Did anyone else’s mum have an alternative “fantasy” family whilst you were growing up

[Justiceishalfblind]

My mum did. She was obsessed with a professional cricket player. She was in love with him but the love extended to his (thin) wife and (sporty) children.

She would sit at the dinner table telling us merrily what that family had done that day.

I have never met anyone in real life with similar. Is this a thing?

Mine was different in that I fantasised about coming from a different family; different parents and wider family. As I said before, I still do but I do it privately, it stays in my head.

Oh these are interesting!

No one has yet said that she herself imagines having someone else’s children/husband be hers though ....I think we’ve managed to find an intact taboo.
I think daydreaming that you are someone else’s wife instead of your husband’s might be quite common though

Mangermaid that does feel quite similar - a dysfunctional reaction to a trauma?

I thought my family were odd.

:)

I feel quite special now!

I did when I was growing up, but I don't now.

@Justiceishalfblind yes, that's the way I see it now. I feel no anger towards my mam, I just wish for her (and me) that she had been happy with the daughter she had.

That’s good manger.
I do feel anger with her but more about other things.

@Justiceishalfblind

Your story rings true with me too, but in my case perhaps not to the extent of idolising an acquaintances family.

My mum would often say how she wished we could be like her sister's children in behaviour and we'd always hear about their achievements in detail. It was like she wasn't proud of us and we weren't enough.

My mum did have a difficult childhood and knew her birth was an accident and it was clear from her mother that she was resented for scuppering her freedom. She still has ongoing issues with her self esteem and isn't nurturing to me or my kids although she seems to be finding a new depth of love for my younger siblings' toddler children and she's a fun grandmother to my kids.

My mum had trauma at the time of my birth- she was hospitalised and severely depressed. I think we didn't get the bond right at the time. But our relationship is much better now- we're close now. Mum seems happier all round when she's not responsible for being the adult. She's better as a friend to spend time with. When I became an adult who stood on my own two feet and didn't look to her for support she was more 'open' and easier to be in the company of.

I guess I'm saying whatever our mums did, said or thought was never about us as such. More about what they have going on. As PP said- a coping mechanism

Salad, that’s interesting and it sounds like she still has some development capacity in her too.

I came on to say maladaptive daydreaming too. I think this is more common than one might think, but most daydreamers keep their alternative family a secret. Although it sounds like your mum had no filter at all about hers OP!

As a child I had a fictional family, in hindsight it started after the divorce of my parents and was based on a character I saw on TV. These 'families' have changed over the years to suit my needs, the current one I have are amazing, they were a great support with my children and my 'brother' got married recently and I was crying tears on the wedding day as I was so happy for him Not a soul knows about them, but they are a very important part of my life and I suspect have saved the NHS a fortune on counselling and medication. I appear to be a very 'normal' person IRL!

This is fascinating and also awful for you. I'm not sure I totally get it - did she tell you what they "did" like an omniscient narrator, or did she insert herself into the stories too, like "CricketerHusband took me out to lunch today, then we went to watch Daniel play rugby and picked up Sue from her riding lesson"?

I used to have a bit of a fantasy life as a child, which obviously filled some emotional gaps, but not since... Though I do have a tendency to obsess and fantasise about crushes - for the same reasons, I suppose.

Wow! jamesfailedmarshmallows

This is kind of awesome:

“ the current one I have are amazing, they were a great support with my children and my 'brother' got married recently and I was crying tears on the wedding day as I was so happy for him hmm Not a soul knows about them, but they are a very important part of my life and I suspect have saved the NHS a fortune on counselling and medication. ‘

I think you should keep a secret diary and keep completed volumes with your will in case your children do the same thing.

My mum had an imaginary chicken that lived in the garden and provided us with eggs, does that count?

Sandandso

It was the former.
An awful lot of it was about jokes that they had told, Effortlessly light-hearted remarks that they had made, many of them true, perhaps even most of them.
A lot of it was true or based on truth but exaggerated. She would sometimes bring me in as a minor character saying “and then justice said sue XYZ”. But XYZ would be something that she had imagined me saying not something I had actually said. It was like she was trying to introduce a different me to her fantasy family

“My mum had an imaginary chicken that lived in the garden and provided us with eggs, does that count?”

Are you suitably traumatised by it and possibly seeking a diagnosis? If so then yes definitely..... :)

My mother told me she used to invent long stories about her fantasy life every night before going to sleep... involving her having thrilling adventures, solving mysteries etc. I think she had done it since childhood.

When she told me this I was a child and just vaguely interested... in retrospect I wonder if it was linked to her low self-esteem and she found it comforting to have a very successful and confident alter ego. She has been dead for many years so I can't ask her.

Justice my dc think I am already mad enough My first family ever was Greek (I was the only girl out of a family of 12, we were from a farming background but my 'father' prioritized education and all of my 'brothers' became highly educated. I actually was motivated as a young teen to learn Greek because of them. For some reason I drifted away from them and my new family have farm land, my twin brother is an equine dentist 4 days a month in the ME (rest of the time he works on our farm) and my other brother (who is actually my cousin, but his mum had postnatal psychosis when he was born so he was raised in our house hence I consider him a brother) got a degree in astrophysics from Imperial, but prefers to farm as he doesn't like office work. Both of them play a very active role in my dc's life, and these 'brothers' have been a pillar of support to me through hard times. Written down I see that it looks absolutely bonkers though but I get so much reassurance and enjoyment out of my 'family'.

@Justiceishalfblind

“My mum had an imaginary chicken that lived in the garden and provided us with eggs, does that count?”

Are you suitably traumatised by it and possibly seeking a diagnosis? If so then yes definitely..... :)

We had the 'Washing-Up Fairy' as well...

Just to clarify incase anyone is following my fantasy life I don't actually live on the farm, but I frequently visit and my dc spent a large portion of their childhood there.

Not a fantasy family, but I did have fantasy friends as a teenager. I was very quiet and studious; my siblings were sociable extroverts who were always doing exciting things with their mates. I didn't want their lifestyles, but I did want to make friends when I went to university, and decided that this was more likely to happen if people thought I had friends already and wasn't weird. So I surreptitiously photocopied my siblings' photos of their mates on nights out, stuck them up around my bedroom mirror in halls, and pretended that they were photos of my friends and forgot to hide them when my brother came to visit

I don't think anyone was fooled .

Your mums fantasies sound quite healthy to me Irene, I did that too - won Wimbledon many a time I tell you.

I wonder if mum had an even deeper fantasy life at nighttime......it would surprising if it was only the public obsession wouldn’t it?

That makes me sad to think about, but it would be like all the unfaithful husbands with “mentionitus” that we read about on here.....

“Written down I see that it looks absolutely bonkers though”

Do you think???