Mother tells everyone everything

[silly88]

For as long as I can remember, I've felt uncomfortable with how my mother talks about people when they are not present. She tells her friends / family about everything other friends / family are doing, planning, struggles they are going through... it can be very personal things. And a lot of analysis and criticising.

I don't like it. It's dressed up as chit chatting, or concern for a friend but really it's just over sharing even bitching. And she does it about me too. All her friends and family know details about my life that really I wouldn't want spoken (things that have gone wrong in my relationship, my miscarriage my DD's troubles with food) about and I've asked her to not use me as conversation but she does (all the time!) and it's now at the point where I feel I can't discuss anything with her, don't want to hear anything about anyone else and I don't enjoy her company at all. I am on edge. She thinks I am unkind, unwelcoming and unfriendly to her. AIBU for no longer wanting a close relationship?

Mine is the same. She recently told people that we were moving house - we hadn’t fully decided and is an extremely emotional move for us. I have just found out I am pregnant and won’t be telling her until my 2 week scan is done- high risk pregnancy and I don’t want to be village gossip!
DH often tells me that she means well/ is so happy for us that she wants to tell people...

My MIL is the same. I despise her for it and nobody in the family tells her anything now.

Don’t tell her anything you don’t mind being ‘shared’ (with half the known world). Make stuff up if you have to. She clearly has no respect for boundaries (or just doesn’t see why she should respect them). She also seems to gain a sense if significance for herself in relaying all this data to others. You could try and stick to ‘safe’ topics and keep your own internal boundaries healthy - in other words, if you don’t feel she’ll treat your words respectfully, don’t offer them. You might try offering something you know is of low emotional importance to you (what colour you want the new carpet or similar) and giving the impression you’ve shared something vital. Doesn’t matter if she overshares and you can always just deny it later ‘ooh mum, no, it was purple carpet in the end. Did you forget? ’.

My mum is like this too. She finds me “cold”.
She tries to tell me the most intimate things people like her cleaner or friends have told her. It’s awful. I haven’t confided in her since puberty.
She also sort of crows when she has gossip on someone, it makes me cringe because they are real people, not a soap opera.

Yup. Mine is here with yours too. I tell her zero about anything important.

This is the reason I stopped telling my mother anything remotely private when I was about 10. I would tell her something, she would tell her friend, her friend would tell her daughter, her daughter would tell everyone in our year at school. Now she just imagines what she thinks is going on and tells people that instead

Thank you for your empathy, mumsnetters!

There is another element to it too, which is that mother helps us quite a lot with childcare throughout the school holidays, has occasionally helped us financially and she generously paid most of our house deposit when DH and I bought in our early 20s. So limiting contact is hard, as I do appreciate that she's been kind & generous. I just don't like her company at all and feel very uneasy. Then I feel ungrateful. We live 15mins away from each other and she comes to my house at least once a week. I don't like the person I am around her (cold and on edge) and would limit contact if I could.. but there is guilt.

I get that as I’m in a similar position re financial help.

You could just take the approach that DP takes and tell her things that aren’t true (quite often hilariously so as he’s a bit of a joker).

It’s quite funny when DPs stories - the funny but untrue stories that he’d sworn her to secrecy on, make their way back to us via my brother or cousin.

Yanbu. My mum& dad are very private and don't tell anyone anything about me or others unless they say it's ok to share. They're very respectful and I would think that's normal.. (it's me they have to remind.😆)(I do check, "is that private not for sharing to cousins or aunties?"... As I once mentioned dad was having an op.... & got rightly told off as wasn't my news to share.!.. Eeek, I felt awful!)

Yep my mum too..I only tell her what she either needs to know or what i want her to know.Its the worst kind of attention seeking I have seen and being a spiteful gossip seems to get her the attention she craves...but she hasnt yet clicked that the very same people she tells probably talk about her in the same way.Older but oh so not wiser and she has lost far more than she has ever gained with us,the ones who care for her.

My mother and her sister are the same. Anything you share will be told to the town, highly dramatised and come back to you via another source before you've even made it back home. Bad news and suffering are particularly valued, it's a horrible trait.

Final straw was me going for a haircut in the village (same salon that she used but different stylist) and having this woman retell my own lifestory back to me - including that my first husband left me for x reason (I left him, for a reason I've never ever shared with her, and it was TWENTY YEARS AGO.......

I now talk to her about nothing more deep than the weather, and what's happening on her favourite soap. It drives her insane and she constantly calls me and my sisters to try and gossip to us about the others, but we have all been burned by her and are all on the same page. Every now and again we siblings deliberately feed her a morsel of invented gossip , just to see how fast she can speed dial the rest of us to share the news....

I used to almost feed mother gossip about myself, I think because I felt I owed her due to financial help she gave us. The relief I felt and the lack of guilt when I refused to take money from her anymore was immense.

This sounds like my mum. It's the reason she has absolutely no idea I have suffered multiple missed miscarriages, and that I am currently undergoing fertility investigations. If I told her this then the whole bloody town would know about it.
I was once violently sexually assaulted in the street. It went to court and it ended up in the papers. I was protected by legal right to anonymity, but that didn't stop my mum telling everyone she knew (who then told everyone they knew and so on). She uses this kind of stuff to get sympathy for herself so all her workmates can gather round and give her sad eye concern for how she is holding up. If something isn't dramatic enough, she will embellish the truth (a pretty standard hospital stay for her grandson was turned into a life and death situation)
I feel like I can't have a normal mother daughter relationship where I can tell her what is happening in my life. I feel guilty about it sometimes, but then remind myself that it's her fault and not mine.

My own mother is a bit like this. I had spent a few months trying to get a certain payment that I was entitled to and eventually I got this.
A few weeks later one of my sister's mentioned it was great you got X.
I did not want this information to be shared.
Their have been several times that my mother would just say something and I am their thinking - why don't you just think before you speak.
Then she would ask questions about things that are none of her business.
My sister has had the same problem with her as well. At this stage we both tell her as little as possible as we don't want things said to other people.
Meanwhile she would hate if I told certain things to her family or friends.
She like to maintain a certain persona but the reality is far different.

I have a friend who's mother in law who would hear something and she would repeat it and sometimes add a bit extra to make the story better. She caused a few of adult children to fall out with each other because of this.
Her neighbours fell out with her as well. Over the years she had a few friends but when they heard private things back they avoided her.
She now has serious health issues and has very little support available due to the hassle she caused in the past.

Op that is tough and I can imagine hard to keep things quiet without her sensing a change and hating it !
My lovely old ma died recently - I always knew she wasn’t a gossip but after her death so many of her friends opened up to me about how much support she had given them for various personal (sometimes deeply personal tragic) problems. I was really touched by this and it’s a lovely thing to now know.
Good luck. I completely get you rethinking what you share with her.

My father was like this. He used to tell people "family news" as he called it. It was my personal business which I didn't want broadcast. When I objected he said "Sure, there's no harm in people knowing". He couldn't see it was private. We had loads of arguments and he just wouldn't keep his mouth shut, even about the most mundane events of my life. I live away from him ( another country) so he had the cheek to photograph the inside and outside of my house when he visited to show relatives. I didn't know about it until he had gone back home. I went ballistic when I found out. He learnt his lesson when I recounted his private matter which he didn't want known to his sisters. He hasn't gossiped about me since. Sometimes they need a tough lesson. I also no longer tell him anything of any interest.

My mum is like this. I don't tell her anything now and keep her at a distance. If I let her spend much time with us she starts to try and manipulate us and take charge AS WELL as telling everyone about everything. When I was at uni she would follow up conversations we had had with "the girls at work think you're manipulative..." Etc. It was horrible and then one of the 'girls' ended up as a fellow school mum. It felt awful.
She also would always talk about my sister to me (and presumably about me to her) in an unkind way. My sister and I are not at all close as a result. Divide and conquer eh?!

My nan does this.. Nothings a secret, as soon as she knows she puts the phone down and rings people to tell them.

Found out I was expecting, and my mum begged me to tell her but you know the whole family will know an hour after shes been told.

Best way is the obvious, just don't tell them! And if she gets defensive be honest, and say I just can't trust you to keep it a secret or private anymore.

I even joke at my nan now she can't keep a secret, it's bloody horrendous. She will gossip to anyone on a till or at the door. I use to tell her everything when I was younger but I can't trust any private things these days.

God my mum is the same. Im nothing but gossip fodder for her. I think it's a kind of currency for women of a certain age who haven't done much with their lives or taken many risks. It's like being related to a tabloid newspaper

My mother is exactly the same and once when I was a teenager I was diagnosed with PCOS and she was ringing all my aunts to tell them and announced it to my sister in the car and was then annoyed I was upset

She's not necessarily vindictive she just can't hold her water on anything, no matter how trivial

Recently I was kicking myself for saying anything at all after she quite obviously repeated to my sister that my best friend is having marital problems. My sister is the type to crow from a distance.

I don't get on with my sister at all and I would prefer her to know zero about my life
It has made me realise that if either marriage or children DOES finally happen for me I will have to lie extensively and withhold news for as long as possible.

I need to move and an opportunity has arisen to move within 5 mins of my DM and though I love her I don't want to take it due to shit like this.

I'm in a similar situation, and not sure what to make of it. I'd be interested to see what others thought.
As my dad's fairly deaf, I thought it would be nice to send him and my mum a brief newsy letter every fortnight to let them know what's going on. I tend to clam up with my mum on the phone, and my dad can't hear well. There's nothing especially intimate about the letters, just a lighthearted catch up on what we're up to.
Anyway, my mum is very appreciative, but shows them to everybody else in the family, as well as the next door neighbours.
Am I wrong to not like this? Is it odd behaviour? It's just that I see letters as personal and not to be shown around.

I think the problem is they get used to triangulating everyone's 'news' - my mum actually calls her gossip this! And because we grow up with it we think it's normal and listening to stories of Great Aunties Maud's Horrendous Gout is just part of the furniture of growing up. Then we have kids of our own and realise it's not fucking on.

However, you could argue that MN is mainly gossip, so perhaps if it didn't exist we'd be doing the same as our mums, instead of sharing personal thing anonymously with total strangers.

My DM would share whatever I said in confidence with my sisters - and vice versa. She also had a nasty habit of taking something, blowing it waaaay out of proportion and then using it against me.

I stopped telling her anything private or important years ago. Was told, very tearfully, on multiple occasions that I was distant and cold. Whatever. You reap what you sow.

My mother also tells people everything about me, even when I have asked her not to, and gets involved in other people’s lives in a way she (IMO) shouldn’t. In her eyes she is doing a good thing by keeping me updated but it’s really hurtful to me. I tell her as little as I can about things to do with me or my children.