To feel like the only person who doesn't get on with their mother

[SweetsCakesBiscuits]

In real life its taboo to say you don’t get on with your mother. My DM has always been ‘difficult’ - not abusive - but sulky, jealous, interferring, immature, nosy and drinks too much.

She can be nice too but after years of ‘issues’ I find I have limited patience for her and don’t enjoy her company. I visit her but try to limit the time and maybe have other people around so I am not the full focus of her attention.

She probably thinks i am difficult because I don’t bow down when she sulks. I used to clash with her and get upset when she got annoyed with me but lately I have stepped back and let it wash over me and give it no response.

I know some people have had lovely mothers that have passed away and must miss them terribly and probably think I am awful for feeling this way about my DM. I think some people don’t understand that not all mothers are like their mothers.

I wish I had a lovely mother I was close to. I cannot at all imagine having a mother that I could tell all my troubles too or spend the day with - the whole idea seems so strange to me.

Your mum sounds like my dad . I rarely talk about him (except on Mumsnet) it's difficult isn't it if it comes up it's like I don't get on with my dad so people thinks that's sad and why can't issues be resolved. If only, so it's easier not to discuss. My dh family will ask if I had seen dd I say no i think they think it's a shame which it is but if someone is so horrible to you it's mental abuse you have no choice to cut contact. We all have a right to be happy and if people in our lives don't make us happy then you have a choice to no longer see them even if they are our nearest and dearest.

I think its more common than you think to feel this way OP, when I was younger I hung on my parents every word. Now as an adult with two kids of my own I see them differently, both my Mum and Dad.
Yes, I love them very much and I'm grateful for many things they have done for me and some of the life lessons they taught me, but, they are still just people at the end of the day.
As I have grown up my own views and principals have grown to and now look back and sometimes question theirs and sometimes feel disappointed with the way they go on and I now don't hang their every word, I sometimes don't like their views and ways etc. I think I now see that they are two people just trying their best and sometimes getting it wrong or that I just now don't agree with them and what to do it my way, it does feel weird because as my parents I sometimes feel like I have to do as I'm told and listen to them all the time, but I'm a grown up to now!

I’ve got one of those. It’s hard work and bloody exhausting. Every second you are there is all about her, no real sympathy for any problems you might face even though her mundane problems are made out to be the end of the world. Nosy, intrusive, childish and manipulative, inappropriate questions. Just focussing on my mental health now and enjoying not jumping when she says how high!

speakout she's not quite that bad, but she will say the most unkind things about other women, even family members. I remember one time a family member uploaded photos of a works do to Facebook and my DM went on and on commenting about how awful her dress was. 'She's go no dress sense'' and it was 'so short you could see her arse' and other nasty stuff. She will often say rape and abuse victims were asking for it, and call female celebrities 'tarts' and 'slappers' etc.

I think she zero self esteem, she's quite obsessed with her own appearance and never leaves the house without makeup on. I think she runs other women down to make herself feel better, but in reality it just makes her sound like a nasty old cow.

So many comments on here resonate.
It's Ok, Op.
Embrace the escape. I feel much lighter not having to deal with their crappy behaviour. Well, I am but just in a different way. No reaction is suiting me fine for now. Am learning to let go of the guilt.
As a PP was saying about elderly care home clients, you reap what you sow.

You're not alone OP. I feel the same about my mum.

I don't enjoy her company and I feel very very guilty about it.

I dread Christmas Day, and feel immense relief when it's over, or she leaves for home.

I worry that when she dies I will feel even more guilt and hate myself for not managing to fix things, and by then it will be too late.

I keep being asked what my mum is doh g for Christmas (I’m working ds with his dad) I lie and say she is with friends

I think she is staying home I don’t really care that much and not bothering to go round and see her

But many find this too uncomfortable to hear so I lie rather than explain myself

Is doing ...

I love my mum, I have to, she's my mum......... right?

.... and to be honest, she not too bad.... now.

During my childhood though, she was awful. I really think that she physically and emotionally abused us. She had a LOT of mental health problems, which she point blank refused and still refuses to this day, to get any help for. This lead to her constantly screaming at us, hitting us, chasing us with knives etc and on the whole hit making us feel like we were a giant hinderance to her. I have very very few happy childhood memories of my mum.

And yet she kept on having child after child. With each new shiny baby the older children went further and further down the pecking order. Until she had my youngest sister, she who she is the most over protective parent to you've ever seen. After her birth she pretty much washed her hands of the rest of us and left us to our own devices. I was 13, but one of us was only 6 and was dirty with head lice and matted hair! Why would someone like her just keep on haveibg children!!

Mind you she free tells me that my youngest sister is the child she always thought she'd have.

She's lazy, she's awful to my poor long suffering father, and anything I ask of her is an absolute chore to her (I don't really ask her for much). She judges everyone and constantly slags people off. I really have no respect for her, but I'm civil and try and maintain a relationship as she's my mum. TBH now really I feel sorry for her.

I know now that she is the way she is because of her mental health problems, but I can't help feeling a bit bitter that she never went and got help and tried to be better for our sake. But hey, what can you do.

Been non contact for 5 years
Rarely talk about it in real life
As apparently “you only have one mother”
Yeah no shit shame mine is one that it took me almost 40 years to realise how utterly miserable she made me

tinytreefrog that sounds bloody awful. Mental health problems can't be used as an excuse for treating a child so badly. Your far more forgiving than I think I would be.

My DM was never as bad as that, but she freely admits that she wishes DB and I would have stayed babies (WTF.). She loves babies, probably because they are so helpless. It was as we started to grow up and began tantrumming (as all toddlers do) or expressing opinions of our own, that she struggled. She can't handle anyone having a different opinion to her. Her moods changed like wind, one minute fine next screechy and shouty, the next sulky and miserable.

I had an amazing relationship with my mother and could never understand why my sister didn't. I didn't know until a year ago that my sister had been sexually abused by a close family friend and that my mother dismissed her and called her an attention seeking liar. Once she left for university my brother and I didn't see her again until her marriage some years later. She asked us to come, but didn't invite our parents and I remember feeling so angry with her for doing that - now I understand.

My dad had no idea about any of this because my mother kept it from him so he didn't ever understand what he had done that was so wrong, that his eldest daughter cut him out of her life so completely.

It's only since our mother has died that the three of us siblings and our father are starting to rebuild our relationships.

It is not a social taboo.

My mother is vile and I am quite proud to say I do not have her in my life.

Narcissist, thief, liar, bully are words I would use to describe her. Her parting shot to me at our final discussion was, "I never liked you, I never loved you and I wish I had not had you". A delight! My Dad parted ways with her soon after this. It is too outing to say what else she has done.

The trick is to not let history repeat itself! I adore my children!!

Wonderful thread.

My mum, as much as she loved me, and I loved her.,she never was emotionally close.

I get it. I'm a 50's child and she went through the war in Europe. It was get on with it and sweep it under the carpet.

It is what it is. I do miss it when I see how different it is these days. (And thank God for that!)

Can we make thisa little sanctuary for the coming few days?

Just arrived at my parents’...my mother hasn’t said a word to me. Who knows what my infraction was this time? I’m actually crying. I’m in my 30s FFS.

Anyone else keeping out of harm’s way of their sulking mother?

@Thunder I'm sad that your mother has got to you :(

I've refused to go anyone's for Christmas since I was 19. Not my parents, not the in laws- nope! Staying home and avoiding bitchy MIL and abusive birth family. I want DD to remember happy Christmases and so far she seems that way.

Good for you, @Kismetjayn. Glad to hear you’re stopping the cycle with your DD.

Next year is the year I do Christmas my way too.

@ThunderInMyHeart
and time for a large

Me too. Mine is astonishingly self centred, made even worse with dementia. Knows nothing of my life, not interested. I loathe visiting but feel duty bound now she is very old and senile.

I'm NC and I highly recommend it.
Don't get me wrong it's been difficult, other family members have ditched us even though they used to complain about my mother to me. But I'm so much less anxious and it's been 100 times better.
My mother used to do the same kind of manipulation and would always play some sort of illness or blame me if I challenged her on it.

Oh Thunder, I'm NC but can totally relate. Post when you need to about anything. A little Christmas sanctuary sounds like a great idea.

I'm glad to stumble across this thread. I'm mostly very confused about my relationship with my mum, because she spent all my childhood telling me that she was the best mother in the world and that she felt sorry for children who didn't have her as a mother, and yet -

• She consistently "dumped" on me as a child and teenager (criticising my father and, later, telling me graphic sexual details about her extramarital affairs) but she has always shut me down and belittled me if I tried to confide in her about anything (e.g. telling me I'm "ridiculous" , guilt-tripping me that hearing about my problems might make her ill, gaslighting me about my mental health).
• She's said some horrible stuff to me over the years ("every time I get something nice, you spoil it" when I accidentally broke something in her house, mainly because anxiety about breaking something of hers made me heavy-handed; telling me that I'm autistic - not that that's a negative thing but I'm not, so it just seemed like she was saying it so she could then brag about having made my autism better with her brilliant mothering (!) - and telling me that I shouldn't have had children because I wanted to try DD with one day a week paid childcare rather than letting DM have her all the time I'm at work) but if I answer back she'll tell me I'm abusive and just like my father/ grandmother/ whoever.
• She's racist ("I'm sorry, but it's a fact that black women don't love their children like white women do") and misogynistic (of a girl in a short skirt at a bus stop who looked all of about twelve: "the disgusting thing is that, if she got raped tonight, she'd whine that it wasn't her fault"). She said a lot of horrible stuff about Jews when I was a child (e.g. that the Holocaust wouldn't have happened if they weren't such unpleasant people) and, when I called her out on it as a teenager, she cried and said that I was mean and judgemental.
• She can be quite cold, e.g. calling ten-month-old DD a "wimp" for crying when she fell over.

...and, written down like that, she sounds a bit horrible, so why do I feel so awful about doubting her?

and for everyone!

I get what you mean, @Given - I get conflicted feelings about my mother/parents because they weren’t awful-awful as a child ie no sexual abuse, starvation etc. We had a nice MC lifestyle with ponies and private schools etc.

Playing Bingo with her racist comments so far.

watching with interest.
Just gone NC with my Mum (suggested by me but I relented and met up despite my misgivings: it went tits up and then SHE chose this) but lost my father 6 months ago so doubly guilty about it all

@thunder my mother wasn't sexually abusive but she makes me feel worse (or at least as bad as...) In comparison to my dad who was abusive that way- the complete emotional abandonment was awful before going NC. I always felt 'at least Dad cares about me', because at least he validated my opinions.

Everyone with dreadful parents feels the need to say 'at least it wasn't as bad as x'! It's a coping mechanism. But your experience is still shit and unfair either way.