Are you close to your mother?

[TickTockBaby]

I'd say I'm not really, but it's an area I struggle with tbh.

I love her she's my mum, but we're not close. I wouldn't go to her with any queries or issues but I'm reassured by the fact that she'd be there if I needed a place to go to.

There isn't a real point to this post, I suppose, but I have a daughter and I so want to have a different relationship with her.

No. She finds me tiresome and a bit dull. We keep in touch with a 30 minute chat about once a month. All very jolly and pleasant, but no real warmth or depth to our relationship.

I have two daughters and am trying hard to be the kind of mum they want to have in their lives as they get older.

No.
90% of what comes out of her mouth is either a fib or something designed to manipulate me in some tiny or large way.

Micro lies or big whoppers. Looking back (like you do when you have kids of your own and start to see your parents clearly) i can remember her often encouraging me to tell fibs or bend the truth a lot when i was growing up.

Now she's in her 80s she's started to lose any refinement we all just roll our eyes and say 'she's talking bollocks again'. It helps me to have sense of humour about it!

Growing up absolutely not. My dm played psychological games with both me and my dsis. I learnt very fast nto to trust her and consider her manipulative.

To her credit though I will say she started to change and learn after I put some serious boundaries in. I went NC and LC for a while and over time we have carved out a really decent relationship. There are still things I don't like but I either challenge her or I just change the subject. Distance seems to be the key. In truth my dsis lives near her and is far more dependent on her, that relationship is what ours would have been if I hadn't stepped back.

Its not healthy and dm is a large part of dsis mental health concerns. It's a massive co dependent toxic debacle that I stay far away from so it always reminds me of caution getting too close. But dm wouldn't say half of the things to me that she pulls qith my dsis. Interestingly growing up I was very much the scapegoat and dsis was the golden child.

Turns out as an adult being the scapegoat makes boundaries easier and I'm bloody grateful I am not the hallowed golden child.

My mum would say we are close, because she’s dependent on me, but it doesn’t feel like closeness to me because I can never relax in her company. I can’t be tired or have off days or concerns because she can only cope when I’m100% .
So she doesn’t know a lot about me.

No. I’m very fond of her and protective of her, but she’s always been timid and naive and she never stood between me and the world the way you need a parent to do when you’re a child — I was already not telling her things she’d only worry frantically about by the time I was eight.

I still tell her nothing. She tells me she was awake at 3 am wondering about whatever.

My relationship with my mother improved noend after her death.

Definitely not. She is thankfully long dead, but was a cold critical selfish narcissist. I went nc with her to protect my DDs from her.
My DH died when my DDs were both still babies. When my DSis informed mother, her response was “How tragic. Do come and see our new carpet.”
I used her as a negative role model of motherhood. I have a much better relationship with my now adult DDs.

No. I was never good enough and still am not. Add in a nasty divorce from.father when I was 12 and two steps in quick succession. She wanted the perfect mother daughter relationship but only for outsiders to see. I left home for uni at 18, dropped out, spent some time in Europe and was working at 20 in London. When ds1 was born I remember holding him in my arms when he was a few days old and knowing I could never do a thing to hurt him and at that point I knew I had never known a mother's unconditional love. I wept for a long time.

She may have been proud of some of the things I have done but never of me and has never provided an iota of support. Through MNet which I found about 12 years ago I realised my mother is a classic narcissist. My grandparents facilitated her, my father didn't but stayed longer than he should, step 2 didn't (over quickly), step 3 does.

I'm sorry op, that was very long but in answered to your question, yes things can be different with your own children/daughter. I have a very close relationship with both my children and it's lovely. Oddly enough dd saw Through mother at 12 (probably because she had been well mother's- although I hasten to add mother was); it took me until I was 50.

Just love and nurture your children and all will be well.

Not close. Similar to Erinyes above — she pushed her own anxieties and fears onto me as a child, meaning I had to kind of manage her anxieties even when I was five. Other stuff too.

We’re… cordial I suppose. We speak on the phone about once a month. Surface chitchat. She doesn’t understand my life at all.

I have learned the hard way that distance and boundaries are the way forward.

She’s started making exploratory noises about me ‘looking after’ her when my dad dies. That isn’t going to happen.

@bloodywhitecat I am so sorry to hear about your DH. I have seen your other threads and know the end was close. With very best wishes and may he rest in peace knowing how loved he was

I think we are fairly close but I would never say we are 'best friends', I don't really want her 'advice' on personal matters. We have quite different views, opinions, interests etc. She is also very feisty and opinionated which I find a bit hard at times - I am much more laid back. I feel mean saying that as she is incredibly generous and kind and always tells me how lucky she is to have a DD. But generally we get on well and have nice days out most weeks.

I don't think I would want an intense 'mother daughter relationship', I have a DS so that will never be an issue but a close friend of mine has a DD and their lives are really quite enmeshed and co-dependent and I would find that stifling.

I am just wish we lived closer as I really really miss her being just around on a day to day basis. We talk every day but she's a 4 hour drive away. Can't wait to see her soon.

Yes I love my mum, our relationship has got better as the years have gone on. We speak everyday and i love her so much even though she is not perfect she is very loving and reliable

No, sadly. I love her because she's my mum, but she is possibly a narcissist (I know that word is thrown about all the time but it fits her to a tee). She's highly strung, quite manipulative and burdened me with her troubles from a very young age.
She'd openly wail and cry in front of us, tell us how hard her life was (it really wasn't), and sometimes she'd even ring the Samaritans when we were in the room telling them she was contemplating suicide.
I have a disabled child, and don't receive any help from anyone with him really, yet my mum still expects me to be the one she can unburden herself to (she has friends and sisters). I have a teenage daughter who I'm very close to though (I've made sure not to emotionally lean on her in any way).
I only realised my own mum was "weird" as I got older and saw my DP's mum and her relationship with her daughters.

No. She prefers my brother. He's welcome. (still hurts though). So jealous of the good ones and just have to remind myself to be a good mother to mine.

She's my best friend and I would rather spend time with her than people my own age. I was equally as close to my grandma when I was growing up before she died. My DS loves my mum and they are incredibly close (as he is with my dad too).

Out of interest, how do you define being close to your mothers? I don't have this and really understand it in real terms.

It's such a difficult topic I suppose.

We had a horrible relationship when I was a teen, and I've been fairly independent of her as a mum since then.

I spent a lot of my life feeling perhaps it was me who was the 'issue' as she and my older sister are very close, she sees her daily, has dinner with her a couple of times a week and lives about 10 houses away.

I don't have any fond childhood memories really. Not abusive in anyway, just nothingness really. I do remember the silent treatment as a teen when I didn't conform to her ways or requests, and being told as a teen that she loved me because I was her daughter but she often didn't like me as a person.

Or when I got accepted into uni, on a course I was so excited about and she didn't say congratulations but asked if I'd be going.

I didn't go to her when I got my first period I hid it from her because I didn't know how to talk to her about it. I don't remember us as a family kissing or hugging or saying I love you. Outwardly she kept us clean, fed, we didn't miss school, the house was neat and comfortable, the outward projection was important to her, she cared, and still does, about what people thought/think of her.

We didn't do anything as a family, and this never struck as odd until I went out into the world and saw other relationships. I feel resentful of this. I feel it even more now after having my own DD. I struggle to understand a lot of her parenting ways now I have children of my own.

I feel resentful of the fact that she does things differently with my DC she plays with them when we visit and undermines my parenting a lot offering sweets, toys, magazines to the children even though I've made it clear I don't want her to do that, as I don't want my DC to have 'things' relentlessly.

We're not close, but I wish we were. I want my own DC to know without question I love them, I support them and they can come to me whenever and for anything. I want them to remember their childhood fondly and I want it positive not something they have to carry with them.

I don't want to be their best friend I want to be a part of their healthy foundations.

@bloodywhitecat

No, I am not. My husband died 10 days ago and, apart from a few platitudes, she has been no support at all. I can't turn to her for help at all.

My daughter, on the other hand, has been amazing. She and her husband have dropped everything and come when I have needed them most, they were here the night DH died and I couldn't have got through that weekend without them.

Oh I am so sorry - I have followed your journey and somehow missed this sad news.

Much love to you and the family, I am so glad you have your daughter for support. She sounds amazing, and no doubt gets her strength and compassion from you.

I feel exactly the same as you OP. I love her, she's my mum and I know she would be there for me in a pinch, but I don't ever go to her for advice, and a lot of what she knows about me and my life is surface level stuff that I'd tell anyone.

She wasn't the best mother growing up, and I believe that if times had been different she wouldn't/shouldn't have had children. So I was fed, clothed and warm but there was very little proper love or closeness, I left home as early as I could and have had a kind of arms length relationship with her ever since. I've tried to broach the subject with her a number of times but in her eyes she was a good mother who did her best and won't hear any different. Which makes any bridge-building almost impossible as she has no insight into my feelings, or why I might feel fairly ambivalent towards her in certain ways.

Interestingly, since she hit her late 60s and was widowed, she clearly wants a closer relationship with me, tells me she loves me all the time, wants to live closer to me, and I feel, whether she recognises it or not, that a lot of it comes from wanting to be supported in her old age.