What on earth is my mother doing??

[Hummingbird75]

For context I am an the adult child of an abusive father, the kind MN would always say LTB.

My father would tell us regularly he hated children, and couldn't stand us and spent most of my childhood hitting and abusing me physically and mentally. Being told he did not love me was far worse than anything he did with his fists as a child. It was devastating. He barely spoke to me when he wasn't losing his temper.

He abused my mother for years in a controlling way but stopped physically assaulting her when he started taking his temper out on us. My mother always said she would leave him, and she had many options to do so, but never did. I grew up desperate for his love and approval initially, to be even noticed enough for him to talk to me. It never happened.

Once I reached adulthood, I realised my 'normal' childhood was not normal at all, and over the years my father and I have been low contact. I remained close to my mother, mainly because he didn't want to be around us anyway beyond keeping my mother happy. My father and I settled on a very superficial relationship that was entirely empty of all meaning.

Once I had dc and he became abusive towards them (making my dc cry calling them fat and being unkind about their appearance when they were young) I went completely no contact with the help and support of MN at the time. To protect my dc. This has been the case for over six years or so. We just keep in contact with my mother which makes things very awkward at times. My mother says she is happy to stay now with him, they have worked out their differences, it suits her to stay with him, at her age.

Last year my father became very, very ill. I supported my mother, but did not contact him. I still choose to keep my children safe, and away from him. It was very hard and sad at the time. My mother said he is getting old we need to 'make up', so I gave him a choice. If my father agreed to be nice to us and not say anything harmful I will restart contact given his age and ill health.
My father refused outright on the phone - he said no and actually laughed at me. He should be able to say what he likes to us, and he will not agree to anything of the sort. I was only asking for him to promise to be kind, nothing more. I was hardly asking for the world.

There was no way I was going to restart contact with him basically telling me he would continue to abuse me/us (as he has always done)

Since then my mother has completely stopped calling. She seemingly will not forgive me for stopping contact and ruining her illusion of a 'happy family'. She has not visited my house in over five years, and refuses to meet me other than from her house (which is very triggering now for me being there, I sometimes have panic attacks when I am outside because I am still so afraid of my father) unless I collect her a few times a year I would never see her. I had a serious illness at the beginning of this year that could have been a terminal diagnosis, she did not even call me then or offer any support whatsoever. I was so hurt by her total indifference. She really did not seem to care.

What she does every day, is send me a WA message saying she loves me to the 'moon and back' and variations of very over the top love messages which feel very insincere and sickly.

I don't FEEL remotely loved by her.

The messages and words feel completely empty to me. I don't know why she sends them, and I have no idea how to respond to her. I asked her to please stop because they were upsetting me, but she carries on anyway. The same message on repeat every single day of undying love, but she never calls or asks how we are in the messages. I am expected to do all of the calling and all of the visiting still regardless of my health. These 'issues' seem irrelevant to her. She sometimes talks about the weather but nothing else, ever. It feels really pointless. I have tried to engage with her properly and she then retreats into silent treatment and this can last for months at a time.

I am so confused.

What is happening here? Why is she sending these messages to me?

It feels like she has cut me off to all intents and purposes, and her daily text hurts me because it seems like she is saying she loves me, but it doesn't feel like she loves or cares about me at all.

I have no idea what I should do about this now.

What am I missing about this situation?

This and I speak from being in exactly the same situation. I have after much LC and therapy come to realise she is also abusive albeit not in the same way. She might have become abusive as a coping mechanism or from being abused herself - in my parents choice she could leave - they are plenty well enough off to do that or get therapy but won’t. Mine has chosen to stop contact as my Father could not (like yours) choose a healthy relationship with foundations.

For me - she is an adult. Her behaviour is not healthy, so yes block her x

You cannot change or influence her, as you know. All you can take ownership and control over is how you react and move forward. I can only offer my own perspective which is to cut her off completely. Block on all channels and don't look back. Allow yourself to grieve and mourn for the loss of the childhood and parents that you should have had but were denied (absolutely not your fault). But cut it out of your life for good and enjoy the peace and lack of constant drama and attempts to deny/"justify" your past treatment and hoover you back in for further rounds of torment.

Have you found the Stately Homes threads on here? - they are a safe, wise and kind place for people with abusive families. Much support and solidarity is there. Here's the latest one, but there are many previous ones on here for helpful reading: March 2024 - But we took you to stately homes | Mumsnet

Please look after yourself. You are a worthwhile, decent person who has not done anything to deserve this. You can break free. Cut this cancer of abuse out of the lives of you and your children and begin the healing process. It will get better in time, even though it doesn't seem like it now, but until you cut out the root, the pain will take hold again, again, again and again, cutting you and your children ever more deeply with each encounter. It will not end and it will not get better - but you CAN stop it from your end. You can stop it, and take strength and pride in your courage to say "no more".

Every good wish to you for happier times ahead. x

OP, wiser MNers than me will sure as eggs is eggs be able to offer you some advice to help you. All I can do is offer some comfort that you are good person and you sound like a wonderful mother. Despite your awful upbringing, you have such love for your own children that you are instinctively protecting them from the abuse that you suffered. You may not feel strong but you are, and incredibly so. Instead of trying to fix the situation with your mum I'd recommend therapy in order to be able to make your peace with it. Actions speak louder than words and your mum's actions are not loving, whatever the shitty daily WA messages say.

I wish you all the very best for your future. Here's another internet stranger sending you good thoughts and I hope you find the peace you deserve. Your children are so lucky to have you as their mum. 💐

sorry for what you have experienced and continue to experience through your Mum. Your Mum has experienced a lifetime of trauma through your Dad and as with any abusive relationship she will be incredibly fearful. If you haven't already done so I think it would be beneficial for you to have therapy for yourself but also to help you understand why your Mum has stayed and the reasons why she is acting the way she is.

To all the people calling your Mum dreadful names, have a bit of respect for a victim please. She is every bit as much a victim as the OP. It absolutely doesn't make it right that she is showing to have chosen to stand by her husband, but as above she will have experienced a life of trauma with this man.

I'd be tempted to start my own automatic cut-and-paste response. Every time the message landed, I'd send something back saying "Why don't you call me, then?". She needs to be brought to think about how meaningless this is.

Sadly, your mum has never put your safety or needs ahead of hers, and she is showing that this is still the case.

When I read your initial messages my gut feeling is your mother is a narcissist. You are such a strong person and you are not broken. Although I get at times it feels like that.

My mother is also a narcissist and it messes you up completely. My father was abusive to her and to us and I believe my mother was a victim but also enjoyed watching me suffer and upset.

I felt an awful amount of guilt as I was so confused and I wanted to help her. But she constantly used to throw things back in my face. There was a lot of emotional turmoil. It ruined me as a person and in the end I went no contact. It’s the best thing I have ever done. I feel guilty at times still but it’s still the best thing I have ever done.

Sometimes you have to accept what has happened has happened and you can’t change it. You will get no answers as to why they behave the way they do. All
you can do is change now and the future and make your life happy from now on. They are abusive and awful and they will never change. But you can change the situation. It’s been 10 years now since I went non contact and life is much better.

IT IS NOT YOU, it is her.

Her adult choices.

Your future is to have kind, honest, loving relationships with your own family, your children brought up with love & kindness, to be surrounded by authentic friends.

Your mother is likely of or near my generational group, who grew up into a blazing awareness of domestic abuse & women’s rights, of women’s refuges & Erin Lizzey et al, & quietly came the acknowledgment, the taboo, that not all women are always quiet victims, that they make deliberate - & seemingly warped/unfathomable - choices to stay in situations of domestic abuse…& sometimes share significant responsibilities for the impact on the family group. So yes, your mother has been the victim of your father, but has stood aside as he laid into you & thus be an equal partner in the damage inflicted on you as a child.

I cannot know your father or your mother, but I believe what you say about your family dynamics. You have come a very long way since your childhood. You acknowledge your then need for love & affirmation from your abuser father as some attention is better than none.

Now you have need to untangle the dynamics between you & your distant withholding mother. You cannot quite out your finger directly on it but you know deep down that it is more of the same. What to do?

Does she love you? Who knows?
Does she love you for you? Pass.
Does she acknowledge you as a person separate from her? No.

That she was not there for you as you faced up to serious illness, no offer of maternal comfort or practical help is a bitter hurtful blow, & deep down I sense that you were not surprised.

Whatever your mother says, whatever she feels, whatever she does - here & now, she represents threat & trauma. Whether she understands that, whether she feels regret or means you no harm is not the point.

@Hummingbird75 Have you a therapist? Someone who you have seen before? If you can find a counselling service that understands the resounding impact on adult survivors of childhood trauma as their abusers age or die, you may find a brief course of sessions to help you work out what really does suit you. I suggest you ask your GP for information or a referral as unresolved childhood traumas affect adult health & wellbeing.

Keep your children safe, happy & well, & the first & foremost step is to keep yourself safe, happy & well.

Some very wise words & hard won wisdom posted as I banged out my response just now. My face is slightly leaking as I stand in awe of how much you all have come through, your resilience & kindness.

@Hummingbird75 you are not alone, you are heard & understood.

As hard as it is you should block and walk away.

There will always be a ‘last day’ that we see our parents, if you can accept that you’ve already had this last day you will be able to move on without the guilt and pain of your mother’s messages.

This thread has been so helpful to me, and to so many of us reading all of your posts.

I realise that I feel guilt for 'leaving her' and this is stemming from my choice to leave her to the marriage she has chosen and save myself and children from the same outcome.

I can see the fear I have of losing her, stems from the guilt that she still has to live with that monster and I do not. Every day I wake up happy without him in my life, and genuinely appreciate every single thing in my life, because for the first 16 years I would wake up and live in absolute fear of what will happen next in the four walls of what amounted to a prison, that other people called a 'home'. Safety for me was being out of the house, not inside it.

I think I need to see that the guilt is not mine, I can not change her life as this is exactly what she has chosen. Yes, she wants me to put my feelings and safety aside and those of my children, and join her in her self made cesspit with that psychopath, it does not make me a bad person to choose something else.

I fear she will die, because that will mean I have failed her and never 'saved' her from him, there will be no happy ending. It will be the death of all hope, as well as her as a person. All of my letters to father Christmas praying for my father to disappear, the years of efforts to move us out of there, and then finally my offer of a home forever with us to leave him have amounted to absolutely nothing.

It basically tells me what I already know, that she does not love me enough to want to make things truly better for any of us. As a narcissist and a victim of dv her life IS actually serving her in some way, she is having her needs met within that relationship with my father in a way I can not fathom. But she is choosing this for herself.

I would love to now put her on silent, and look at her messages once a week only. It was a great suggestion from pp. I am rubbish with tech. Is that possible to do with WA? I think that might be a step in the right direction. To minimise the daily torture and gas lighting, because I now think it is gas lighting and the messages are not expressing any real love for me.

Thank you all of you, for your help with this.

@Hummingbird75 you can mute specific numbers or groups within whatsapp.

their guides are excellent. I have mine muted during work hours so you can be very precise.

faq.whatsapp.com/694350718331007

You're doing so well @Hummingbird75. I understand that you feel broken as I feel similarly due to my family.

Sometimes fucked up family dynamics cannot be solved in one generation. Because of your insight and bravery your children will thrive but you are a sort of 'bridging generation' and may not be able to fully recover from your parent's abuse. But you have come a hell of a long way and certainly have broken the cycle for your children.

You've recognised that the daily texts are triggering you, time after time. I'm wondering if a small but practical move might be to change the name on your mum's phone contact? Just to her first name, rather than 'mum', or even to something silly, or rude (insulting) - anything that might reduce the sting of her self-serving cut and paste message. Worth a try?

Your mother has completely let you down, I’m so sorry.

There is a very good book I have recommended to loads of people it’s ’you are not the problem’ please read this to get some strength. You were dealt a very bad hand of parents. Get support everywhere you can and stay strong!

You say your father stopped physically abusing her when he started abusing you and your mother protected your brother from some of the abuse by redirecting it onto you.

Sorry OP, but I think you’ve become the family punching bag in their eyes, physically from your father and emotionally from your brothers emotional blackmail now. Your mums just as bad as your father OP. She’s guilt tripping you with these messages to try to get you back in line. She enabled your fathers physical abuse of you and by letting you take some of the abuse instead of your brother she’s responsible for some of it as well.

I think she wants you back visiting because it is someone for your father to take it out on rather than her. And as well as that it makes her feel like she’s not a bad mother in her eyes if you have contact with her (the same as telling you she loves you everyday, it’s for her benefit so she can say she’s a good mother, she’s not).

You need to go no contact with all of them and get some therapy if you can as well, you need to see your mum for who she really is. You don’t have to put up with this just because she’s your mum, or he abused and controlled her. If she really loved you more than him she would encourage you and your children to have a life away from him.

@Hummingbird75 I get where you are coming from, and how difficult this is for you.

My mum was the narcissist, my brother the golden child, and a few years ago when I told my dad that I wasn't going to see my mum anymore, he said they come as a package so if I still want to see him I need to see them both. I looked to him so many times for some support, or even acknowledgement of her behaviour, but I never once got it.

So I carried on seeing them both, because I loved him. My dad has now passed away, but I did really love him, despite knowing that he put up with so much, and turned a blind eye to her treatment of me. Possibly because he was the only parent who was kind to me.

Like you say, you are deep in the fog, and you love your mum. I think it is going to be too difficult for you to decide to go no contact.

My advice would be to either block your mum, or change your number. No need to decide whether or not to go no contact, dont put that pressure on yourself - just give yourself some space and time to heal.

You have done an amazingly difficult thing by breaking the cycle and protecting your children - you should be so proud of yourself. Yes, your mum is a victim, but we all have difficult choices to make, and she has made hers.

Focus on yourself, say kind words to yourself when you look in the mirror, be kind to yourself. Get some more therapy if you feel you need it. Learn to know your worth. Look back and realise how far you have come.

Sadly OP, your mother doesn't love you as much as she loves your father.

All of the tragic backstory aside, she is ignoring your request to stop messaging and continuing to do it because it suits her, even though it hurts you.

Honestly at this point I have to wonder whether you'd be better off mentally and emotionally cutting contact with both of them: as long as your parents are together, contact with your mum will trigger your memories and reopen your wounds from your father, and it sounds like she is creating wounds of her own with you and simply doesn't care, or lacks the capacity to care.

Your father is abusive, but I'm not sure if you're aware that your mother is too.

It's tragic when someone chooses their abusive spouse over their children, and I'm very sorry. You sound like the loveliest person and like a daughter any parent would love to have. They are so lucky to have you and they have no idea. They certainly don't deserve you in their lives.

I would think long and hard about no contact with the pair of them. Yes it will hurt, but it will hurt in a way you can eventually process and move on from. If you keep her in your life you will be freshly hurt again, and again, and again, until they die.

I had a similar issue. For me my line in the sand was my mother choosing to stay with him over having the relationship she claimed she wanted with my children.
It is devastating to know your mother will never choose you, to be scapegoated by your siblings because you won't sweep everything under the carpet and play happy families.
My mother choosing him over my children made me angry, angry enough to change the dynamic and protect myself finally.
I am sad, even when he dies I will never be able to forgive her. But being sad because I've given up on our relationship ever being right is infinitely better than the pain of trying to be enough for her and being triggered constantly.

It was hard to draw boundaries and set my terms, and I still feel guilty but it has brought me peace to heal.
Good luck- it is a hard and lonely place

Your post is really triggering for me as I am so like you. I know what it feels like when someone has trained you to serve them then they go no contact in order to punish you. What utter cruelty. Then they exonerate themself by sending nice texst that they can show to people: "see, look how loving I am to her." I am so angry for you and for me. It is so hard to extricate yourself from these people even though they are so cruel because cruelty is all you have known of love. The miracle is that, despite all this, you do know how to love others. So do I. I am trying to put all that love and servitude to better use by giving it to myself, one day at a time. I hope you can do the same.

I've read a few replies and I must say it's refreshing to see people say to OP 'you should cut your mum off too' rather than the age old 'but faaaaamily' guilt trip people often receive on here when they need to distance themselves from abusive relatives.

I can relate to that feeling of feeling unable to protect yourself, due to conditioning. Of knowing something in your logical mind but being unable to put it into action.

I'd recommend looking into Internal Family Systems therapy. The idea is that there is an adult part of you that is strong and wise - and it's clear from your posts that you have those qualities in spades. But there are also younger parts of you that hold the trauma, and those parts make leaving feel impossible. IFS is about being able to help those younger parts of you.

I struggle with the throwing about of the term narcissist. It sounds to me like trauma bonding of the parents and it's about generational relationships and expectations of behaviour and marriage post WW2 when the entire nation was traumatised and feminism was yet to arrive to rescue women.

I find this a distressing thread for personal reasons so I haven't read all of it but OP, I'd say you need to cut contact with your mother but then you will need to do the work of grieving the parents you haven't had and needed. No one has mentioned grieving and it's very important. It's like letting go of a toxic relationship of any kind, it's hard work. As long as you keep contact with your mother, you won't heal.

I spent most of my life estranged from my abusive older brother. He couldn't listen and in the end, to get rid of him, I had to send him a violently angry and explicit email, it did the trick and I was so glad to have him out of my life. I heard he died recently and I was momentarily sad for the relationship I might have had but I had not a moment of regret for cutting him off.

@Hummingbird75 OP just because your mum didn’t physically abuse you doesn’t mean she didn’t abuse you and she facilitated your father to do it .

i think you came here to be told to go NC with your mum too

It’s time to move on from the past . Your mum has made her choices.
Close the door on then both a d get some Counseling. .

From your insightful words OP my heart goes out to you.
If your mum was really alone with your dad and had no one and was not in contact with anyone then your approach might be different.
But if she’s calling other relatives regularly, she’s not that isolated.
I am wondering if in childhood your mum had a bond with you that your father was extremely jealous of and then proceeded to take punish you for? As it seems you have been singled out, and she’s sending these messages as a way of appeasing her own guilt.
They don’t mean much after everything you have been through.
You are grieving a mother you longed to have. And still want, but sadly this woman cannot be that loving parent for you.
Well done on removing yourself away from your father and protecting your own DC.
Counselling would really help you work through your experiences, and building your own life and memories with your own family matters most now.
You don’t have to go NC, but muting these messages as PP have suggested would be a huge help.
Your life is for you and those who love you now. Don’t let your parents (they don’t deserve the title!) steal
any more of your time.

The truth is I have given up on myself in some ways. It is too late for me now. I am way too broken to be save. I recognise I am still in the cycle of abuse myself, because I am completely unable to protect myself and walk away from my mother. I have no ability to walk away or to leave her, I don't know how to. So in some ways I am still stuck and she knows this. I can't leave her for fear 'something will happen to her'

So I remain where I am. A rudderless, helpless feeling where she pulls the strings as and when she pleases.

Your situation isn't your fault OP, but managing it is your responsibility.

You have enough insight to identify FOG, and to recognise the patterns that facilitate you holding yourself in place so they can hurt you again and again.

Organisations exist to help people who are victims of abuse, to learn how to get out of that relationship and identify what kept you there in the first place.

I just gently wish to remind you of your power. You have the power to choose to have nothing to do with them any longer. You may choose not to exercise that power, as is your right, we all get to make our choices about who we keep in our lives and who we let go. But it is a choice you're making.

It's important to remember the messages we're sending to our kids and the lessons we are teaching them.

Your parents may wish you to feel you're helpless, but you're not.