DD has said she will never view me as a mum

[Strangersev]

Hi all, this could be long and I want to say straight away I know I messed up, I just don’t know how to reply, I’m not looking to minimise my actions.

So background, my ex husband and I both had jobs which involved moving relatively frequently, we had one child, and over the 18 years of her childhood she lived in 5 countries (Canada, Italy, Singapore, Switzerland, and France). I am British, her dad is Italian.

For the first 10 years of her life I’d say we were a very happy family, we lived in Italy for 7 years which provided a real period of stability. We then moved to Singapore, this was more for my sake than my ex husbands but much like Canada in the early years he was willing to make a compromise for my career. However here is where cracks started to form. We lost our way with parenting, would have loud and dramatic fights and often our poor little DD would be witness. I regret this period deeply and 2 years later we moved to Switzerland, this was meant to be a happy middle ground, good career opportunities for us both and DD hadn’t really enjoyed life in Singapore so we thought this may be more familiar.

My ex husband immediately started having an affair, I knew but for 2 years just allowed it to happen. I lied to our DD about him working late when I knew he was with her, I didn’t question or press him on where he was, however 2 years in I came home to them in our bed. This was my breaking point, I spiralled, had a mental breakdown and went into a deep depression. I decided for 6 months I’d move back to my parents home in the uk, my husband and I agreed we would divorce. We spoke to DD and she insisted she wasn’t moving again, she liked Geneva, she was happy at school. I accepted that 6 months apart from her would be a sacrifice worth making. The 6 months passed and I was offered a dream role in Paris. My mental health wasn’t great still, I felt selfishly like I needed to make a decision that was best for me, so I took the job. I asked DD to move with me, she refused. Geneva to Paris was a very manageable distance though, I spent all the holidays with her and we had a lovely time. I do realise now I was saying horrible things about her dad to her during this time and that was immature and cruel of me.

Once DD finished that phase of schooling at 16, her dad got offered a job in Luxembourg which he decided he was going to take. DD was offered Paris or Luxembourg for her diploma years and settled on Paris. I think upon reflection this was very little to do with me and more that for a 16 year old girl Paris is perhaps the more inspirational place to live. I thought her living with me again would be wonderful but the reality was she took 7 subjects for her diploma instead of 6 (wanted to take all her languages) and the time taken up by other elements of the IB diploma meant she was never really home, distance grew between us massively in this time. I started a new relationship which at the time I didn’t feel guilty for as she was really never home in the week and on weekends she’s often want to go to her dads.

DD then took a gap year, and after that went to university in the UK. She is now graduating this summer.

I met up with her for lunch yesterday. She told me about the masters she will be doing, how excited she is to move back to Italy. I realised that in the 3 years she has been living in my home country I’ve only seen her 6 times. She always spends Christmas with her dad, spent summers travelling so it felt difficult to see her. I asked her jokingly if she felt more “British” after her 3 years and she said not at all. She is a third culture kid but If asked to pick she would always say she is Italian. I was hurt by this initially and told her this. She then said “I don’t even really view you as a mum”. This broke my heart I started to cry and she said she was best going.

She messaged me this morning explaining that she can’t view me as a mum as when she was 14-16 I messed with her head. I told her that her dad was evil and cruel yet I left her with him alone. She listed all the ways her dad has been a more selfless parent and more supportive parent.

I am now sad heartbroken and stunned, I don’t really know how to reply? Of course I can and will apologise and I don’t plan to defend my version of events but I feel like I should at least explain?

AIBU to feel like I should explain my side of the story to her? Or have I been ridiculously selfish and this is a result of my own actions?

Any advice much appreciated/

You've never given her reasons to think well of you. Given how little you see of her, it would be interesting to explore what she really says about her nomadic childhood to close friends/partners. Is she trying to make you feel better by
saying that she enjoyed the moves? Having been in a similar situation I can see that multiple moves meant gaining an ability to make casual friends easily and I have needed to tell my parents this as they wanted us to be relentlessly positive about our upbringing. What they certainly didn't want to hear were the downsides like not investing in friendships as you knew you would be whisked away from them. The independence they took credit for was born out of the only way of feeling any sense of control of your life.

I wasn't close to my father. I'm a bit closer to my mother as she felt she had to support my father's ambitions and she had to deal with regularly finding new schools and setting up homes. My father never put us first and my mother didn't advocate for us.

You can explain as much as you like but you are wasting your time as she has a clear understanding of you already. All you can do is accept the impact your had on her life and consistently show empathy for what you did. You reap what you sow.

I agree especially after hearing her daughter says she does not see her as her mum.

op made a huge mistake but op was also in a bad place. I don’t understand what people want op to do. Go down a path of self loathing and shame and attempt another suicide?

My own mother badmouthed my father to me, but I know he deserved every bit of it by making my mother’s life hell and giving her trauma. She could also not be a caring mother. I was raised by grandmother who was very tough. But my mother is a human being too. So I judge her based on her behaviour now, not at her most vulnerable phase. So maybe eventually op’s dd will be able to see her mother with a little sympathy. Op just tell her you would want to be there for her now in whatever way she would feel comfortable with.

Op delete this thread as you will end up feeling worse. See a therapist and slowly build a relationship with your daughter by finding some common grounds.

You don’t know what mental state she was in. And you don’t know you would have acted if you had been in that mental state. Don’t be that person.

That's the kind of thinking that may come with more mature and life experience on her part.

You sound like a complete narcissist. I’m honestly not surprised she told you that.

This.

Completely agree.

Sound like she has good reason to not consider you a parent

I have a surprisingly similar story (just no international moves, but suicidal attempts, affairs, getting us involved in marital strife) and if anything I have less sympathy for my mother, particularly since having my own children.

Dad isn’t squeaky clean but at least he took an interest in our welfare during the teenage years.

So it may well go in the other direction.

As someone who also experienced a mother having suicide attempts, my reasoning was that my mother would prefer to permanently exclude herself from my life than love me enough to stick around.

Saying the dd won’t understand till she is older is just patronising.

Personally the older I got the more I understood how little my mother cared for me and I would never ever do that to my dc.

FWIW I have suffered with depression and had a nervous breakdown. Not once did I think that I should leave my dc for even 1 night in order to get better. Neither did I think taking a job in another country to my children was going to entice them to live with me when they had already said they wouldn’t leave the country they were in. It’s only common sense to know if you leave your child/children and go away for 6 months at a time with presumably little contact, then get a job in another country and act like a single, childless woman when you have teenagers, you are not going to have a close bond going forward

i am interested why the grandparents never pointed this out to their dd when she was living with them or advised her against taking the job in Paris for the sake of her dd

It could well go the other way. Everyone has their own story.

I developed a lot more sympathy for my parents when I studied and worked in the field of mental health.

I'm not saying I don't have resentments still, but I do view things a bit more generously. I'm not saying that I went the right way, or that that is always the fair way to go, just how it happened in my life.

I'm sorry you went through that. Of course it's extremely damaging to a child to go through parental suicide attempts and they will always wonder why their mother didn't want to stick around for them.

My sister took her own life. Sometimes I felt quite suicidal in the year after myself, but I knew it wasn't even something I could think about as I had children who needed me. I got through it and out the other side, thank goodness.

Having worked with people who have been suicidal and hearing their experiences of what was going through their minds at the time of the attempt, I've come to a place I'm not sure how much of a choice it really is at the time. That really helped me when coming to terms with the inevitable questions about what I could maybe have done that arose when my sister died.

Your mother's attempts weren't personal to you and you didn't deserve any of it. Neither did OP's daughter. Chances are she didn't have grandparents around to say much with all the international moves. I have never known my grandparents and they wouldn't have had any input into my parents and my life because they just had no idea what was going on.

It's hard being a child that no-one stood up for, I know this personally. What I mean when I say perspectives can change over time is that rather than seeing it as something personal to me, I now see it as a reflection of brokenness in my own parents. I really don't think they were very well equipped to raise children maturity-wise. The best thing I can do is turn that around for my children and make sure their experience is difference.

From what I can tell the move to Singapore broke the relationship and the move to Switzerland was suppose to fix it.
It didn’t - he avoided being home which ultimately led to him having an affair and she buried her head in the sand and pretended everything was ok.
not great yes but hardly awful abusive behaviour.
they both handled it badly and I suspect it was fairly awful for the DD at this point. The difference seems to be that once the marriage ended he was able to be a father and she easnt

I would say having a stable home and a mother who is around far outweighs being able to speak three languages. So you saying there are benefits, is wrong. There are no benefits to her childhood. Stop trying to excuse it.

I too am NC with my mother, after decades of self serving narcissistic behaviour. It’s a relief and the only answer for my sanity. When I read the OP’s posts, it’s a catalogue of selfish behaviour. Quite shocking. You say you were ill and yet able to take on big jobs. You failed at the most important job however. Time to humbly apologise.

Eh??

Well that isn't how the daughter views her experience which is actually what matters.

This was my experience too. I was able to feel empathy for the way my mother's mental health difficulties affected me as a child (partly because I believed the narrative I was told, being a child). However, when she deliberately chose to do things that were hurtful to my children, as an adult with much more life experience I could see this was completely abnormal and harmful (I also had the example of the much more 'normal' grandmother on the other side to compare to). Plus also I could see it was a choice - she didn't have to do those things - she didn't always make those sort of choices and it wasn't something that was out of her control or entirely due to mental health problems. There were a lot of straw man manipulative arguments which I saw through as an adult and hadn't as a child.

The only thing OP can do is apologise and actually be a good Mum to an adult child, listening to her daughter's point of view. This makes it more likely her daughter will want to keep a relationship going.

Completely agree

OP, I’m a third culture kid too and even though I also loved the opportunity and the experiences, TCKs often struggle with the concept of ‘home’. They never had one permanent place, not much shared history, no grandmas and aunties just popping round, very little familiarity. For me, for several years I only ever got birthday cards from my parents as none of the family knew our address (we moved frequently!) But as a result of some of these early experiences, some TCKs look to people instead to be their ‘home’ and because you weren’t around during some of her formative crucial years but her dad was, it’s likely he’s ‘home’ and you’re not.

She actually sounds really sensible and self aware and has obviously had a great education. You can’t change what’s happened but I think it’s important to not try to justify it to her. The best you can do is apologise, let her know you love her and ask if you can work on repairing or resetting your relationship. In years to come, as other apps have said, she might take a different view but right now, it’s best to meet her where she’s at .

I was asking why the grandparents didn’t advise their own daughter that leaving her child for 6 months and taking a job in another country wasn’t going to result in a happy mother daughter relationship and if anything could lead to permanently being estranged which isn’t going to do her any good for her mental health in the long term

Unless it's mentioned in a post other than the first one (I can't remember all the details), we don't even know if the grandparents are involved. Considering all the moves, unlikely.

I decided for 6 months I’d move back to my parents home in the uk

I find it strange that during that 6 months that Strangersev parents didn’t mention to her that spending 6months with them in a different country to her dd that it wasn’t going to be good for her relationship with her dd.

Never mind Strangersev deciding to take a job in another country to her own dd and what that would mean if she really wanted a relationship with her dd

Maybe they did? Maybe they didn't care? Maybe they knew they wouldn't be listened to anyway? Maybe they don't have that kind of insight? Maybe they did that sort of thing themselves? If grandparents had that much say half the threads they start complaining about lack of access to grandkids or their own children's time wouldn't exist.