Aibu to have not stopped.

[Quiddichcup]

Dd went to my mum's after school yesterday due to bad weather. Mum lives very close to the school and has said dd is welcome. Dd gets there at 3.30 and I finished work at 4pm so it wasn't for long.

I text dd as I came out to say I was on my way. And she replied to tell me my mum wanted me to go into the house.

I only saw mum 2 days ago and didn't have time. I had a 10 minute walk to my car ( in the rain) and called her to say I was sorry but I couldn't come in as I had a text from my food shopping I had ordered to say it was on its way. I hadn't actually ordered the food to come till 5pm but last week when I got home at 4.20pm it was sat outside my house.
Obviously I didn't want to miss it, so just asked her what the matter was. She wouldn't tell me and just said I needed to go in. I kept saying I couldn't but what was wrong.

She then got cross and told me to ' use my bloody common sense but I still didn't know and said to use it over what?

I then got screamed and shouted at as it was for mothers day. She had for dd some flowers to give me and wanted to watch dd give them to me. She called me selfish and hung up.

I was upset. I drove to mums house. Dd came out. Mum would usually come to the porch and save but she didn't.

Dd said mum slammed the door on her and told her to tell me not to call her.

A bit later I get a phone call and shes demanding I apolgise for pressuring her to tell me why I needed to go in. All my fault apparently. Ww3 has kicked off and mud slinging in my direction.

We were meant to be meeting the rest of the family Sunday for mothers day. Last year's mothers day was ruined over a huge family row with my sister. I don't want a repeat of that and with this going on with mum, cancelled my invite but said sorry.

Which has now made everything worse. I wouldn't pick up the phone to her so just got text after text of crap from her. And I can't have explained more times that i just needed to get home as I had had a text saying my shopping was on its way.

It's really upset me.

@LIZS but why should she? A gift is meant to be about giving not demanding someone disrupt their entire evening after a long day at work, shopping to unload, next day to prepare for and with a hungry kid to feed- all to satisfy her mum's glorious vision 😂

You're never going to win here OP, just let it go. It's about 50:50 view by the look of it - the vipers have sadly got out of bed the wrong side and come on here itching to give a stranger a kicking. Sadly today it's you. At another time on another day the same people would be telling you to stand up to your mother and direct you to the 'stately homes' thread. Hopefully this verbal kicking of you here will avert them being shitty to people in real life today, so just let it roll over you,

Some cannot remove their fixated idea that we are talking about a selfless granny who picks your sweet 5 year old up from school and provides free childcare without question (God, people really HATE that in MN world) who just wanted 5 minutes of your time because they were excitedly waiting for you to get there, giggling together because they had a lovely surprise for you. You refused to spare a minute for no good reason and they were both crestfallen, you meanie.

The reality - your Mum had got some flowers to give you on Sunday (a nice thing, let's not take that away from her) but your teen daughter swang by to avoid a walk home from school in the rain on Friday evening. No childcare required. Your mother decided to do a surprise on a day that WAS NOT MOTHERS DAY (when she was going to see you anyway) but expected you to use your 'common sense' and have nothing else on your mind 2 days before the event. You called to check nothing was actually wrong and had a perfectly valid reason for not having time to drop in at that very moment (except of course in MN land delivery drivers always behave as they should and never leave anyone without their shopping). Since you didn't accede to the demand to do her bidding instantly she went batshit and started screaming at you while her grand-daughter could hear and slammed the door on her when she left. She has subsequently been texting you abuse and telling you to stay away from her. You are acceding to this demand by doing just that. You actually see her very regularly and she starts hassling you daily with the first of many phone calls from 6.30am (WHAT on earth does anyone have to talk about at that hour??). She has form for unreasonable demanding behaviour and is already estranged from one sibling with another choosing to ignore her as much as possible.

Have I missed anything?

I don't live in MN world. I do have a mother and we have a pretty good relationship all told. However, I can quite see that your relationship with your mother is messed up and she is a melodramatic drama queen who has ruined her own Mothers Day with her irrational behaviour.

You are a mother too - have a nice day with your daughter, who sounds like she has her head screwed on and needs to know her granny's behaviour isn't normal or acceptable.

Oh for gods sake just kiss and make up
What a storm in a teacup
Put it behind you and move on!

On top of all of that, you have described some worrying behaviour from your mother, that she's controlling, that she holds a grudge, that she can never apologise but that she can't accept an apology either without constant digs for years, that your sister has walked out and not seen anyone for a year now, that your DD often wants to leave her out of things because she spoils them, that you love her but that you all know she's like this.

This certainly all seems true

@Quiddichcup for your own sanity you need to work on boundaries with your mother- she is an overgrown toddler.

It just makes me sad to be honest.

All of it does.

Dd is fine. I'm fiercely protective of her and her mental health and internally how she is. Absolutely would never let her even for a second, feel the same way I do. Outwardly I'm very confident until the point of confrontation with a person like my mother where I just shrink into this person trying to justify myself so they can see it but they don't and I get more and more desperate to sort the situation out but I can't.

I actually hate it.

OP a lot of posters here are on your side and have said you were right to behave as you did and DM was unreasonable. I echo that and all the people who disagree with you won't be persuaded otherwise.
The 'She is your DM!' response upthread really sums it up - as if that gives her carte blanche to have you dancing to her tune no matter what else you have going on. Good for you sticking to your guns.
I'd go round with a bunch of flowers for her, say sorry she was so upset but that the timing really was awful for you. Hopefully she'll accept this (even though you've really got nothing to apologise for) and you can move on. If she still has the hump, you need to decide whether to let her continue to dictate to you or calmly tell her you have your own priorities, and does she honestly think you were intending to upset her by not coming in when the situation was as you describe? IMO she sounds selfish, immature and narcissistic. If it's an ongoing pattern you might want to think about breaking it.

No of course it is not about the food! It could just have easily been a doctor's appointment, package delivery, arranged meeting with a friend etc which was more pressing at that moment than a spontaneous visit to her mother. The issue is that op was unable to assert the need to be somewhere else than visit, but failed to it across.

This is one of the weirdest threads I have read...I read the OP and thought 'well, that's clear, the OP's mum has clearly got a pattern of emotionally bullying and manipulating the OP, expecting her to be a sodding mind reader and then kicking off because the OP doesn't happen to have that supernatural skill (I know that one well). This will be a short thread. After all, how many times do we read on MN that no is a complete sentence?'

So I was slightly wrong.

I only made it to page 6 of the craziness but think katieflorins above wrote a good post. Also, we still as a culture put mothers on a sacred pedestal but really mothers are like anyone else. All those cheeky fucker threads? Those CFs could well be mothers. All those posts about 'you only have one mum' are emotionally blind to the reality and also manipulative. It's like collectively we are trained to absolve mothers of any wrong doing (fathers, well, a different story).

If OP's mother shouted at her and behaved like a petulant teenager this time, chances are this is a pattern of behaviour which she has learnt gets her what she wants (and, as evidenced by this thread, is sadly condoned by society simply because she gave birth to the OP).

for you OP. Have a nice time with your DD this weekend.

Someone who acts like this over one tiny incident is very recognisable to others who've experienced the same behaviour

THIS

And the only people bashing you are either those with fabulous, wonderful parents (living or passed) or those who have the same type of parent but refuse to see/haven't learnt yet.

Ignore them. YANBU. At ALL. Enjoy Mother's Day with your lovely dd and let Dm stew in her own juices.

Outwardly I'm very confident until the point of confrontation with a person like my mother where I just shrink into this person trying to justify myself so they can see it but they don't and I get more and more desperate to sort the situation out but I can't.

Ditto here OP and I too left an abusive r/s. You will eventually feel stronger but it's not easy and I sympathise.

shiny
I agree op needs to break the pattern. For precisely that reason, I would not be going round and rewarding her behaviour with flowers and an apology. I would be popping a mother’s day card through the letter box and some chocolates or some token gift. She’s now got flowers of her own that she can keep.

Outwardly I'm very confident until the point of confrontation with a person like my mother where I just shrink into this person trying to justify myself so they can see it but they don't and I get more and more desperate to sort the situation out but I can't.

This is what you need to work on. State your case. Be confident in this. Then step back, detach and stop engaging. You can't sort the situation out. You aren't dealing with a rational person. You set your boundaries and then it's up to her how she reacts. You are not responsible for her reactions, only your own. Maybe some counseling to help to help you do this?
Remember you don't need to keep justifying yourself. She's not thinking logically so it's pointless trying to get her to see reason if she can't after the first attempt or two.

YANBU, you didn't deserve abuse. It's not OK to threaten or shout at someone because they don't do your bidding, your mum was unreasonable.

I think you and your mother are probably both quite difficult people. Ultimately though, the only person whose behaviour you can can change in the situation is yours. You might want to work on just not letting her over-reaction get to you, and not over-reacting yourself. Just be a bit more chill!

If she's going to behave like a spoilt teenager, treat her like a spoilt teenager.

Send a message back along the lines of "I am sorry that you are sad about me not coming into the house when you demanded it. Sometimes people cannot drop everything they are doing and do whatever you want exactly when you want it. I am going to switch off my phone now until Sunday. Any messages you send will be lost. Try to have a nice weekend. I love you"

And then really do switch it off. She had an adrenaline pop and blew out at you. She's probably embarrassed by her temper tantrum and is trying to manipulate you into comforting her by taking the underdog position - asserting her control, so to speak. You don't have to engage in her drama script though. She has handed you your lines as she has written them, but you can just put the script down, say "no, thank you" and walk away.

Ignore the vipers, they're hungover

Why am I difficult?

I went to work. Text dd to let her know I was on my way. She text back to say my mum wanted me to go in.

I called mum to ask how her day was and to say I couldn't go in as the food shopping was on its way.

That's all normal. I haven't done anything difficult.

Ww3 kicks off and gets worse when I refuse to bow down to it.

By that point it's lose/ lose anyway as it's already kicked off and there is no coming back from that.

I know I did nothing wrong.

You shouldn't have to put up with that OP.

You didn't do anything wrong. It's not normal to send message after message like that.

I would like to see the posters who say you are being unreasonable explain how those messages are reasonable or justified.

Because I doubt they have lived under this kind of pressure, where you cannot say no to someone without them reacting like this.

With PILs, if they got their own way they were pleased, although if they got one thing they would push for a second and a third and nothing was ever quite good enough.

However if they didn't get their own way they got the drama, the upset, the shouting, the tears, the phone calls, the texts, even sometimes the letter writing.

A bad phone call with one of their adult children could result in a two hundred mile round trip to visit another one so they could be looked after while they were upset.

When we first married we lived a five hour drive away from them. I remember they came to stay for a week once. They had already been saying with BIL number 2 and his wife for a week, and came to us "on the way passed" which was actually about a 100 mile detour.

They left us on Saturday morning, and by teatime the same day FIL was on the phone to say they had rowed with BIL number 1 the minute they got home and MIL was so upset they needed to come back to our house.

I said no, they weren't happy about it. They rang BIL2 and said they were going back to him and he said no as well.

The entire family suffered for weeks because of this. DH was in bits because he'd grown up being told he couldn't say no to his mother without her having a breakdown that would be his fault.

Your posts about your Mum and her reactions remind me of them. Over the top, entirely selfish, and still making her the centre of attention even if that is in a negative way rather than positive one. It's still a chance for her to be right and you to be wrong and for everybody to feel sorry for her because of what you've done.

But you haven't done anything wrong at all so please don't blame yourself for any of this.

A normal person would have said they had something they wanted to give to you, or walked outside with your DD, or waited until Sunday.

That's exactly what she does. Aggressive then plays the victim 2.5 seconds later so people feel sorry for her and you look awful and she's so sad so you say sorry to try to make her feel better.

That's my last 40 years to a t!

You are doing it again. Justifying yourself. So many people are agreeing with you yet you aren't focusing on those, you, are continuing justifying yourself to the crazies.

I know I did nothing wrong

Yes! Hold to that knowledge.

YANBU

Your mother's overreaction and her need to be involved in your DD presenting you with some flowers for Mother's Day is really off.

The shopping, 'free child care' and whether you saw your mother 2 days ago or 2 months ago are not really relevant. What is relevant is your mother's demand/sense of entitlement to be involved in your DD presenting you with flowers. It's got fuck all to do with your mother, whether she purchased them for your DD or not. Her reaction to you refusing to go in was totally out of order.

Going forward, it might serve you well to look at your family dynamic as from what you've written in your OP, it sounds far from healthy.

Flowers for you as I think you've had a rough ride on here on top of dealing with the fallout from your mother's nasty toxic tantrum

Cross postes with you hygee. Basically the same thing.

I still don't know what to do. If I should just say sorry and get it over with as nothing changes or hold out and nothing changes.

I don't understand why people are giving you such a hard time - your mother behaved terribly but it sounds like she does this a lot so maybe you need to take a step back like your brother does. Plus it seems that things are hard for you working full-time, single parent, you need more support and not being harangued.

Your "mistake" was responding to the message about going in and fuelling the fire. What you needed to say was not unreasonable but probably better said face to face. Or you avoid the doorstep confrontation altogether and ask dd to walk instead as you have to get home.