To cut my mum off over her Facebook addiction and ignorant attitude?

[GraceyBeaker]

Mum has been addicted to Facebook for a good decade and a half. I am mid 20s and have emotional trauma from my teenage years directly relating to her Facebook use. She would post about every aspect of my life - my bullying as a young teen (and the posts got around to kids in my school which escalated the bullying), my period, an overdose due to depression and my school refusal due to the bullying. I had a miscarriage at 18 and that got posted also. Anytime I was seeing a new boyfriend she would go through my friends list on Facebook and work out who the boyfriend was, then would relentlessly stalk him and his family members profiles and “accidentally” like old pictures, or message their mums to ‘introduce herself’ before even meeting the lad (this was when I was 17/18 and even when it wasn’t a serious relationship and I was just trying to have a bit of fun dating) thus freaking the lads out and costing me the relationship.

I very nearly cut her off completely after my miscarriage incident but she promised she would stop and so I moved past it. I’ve now been in a serious relationship for a year and me and my boyfriend will be living together shortly. Mum’s Facebook behaviour has gradually reverted back to type. Late last year I accompanied my boyfriend on a family trip with his mum and siblings. Boyfriend’s mum posted a picture of us all and tagged me in it, so mum saw it. Mum then proceeded to go through all of her posts back until 2012 and commented on every single one. My boyfriend is from an EU country and his mum speaks every little English, so my mum was translating all the posts then commenting on them in English. Boyfriend’s mum was understandably disturbed and blocked my mum, and I had my boyfriend apologise to his mum on my behalf. Me and my boyfriend discussed it and he told all of his close family members to block my mum with my blessing. Keep in mind my mum has never met any of boyfriend’s family and likely won’t until we marry or have a baby- they live in their home country. When mum figured out they had all blocked her she was fuming but I told her I had encouraged them to do this because she has no boundaries. Thus a huge argument that with time died down. My boyfriend and I remain friends with her on Facebook so we can monitor her posts.

It’s kicked off again today because my boyfriend was casually scrolling Facebook and noticed mum had been arguing with somebody on an article about Brexit/EU immigrants. Mum posted a comment along the lines of “Well I voted Brexit and I am glad we did and got our autonomy back but some EU immigrants are fine so I still wouldn’t tar them all with the same brush!!! My daughter’s boyfriend is from X and works at X location and has never been any trouble, she’ll be moving in with him soon! Unfortunately I still haven’t convinced him to enjoy tea or fish and chips, hahaha!!!”. Me and my boyfriend were disgusted. It gave me “I’m not racist, my mate is black!” vibes so I immediately called her and demanded she delete it. She is refusing to delete it and has said we are over exaggerating and she can say what she wants on Facebook.

We’ve had incidents before with her being ignorant about my boyfriend’s nationality - we were petting a dog in a park and she said to him “I bet you eat them in your country”, or telling me that she thinks his mum is weird looking, things like that. Also very patronising, “Have you heard of Easter?” (He’s from a Catholic country), and “Do you know about bonfire night?” (He’s lived here 11 years).

AIBU? I’m sick to death of her. She will be a nightmare when we have children.

She prefers attention to her own daughters feelings. It’s everything I hate about that sort of social media.
I have a relative similar to your mum, I had to go NC in the end to cut off her supply of info about me. She accused me of being ‘controlling’ for being upset that she shared my personal medical information and that was the final straw for me.
People like your mum never improve unfortunately.

I would also start feeding her fake info so she makes herself look ridiculous.

Do you think she has a mental illness? This is not normally behaviour.

This is seriously unbalanced behaviour that hasn’t changed and she needs professional help… I think you need to consider asking her to quit social media and get therapy. If she refuses/flies off the handle then write her a letter saying that unfortunately she cannot be a part of your lives at this time and cut her off. You seem happy otherwise, she is trying to ruin that. She will also be a nightmare re any grandchildren in the future. Yes. Everything she did to you on FB she will do to them probably…

Eek, I don’t blame you OP! She actually sounds a bit mentally unwell. I think if it were me, I’d sit her down and lay out (again) exactly how her behavior affects you, and then tell her in no uncertain terms that if any of her Facebook activity from now on involves you or your life in any way, you will cut contact. No more chances. I think that if you give fair warning of exactly what your next steps will be if she continues this way, you can cut her off with a clear conscience if/when she does cross the line.

There’s stuff coming out now with regarding to parents posting everything with regard to their children and the psychology damage that’s being done by it

even the starters of Facebook have said it’s a nuclear weapon for humanity. The other thing is in America are bringing out a law that any money made by their child’s profile in anyway is now made to be allocated for the child and it cannot be spent by the parents

Freud would have had a day of it with social media!!!

edit. Sorry I didn’t even put anything. But I can completely understand why you feel the way you do!! Look uk the studies being done on them now.

Yup. There is tons and tons coming out on the damage social media is doing to humanity.

Just use a different social media platform?

Your mother is massively disrespectful to you and you’d boyfriend. Totally unacceptable behaviour.

Sorry (not sorry) to say that she sounds ignorant, especially with the Brexit and immigrant comments.

I think you need to distance yourself and not tell her anything. If she posts bullshit, comment to call her out.

As others have mentioned, there will be lots of teens and young adults who are realising what their parents have been doing. Pimping them out for likes. It’s just not right.

We have chosen not to have photos of our children on Facebook. Our relatives respect that. Your mum is not going to respect that of you have children. I think you need to think carefully about how you manage things before having children, or their lives will be shared in the same way. You may need to go very low contact and share minimal info and photos. Do you have other relatives who would pass information on to her? I am sorry you are having to deal with this.

Honestly , reading that - I think you guys need to come off fb as much as your mum 🙄

My mum was like this (completely insane). I went no contact but she still stalks my friends on there (she actually messages them unless they block her). Pretty sure she still has a photo of me as her profile pic though!

Block her and set up a new account in a random name to monitor her (assume she doesn't have 'friends only' can view her posts on?)

@GraceyBeaker Boyfriend’s mum posted a picture of us all and tagged me in it, so mum saw it. Mum then proceeded to go through all of her posts back until 2012 and commented on every single one.

Her behaviour is mentally disturbed.

I'm.so sorry for what you have been through.

I decided to come off FB and delete my profile about 9 years ago, similar reasons to you.
I can't begin to tell you the joy and happiness this has brought me.

It seems scary, because you feel you need to monitor what people (your mum is saying).
But, I promise you, because I can't see and don't know what people are doing, the weight of the stress, anxiety and panic has lifted completely.

Not blocking her and monitoring her, is not doing your mental health wellbeing any good. In fact, it's damaging you.

You are not responsible for your mum and you can't make her change her behaviour.
The only thing you can do is change how you respond to her and protect yourself.

You need to ask yourself why you need to 'monitor' her behaviour? My Mum has been blocked on Facebook from the day she set up an account.

I don't want her sharing photo's of my kids- (I don't share on FB but used to share via whatsapp- that has now stopped) I don't want her commenting on work stuff, I don't want her seeing anything. It makes life much easier. She wouldn't have been able to find your partners family if you had both blocked her.

She's not going to change her attitude is she? So all you are doing is allowing her another avenue of access to your life that she can exploit.

This sort of nonsense is why I don’t use social media.

Delete your social media accounts, OP. Your mother sounds batshit, and you can’t control what she posts on social media, so it’s best to take yourself away from it. Be very careful what you tell her about anything, don’t send her any photos and generally put distance between you.

The stately homes thread may be able to help x