How do I get over my mum telling lies about me?

[allatseawiththis]

As the title says, my mum tells lies about me. This happens usually when I do something she doesn’t like, or when I have a big life event which she’s not in control over.

The latest example is that she told my sibling that DH and I hadn’t told her when our next scan is (I’m currently expecting DC1). The thing is, I was sitting opposite my mum and next to DH when he looked in his phone calendar for the scan date and told her. My dad was there too, but apparently ‘really doesn’t remember’.

Previously, when I moved to DH’s town when our relationship was getting more serious, she told my family that I’d moved without telling her where I’d gone. In fact, not only had I told her, I’d also written down the address for her on a piece of paper.

She also likes to rewrite the past - apparently I caused her ‘a lot more bother’ at school than my sibling, even though every one of my school reports without exception said that it’d be nice if I actually spoke in class or put my hand up occasionally.

I’m just sick and tired of her lying and getting away with it. I asked my dad why he let her lie about the scan and he said he genuinely can’t remember being told when it was - we were all sitting there together!

If I lower contact, I get bombarded with calls and messages about how I don’t love her. In the past, she sent me an email saying that if she walked in front of a lorry tomorrow, then I’d regret not seeing her more.

How do I get over this?

Look into the 'We took you to stately homes' threads. So many of us dealing with this horrible people but not as easy as just saying cut contact. I finally have but the backlash...

Yes, she always had to be in control when we were younger. She has got noticeably worse since I went to uni and properly left home, because she can no longer control what I do.

I think she thinks I’m incapable of making my own decisions. She’s said before that I’m ‘under the thumb’ of my DH and his family - no, I’ve decided as an adult to spend time with them because I enjoy it and they’re nice, supportive, fun people to be with. Really, what she means is that I’m not under her thumb any more and she really really resents it.

Something my granny said yesterday about my wedding last year has really hurt, to be honest. She said that it was very difficult to be there as one of 10-ish family members from my side, with 50 strangers - but the strangers were my in-laws (DH’s parents, siblings and their partners, mainly) and mine and DH’s joint friends.

Nobody at my wedding was a stranger to me - we invited people who are important to us, and it wasn’t a huge wedding by any means.

I don’t have any other family I could have invited other than cousins who I never speak to. And DH only had one out of his seven cousins there in any case.

It wasn’t really the point of our conversation, but it feeds into that narrative that I’m abandoning my family in favour of DH’s. Granny said mum is worried that DH’s mum is taking me away from her - again, I’m a passive/inactive element of that sentence, having the taking away done to me, because I couldn’t possibly choose to spend time with MIL over my own mother.

She has no awareness that it’s 30+ years of her own behaviour that has led me to detach from her. We were never, ever close - whenever I tried to share things with her (aged 18, going on the contraceptive pill, or aged 20, alone at uni in a foreign country and upset/lonely), my emotions or decisions were met with absolute rage. Why would I keep subjecting myself to that? Of course I decided to move away.

That said, my granny also said she is under no illusions as to what my mum is like, and she has borne the brunt of her difficult behaviour as well. She said that mum would always have a dig at her at any opportunity, about her career etc, and mum completely cut her off for a while before I was born for leaving my grandad (he was an alcoholic and I gather that their marriage was not happy).

To the PPs who’ve mentioned personality disorders, thank you. I’ve been reading this morning and I think borderline PD might fit? Does that sound like the sort of behaviour I’ve described?

How do personality disorders get diagnosed and treated? Presumably she needs to recognise in herself that she needs help and be honest with a GP about it, which seems very unlikely to happen - she never admits fault or accountability for anything. She’s never ever apologised for any of her behaviour.

OP, unfortunately you are waist deep in FOG. That is fog, obligation and guilt.
Read up on it.
It makes you so vulnerable to criticism and flying monkeys who try and gaslight/manipulate you.

You are bending yourself out of shape to understand this awful woman.
To what end?
To change her?
You can't change her. Not going to happen in any shape or form.
She is consumed by controlling you and if she can't do that because you wish to be independent, she will control the narrative about you.
You read as terrified of her and her anger.
Sadly if you don't step away from this woman, in time bitter regret will be greater than your fear.
She will ruin your experience of motherhood. She will ruthlessly poison it for you and not think twice about it.
Believe me when I say you will feel a greater pain that what you feel now, if you allow her to spoil those precious first months.
You are scared of the fuss she will cause?
There is no avoiding it.
The decision is do you do it now before she has the chance to ruin your post partum experience, or when things get so stressful and you are so upset and you do it.
Your choice.

Reduce contact. If she is threatening to walk in front of a lorry she is using emotional blackmail on you and that is even more reason to take a very large step back and get some space. She needs to know she can't control you.

Do you really want that energy around your child? Get her out of your life and if you don't never allow her to be with your child without you there. She will also relish in trying to turn your child against you. I would go very low contact immediately and up it to NC if her bad behaviour continues.

No, I don’t. I think the way forward is going to be LC like you say, with NC as a back-up if she continues to escalate her behaviour. And I’m going to have to be completely honest with her, my dad, my sister and my gran, because I am not having my child subjected to the same drama, manipulation and frankly abuse that I was. I’m not putting up with this in my pregnancy and nor should I - for once, this is part of my life where I should come first and people need to think about me, rather than the other way around.

Keep your resolve and stick to it because she is going to fight back and manipulate you like crazy. You have a right to be happy in your life. You, your husband and your child come first, make sure you prioritise the three of you and don't allow your dreadful mother to suck you down and exhaust you. You will need your energy when the little one arrives.

Thank you 🙏🏼

Should she threaten to self harm and use your weak father to be her flying monkey, you tell him that HE is responsible for looking after her, NOT you.
Neither of your parents are going to be decent grandparents so best you be prepared for that.

The trade off of peace and quiet will be well worth it.

Why should she know when the scan date is in the first place. She has no need to know. So why does it bother you so much her lying about it? It's not like she's saying you did anything bad or wrong. I mean it is understandable as lying about someone is not nice no matter what it's about. It's strange that she lies about things like that. But as others have said I doubt you'll change her. I guess all you can do is go low-contact.

Honestly, whenever she does it, I would make concerned comments about her deteriorating memory and offer to accompany her to the doctors to discuss it.

You’re right - if I’m being 100% honest, the reason I remember so clearly that DH told her when the scan was is because I wished that he hadn’t. I was content with telling her ‘oh it’s at the end of June’, and when she brought it up again in front of DH, he got his phone out and told her (and dad) the exact date.

Prior to that, I’d noticed that they’d both come in to the kitchen and looked at my wall calendar, so perhaps they arrived with a bee in their bonnets about the date and were determined to find out. There was nothing written on the calendar because I’ve stopped writing on it, because whenever they come over (once a month or so), they stand and have a good look. So it’s just a picture on the wall now tbh.

Same with my shopping list/meal planner, mum will stand and read it and make comments about it.

We were always going to share the scan picture after the fact (hoping of course that all goes well). It’s the obsession with knowing that I don’t get. It’s entitlement, isn’t it?

When I moved into a houseshare in DH’s town 7-8 years ago (allegedly without having told them where I was going 🙄), I got a message from mum saying she wanted to ask me something ‘without me getting angry’ (I’d never felt anger in my life until about 2 years ago, I was physically incapable of it), ‘why don’t you want us to see where you now live?’ Even the turn of phrase makes my skin crawl.

When I offered that she could see it if she wanted, she responded ‘we would love to’, but it has never ever ever been about love, it is her feeling of pure entitlement to my space, my body, everything. She genuinely seems to think I am some extension of her.

My step-grandad (who’s known her over 30 years) said that he thinks she’s struggled with different identities - becoming a wife, becoming a mum, etc. I’ve interpreted this to mean that she can’t cope with anyone’s thoughts and feelings beyond her own, and it’s not so much the identities as having others (e.g. small children) dependent on her and she was just incapable of thinking of us as separate people.

Everything revolves around her, in her head. One Christmas, I was chatting with my sister on one side of the room, my mum and gran were talking between themselves on the other. I’ve no idea any more what my sister said to me, but I was thinking about something and just touched my nose as I was thinking, and suddenly mum shrieks across the room ‘WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY NOSE?!’ We hadn’t even been talking to or about her.

She’s deeply deeply damaged and insecure, but I am not responsible for that. Thank you for the space on this thread to write it all out (much of it not for the first time, but the anger is relatively new for me, and the strength that I can feel coming from that anger is newer again).

I definitely agree that you need to be open with your dad and sister that you’re not going to tolerate her behavior going forward and raise the possibility of MH issues. I’m not sure that I’d discuss it too much with your Gran going forward, as I’m assuming she’s 70-plus and I’m a believer in making life as stress-free as possible for elderly relatives. You don’t want your Mum moaning to her if you go LC or NC, which could easily happen . Let your Dad deal with your Mum.

Quite frankly, I’m appalled that he hasn’t tried to protect you more from her. My Mum protected me from my Dad’s MH struggles, I had no idea how many problems he had when I was growing up.

Thank you @BruFord that’s really wise. Yes, my gran is getting older now so you’re right, I shouldn’t add to her distress with any more about mum’s behaviour. She’s already anticipating though that my dad will drive down to her house with mum at some stage because he doesn’t know what to do with her.

I’m glad that your mum was able to protect you from your dad’s struggles. My dad has never seemed/been able to protect us from her behaviour.

He was raised in a family where his dad was very strict (probably too strict) and his mum did everything with the children. And so even though he said our mum ‘couldn’t do emotions’ (his words), he just left everything to do with us to her. He worked a lot as well, to try and be fair to him, he did a huge amount of shift work when we were very small. But everything at home was mum, and she was just volatile and scary.

It makes me really sad for those little children in us that we were brought up like that and nobody protected us then, and even now we’re supposed to put up and shut up and forget about it.

Read "but they're my family" by Dr sherrie campbell, totally lifechanging book.

I think you are in a great position @allatseawiththis your eyes are open and you see the problem is your DM, not you. (So many of us just thought we had to work harder, that the problem was probably 50/50, for far too long.) LC is probably a good idea as you get use to managing, the raging and destruction that go with NC are truly off the scale, not something you'd want to be dealing with now.
The big difference is that now you see it for what it is and will be able to handle it. Don't waste your time trying to make her see she might need help, she never will in that sense, but she would make you pay for the 'insult'. They can't change.
It feels awful to talk about human beings in this way. But not as awful as what they do without a second thought. The only option is to protect yourself.

Thank you @LiveAtVillaVillekulla, it’s been a real work in progress! For a really really long time, I thought it must be me (as we all probably did, because when you grow up like that, it’s too scary to think that it’s your parent who’s in the wrong).

Thanks so much to everyone for your advice and perspectives. I wish we didn’t have to think about this! Otherwise my pregnancy has (so far 🤞🏼) been really smooth and easy, this is the one issue in it, and the issue is my own mother.

I’m going to try and channel the new-found strength and will not tolerate her drama around my child (or me in the later stages of pregnancy). We need space and time to become our new little family unit and she’ll have to lump it if she doesn’t like it (which she won’t 🙃)

Great work, OP! Keep moving forward. You are only responsible for your dh and children. No one else.

Has ur mum any reason to believe u don't love her? Have u said bad things to her ? I can't think why she would ask u to tell her u love her......its hard being a mother but she shouldn't lie about u unless she is getting confused and under a lot of stress. U really need to sit her down and tell her u love her. Then ask why she lies etc. I hope u get it sorted as u only have one mum and its a true saying ull never miss a mothers love til she's buried beneath the Glen x

When she did this
you need to say
I’ve already say stop this silliness

begs you to tell her you love her - look her dead in the eye and say I think you need therapy this is worrying behaviour from you

I know you hate me - I am concerned for you mentally and emotionally you appear confused

Have I said bad things to her? 😮 @Penniesdropped, have you read the rest of the thread?

My mum made my entire childhood and early adulthood all about her and her feelings, to the point where there was absolutely no room for my own. She shouted and screamed at me or gave me the silent treatment for doing perfectly ordinary, age-appropriate things. She threw hot cups of tea across the room when she didn’t het her own way.

She had zero boundaries and essentially trained us that our own feelings could not be trusted and our sole purpose was to serve hers. This has led to a huge amount of people-pleasing, trust issues and unhappiness for me in adulthood.

Yes, I only have one mum and I bloody wish she’d behaved like one at some point in the last 30 years.

@Penniesdropped she wanted me to tell her that I loved her because I was moving an hour away to live in a houseshare in DH’s hometown to do my teacher training, aged 23. Prior to that moment, she had bombarded me with texts, phonecalls and emails, to the point where I would have multiple of each before 8am. I had asked her to stop bombarding me with messages as it was unnecessary.

She ‘got counselling’ by speaking once to the school counsellor at the primary school where she was chair of governors, who apparently advised her to write me a letter. It was in that letter (email) that she told me that if she walked in front of a lorry tomorrow, I would regret not seeing her more. I pointed out at the time (aged 23) that this was emotional manipulation, at which point she phoned me telling me to stop being silly.

I was summoned to her house where she cried all over me and that’s when she begged me to tell her I loved her. She then told me I was ‘cold and unfeeling’ and said directly to me, looking me right in the face, ‘I know you hate me’.

Do you think that is normal or stable behaviour for someone whose daughter has moved an hour away at the age of 23 to live near her then-boyfriend (now husband) to train for a professional job? Because I didn’t then and I still don’t now.