How to deal with aging mother when there is no (healthy) relationship?

You are in Elderly Parents 🤦‍♀️

Here’s the link to stately homes. Lots of help there.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/relationships/5365921-july-2025-well-we-took-you-to-stately-homes

Have you been on the Stately Homes thread? I’ll try and find the link. Basically someone challenged their parents about their upbringing and the parents replied “But we took you to stately homes!”

And the Elderly Parents section is also very helpful.

Yes that's the thing isn't it, you feel sorry or whatever imagining how you would feel but they don't feel the same, and you can't know or be responsible for how another adult feels - but lots of us have been conditioned that we are there to do exactly that by poor or emotionally immature parents.

You imagine them sitting there feeling lonely and dying for you to contact them or visit them - that's a story that we make up, it's simply not true in some cases, and if it is that doesn't mean we should get in touch.

I have a difficult mother, though I don't feel to the extent of yours. But difficult enough that I often have to go low contact for periods or say no to things she asks of me. And over the years I have felt guilty over this, until I realised that it goes beyond me - when my mental health is poor due to my mother's behaviour, my children suffer because I cannot be the mum they need me to be. You say you have children, perhaps they are older I don't know, but they still need you in whatever capacity. So my advice is to keep your mother at a distance you can cope with, don't sacrifice your mental health for her. Your responsibility is to your children and family.

Of course, you are worth doing it just for yourself and you shouldn't feel guilty - but you will do, so the above is a very valid and true way of reframing it.

I also have a similar mother and agree with this. Mine is failing fast and wants me to help her despite having been really unpleasant and unsupportive to me my whole life. I keep contact as low as I can but I am eaten up with guilt. I understand completely how you feel OP.

Op I had similar with an elderly relative and they did tell the hospital I was their next of kin to contact when this happened I asked them to refer them to social services and arrange hospital transport for them they did this and social services set up things like a carer visit daily and a phone call system for emergency. I didn't have to get involved further just in case this helps

I have a similar dm. Do the bare minimum to keep her safe and look after your own mental and physical health. You can't cure her. She won't change. She will still think nothing of hurting you.

OP

We are all flawed as people. Your mother is both flawed and abusive to boot. It is not your fault she is like this and you did not make her that way either. She made you her scapegoat for all her inherent ills. She had a choice too when it came to you and she chose to abuse you. She never wanted to seek nor sought the necessary help.

She was once young and abusive, and now she is old and abusive. Age has not necessarily mellowed her.

You do not have to forgive her either.

You were never going to be like your mother is and was because you have two qualities she lacks; empathy and insight.

You need to grieve for the relationship you should have had rather than the one you actually got.

OP

I would get another mobile phone number because your mother is now likely to blow this up. Why did you give her this?. I know; it's a combination of fear, obligation and guilt; a legacy of three unwanted buttons installed by your mother.

Read Toxic Parents by Susan Forward as a starting point and seek therapy; BACP do a scale of rates.

She had a choice when it came to you and she chose to inflict on you what was likely done to her in childhood. BTW do you know anything about her childhood as this often gives clues?.

You owe her nothing least of all a relationship here. She failed you as a child and abused you. She has never apologised nor has accepted any responsibility for her actions. Drop the rope she holds out to you and further lower all interactions with her.

"But then I remember that my body goes into revolt when I see her and the upset has dominated great chunks of my life."

Your body goes into revolt because your survival instincts are on red alert to warn and protect you of imminent danger - physical, mental, emotional. You're a kind and empathetic person who wants to be a good daughter but when you have a physical reaction as strong as this, personally I would heed the warnings and leave well alone.

It's very difficult to make peace with a situation such as this as it goes against nature. A mother's love is supposed to be unconditional, wholesome and a whole list of positive adjectives. For my part I learnt to accept that my mother just wasn't capable of being those things and I went NC with her over 30 years ago. It took a while but I forgave her. I learnt she died last year. I felt sad initially, not because of the loss of the person she was, but for the loss of the mother she'd never been. I hope you find peace with your situation too, OP. 🙏

This. And get a new mobile number!

Karma
She reaps what she sows.

Don’t feel guilty!

The way you can empathise and relate to her struggles with hormones, her own upbringing, maybe societal attitudes to separation/divorce(?) etc shows you’re a bigger and more sympathetic person.

I can do this with mine, now I’m menopausal, I think back to how she must have felt. But she chose to take it out on her children and be sweetness and light to her friends, for instance, and that’s a choice she made, so she wasn’t just a victim of life’s circumstances, she had choices and made bad ones.

OP, many years ago I read an interview with Noel Gallagher of Oasis.

His father was a horrific sociopath who abused him, his older brother Paul and their mother. Everything from violently asaulting Noel, destroying their possessions, eroding their mother's self esteem and forcing her to work 3 jobs while he spent his wages on booze.

He once called their mother one evening when she was at her factory shift job and told her if she didn't come home right then and there, he'd set fire to their house and kill baby Liam and little Noel. (When she got home, the boys were alone in the house and Gallagher senior was nowhere to be seen - he'd left the boys after the phonecall to go down the pub on a bender. Didnt come home for days)

Noel was no-contact with his dad since the day their mother packed a bag and fled the home with the kids. But he said people would ask him why. Surely his dad wasnt that bad? But- he took you to Manchester City's football stadium to watch them play!!!!!

Noel's sarcastic response was something like: He wasn't such a bad dad after all, eh?

Please don't feel you have to explain away your decision. It's something that must be gnawing away at you now she's older, and ultimately it is your decison whether or not you want to be involved in the future... but you owe her as much as Noel owes his dad. Nothing.

A parent has one job. One. There is no excuse for a parent to abuse their child. Not one. Not trauma, not mental illness or ill health, nothing. When you empathise or sympathise with someone who has hurt you repeatedly, you are playing into the abusers' scheme. They don't deserve a shred of it.

You are a truly wonderful, phenomenal person to have made it into adulthood with your empathy intact and your ability to still care/have concern for your mum... but you deserve better than being drawn back into an unhealthy dynamic.

Take a leaf out of Noel's book. Put yourself first. Don't sacrifice yourself and all the hard work you've put in.

And fuck the tossers online or elsewhere who might judge you or play the old 'but she's your mum' card.

They're almost always narcissists or bullies themselves, filled with horror at the thought of an adult child who broke away and stopped the cycle. That's how narcs and abusers reproduce, so naturally they want to shame and bully people who have ended the cycle.

All my best wishes to you. 🩵 Listen to Oasis' Live Forever... 'lately I don't really wanna know how your garden grows, 'cos I just wanna fly.'

Take the advice, don't let the past try to get its grubby hands on your self esteem. You're worth every inch of the freedom and the life you've built for yourself.

**(there's a lot of wisdom in Noel's very Irish-Mancunian brand of musical melancholy).

Trust me @Asabat you are not alone. But as someone desperately trying to pull out of the orbit of M and her toxic family after many years of being NC or VLC, I know how you are feeling and how hard it is.

Your Mum is safe and supervised in sheltered housing. You can have as little or as much contact as you want.

Please don't sacrifice yourself to look after her.

I am not sure why you feel “awful”, whether it’s social pressure or something else. You mention people who have wonderful relationships with their mother and I get that, but that’s not you or your experience. The fact that you have established low contact and kept it that way for years is such an achievement!

A warning ⚠️: if you go back into the “fray” now when your mother is starting her 80s it will be much much harder to distance yourself again should you find the need to disengage. Unless there is some pressing other reason, you could find yourself getting into a very messy and perilous situation. Prioritise your own health and happiness.

If you can afford/find a counsellor/therapist to peruse these feelings it might be helpful (also for the support). I found I needed to return for a short period of therapy when my mother was older.

You are not alone, and i as others know what you are talking about.

She gave birth to you and that is what pulls you to her “the invisible cord”

But if she could not look at her own childhood with insight as to how she can improve her own life and that of her children, then she was lost a long time ago.

Many of these mothers know their own failings deep down and are bitter and resentful if their own daughters are different and achieve what they did not.

How you interact with your mother should be front and centre about your own emotional survival.

your mother is the living past she cannot change anymore than the past can.

So whatever you chose to do, be aware there will be no resolution or reconciliation.

It is a very sad thing to know but her death will release you.

And for me the death of my own mother.

i know i will cry at her funeral for what i never had, not for what she was.

@Asabat Honestly I feel you and everything you are saying. It was almost like reading this from my own future self. I had and still do have an awful relationship with my mum. We are currently NC but over the years her, life events or circumstances have drawn me back to having her around but this quickly changes into another trauma cycle and soon the minimising, the blame, abuse and rewriting history come back again leaving you feeling even worse for falling for it again.

You are a kinder person than I am because I know in my heart that when she's at the end of life I really won't care. I also have had the "she's your mother", "you'll regret it once she's gone" lines my whole life even from people who have seen the worst of this and it annoys me because all I associate with her is pain, plus she has never been their for me so why should I extend my own human responses to her.

My advice would be to do what is best for you and your own sanity, try not to let guilt and your caring nature trick you into something damaging to you. However if you do decide to help, go in with your eyes wide open because you will likely be in a more vulnerable position for the cycle to continue.

My mother was foul. Verbally and sometimes physically. I’ve seen her once in the last year and that was once too often. I used to wish my dad would leave and remarry as yours did and I was constantly walking on eggshells.

So I’m another one giving you permission to keep your distance! Not that you need it. Good luck OP. Hopefully she’ll stick to emailing and won’t bother with the phone.

You are a lovely person. She was a bad mother. Really objectively, which of these (lovely person or bad mother) deserves the most love and compassion? Because you have to offer yourself kindness as well.

She’s in assisted living/sheltered accommodation so she’s safe. And there are people around her. Don’t do something to assuage guilt which will just lead to more and more guilt. Which it will, because that’s who she is.

Op get yourself back to therapy
and don’t do anything more than you are already doing for your mother

and be prepared for her to blow up your phone