To ask if becoming a mum has made you see your dark side?

[joannita]

Just wondered if anyone else has realised they aren't as good a person as they thought since having a baby. Did you think you were patient and easygoing only to find you had a shorter fuse than most? Did you think you were organised only to descend into chaos? Does this stuff happen to everyone or is it just me?

If by "seeing your dark side" you mean turning in to my mother then, yes. I never knew I could be so angry all the time (and consequently, so filled with self hate).

haha I always find the bit in the Simpsons movie a bit of an inspiration, where Lisa says "but mom im just so angry" and Marge says "your a women, you can hold it in forever!"

chandellina I would just like to go to the loo without being interrupted !

i thought i might become less selfish as a parent - but not really. sometimes i just need time to myself, or to have a little bowl of nuts without someone else's hand sticking into it!

Ha. Well, I'm an only child so not used to sharing food at the best of times. DH soon got the measure of me when we were first going out and he tried to take a chip off my plate (the fattest one I was saving for last) and I nearly speared his hand through with my fork. :)

Gerroffmecheese!

I am a shouty mother. Fortunately this appears to have no negative effect on DS whatsoever. I am however shit hot at multi tasking and have an encyclopaediac knowledge of which box DS's toys are in.

Can also no longer stomach anything sad about children on news/newspapers etc.

I've discovered both incredible love and stamina and deep reserves of rage and exhaustion. Both sides can come into play at any time!

I found myself saying "this is not the kind of mother you want to be EMS23" to myself the other morning when my DD was refusing to eat and I could feel myself wanting to shout at her. Being as she's 9 months old I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have helped.

I am very fond of my dark side (theer are thosw who would say that's all I have) - but on Monday I found a protective rage I never knew I had. A vile demon disguised as a woman kicked out at my todller's buggy as she cycled past to make us move. Baby was perfectly fine but I was scared at my own anger, had she hurt my girl I genuinely would have gone for her and left scars. It was the cold calm certainty that was frightening, a wave of hot temper and yelling of rude words is more my style.

I am not half as nice a person as I thought I was before kids.

Who knew that children could cause you to boil over with rage? I'd never boiled over before, ever, with anyone. Why can my kids do that to me?

I don't always like the person my kids turn me in to.

I have discovered a temper I never dreamed existed. I am also shockingly lazy

Ah, yes, it's been interesting

It's certainly polished it up.

Thanks baby.

I feel I have let my kids and myself down appallingly. More than I eever thought I was capable of.

I suffered PND, am going through a marriage breakup and feel likee the shittest person on the planet. Still, they are wonderful kids. I must have done something right but I have no idea at all what it was.

The guilt is what has shocked me most about motherhood. I never felt real guilt before. now it obsesses me every day.

breaktime. I'd bet the farm you haven't let your children down.

Thanks Georgi. It's a long story but I know I have let them down deeply. I acknowledge it and sincerely hope that when they are able to know the full story they can forgive me.

I have bipolar disorder and had some outbreaks of truly appalling behaviour (I won't detail. You can imagine- no violence or drugs though, that I will say) which ended my marriage and led to the lasting contempt of my ex. A residence battle then followed which I wasn't strong or well enough to fight. I was left with the choice of either giving up work and staying in London to look after them full time- hardly what I am good at- or moving 1 and a half hours away to do my job (I am an academic and could not get work in London at all, I did try for around 2 years).

A lot of people have told me they would 'scrub toilets for their children' etc but I know if I did that I would just become even more depressed and would be an even poorer carer for them. I am better off trying to keep myself going with work and the friends I have there or I really might go finally mad.

So now I am reduced to every other weekend during term. Booted out of their lives at school. I just hope to god they feel ok with this when they are old enough to see what is happening. They ahve their dad, who adores them, but he is a control freak lawyer who farms out most of their care to a nanny- I lost the capacity to challenge his 50:50 arrangement when I left the house during my breakdown.

It's very hard to look back and see the catastrophic series of mistakes I made. And I was a crap mother before that too anyway. Lots of shouting. Was very immature with ds1 as a toddler, dealt badly with tantrums etc. Used to lose it the way he did and always call for H to help. He ended up taking over as he was always the calmer one. As it is I have now lost out on a lot of my kids' life through my stupid mistakes and emotional inadequacies.

I just hope that they forgive me one day as I said. As it is they are lovely kids, I miss them every day I am not with them, they really bring what joy is left back into my life. They are far better people than I am, for which I am really grateful.

It sounds to me like you have had a hideously tough time and are blaming yourself for too many things (illness, marital breakdown) which are either not at all your fault or not entirely your fault. Your ex sounds like a charmer -I know the type well. You're the only mother your children have and I bet they understand more of the situation than you would realise.

breaktime73 I wasn't a great mother either in that I had MH issues and didn't cope with the demands of small children well. Also used to lose it a lot and shout all the time. it's very hard to do that job when you aren't mentally that well yourself. I'm getting better at it but it's a slow process. It sounds as though you have had it very tough and there possibly hasn't been a lot of understanding from your ex/the courts etc about your problems. Don't supposed it helped with your ex being a lawyer. Soudns like you didn't stand a chance.

Not enough, I liked my dark side! My only problem these days is not having the inclination or the energy.
Nothing wrong with it, people that are too white are the ones to watch they are the psychos let me tell you.

yeah he is not exactly the greatest ex to have. In my attacks of guilt I've had the feeling I must have turned him into a monster somehow. I engaged in some very weird sexual behaviour during my breakdown- semi 'affairs' with truly repulsive men, weird internet based liaisons etc. Really awful stuff. At the time I was too off my face to acknowledge how hurtful it was. Since then I have apologised a million times- not that I wanted us to start again, I don't, but I wanted him to know I was sorry. He has made it clear that not only am I not forgiven, but that he sees me as a contemptible lunatic and whore. But then he's not alone in that. A lot of people would I guess.

The fact is though, that I was responsible not only to him but my kids. My behaviour was almost bound to ruin their family life and cause them awful disruption and I should have been able to drag myself back into thinking about that properly. There are no excuses, you can only learn.

I take mood stabilising medication since then, which seems to have stopped the 'mad' episodes.

I am less than human to my ex because of the past and therefore he doesn't really see it as a problem to tell me to fall in line entirely with him, or f* off. So I have tried to choose a way where I don't prolong the fight, where I try to keep just a bit of myself. It's hard to respect myself at all after all this, and I have to say that in the end I often believe everything he told me, that he is the one who has always been there for the kids, he is their stability, I have brought them nothing but chaos and abuse and I'm lucky he didn't take them off me completely.

On the other hand though I do know that this is a shitty attitude to take to someone with a diagnosed mental illness who is the mother of your kids. I dread to think how the kids will cope with this attitude when they are older, he sees them as his little mini-mes but we all know older kids are not likely to toe any sort of parental line...

my worst fear is that I will either end up losing the kids completely as in a few years they won't want to leave their established 'home' to come to be iwth me a longish train ride away, or that they will suffer very obviously and I'll have to come back to London to accommodation I can't afford, deskilled employment and/or stay at home motherhood (delivering them to their dad at 7pm on 'his' days)....which would be a kind of living hell for someone like me.

Well i can only try to offer them my unconditional love if they want to take it and try to ensure that my instability is minimised for their sake. But the guilt is relentless and sometimes intolerable. If it weren't for wanting to be around for them, I do think I would have killed myself.

thanks for the kind words btw. Although I never feel I deserve kindness. I can't punish myself enough for what I did- although being kicked out of the kids' normal lives and turned into a holiday parent is pretty much punishment enough I guess.

I learned how fucking magnificent and resiliant i am as a mum!!
Seriously, i am amazed at myself, i never thought i had any of this in me...

Its like ive a whole superhuman side that i never knew i had

Carl Jung 'everyone carries a shadow'

We have to be aware of and comfortable with our dark side (and everyone has one) in order to function fully as human beings. Too many people deny that side of them in the pursuit of perfection - in extreme that leads to dysfunction

breaktime73 - my birth mother had severe mental health problems. I was adopted but my adoptive parents were abusive. She actually loved me for being me, wholeheartedly, and for that she will always be my true mum. I turned out okay, because despite her mistakes, I know she adored me. I am sure you mean the same to your kids, don't give up

very glad to hear that addressbook. :)

breaktime73 You were mentally ill!!!!!! You were not responsible for what you did. That is a very difficult condition to deal with. Don't let you ex make you feel like that. You need to forgive yourself for how you behaved and accept that you can't and couldn't at the time change that. Don't let him make you out to be a whore and a lunatic, you are not! He sounds like a stupid man for blaming you for things you did while you were ill and for not recognising the wonderful things you brought to your dcs lives. Just because you couldn't handle tantrums and would get angry yourself doesn't mean you weren't a good mum. None of us are perfect.

How old are your dcs?

Wow breaktime73, you really have had a tough ride. I agree it's not your fault and it must be a nightmare having to deal with mental illness and small children, especially when you don't get the support you need. Don't give up on yourself or them. You are still there for your kids and a big part of their lives, even if you don't see them as often as you'd like. It must be very important to them to have that contact and know that their mum cares. You have to try to forgive yourself and build on what you've got. Good luck xxx

well I don't know, Whose. The question of responsibility haunts me. Im an academic and even became intellectually obsessed with the issue...how far does mental illness excuse actions performed under its influence? xH says not at all, however ill I was I chose to behave like a c*. Also he sees me as fundamentally untrustworthy and inferior basically because of it. And lets face it many would agree with him. I am still mentally ill but with time and practice I think I manage it better. Had I managed better earlier on I might have saved my kids a lot of grief.

The one thing I do know is that xH has shown himself to be not the great man I thought he was, after the split. I always really admired him as a person before, for being very calm and high-achieving, even though I didn't love him romantically (a big issue for many years!)

I know how much I hurt him but equally I know that it is silly and harmful to ones dcs to claim that you are the 'better parent' and to try to keep rigid control of them in the way that he is doing. But I can't do anything about that. People tell me he will suffer for it later when the dcs rebel against him but who knows. They adore him atm. I would prefer for them to have a happy relationship with them forever tbh.

The thing that haunts me is that he has definitely and dishonestly used the argument of their 'welfare' so that he can just keep his old life going with me booted out of it- he's still in the same house, with same nanny and even same friends (who deserted me when I went mad) as he had before I left. I know very well that's about him and not the kids, tbh. He also lied in my face at mediation, told me I'd always been a child abuser (not true although I did have problems) and that his nanny, whom the boys hate, was a better carer than me. Etc. He got his revenge alright and he's still having it. I am desperate for the boys not to suffer for his hatred.

The task of forgiving oneself for totally fucking up one's own and one's kids lives is too big for me atm. I just feel a lot of dreadful grief, full on crying most days over it all, as if someone just died....often in public etc which is problematic when you have a job LOL... and have been on p/t work with depression for some time. Got to go back sometime though, try to live something resembling a normal life, and I am hoping a move to somewhere quieter out of London and further away from xH's hatred will help a bit.