To go no contact with my mum?

[kindredsp]

I’ve not spoken to my mother for several months now and haven’t responded to a couple of texts and emails she’s sent since. The last time I spoke to her, I told her I wanted some space from her and to leave me be, with a very clear explanation as to why. I have since heard through other family members that she’s saying that I’m blanking her, that I’m denying her access to her grandchildren and that I have insulted her, and quite frankly I’m pissed.
Our relationship is very complex and I won’t bore you with too many details. But the straw that broke the camels back was when we decided to move away to a cheaper part of the country to gain some financial stability with a small mortgage (first time buyers with a limited deposit).
She then offered us 150k so we could stay local to her and still have a small mortgage. We said no originally as there’s always a condition or catch to her “help”, but eventually she wore me down and I accepted.
We house hunted, put an offer in for an incredible house, and had it accepted. The dream of living in an area we loved in a house we loved really was intoxicating.
Then she withdrew her offer. No real reason was given, other than that she couldn’t access that kind of money (she obviously originally said it was easy for her to access). I was so emotionally invested in the move that I persuaded my husband to go ahead with the purchase anyway despite it totally maxing ourselves out affordability wise. So we moved.
We’ve lived in our house for 5 years and money has been horribly tight. We love the area and the house, but we’ve literally lived month by month saving nothing. We have no money to live, just meet the basics. It is not the financial stability we were looking for. Add a pandemic, cost of living crisis and now the end of our fixed rate, we’re tighter than ever before.
We work our arses off and we’re missing everything. We can’t live, we can’t enjoy ourselves, we hardly see our children. It’s miserable and so stressful and the whole situation has put a huge strain on our marriage.
My mother breezes in and out with zero remorse for what happened. As far as she can see, we’re close by with a roof over our head so what’s the big deal. The last conversation I had with her was just as we were remortgaging and coming to terms with our monthly rate going up by a few hundred pounds. I said that if she’d let us make our own decisions we’d be in a financially stable position now and able to ride the spiralling expenses much better. She said she was only trying to help and had no idea it had put us under financial stress. She said we shouldn’t have bought the house if we couldn’t afford it.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, especially when you remove emotion from it. If I could go back I would have absolutely not bought our house. I would have reverted to the original plan. But at the time house prices were shooting up, we’d wasted 6 months on a fools errand and were about to be at a point where moving elsewhere wouldn’t have been the financial break we’d hoped for anyway and we’d still be stuck in rental today most likely.
But here we are. She hasn’t apologised for what she did. In fact, she said she couldn’t even remember how much she’d promised us. It feels like it was just a tactic to stop us from moving away so she could still see her grandchildren rather than allow us the freedom to make our own decisions.
I felt proud of myself for finally speaking up about it and her response also made me realise that I don’t want her in our lives. But now she’s telling everyone that I’ve insulted her (I haven’t), but I have stopped her seeing the grandchildren because I’m not seeing her myself and I am ignoring her messages because I asked for space the last time we spoke. So am I the AH?

YANBU.

I expect this is just one thing of many she has done to emotionally blackmail you.

I am no contact with my dm. Sometimes parents engage in behaviour that we would tolerate from a partner. So many people will say things like ‘you only have one mother’, and expect you to put up with it, even if it’s impacting your mental health and emotional well-being.

I know this won’t be easy for you to do, and it won’t be a decision you have made lightly. It was incredibly difficult to walk away from my mum. I really did try for many years to have a relationship with her. However, it reached a point where the damage she was causing me became unbearable and walking away was the best thing I ever did.

Ive been no contact with my mother for years.
Hope she dead but i no shes not she has a lot of guilt though.

God that was cruel of her OP. Don't blame you in the slightest for going NC.

I agree with others that you should sell up and revert to your original plan, have some financial security and LIVE

I abhor the NC thing. It seems to often the easiest and most vindictive way to proceed
yes, there are cases where you need to do this, where abuse is taking place and it’s a auction of safety.

but, outside of that it can be emotionally damaging for both parties, and never actually solves the problem in terms of moving to an “acceptance “ place needed for all “grief” or “change” process

my advice is to have a conversation in which you both establish a safe space to talk honestly, a common motivation, and share your “stories” on both sides.

there is a good approach to this described as “crucial conversation”. It was developed for industry, but works with any difficult relationship whether parents, children or your own boss. Google it, read it . It isn’t easy to apply, needs to careful thought about how to approach, but is worth a try before you simply go NC.

Going NC often seems to be more about telling the other person to shut up, refusing to listen to their side of story (which may be wrong, misguided etc but until you discuss it it won’t change) and wresting any control the other person has over their own interaction with you.

https://virtualspeech.com/blog/crucial-conversations

https://goodfamilymatters.com/learn-how-to-have-crucial-conversations-part-2/

I echo this. Ultimately as an adult it should be your choice who you have in your life. You don't have to cut off all contact forever, but you're entitled to want space as you've asked for. My only thought would be are your children likely to miss her? If so it might be worth exploring supporting them to have a relationship with her even if you choose not to have one yourself, but that's up to you.

I see she has her 'flying monkeys' working efficiently on spreading rumours about your situation with her.

The trick here is to ignore everything that is said about you and your DH and your children.

You would not be unreasonable to go no contact with your mother. This is the consequence of her actions and words. You are still at the end of the phone if she is prepared to apologise and own the situation that she had more than a small part in creating but until then, you should just hold your head high and carry on contacting whomever in your family you are happy to.

You might find that you have to cut some of them out too because they end up working as intermediaries between you and her and that might not work well in the long run.

What I would do now is to investigate areas that you would like to move to, work out if you could do it by selling the home you're in now and see if your monthly outgoings would go down as a result (so you'd be able to start saving again). If that would be possible, that's what I would set in motion as quickly as I could.

Look, I have a mum who promises the world and under delivers. She's never promised us a house, but she offered to pay healthcare costs of £1000s then didn't mention it again. She knows I'd never ask.

Anyway, I get how you feel. She shouldn't be going around offering things and not sticking to it. Especially in the case of a house purchase where the costs and emotional investment is high.

BUT - the house purchase is on you. You should have pulled out, cried for a week, and moved on. Instead you persevered knowing the strain it would be. You couldn't predict the COL crisis but it sounds like it was tight from the beginning.

Whether you want to lose your mum over this is up to you. Personally, I would take responsibility for the move and accept that you took a gamble. In the meantime, don't ever accept anything else from your mum unless it's directly in front of you.

Family is precious. I would move on and keep tighter boundaries. Going NC is a huge thing and can make you feel awful at times. It won't necessarily make things easier for you.

I voted YABU but not for going no contact with her, she sounds awful. But for whinging about what she tells people, I mean really what did you expect? Her to tell everyone she is manipulative and deceitful and that is why she doesn’t see her grandchildren? Be more realistic.

But the things you say she’s talking to your family about are true though? You did all of that! Who else is she meant to talk to? Yes she shouldn’t have promised the money but I’d say she got carried away with the excitement of living near you. Give us all 20 years and I’d say we’ll all be promising the moon to get daughters to live near us then scrambling to try to fulfill the promise. Only you know whether you’ll regret never having your mum in you life

I don’t you should go no contact but definitely move and enjoy life.

She’ll be miles away also hopefully the dynamic might change. You can’t afford the area so your moving on. End off. What else can she say?

It was incredibly manipulative and selfish of her to do that to you. However you actively chose to go ahead with a house that sounds like it was significantly outside budget and that isn't her fault, you could have moved anyway. So it's fine to blame her for her shitty behaviour and if you can't forgive her for that then that's fine. But I don't think you can forgive her for any of the subsequent financial strain, I'm afraid that's on you. I'm guessing that there is a history of this behaviour rather than a complete one off because she was desperate to stay close to her grandchild. If so then yanbu to have had enough of it. If not then I think stopping the grandparent and grandchild contact because of one incident between parent and grandparent does sound a bit extreme

Sorry to hear this OP and I totally understand why you had to break away.

For my own sanity I did the same. My mother has been an narcissistic all my life and I have put up with her treatment and mind games. We haven't spoke for 5 months and I use to message all the time, pop in every week or so.
It is so hard to explain and I have done everything to help, support but nothing I do is good enough. I decided to let it all go when my youngest picked up on me being upset over something my mother did. He is a sensitive little lad and it was a light bulb moment for me. I have my little family unit and nothing will spoil what we have. I am the oldest sibling and she doesn't treat my DS's or DB the same. We have an age gap between 10 and 15 years so growing up I have always helped, been on hand and love my siblings very much. My mother's behaviour is odd and I feel I just craved her love. I am in my fifties I realised she is just a jealous, spiteful woman who loves drama. It is extremely sad but I know she won't change. I have.
Put your happiness first. Ignore all the spiteful talk and look after yourself.

I do 100% take responsibility for ploughing ahead. My issue is that when I raised what happened with her, there was no remorse for doing what she did which was why I sought the break. That in itself wouldn’t be an issue if it was an isolated incident. I would have gotten over it. But as you suggest, this is the last thing in a long line of problems. Incidentally, I’ve not mentioned to the children that I’m not talking to grandma right now. We had to block her on my son’s phone (he’s now a teenager) for emotionally manipulative texts she would send him and made him feel very uncomfortable. But neither child has asked where she is or when we are seeing her next as they have done and do with other family members. I find that quite interesting…

I'd you 100% accept responsibility for doing it anyway why do you expect remorse from your mum?

You make it sound as though she deliberately lied to you out of spite and control. Of course she wanted you close by. She loves you and she loves her children. Perhaps she got carried away, thought she might be able to access money and made a promise in the heat of the moment that she couldn't keep. Ultimately you decided to buy that house. It's only now that you're struggling due to remortgaging and interest rates going up that you feel resentment. It was your decision.

You going NC is, quite frankly, a cruel way to punish her. Of course, you will receive support from all those MNetters who have also gone NC with parents (some justified and most down to their inability to work through difficult situations and politely draw a few respectful boundaries). I come from a very difficult family where there has been a lot of trauma through several generations. My mother is not easy, but I would never dream of going NC with her. My sister cut herself off from the entire family (due to mental health and addiction problems) and it is unbelievably hard for us all to bear. We miss her immeasurably. My sister is terminally ill now as is my father. We most likely won't be together again. I cannot tell you what this has done to my mother.

I am absolutely determined to set a better example for my children. I tell them when I believe that she has acted unreasonably and I will call her out on her behaviour. But I also show my children how to not escalate arguments and teach them how sometimes people act in hurtful ways even if that was not their intention. I teach them that it's ok to be pissed off with people, but how to calm down and move forward without stewing on it. If I went NC, I would risk them seeing this as a way to manage relationships and to run away from problems. And they might well turn around and do the same to me one day. We reap what we sow. Family is family and going NC rarely results in greater happiness/peace of mind (it does for some bit generally doesn't). Honestly OP, I know that you won't like what I have said, but it comes from a good place. Life really is too short to carry so much angst. It's far better to resolve things where at all possible and move on.

So you don't think the mother has in any way behaved badly?

@Appleofmyeye2023

How refreshing to see some decent calm and rational advice here!! It is very hard working through difficult situations. We're not shown or taught how to do it or manage relationships. It's even harder if we've not been modelled it by our parents. But it can be taught. There are lots of brilliant resources online with advice on how to reconnect with family and whether going NC is the right decision.

@Appleofmyeye2023

Apple is spot on.

The whole 'NC' thing is often petulant and rash. We live in families and communities and we need to learn to be solution- focused and communicate with difficult people, especially family.

Unless they are violent, cruel or abusive these relationships are important and worth preserving. From what I can glean from your predicament it does not seem fair to cut your mum off.

I’ve not gone into detail here. I could write a novel, but emotionally abusive and controlling is absolutely on the table.

You can’t have a productive conversation with some people. The posters who think so just have no experience of manipulative or abusive people. The minimum safe distance is ver far.

That’s interesting.

But then a root cause of an inability to take responsibility can be overbearing parent(s), so I guess it fits in.

I think both YANBU and YABU - yes she was horribly manipulative at the time, and probably never intended to give you the money. But you needed to take the decision either never to accept the money (knowing what she was like), or to pull out when it transpired you weren’t going to be getting it.

I still think you would probably be wise to sell up and move now though, if you’re that miserable.

I think it’s disgusting that so many posters are coming in here and telling the OP (and others, by extension) that going NC is petulant or wrong. You don’t know the intricacies of what OP (or others) have had to deal with, often for prolonged periods of time. The majority of your ‘solutions’ work on the assumption the family member is willing to be honest, open, take responsibility, and has good intentions. In what Hollywood movie do you live that you think everyone is lucky enough to be in such situations to enable reasonable resolution?

OP, I’m sorry about what you’ve dealt with. You know you shouldn’t have bought the house and you know why, and I think the best takeaway you can have from this is working on your own self-esteem and your own boundaries. You have a right to live your life the way you want to. I would strongly suggest counselling to help you work through the issues.

@kindredsp I am in a similar situation except she did give me the money.... was for a house alteration. She then changed her mind and sued me for it back.

I haven't seen her or spoken to her in nearly a decade. It has caused irreparable damage to both our and my siblings relationship with me and I have had to go through trauma counselling to feel 'normal' again. It was the straw that broke a rather big fat camels back.

Move. Cut contact. Have peace of mind.