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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

y sister financially benefitting from our parents AGAIN - Theead 2.

547 replies

QueenofmyPrinces · 16/01/2019 17:40

My mom is due over in 20 minutes so let’s see if she turns up on time for a start......

Feeling very nervous and already feeling upset to be honest. I’m worried I’m just going to burst into tears when I see her Sad

Thanks everyone for your support on the the first thread and I will let you know how tonight goes Flowers

OP posts:
Original poster
QueenofmyPrinces · 18/01/2019 11:04

I’ve had a text off my dad to say my mom had told him that we’d “made up” and so he was glad to hear we’d cleared the air Hmm

OP posts:
RandomMess · 18/01/2019 11:09

You do need to text your Mum tbh.

"Glad you found it cathartic to offload, next time I can share with you how I have been feeling all these years and see if we can find a way forward so I no longer less important to you"

WhoKnewBeefStew · 18/01/2019 11:21

I’m afraid you may find that your mum now feels that it’s all done and dusted and back to normal. As you said op ‘she’ now feels better for off loading and that’s all that counts in her world. She hasn’t actually asked you how you are feeling ‘again’

StormTreader · 18/01/2019 12:01

"I know my mom said that once the PND was addressed she then loved us as equals"

Hmm she hasnt treated you as equals though, has she? This isnt just "things were uneven while you had PND", this is "things have been unequal your whole life and still are". The PND may have been terrible but I dont think its a get out of jail free card for everything for ever.

Mix56 · 18/01/2019 12:10

Hi Dad,Well, the cold war (she created) has ended, if that means she has "made up", she is wrong. It remains to see if she adopts a new dynamic in the future as to whether there is any worthwhile relationship left

MRex · 18/01/2019 13:00

I like @RandomMess's response.

Original poster
QueenofmyPrinces · 18/01/2019 13:09

Well I didn’t get chance to text my mom as she text me first, a general breezy, “Hope work was ok yesterday” type stuff followed by her asking me if I fancied going out for lunch tomorrow with her and my sister as she “knows a great new place that’s opened that she’d love to try” ending with her saying it was “her treat”.

I feel like I’m in a parallel universe and imaging if I’ve just imagined the last two months...

OP posts:
eddielizzard · 18/01/2019 13:11

This isn't resolved. They're trying to push you into dropping it. Thing is it won't really go away or be resolved until you've been heard. And that's not at all unreasonable.

Original poster
QueenofmyPrinces · 18/01/2019 13:15

I can’t tell if her offer for lunch at her expense is a way of an olive branch, an apology, a gesture of treating us as equals etc OR she genuinely thinks that the issue has been dealt with and this is just her carrying on as if nothing happened....

OP posts:
SuperSange · 18/01/2019 13:20

I'm afraid it might be the second. She thinks it's all sorted. She hasn't asked how you are. How things should be in the future. She gives as much of a shit now as she did before. She's had her telling off, she's said her piece, fuck your perspective. Exactly nothing has been achieved for you. It's all about her. I'm so sorry.

aaaaargghhhhelpme · 18/01/2019 13:22

But as far as you mum is concerned it is all sorted. She told you how hard it was for her. She dismissed your feelings as being totally irrelevant. Job done. Now she just wants you to move on.

Sorry op. It sounds utterly shit.

I can only echo pp. she has not even slightly acknowledged your pain. As a mother that would kill me to know my child felt that way. For years.

Personally (I’m prepared to get flamed for this) I think she’s using the Pnd to hide behind. I’ve had it. I don’t doubt it’s one of the worst times I’ve ever had. But she’s using it as an answer to everything and no one can argue back against Pnd.

Everything you say - she will come back with ‘it was the Pnd. You wouldn’t understand. Poor me’.

And you - being a nice person - will accept that and think you can’t argue with that.

Have you set your dad straight? He sounds the most reasonable out of them.

ChrisjenAvasarala · 18/01/2019 13:25

Maybe she has heard everything you've said over the last few weeks, so coming over and telling you about the depression and leaving and how she's felt is her way of saying "I understand everything you've said; here are my reasons for doing it all". She just doesn't have it in her to say it outright?

She feels like you've already made your feelings clear, and now she's explained herself so she thinks that's it. So maybe she's not doing anything out if malice here.

You should absolutely bring up your feelings again, in the context of clearing the air on your side too. But gently, so it doesn't all kick off again.

Original poster
QueenofmyPrinces · 18/01/2019 13:32

I phoned my dad not long after his text and said things weren’t sorted and we hadn’t “made up” but that she’d been round and tried to explain her behaviours in relation to the PND she’d had.

He told me that he felt he was partly to blame because when my mom returned home after leaving he’d been incredibly angry with her and apparently laid it on thick about how wrong she was to have left us and how my sister had cried and cried for months because she couldn’t understand where her mum had gone.

He told me that in hindsight he shouldn’t really have said those things to my mom but he was just incredibly frustrated and stressed and he just took it out on her. He said it took him a long time to truly forgive her for what she’d done because of the repercussions it had had on him, my sister and my mom’s sister (who had to change her life around to look after me and my sister in our moms absence) and he found it hard to be understanding and sympathetic to her at times.

So now I have both parents feeling guilty....my mom feels guilty about having walked out on my sister and my dad feels guilty for making my mom feel guilty.

OP posts:
aaaaargghhhhelpme · 18/01/2019 13:36

The important thing is for you not to feel guilty. You’ve done nothing wrong.

Your parents SHOULD feel guilty for the years of treating you like a second class citizen with all the secret payments and refusals to help with you childcare. Don’t let that get to you. Their actions are not your responsibility.

CraftyYankee · 18/01/2019 13:42

FFS, even your dad doesn't include you in the list of people who were hurt by your mom leaving. It's like they both think you were a little doll baby that got put down and didn't notice a difference until your mother came back and picked you up again. You missed out on prime mother baby bonding time that probably goes a way towards accounting why you and she don't have the same connection she does with your sister.

It's not your job to make your parents feel better about poor decisions they made when you were an infant.

StormTreader · 18/01/2019 13:43

"He said it took him a long time to truly forgive her for what she’d done because of the repercussions it had had on him, my sister and my mom’s sister (who had to change her life around to look after me and my sister in our moms absence) "

And what about you? Do you realise you only feature on that list as a burden on your mums sister?

HeebieJeebies456 · 18/01/2019 13:47

You're not responsible for their guilt.
Guilt is also a 'useless' emotion - unless you can use it to proactively make changes for the better.

If your mum was truly being honest about her 'guilt', she would not have been treating you unfairly/unequally as an adult.
Your dad could have also done more to balance out the dynamic.

Your parents are still only concerned about their own feelings and making excuses for themsaelves.
They sill don't see that your feelings matter too, don't want to know/understand them and definitely don't want to talk aboiutr how to do things differently/with more awareness in the future.

I wouldn't go to the lunch.
It's NOT 'sorted' - they need to actually LISTEN to how their actions (or lack of) have affected you.
Only then can the air be 'clear' and you can move forward without it still hovering in the air between you all.

Your mum pretending that this doesn't affect you personally and that only her feelings matter is exactly what she's always been doing all your life.

Don't let her get away with it.
You've come too far to let it go back to the way it has always been.

joanmcc · 18/01/2019 13:49

OP, I desperately hope you are able to see through the fog and realise none of this is your fault. And whenever your mum inevitably gets angry that you haven't magically stop feeling upset about her complete failure as a human, that you know that is not your fault either. You didn't deserve it as a baby and you don't deserve it now.

RandomMess · 18/01/2019 13:59

With your Dad (because he will think it through) I'd text something like;

"And what about me, pushed to the side as the constant after thought and ignored whilst everyone else tried to make it up to Sister not caring that I was treated lesser for the whole of my life..."

Original poster
QueenofmyPrinces · 18/01/2019 14:00

Regarding my dad: he was telling me about how he had made her feel bad about abandoning my sister purely in relation to me having told him that my mom felt guilty only about that. He had obviously told my mom she was wrong to leave me too but during our conversation we were just talking specifically about the guilt my mom felt towards my sister.

My dad obviously knows how equally wrong it was that our mom walked away from me as well as my sister. Just because I was a young baby at the time he has never used that to brush aside the fact that I was left too whereas my mom does.

OP posts:
Original poster
QueenofmyPrinces · 18/01/2019 14:02

As an aside I don’t feel guilty about any of this mess, I just feel extremely overwhelmed by it all.

It’s like a huge skeleton has come out of the closet and things are just getting more sinister with each day that passes.

OP posts:
Bekabeech · 18/01/2019 14:17

My advice would be to find a therapist experienced in Family Therapy and see if they are willing to work with you all. At present it seems as if the other members of the family are using you in that role, and no one is acknowledging your needs (and a lot of good therapists have their own mentor/counsellor who will help them process the stuff brought up in therapy).

RandomMess · 18/01/2019 15:31

What I was referring to is that what has been completely overlooked is how hurt you have been by your mom favouring your sister to appease her guilt.

Your Mom feels guilty for leaving your sister, your Dad feels guilty for making your Mom feel bad.

Does anyone recognise or feel guilty that you have been ignored and made to feel lesser by your Mom appeasing her own guilt as well as the hurt you have felt knowing that your Mom left due to the PND after you were born?

So you were abandoned the same as your sister AND had to suffer watching whilst your Mom tried to make it up to your sister whilst never considering that she had also abandoned you?

Not sure I'm being clear Confused

Mix56 · 18/01/2019 16:37

yes, "you were abandoned the same as your sister AND had to suffer a lifetime watching whilst your Mom tried to make it up to your sister ....
and her dc

ssd · 18/01/2019 16:42

you need to stop looking for it, its not there, with any of them, your mum, your dad or your sister, the love you need and want from them is not there

turn to yourself and your own nuclear family instead

if you can build an atmosphere of mutual acquaintanceship with all of them, and it suits you, then thats better than this constant hurt and rejection

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