I have posted here as well as relationships. I know it’s not good form but I am desperate for some help, feeling like I’m drowning.
Don’t want to drip feed but in essence me and my mum have had a rocky but close relationship over the years. I’ve been told by multiple therapists and friends that I was severely emotionally abused/neglected as a child and I’ve always carried with it an underlying anger towards my parents for this. I won’t go into the detail but suffice to say that most therapists over the years have labelled it at the ‘extreme end’ of emotional neglect. I’ve battled with huge issues growing up and as an adult (now late 30s) and have managed to carve a good job and decent pay and have lots of friends, though romantic relationships have been hard for me.
That said above, whatever anyone says, it’s not as simple as ‘my parents were shit.’ They we’re often shit but there was also lots of times of love and crucially, I know that the majority of the time my parents did want the best for me, they just didn’t have the tools themselves to be great parents on the emotional side.
my relationship with them both (they are still married) was never great but we were a close family. My sister was the one that they were closer to but we were a family. I have, admittedly, a terrible temper with my mum to the point where I would scream and shout and swear at her often. I am not like this with anyone else, just her, and it completely relates to the background of our relationship. In fairness to her, in the last ten years she has been very different and as a person I can she she is good and decent and really did want a relationship with me and valued that. But deep down I don’t forgive some of the things she said that damaged, forever, how I saw myself.
Anyway, a few weeks ago I found out I was pregnant. I wanted to keep it quiet for a while so didn’t say. During that time we had a row, as we often do every few weeks, I told her to fuck off, and this time, she did. Usually we would speak again one way or another but basically this time it’s been silence.
I am NOT excusing what I said to her and in many ways I don’t blame her this time for actually fucking off like I put in the text. I haven’t written the background to this to excuse my behaviour but more because crucially, now, I genuinely believe she doesn’t care if I am dead or alive. And this has been my fear since I was a child, that they just didn’t care. So it’s like this has now come true, she doesn’t.
I want to speak to her mostly because I’m pregnant and need my mum. But I am angry she hasn’t been in touch and part of me wants to know how long she will actually leave this. Being honest, I also don’t know how to engage in any conversation with her that doesn’t make me on the back foot because ultimately I hate the things she did to me and I KNOW the only reason I get angry quickly with her and nobody else is because I have this pent up resentment always under the surface.
My mind is such a mess though because:
I’m an adult and shouldn’t tell her to fuck off no matter what
nothing that happens now as between me and her will change the past and she has actually apologised and acknowledged the failings to me before and she seemed genuine and was crying and said she could only say sorry over and over and that she knew better now
i am feeling increasingly sad that I we are not talking during my pregnancy. This is the longest we have ever not spoken.
in not speaking to her, automatically my dad will not communicate with me as they are a team and that’s that, they operate as a unit, so I am missing that relationship too (not that he was perfect either, but that’s another story!)
im basically just sad and low and having them in my life is hard but they are not really awful people. In fact a few weeks before this argument happened they had given me a significant amount of money. Not that that cancels out childhood emotional neglect but it shows there is care there and they do mean well these days.
if she rang me by mistake I would call back straight away but I feel there’s no way in now and my fear that she doesn’t care has come true. If I contact her how will I ever know if she would have contacted me?