What's a "normal" relationship between adult daughter and mother?

[MickeyMouse111]

Want to repair my relationship with my Mum (see
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/ninety_days_only/5281024-what-sort-of-relationship-can-i-have-with-my-mum-under-these-circumstances)

But don't know what I am even aiming for...what's your relationship with your Mum like?
Do you worry about her mental health and affecting it, or is this unusual? Do you do things together? Do you call her regularly? Or are you both living your own busy lives and see each other at Christmas etc?

I don’t think you can apply maternal relationship norms to a mother that is mentally unwell.

In most cases, the child in this situation usually needs much more care and support than they will ever receive as a child.

They will have grown up in the parenting role, therefore losing not only the nurturing unconditional care of a mother, but they will have felt possibly unsafe for much of their childhood, developed a maturity well beyond their years and felt alone at times. They will struggle usually to put their needs first.

Parentification strips the child of their childhood in many ways, they usually have to grow up too quickly, and suffer from guilt and shame as they develop into young adults and need to become independent. Some never become independent due to their ‘caring responsibilities’.

If I understand you accurately op, and you wish to have a relationship with your mother, then following posts on here won’t help you very much. In this relationship you need to stay safe this time, to feel cared for and to have some semblance of having your own needs met. Your mother is unlikely to be able to do this, but you can. By making sure you are cared for, protected, you can mother yourself so to speak.

Placing no expectations whatsoever on having a normal relationship, just one that works for you and her should be the aim.

What do you hope it will look like? What do you want from this and is it realistic? Expectations versus reality exercise. Understand the limits. Ensure you are supported by a therapist. Limit your exposure if she is draining. Resist the urge to rescue, fix or mother your dm. Aim to meet as equal adults, and maintain only what is comfortable.

I'm in a similar situation as you. My mum has no idea what goes on in my life as she isn't interested enough to ask. We speak a few times a week but that's mainly out of courtesy on my part and I get to listen to her speak about herself.
My friends have great relationships with their mums and that makes me quite sad seeing what I never had.

There's no 'normal' that you can aim at because nobody else's family will be exactly like yours. Broadly speaking, it's normal to feel all kinds of things including love, concern, irritation and anger towards one's mother. How all this works itself out is different in every case.

There is no “normal” OP.

What’s normal to some families is something totally alien to another. There’s no “one size fits all” when it comes to family dynamics.

As long as it’s a healthy relationship on both sides- that’s all that should matter.

Don’t compare your relationship to your mum with anybody else’s to theirs.

As long as you respect each other’s boundaries, don’t argue and enjoy spending time with one another whenever you have chance and love each other -that’s what I would call healthy.

I see mine weekly. She likes to see my small children. We aren't very close, she's often weird towards me in a jealous kind of way.
She also fell out with her own mother and her 3 sisters. She's not an affectionate person. I've tried really hard for many years to foster our relationship as I'd love to feel close to her and feel like she likes me. A lot of things she says feel superficial.
It makes me sad daily but I don't think there's much more I can do.

This sounds quite similar to my experience. I'm sorry, it's tough

I speak to my mum every day at least once. We have a family (mum and my sisters) group chat that is constantly pinging. I physically see her at least twice a week. She is the first person, outside of my household, I tell any news I have and the first I ask for help if needed.

I have a close and loving relationship with my mum, I realise I'm very lucky with this, I hope you and your mother can have the relationship you want and need.

I don't worry about my mums MH and affecting it, she has never had MH problems though, I imagine if she had then my answer to that question may be different. We do a lot together, I've just recently had a baby so we go out a lot, for meals, to the shops, places with the baby, ie yesterday me, my partner, baby and my mum went to a horse sanctuary and then to a restaurant. I also go round to her and my dad's house or they come to mine, for food or just to hang out. We do things like all watch the boxing together. We WhatsApp every day (mostly sending photos of the baby) and speak on the phone sometimes but not loads, usually just if there is a time sensitive question.

Just skim read your original thread and it sounds a bit like my mum - we never went without anything material (we weren't massively well off but she always made sure we had the best she could afford), but almost no emotional support.

We clashed a lot when I was a kid/teenager, which was probably a combination of the fact that I was ND (undiagnosed at the time) and the fact that my mum has no emotional regulation skills whatsoever. She was very volatile and would fly off the handle and be quite verbally abusive about small things - I was often called fat, lazy, selfish, she wish she'd never had me etc.

I moved to another city at 22 and we had much less contact - the odd text and I saw her maybe once a month - which felt better for me. I sort of pushed everything from my childhood down and told myself I'd made it up, that I was overly sensitive or that I deserved it etc. and told myself that my mum was clearly struggling with her own mental health and that I should give her some grace, and we managed to have an OK relationship.

Then when I got pregnant with my daughter, it really triggered a lot memories and feelings again. I had a conversation with my sister about parenting, mum-daughter relationships and our mum and I realised that my mum never treated my sister the way she did me - her and my sister were really close - she clearly chose to treat me the way she did.

I really struggled after that, especially as my mum started trying to play 'grandmother of the year'. She would send me those soppy quotes/poems about being a mother from Facebook, would gush to me about the 'amazing' experience I was going to have having a daughter, there's nothing like it etc. and it just used to make me feel really angry.

Now she visits me once a week and texts me pretty much every day - usually asking about me and my daughter. I really struggle with it if I'm honest, but she does seem to have changed, she absolutely idolises my daughter and I want them to have a relationship. I just find it hard to watch her be this really hands-on, patient, affectionate grandmother knowing the version of her that I got - I still wouldn't dream of hugging my mum, and as a kid I don't really remember sitting on her lap or getting any kid of affection from her because she never really felt like a 'safe' person.

We get on really well. She's a great mum. I just wish she'd phone me for a chat. But she does text on the family chat.

I see mine once per week
I have to visit or I would never see her
She never visits me (I live five minutes away)
We never go anywhere together or do anything

She doesn’t know anything that’s going on in my life - I stopped telling her things when she was act completely uninterested but manage to tell absolutely everyone personal things about me and my health

I really struggle to be around her as she gets older but I bite my tongue and give her low contact but in a way that she probably hasn’t realised.

Yes cuteeasterbunny best way to deal with it. I think those with easy families dont understand it. Its hard work. I dont tell her much now just vague info.

I see my narcissistic, abusive 82 yo mother in another country once every five or six years.
At 46, I make every excuse not to go, until there is very little choice.
Cannot wait for this to finish.

I agree with the pp who suggests aiming for healthy rather than ‘normal’, which is so subjective.

i dont live in the same country as my mum. We text several times a week, we speak maybe fortnightly, we’ve never been up for daily calls since I left home for uni age 18 (I’m 52 now). We used to see each other 3/4 times a year, during extended family holidays together, but we are probably both glad to get back to our own space / lives again. She adores my boys and is a fantastic grandmother. She (and my dad) have helped us out in loads of ways over the years, and even now I know I could turn to them if any disasters befell us. She has always made it clear that she’s my mum, not my friend - we both have plenty of actual friends so I’m fine with that.

I don’t have DDs, but tbh the mother-daughter relationship is not one I am sad to have missed out on. There was a lot of expectation heaped on my sister and I, mostly by her. So we’ve found ways to see the best of each other I think, over the years. I keep things pretty superficial in a lot of ways (this is quite way when we don’t live close) but it seems to work ok for us.