

OP, have you asked your mum why she did what she did? It might help you get some closure.