To actually not like my Mum

[Mrchubster]

I have always had a strange relationship with Mum. Although I don't doubt she loves me, since my parents divorce 25 years ago, it's like our roles have reversed. I'm the mother, she's the child.

Approx 10 years ago she moved 150 miles to be near us and as she was retiring it made sense. At the same time I was pregnant with DS and thought how lovely it would be to have her close.

How wrong was I?! She is massively needy with a big dose of passive aggression. Everything is "poor me". She has made very few friends since moving here and so her whole world seems to revolve around d me and my DCs. Trouble is I don't enjoy her company, we have nothing in common and she only talks about herself, doesn't want to put herself out. She can be very critical of other people which I find wearing.. I can tell her something quite important and it will go in one ear and out the other. She'll then phone 2 days later wanting to discuss the issue. Well, no thanks I've moved on!

If I confront her behaviour she gets all teary I'm on my own, no one cares about me" etc...

Sadly I alsoI find her embarrassing company to be with. At a recent family event she spoke over everyone, talked about me as though I wasn't in the room and generally lacked any social skills.

It's now at the point where I don't tell her anything personsal because she just doesn't listen. It's a standing joke with me and DH that no matter what you tell her, she'll change the subject! I look at her sometimes and wonder how the hell we're related!

I feel angry, sad and guilty in equal portions. Guilty that I encouraged her to move here ( although I have said if she wanted to move back I'd be fine), and because I shouldn't feel like that towards my mum.
Sad because I would so love a close relationship with her (am quite envious of friends who are close to their mums). Angry that she just doesn't get it.

Her whole life seems to revolve around me and the DCs which I find suffocating. I have given her info on the local WI, church, gardening clubs but she's not interested. She has made very little effort to make any friends.

Her health isn't good, mainly caused by poor lifestyle (which admittedly I'm not very sympathetic about) and so she's doing less and less, becoming more dependant. I feel such a huge weight of responsibility to be everything to her, it has the opposite effect of driving me away.

DB lives 300 miles away and keeps his distance for exactly the same reasons.

She's 70 btw. I know I should accept her for who she is and get so frustrated with myself for having any expectations of a close mother/daughter bond. Sorry to bang on

So much of this thread ringing true for me too. The 'i could be laying dead' thing gets said here too, about my failure to call often enough. (With the jolly add on - 'and the cat would probably eat me') I mean that really makes you want to ring a person up more often doesn't it, when they come out with bollox like that. I'm afraid last time she said it forced myself to laugh and say - well, if you were [dead], me ringing up wouldn't help much would it? I felt awful afterwards, but thankfully she hasn't said it since.

''She recently had an operation and rang me in raptures to tell me how the surgeon had written to her dr (allegedly) to tell him what a marvellous patient she was''

this made me smile. My mum told me excitedly and in great detail how she had seen a copy of a letter from a hospital clinician reporting back to her GP saying bla bla bla about ''your patient, the lovely Mrs X''. I thought she was going to burst down the phone with pride! And then said ''At least somebody thinks i'm lovely ...''

Gawd sigh.

Also have a narc mother, when it all gets a bit much i post / read the stately homes thread in relationships. Currently i aim for min contact which in some ways is harder than NC.

I have a quote saved from someone on the stately homes thread (can't remember who it was now) "Please protect your DC from your toxic mother. I did not and now my DD who is 16 is totally enmeshed and believes all the utter crap my mother pours into her ears. I am NC with Toxic mother, but she feeds off my daughter and delights in turning her against me. It was the biggest mistake of my life allowing her to get close to my kids."

Last xmas she was hospitalised with heart problems. I felt so bad and so guilty because she's on her own I ended up making deals with myself, promising all sorts (spend more time with her, clean more for her, take her out more).
4 months on her behaviour is so bad I've not followed through on half of it..... Hence guilt, guilt and more guilt ( not even Catholic!)

How funny, about the medical thing. My mother has just had an op and won't stop blathering on about how ALL the nursing staff AND the doctor OF COURSE THE DOCTOR told her how strong and fit she was and how generally AMAZED they all were by her. Good grief.

Listen, when you think you may be like her, remember that if you have empathy you won't go far wrong. None of us will end up being like our mothers. At least not in the ways we fear the most. Can't escape bloody genetics though!

EssexMummy - my narcissistic mother is actually my maternal grandmother. She adopted me after driving my birth mother to mental illness. I was taken away from my birth mother and was rarely allowed to see her or talk about her.

Be warned about how evil these sorts of personality really can be.

So funny with the medical angle; I get the exact opposite

" doctor couldn't believe how ill I was and was amazed at how I'd struggled on for so long. Was practically at deaths door"

Essex that's terrible... What a dreadful thing to happen

Sorry, that was for you Altered

Mrchubster - oh same here! Struggling on alone ... (alone mind you. She's not bloody 'alone'!) ... but lovely even so

That's so uncanny about letters from doctors. My Mum was over the moon when her consultant wrote to her GP and described her as 'very pleasant'. She mentioned it many times with a pleased sounding little titter.

My consultant described me as 'engaging and articulate' in a letter to my GP. I'm not flattered. It's quite obvious this is now a 'thing' with consultants to make them sound more interested in their many patients.

I doubt my consultant could have picked me out in a line up just an hour after we met.

I grew up to the sound of my mother shrieking (on a weekly basis) "I've sacrificed twenty years of my life for you.."

Thanks Mum. Now that I have my own DCs I realise that she didn't make ANY sacrifice at all, but that it was all her own choice.

I think it's pretty normal. People regress a little as they get older and all those poor habits as a child/teenager come back.

She must have some good qualities?

This thread - sadly, because I wish none of us were in this position - is such a bloomin' RELIEF! Whoever said at the start of the thread that their Mum's record for talking non stop on the phone was 37 mins, I salute you. I held the phone away from my ear once and didn't even interject with a 'hm' or 'really' and I thought she was extraordinary for making it to 11 mins before asking if I was still there .

The ONLY way I'm making a vague show of coping at the moment is because I'm training in head-doctory so am detaching and viewing her as a patient, and practising diagnosing various things and just observing her. I realised if she came to me as a patient, I would be a bit more sympathetic and interested, and try to help, but am far more judgemental because she's my Mum, which comes down to my own expectations of what she should be giving me. And as someone wise once said, expectations are premeditated resentments...so am trying to expect nothing, in the same way none of my patients would be giving me emotional sustenance/interested in my life etc. It does help. It's sad, but it helps.

The one area I still can't cope with though is when she behaves the same with my children. DD1 is going trough gender transition (this may out me but hey!) She was brave enough to tell DM about it (who is her only living GP), who turned it round within 5 mins to her (nasty) views on gay marriage and female priests - none of which is even vaguely connected to DD1's desire for her head to match her bits. And then has never spoken to her about it again, enquired how things are going, rung her, emailed, nothing over the ensuing 4 months. But bitches endlessly about the amount of time the other GPs spend with DDs 2&3 (different Dad, so they have other GPs). Versus them, she's DD1's only relative in that generation. She could be offering SO much stability and wisdom and unconditional love. But nada. Because there's no competition is there?

And breathe .

I think we should set up some sort of support group; let's all be each other's mothers!!!

Comforting to read this thread. I am immensely pissed off with my Mother and would really like to be ablevto tell her why I am so cross but she has Dementia and wouldn't get it. She has always been difficult but that was just her and all was fineas long as I did what she said.

However the scales have fallen from my eyes now as with the Dememtia she sometimes does her mental plotting aloud. I hasa bot of a crisis last year after clearing her house as found letters and realised she has lied to me and manipulated me all my life. Totally sabotaged my relationship with my Dad by dripping poison about him to me since I was a child, saying she only stayed with him and had my Brother for my sake. She hid 40k from him and dudn't declare it during their separation.

Not only that but she has behaved so badly to her sister abroad who she is estranged from . My cousin won't speak to me after a massive fight between my Mother and Aunt over deceased Aunt's house. I wrote letter to so,icitor based on what she to,d me years ago and I think now that was more lies she fed me. All made harder by fact there is a language barrier.

My Brother saw her a few times last summer but that is the only time in 6 years . He is the golden child. We fell out over her care as he didn't understand what was going on. He sacked me, cut my DH's hours, said I was no longer his sister and reported me to Social Services. The Care Home she was heard her on the phone and said she plays us off against each other.

If I do as she wants all is fine other wise I get 'the trouble with you is'. She thinks we are the same and saud I woukd have miscarriages if I tried for another child (I didn't) . She lied amd said my Granmother died of hyperthermia because my Aunt didn't look after her - bollocks and now emerges she tried to put my Grandmother in a home when she was still perfectly independent.

I could go in all day but will stop . The sad thing is it took a Friemd saying to me 'she has always been toxic' for me to start seeing it. The only good thing is I know see my Dad for the man he is and we have become close.

Very interesting reading from the other side. I have 2 daughters grown up and soon to be a grandmother ,am very excited. Their father was abusive and left when they were young.
Some of the comments about negative mothers I can identify with. Over the years I know,I have become anxious about them and have phoned probably too much at times. I have lost all significant family members,parents,brothers have died and have a fear of loss of my children. I try to rein in anxieties so has not to be intrusive in their lives.
Have been known to Twitter about driving to new places,that the cat will be the one to find me dead as no one has phoned for a few days hopefully with a joke. Never though how needy this must be to my girls.
Have had wonderful times with them and the oldest wedding last year was amazing and she thanked me for my support and fun day.so can't be too bad a mum !!!
Thanks for all your comments think I need to change some of my actions so am not a burden to them.

stinkingbishop it's wonderful that your DD has your full support, it's a shame her GM couldn't do the same.
jaffacake by simply recognising that you might sometimes be coming across in the wrong way immediately sets you apart from narc nightmare mothers who are too self absorbed to think that way so please don't put yourself in the same basket as all of them. Normal phone calls to chat and enquire about well being are fine, getting the hump because I dared to not answer my phone for 10 minutes = not fine!!

Jaffacake, I'm sure you're packing over nothing!

OP, I think your mother you should read around the Autism spectrum and women with Asperger's syndrome.

The one sided conversations, lack of ability to read social cues, difficulty in making and maintaining friendships, obsessive behaviour, slow processing of information, childhood issues which she felt were ignored, depression, not noticing when people need help, clear lack of social skills, not wanting to go to other places when on holiday, problems with executive function (cleaning, decluttering), can't sit still and quiet, dropping in without warning and expecting your to be free and concerns about other people's germs.

These are all behaviours that I've taken from your posts. Every one of them could be linked to a trait of autism and all together they paint a pretty pervasive picture.

I don't think for a minute it would be worth raising this with your mother or seeking a diagnosis for her due to her age but reading around the condition could, if you feel the description fits her, help you to understand her behaviour better, communicate what you need from her more effectively and feel less resentful and angry with her.

Before anyone says I'm giving people with autism a bad name by using it as an excuse for shitty behaviour, I'm not. What I may be doing is offering the OP a way to understand the reasons behind it.

Jaffa, by merely recognising behaviour traits and questioning your actions, you a definitely not a narc mum. You are clearly self-aware which sadly my mother isn't. Enjoy your family

Interesting Goldmatra and maybe you have a point. Many of her actions point towards a MH diagnosis. What I need to learn is how I can modify my own thoughts/actions to not accept her behaviour as such but let it go.

I don't think there's any mileage now in confronting her, she's had 70 years to hone her issues and behaviour. Whenever I've challenged her in the past she just dissolves into tears and sulks.

I'm done.

What I truly wish is that she lived a distance away and I could visit once a month with DCs, then promptly leave. Sadly no chance, I am her only support.

Hello op, things are similar for me. Only child with mum 5 minute drive away. She displays similar behaviours, is very needy and can't sustain many friendships. She's been single since father left her in her early 20s and she's quite odd in lots of ways, moody and resentful and everyone else is to blame. I've stopped letting her strops and digs spoil my day and slowly learning I'm not responsible for her happiness. We've also stopped taking her on holiday as that was fun (not).

I hope you can get your life back OP.

You're not responsible for your mum even though she induces you to be. She is still responsible for herself and needs to make her own friends

Her passive aggressive ways feel quite toxic to me. I hope you can get some space somehow - she doesn't feel healthy to be around ..only in small doses.

I think it's harder to limit contact as she has quite severe health problems (mostly self induced) but I do worry about her being alone. Sheesh!

Mrchubster - yes I can see you're torn and that she induces you to feel guilty and care take. I don't see 70 as old - not these days. Are you able to say what her health problems are. I'm wondering if she is a drinker.