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?

It's a bit beyond that though, surely?

Obviously MN's not a hive mind, but IME the cries of "But family ...!!" are pretty generally reserved for lower level offence where simply talking it out might work, rather than appalling and longstanding abuse like this

I highly recommend a book called Discovering the Inner Mother by Bethany Webster.

And another one called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.

I have a parent/child dynamic with my own mother, but having therapy and reading books like the above has helped me approach my parents as adult to adult rather than child to parent or vice versa. It has helped me see the limitations of what our relationship has and helped me seek what child me needed from elsewhere.

Good luck OP.

Edited to amend book title

There are times OP when we have to accept things can never be fixed no matter how much we try or want them to.

You OP are amazing. You are much stronger than you give yourself credit .
To recognise what is happening is wrong takes strength. To protect your children and move 300 miles to save them from the awful things that happened to you , shows great love and resilience.

You are 100times better a parent than you Mother ever was. You put your children 1St always and move mountains to keep them safe.

You are enough OP. Those kids are incredibly lucky.

Im going to disagree with some posters and say stop making excuses for your Mother. She’s as Bad , if not worse than your dad because she knows you were abused but continues to excuse and perpetuate the mental heartbreak you went through.

She doesn’t deserve you. Stop tearing yourself apart wanting her to be something she will never be . A kind loving Mother. Surely her actions by not contacting you and supporting you when you were I’ll demonstrates this ?

Block her , mute her , just stop feeding this cycle of abuse.
Go back to therapy and focus on your self and your kids.

Your Dad , Brother and Mother are not and never will give you the Love and support you deserve. That’s their loss.

Stop wasting your energy on them and focus on what’s really important yourself and your family.

I just want to clarify I am not no contact with my mother but low contact. She too has punished me for this and pushed and pushed against every boundary.
I tell myself I am prioritising myself so I can prioritise my children. That helps me stay firm- not being constantly in ptsd distress makes me a better parent. Could reframing it so you are helping your children help you help yourself?

In which case block her on everything and get on with your life.

You have made your choice and she has made hers.

Time to cut this all free and get on with your life

Why the fuck would you offer to house her?
You were not only the child of an abusive father but that of a neglectful mother, abusive by proxy. She watched on whilst your father destroyed your childhood. She did nothing whilst your father physically abused you.
You owe her nothing. I would have zero qualms about cutting off both of them. They have already stolen your childhood, stop letting them steal your adulthood and spreading their toxicity to your children as well.

I am so sorry my posts are painful and triggering to many of us. Please only post or read them if you can. I know it is so hard when things resonate painfully on here. I found liberation in facing some of the pain on MN and indeed the strength to change things from looking at different views.
It is extremely hard to face this stuff, and I am struggling with it too.

I believe and sense there is a place of acceptance somewhere if only I knew the route to find it. I can not change the trauma and abuse that has already happened, I can do this by focusing on now and I no longer have that in my life. That is relatively easy to overcome.

I can accept I have my own perception and conditioning from a childhood like mine that makes it hard to prioritise my own safety over my mother's needs. I have literally been trained/brainwashed to look after her at all costs, and take the bullet for her every time. I am a secondary person, a junior and an irrelevance at least to her. Even managing to give the responsibility for her own life back to my mother took many years and was great progress at the time. I stopped rescuing and simply accepted she wanted this for her life.

And yes it might be that a complete recovery isn't possible in my life time, which is quite sad, my children will inherit the blessings of normal healthy relationships.

Part of me marvels at surviving a childhood with a real psychopath, maybe I could start to be be proud of the fact I came through it, with all the scars I have and that I did my best to take others with me even if they declined.

Maybe seeing my mother's messages as gas lighting rather than expressions of love will already help me enormously to put a stop to it. I think I needed the validation of this thread to know that this is a form of abuse, even if it doesn't sound like it or look like it on the face of things. Anyone reading them would be incredulous that a message of love can be anything other than loving but this is not true because the words are empty and the constant stream triggering the shit out of me every day.

I would love to have a real connection with my mother, but now accept it is unlikely.

I think I might have to put my big girl pants on, and say to the the little child within me that wants her to love me so much and believe her trite messages, and say sorry she didn't even protect and love you back then you were truly defenceless, cute and small so it ain't definitely happening now sweetpea. That is pretty much what it amounts to. You are supply, and that is all you will ever be. On repeat until it goes in somewhere! And stop looking for the love, the reconnection and the happy ending. We don't all get to have happy endings do we, not in real life. She is not coming over the hill to tell me she loves me after all, she is not coming back at all. Ever.

Facing up to a mother that is quietly and discreetly abusive has been the hardest thing to live with, as it is dressed in sugar and kind words that are the opposite of kind and loving.
Living with what my father did has been easy comparatively and straight forward.

What my therapist was unable to do was offer a solution.

OP it's a basic tenet of therapy - and of life - that you cannot control/change what anyone else does. You can only control/change your own responses to that person.

You have two choices here, either let her carry on, with all the negative feelings that brings, or detach from her and accept that although you feel like the parent she is an adult who has made her choices for herself.

I think you would benefit from person centred therapy to work through your feelings of responsibility, why you still feel such a deep love for her despite everything she's done and said. And come to a way of letting go of her, and with it letting go of the guilt. She is not going to have a moment of Damascene awakening when she suddenly becomes the mother you want her to be. You need to find clarity in your own thoughts and feelings so that you can make a decision that is right for you and your children, not for your mother.

Absolutely spot on. Block her on everything, you and your family are the most important thing now.

You have tried to do what you can and it isn't enough, it will never be enough unless it's on her terms and her terms only.

Concentrate on you.

My father also didn't want children, my mother lied to him that she couldn't have children, then 'oopsed' him and they ended up having myself and my two brothers within 5 years. My mother is Catholic.

'Luckily' for me my father removed himself from family life when I was 9 to work abroad. For the following decade or so we rarely saw him, and after one attempt to abandon us on the other side of the world when I was 12, he finally left my mother for another woman when I was 21 (he'd been unfaithful the whole 23 years they were married).

Like your mother, mine had plenty of opportunities and the resources to leave my father at any time. She came from a very wealthy family who repeatedly offered to support us if she left. My mother however always put her marriage/wealthy ex-pat lifestyle first, and had no hesitation in completely wrecking our childhoods to do so.

I'm now 55, went very low contact with my mother 25 years ago, and live on the other side of the world from her. I've not seen her in 15 years. Neither myself or my two brothers have had children of our own.

To this day my mother is defensive to the point of being nasty whenever I try and discuss any of the above with her. She accepts zero personal responsibility and blames everything on my father. She also blames me for him having his exit affair, as I made him 'feel old' by getting married and leaving home - he was 42.

"It’s also okay to grieve the relationship you wish you had with your mother. She may not be capable of giving you the support and love you need, and that’s a painful reality to face"

This post is so true. Your mother is now panicking that your father is going to die and she is going to be left alone...which frankly, she deserves to be.

You reap what you sow.

100% agree with this.

It’s a copy paste? Super. Work out your own reply, and copy paste that. Each time.

This. Absolutely appalled by the posters telling the OP to have sympathy for her 'poor mum' etc, etc.
How absolutely disgraceful to tell a victim to put their abuser first.

I don't want to feed into a game. I want to have real relationships with honesty and something approaching intergrity. Even that would require more headspace than she deserves, although I totally get why you would suggest it and play her at her own game, and see how she likes it!

No idea if this is good advice but personally I would answer each message by the same thing every day. I love you -> If you did you wouldn’t side with the man who abused me since I was a child. Every time she sends the same message, send the same answer.

As PPs have said, I suspect she is doing it to feel good about herself and pretend all is well, your answer would prevent her from lying to herself.

Ah cross posted!

I come from an abusive background and share some parallels with you.
You wouldn't be a 'bad daughter' for walking away. Protect yourself and your family. I know you've done that before and put tlup boundaries, but try and do it again. You deserve better and your mum and dad are very, very emotionally immature, like my parents.
If you don't mind me saying, YouTube videos about immature parents (be careful what you watch, but there is some very good stuff: Jerry Wise, Doctor Ramani, Kati Morton, AJ Mahari) help me through.
Your mum and dad are being deeply unfair, as are mine. I had to cut contact after my psychologist advised me to and it was the best thing to do. There is also something called 'trauma bonding' that you might want to look up.
If you don't mind me saying, I think therapy might be very useful to you so you can realise your worth and see the way forward better.

Not necessarily play her at her own game. The idea is that if she uses the messages to lie to herself, you answering will either make her stop messaging or she might start answering you, ie an actual exchange instead of her daily copy paste.

If you archive your mum on WhatsApp you won’t see the notifications at all. Then once a month your partner (? Sorry I’m not sure if you have one but you said you were modelling a healthy relationship so I think there is someone) can read the messages. If there is anything important he/she can tell you about it.

You can’t save your mum, no-one can. You can only save yourself.

@Hummingbird75 i would archive as well as mute her on WA. Muting means you still see them in your inbox; archiving as well puts them straight into a separate folder, then you can just go into it and check them once a week or whatever. Swipe the message to the left and the archive and mute options come up.

I think if I could see her messages as performative rather than genuine, in the hope I will reengage properly and therefore offer more supply/attention/serving to her, to see it for what it is which is completely self serving.

I need to see that the past memories I am hankering after again, are the same ones I created myself with her and my children, I made them special, happy and joyful, she contributed virtually zero to the beach days, the lunch days, the picnics and her visits to us. She brought nothing to the table. I was the one creating the special memories in truth, she was just taking and accepting everything was offered to her. I can't even remember a time she organised one thing for me. Maybe I was ten years old.

She won't offer a relationship to me unless I accept my father and their cycle of abuse is allowed to continue to another generation, thats the reality. I can't have one part of their package, I take it all - or leave it all.
I have to take the consequences for my refusal to do this, it was my choice to have a different kind of life, and yes at times I do suffer without a family, but the alternative is far far worse. Signing up my kids to a life sentence of this kind of abuse is unforgivable, unimaginable and how would I ever live with that?

Yes potentially once a week I could answer the same message copied and pasted each time, and give it no further thought. I would love to be free enough to do that.

With respect, there are people like the OP's parents in EVERY generation. This has nothing to do with the generation mentioned using a derogatory term in that article. We should all be aware of what can happen if we cross paths with these people, as it can - and has - ruined lives.

They're absolutely performative, OP. Think about it: there's nothing personal about them at all. They're someone else's cookie-cutter words, copied and pasted repeatedly, in the face of having been told that you hate the messages. They are pure performance with nothing genuine about them at all. It would be one thing if, say, Guess How Much I Love You had been a special book to the two of you and you'd often exchanged those words through your childhood and she knew you appreciated the reminder. But none of those things are true. It's fake and self-serving.

Deep in her heart of hearts she knows she is a bad mother. But to admit that would cause her world and her psyche to crumble. Hence the performance, for her own benefit.

Being with an abuser serves a need in damaged people. When you are the victim, you are always in the right, you garner sympathy and attention - and for a narcissist, that's manna from heaven.

The trouble with narcissists is that they tend to see others not as people but as props or an audience. You're either useful (you give the sympathy and attention they need) or you're not.

I think you should be IMMENSELY proud of yourself for:

• recognising that dynamic
• removing yourself from the dumpster fire of a situation
• finding the strength to protect your children - despite having no role model on which to base that, no model of what a health parent-child relationship looks like
• still finding it in your heart to care about your mother

You're an absolute inspiration. Capable of great love, despite never having received it. Your children are so lucky to have you.