Do you like your Mum?

[Lemonthyme3]

Do you like your Mum?

I don’t mean love - I mean like

Would you be friends with her if she wasn’t your mum?

Would you be able to work with her if you shared an office/same company?

…I’m writing this because I wish I liked mine and I’m deeply sad that I don’t. I find it tough spending time with her.

But I have young children, and often wonder if when they grow up, they’ll feel the same about me, which saddens me greatly 😔

So yeah - if you like your Mum, help me have some hope that it can work out? x

She’s nice enough and well-meaning but I absolutely would not be friends with her if we weren’t related. Nor her me. We’re completely - COMPLETELY - different people.

My mum is gone 16 years now and we were just getting to the adult friends stage of life. She was lovely and the amount of friends she had was something else, they were all mad about her.

Hmm, this resonates. Is your mother like mine, in that I absolutely cannot criticise her to her face?

I suspect mine is somewhat narcissistic and uses her children to bolster her ego, so we’re trained in this. It’s very confusing

In my family growing up, nobody was happy unless my mum was happy. It really was ALL about her. My dad still plays this role, the classic enabler. Painful to watch now I see it for what it is.

Lost mine 13 years ago….truth be known, lost her many years before she passed. No relationship, her golden child was my brother…I didn’t like or love her.

I like her, but I think she’s crazy. Bit of a narcissist tbh but also funny and charismatic. Drives me insane fairly often. I still like her.

No. I love her, have a lot of respect for her good qualities and appreciate her very much for everything she has done for me. She is generous, kind and has very strong moral values, all of which I admire. I want to look after her and do all I can to make her final years as easy as they can be, but I really do not like her company and we have little in common as people. I don't feel she really knows me and I've never chosen to tell her things or confide in her. I'd never spend time with her if we weren't related.

I guess old age has made the bits of her I dislike even more pronounced - she is extremely negative, moans non-stop, catastrophises everything and is highly intolerant and judgemental, bordering on very nasty sometimes when talking about other people. I never look forward to spending time in her company yet we are now at the stage where I must spend a lot of time with her and I inevitably come away feeling really quite depressed by it all. It's a weird old dynamic.

Similar situation with me. We live 5 hours away and after a couple of days with her I'm itching to go home 😔She's getting worse the older she gets. Saw the same with my nan too. Saying things even if they are hurtful 😭

I liked my Mum a great deal. She was a good person, was fun, made friends easily. Was loving and caring but never smothering. She was a joy to be around.

Would I have been friends with her if she wasn't family? Probably not. We didn't share a lot of interests in common, and all of my good friendships are built around shared interests.

Would I have been able to work with her? I did, for 3 years. Same place, different department, and yes, she made a good colleague.

I absolutely loathed living with her though. My late teen years, and again when I moved back home for a year after uni, we just did not get on. That didn't mean I didn't like her though, I think I'd struggle to live with some of my best friends as well!

She died 7 years ago this week, I miss her terribly.

Mine is a covert narcissist. Im completely estranged. I can see it crystal clear with the space I now have.

When i think of her as a child I feel sorry for her. I don't feel sorry for her as an adult. She's been selfish, cruel, absolutely self serving, a bully, neglectful and a tyrant. I actually called her a tyrant about 20 years ago. She shut it down and continued her spiel, like a tyrant.

I had a complicated relationship with mine, she had mental health issues and a learning disability and was very toxic at times. Then she died suddenly at 57 of a sudden brain haemorrhage when I was 27 and now I regret ever feeling that way. I now realise she tried her best with what she knew and I’d do anything to have that complicatedness back

I also feel I can't tell her things because she'll gossip so I'm pretty guarded now about what I tell her. There's no closeness anymore...

I hope you can regularly appraise how spending too much time with her negatively affects your health…

Your needs are important.

There are other ways for her to be cared for than you having to do it

I know that’s easier to say than do sometimes, but please find ways. Hugs

Yes she’s a great person and she’s got a brilliant sense of humour. We laugh at things together a lot.

No, and never have. She was a cruel, toxic person.
Now she has dementia and no longer remembers to be horrible to me.

Nope don’t like or love her. It’s been a source of great sadness to me that I have such a cold judgemental bitch for a mother. Nothing I have done has ever been good enough. There are reasons she is like that but it’s made her a terrible parent so I have very little sympathy. I think I’ve broken the cycle with my kids but it worries me greatly. I like and love my MIL even though she drives me nuts. I’m really glad some of you have lovely mums - there is hope!

Yes and no (if that's allowed!) I get on fairly well with her, we have many interests and people we know in common and she does to some extent understand me.

But she is also a narcissist, takes pleasure in being unpleasant to people, and has no real interest in her DGC. DGC (as her DC were) are only of interest if they show signs of being extraordinarily academic or talented in some area. Otherwise they are a disappointment and of no interest.

My mum is, unfortunately, a narcissist. She has not been much of a mother and she has definitely not been a friend. Highlights I can think of are her discussing with my aunt whether I am a lesbian (I am not), talking to my dad and saying i am a sl&& and always taking other people's side in any conflict (friends from school, ex boyfriend's etc). I don't like my mum and she definitely doesn't like me. My mum is close to dying now and it feels quite strange, I have tried to be go and see her but she doesn't want to see me. I feel sad for the mum I didn't get and never will. To hear on this thread that people will forever miss their mums who have passed away, you were so blessed to have that xx

Yes. She's great fun and good company.

Ooh, now that's an interesting topic.
Everyone likes my mother. She is quirky, has the vibe of someone who is young at heart, loves a laugh and is usually the centre of attention. Her coworkers love her, every single workplace she had, all my friends thought of her her as "the cool mom" when I was a kid, my ex-girlfriends loved her (from my teens). My kids love her, nanny is the best, of course. On paper she sounds great. Someone you'd see occasionally, or at work, sure. But as her son, I can take very little of her without starting to be annoyed with her. This is mostly because of how I grew up. I am her son, we have 20 years age difference, and yet I am always the wiser one, the sane one, the one who thinks of tomorrow, rather than jumping into things randomly, and then wondering why life doesn't work out as planned. When she is around, my energy drops, I don't talk much. Because she talks non-stop, and I grew up with that. My system developed this mechanism of winding down when she is around. This was always a funny (from the outside) dynamic between us until I became an adult, and I started understanding life, money questions, decisions, consequences, work life.. and then her antics started annoying me. And because of that I couldn't say I like being around her much. Here's an example: She rents. Just as Covid was about to hit the fan, she had to move out from one rent and find a new one. I kept telling her to start looking weeks/months before she had to move. She kept waving it aside, being convinced that she will find something quick, because there would be so many available. (On what planet?). Anyway.. I kept warning her like some old man obsessed with time running out, she didn't listen. Time was up, and she asked if she could stay with us until she finds one. She was convinced that it would be 2 weeks max because she will find something quick. I told her I am not happy, but of course as my mom I will let her stay. I warned her over and over. And then Covid hit. And she was stuck with us for months. I was constantly on edge. I was an angry mix of "I TOLD YOU SO", "I KNEW IT" and "WHY CAN'T YOU BE MORE RESPONSIBLE?". She somehow saw this as me being not welcoming... Anyway...
So to answer in short: As a person I would just see at work, completely fine. As my mother who frustrates me with her life choices - nope.

Until recently I did, but I no longer do after the horrible realisation that she’s sacrificed her relationship with me to protect my wicked sister

No. She is a really selfish lady and has been all my life. I remember being in my early 20s and when I used to go home for Christmas and people would ask ‘how was your holiday’ I felt I had to lie and pretend it was great when actually it was awful and really lonely. It was so freeing when I realised that lots of adults have difficult relationships with their parents and it’s not unusual. It feels easier now I can say it. I see her 3 times a year and she’s an adequate grandmother, mainly because her health means she doesn’t drink now (and my step dad is dead who was a horrible man). She has had a lot of tragedy in her life (as have the rest of us) but some of it is self inflicted.

I love and like my mam. She's not really the sort of person I'd be really close friends with I don't think, because she's pretty private and doesn't really open up. I'd love to go and cheer her up and look after her when she was a kid. She had it rough. I'd also like to have known her when she was in her early 20s and had few responsibilities. I think she might have been fun and if we were the same age we really might have been friends.

No. No interest in me, the children or my life. Was always the same growing up. Never texts, never calls, complains that I’ve not done enough of either.

im not the golden child 🤷‍♀️

Yes, she's always been a brilliant person, funny, kind and generous.
I have worked with her in the past as my supervisor.

She has had a bit of a personality transplant over the past few years, but has had to have brain surgery thanks to cancer, it's removed her filter and she can make some (occasionally quite cruel) rude comments. I still love spending time with her and we have some great days out!

I miss the woman she was, because she's lost some of her softness and her confidence, she lost her independence for a long time and still doesn't have it all back, but shes still there, just not entirely yet.

No. She is a dreadful woman who doesn't have a nice word to say about anyone.
That she is 80+ and has managed a long life with zero friends speaks volumes.
She has definitely reaped what she has sown.