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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To not know how to react to my mother telling lies about me

26 replies

CaddyJelleby · 06/04/2014 20:13

Not first post but name changed. My deceased mother was a difficult, eccentric, unconventional and decidely non-maternal person. She was also very secretive and there are many aspects of her life my sibling and I don't have full information on. Neither of our fathers from who she separated years ago are alive. I live a long distance from where she lived.

She carried on working after she was 60. I have found out she was telling people in the small town she lived in she had to keep working to pay off the bank loan she took out when I went to university.

I went to university in the 70s in the days of full grants and no tuition fees. I graduated in 1981. It didn't cost her anything.I didn't get any money from her as the grant supplemented by holiday jobs was more than enough to live on.There was no bank loan. She wasn't rich but she had enough money to afford things like city break holidays every year, expensive perfumes and running a car.

I'm shocked. I don't know how to process this information or deal with it.

OP posts:

Hoppinggreen · 06/04/2014 20:15

Sounds like she's pulling your strings still even though she's dead.
Try to just ignore it, anyone who cares about this isn't worth bothering with anyway.

Original poster

CaddyJelleby · 06/04/2014 22:38

Thank you. Anyone else got any comments? This has been a bit of a blow.

OP posts:

foslady · 06/04/2014 23:12

Do you ever go back there? If not I wouldn't wory.....if you do go back if you reminise about the past don't be afraid to say along the lines of glad you went to uni before the gov passed on the fees and how proud you were to have supported yourself by working p/t if you think it will give you closure.
I think most people will think dotty old dear and KNOW that she would have been lying with it being the 70's

DoJo · 06/04/2014 23:17

Perhaps she owed money for some other reason but wanted to appear to have spent the money on something more 'virtuous' than whatever she did spend it on? Maybe she wanted people to think she was a more dedicated mother than she was? If she was very secretive, then maybe she used misinformation as a way to keep people out of her business.

There are plenty of explanations which don't involve your mother actively trying to make you look bad in any way, or going out of her way to hurt you.

Original poster

CaddyJelleby · 06/04/2014 23:18

I do go back as my brother and sil are still there. I know about this as someone mentioned to my sil how awful it was for my mother to have to do this. My sil told the person it was utter rubbish. Sil has had to put up with mother's fanatasies as well. I don't think people would actually work out/necessarily know you didn't have to pay for university in the 70s.

OP posts:

Original poster

CaddyJelleby · 06/04/2014 23:22

DoJo I know several 60 plus women who carried on working. All she had to say was I enjoy my work/I like my foreign holidays/I'm not ready to retire. It was a horrible lie.

OP posts:

Walkacrossthesand · 06/04/2014 23:26

Hopefully your SILs robust dismissal of the story as 'absolute rubbish' will make its way round the small town, slowly but surely, and the wrong will be righted!

Scaredycat3000 · 06/04/2014 23:29

If she was telling lies about you she would have been telling lies about all sorts of things including other people. As you have pointed out it really wouldn't have taken much working out that the stories she was telling about you were unfeasible. I bet you lots of people realised she was a fantasist.
I have slowly realised that the gossiper in my life is going about telling people things about me that aren't true, suddenly all the stories she has told me about other people suddenly make so much more sense, because they probably didn't happen or at least not much like she has told me. I have lost the last shred of respect I had for her.
I don't know how to deal with it when it's now all in the past, but this is about what people think of your Mum not you.

Walkacrossthesand · 06/04/2014 23:29

...but I suspect this isn't just about that allegation, it's about your realisation that your late mum wasn't just 'difficult and eccentric', but prepared to tell a significant lie to all & sundry to paint herself in a better light. Not nice - especially when it's your mum, and she's not here to tackle. Sympathies.

niddy · 06/04/2014 23:37

Sounds like this is her 'stuff' for whatever reason. Although I can hear how baffling it is for you.

Hard to understand and accept.

Original poster

CaddyJelleby · 06/04/2014 23:37

It's not so much whether other people believe it or not but that she said it.

I don't agree with Dojo's assessment she meant no harm. I think anyone hearing that story would think I was an awful ungrateful person. There were plenty of other things she could have said. Her usual response to any question she didn't like was "none of your business".

I didn't have a terribly good relationship with her and it appears it was worse than I thought.

OP posts:

Original poster

CaddyJelleby · 06/04/2014 23:40

Sorry I hadn't read last posts from niddy,Walkacross and scaredycat Thanks all of you.

OP posts:

piscivorous · 06/04/2014 23:45

I think this has hurt you so much because she was your mother. It is hard to hear lies that cast you in a bad light anyway but from your own mother must be worse, even if she was difficult and eccentric.

I suspect there is nothing you can do to be honest as so much time has gone by and you risk looking bad by trying to correct it as she is not there to counter your statements. Your best bet is to put right anyone who says something to you, thank your SIL for doing it and ask her to continue then try to find a way to let it go.

Ultimately your "revenge" is that you are building a better life with no need to lie about others

Scaredycat3000 · 06/04/2014 23:50

Just thought a bit more. She was trying to make herself look good, 'Look at me I'm prepared to work for years past retirement so that my child could go to university, aren't I great'. It will not have entered her mind that she might be hurting you. Or she fucked up badly with her money and had to work years past retirement to sort herself out was hugely embarrassed and overcompensated by telling a ridiculous lie. I doubt it was about making you look bad, all about her.

bobot · 06/04/2014 23:56

I had to make a conscious decision not to care about or react to anything my mum says to anyone or thinks about me. She's still alive btw. There's nothing you can do about it, yanbu to feel angry but you're an adult, living your own life, and it is honestly best not to give it any energy. You can't control how other people behave.

BlackeyedSusan · 06/04/2014 23:58

My mum says all sorts when she is ill. It is most helpful when she says things that are really unfeasible.. It is not helpful when she says things that are not true about unkind things I am supposed to have said or done.... it really hurts, even though I know it is illness talking.

Original poster

CaddyJelleby · 07/04/2014 00:17

Thank you all. I think this is hurtful as I'd thought her eccentricity, our somewhat bohemian childhoods etc, etc whilst perhaps being more fun to reminisce about now than to live through at the time weren't actually toxic. It's certainly the case we know about lies she's told about our grandfather (who basically brought us up) and my brother's father.

I know the OP who posts and runs can be a pain but I probably have no more to say and I appreciate the responses.

OP posts:

t3rr3gl35 · 07/04/2014 07:54

Just another thought. My financially comfortable ex-MIL also worked well beyond retirement age, during the 1980/90's. She lied about her age although the only person she was fooling about her 20 odd years knocked off was herself. Her reason for lying? She felt guilty for not making way for somebody who might have needed a job during periods of high unemployment.

Barbaralovesroger · 07/04/2014 08:41

Was she covering up her own need to work for debts

Barbaralovesroger · 07/04/2014 08:42

Her own debts or to finance the holidays/cars etc

DoJo · 07/04/2014 10:44

CaddyJelleby

Sorry - I wasn't trying to convince you about her motives, but to offer potential alternative explanations for why she might have said it which were primarily for her own benefit rather than specifically aimed at painting you in a bad light. That it was hurtful and untrue is clear, and I hope you don't think I was trying to minimise that as it must be incredibly frustrating to find something like this out when you are not in a position to take it up with her.

I do think that it might be possible that she was trying to make herself seem like a better parent (ironically at your expense, and therefore achieving the opposite) to those around her. In my experience, even the crappest parent finds it hard to admit to others why they do not have a close relationship with their child/ren and tries to portray themselves in a more sympathetic light to 'outsiders'.

I know for a fact that my dad lies to people about why we have no contact, but I have to accept that his version of the truth is the only way he can reconcile his own self-image as a caring parent with the fact that none of his children have much to do with him. Whilst he does have the capacity to be cruel and thoughtless, some of the more fanciful tales he tells about me are for self-preservation purposes.

VivaLeBeaver · 07/04/2014 10:48

Maybe she was trying to make herself look good and thoughtlessly at the same time made you look bad. Rather than trying to make you look bad maliciously.

I should think your SiL telling people it was rubbish will have got around. Most people would have been suspicious anyway.

rowna · 07/04/2014 11:50

I suppose it's an awful lot easier to say you're paying debts off for virtuous reasons, rather than for overspending yourself. Getting nearer retirement myself, I think it could be quite embarrassing if all your friends have retired and you haven't because you didn't plan.

Original poster

CaddyJelleby · 07/04/2014 12:56

Thanks for the replies. She was never a person who cared what others thought(and indeed was quite sneery of anyone who did) I think embarrassment at not having saved or keeping someone else out of a job is unlikely to have bothered her. We're not in an area that suffered from unemployment anyway. My brother and his wife left school in the mid 80s with few qualifications apart from their driving licences and have never been unemployed.

My brother and I are getting angrier with her. She'd have been furious to hear the comment made at her funeral that our grandfather had done a fine job bringing us up. So yes I suppose people who knew her knew what she was like.

OP posts:

MissHobart · 07/04/2014 13:38

It's all part of being old! My grandma comes out with enormous piles of shit to all and sundry, I have very slowly learned to block it out. This is very difficult when she has got everyone at the local Carluccio's calling her Doctor!!!! This is a lie (one of many). I find it hugely embarrassing but try to let it go. She does it about me too, telling people I've been to medical school?!?

OP, try to take it with a pinch of salt, if you're asked tell people the truth, I now tell people when she's gone over the top with the bullshit!

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