AIBU to change the Christmas plans with my mother?

[pontipinemum]

I don’t know what to do about Christmas this year. I’m an only child and my mother normally stays with us for a few days over Christmas. I want to wake up with my husband and kids on Christmas morning without the stress of her presence hanging over me.

To try avoiding drip feeding:

Hisory
My mother wasn’t around for most of my childhood. I lived with my grandparents from 6 weeks old and only saw her a few times a year. At 12 I moved in with her and my stepdad, and my teenage years were awful: constant drinking in the house, a lot of control and manipulation, and various forms of abuse behind closed doors. On the outside everything looked normal.

Boundaries
Fast forward to now: I don’t drink, I have two young children, and I’ve spent the last year in counselling. My mother still drinks heavily and has serious alcohol-related health problems.

Two weeks ago I drove nearly 350km after work to speak to her face-to-face. I told her she’s free to make her own choices, but while she’s drinking I can’t be part of her life. Not an ultimatum — just a boundary for my own wellbeing. She promised the sun, moon and stars.

The lies
She caught herself out in lies - on the phone a few days after she was clearly drunk, I reminder her of my new boundary - she said she was off to get her script to help with stopping alcohol - told her the pharmacy was closed. More crap out of her so I hung up. Next day she apologised for missing my call because 'she was so tired after taking her new pills'. I reminder her we actually had spoken on the phone and I knew she didn't have the tablets. She replied apologising 'won't happen again'. I didn't reply. I haven’t heard from her in eight days now.

It's over a 2 hr drive from her house to mine and because of her health issues it often takes for 3.5hrs. But I don't want her here over night, and I really don't want her to be here when we wake up Christmas morning.

AIBU to only invite her for Christmas day?

YABU - she is still your mother, let her come up for longer that drive will be too much
YANBU - you made a boundary. Woman up and live with how dreadful it is making you feel!!

I get that it is a disease and that she is in an awful loop but IDK she is also a pretty selfish and self centred person. And I know she is 'sulking' now

You sound amazing.
You do not owe her a single Christmas with you.

Focus on your children and making it a lovely happy time for you all.
You really deserve it.

She made her choices.
Time you made yours for you alone.

I had an alcohol free house. My mother would just turn up drunk or with a secret stash. Or - even worse, off her face on Librium, on which she might as well have been drunk as the effects were identical but there was an added layer of smug.

Please give yourself a break and either not see her at all, or pop over to see her by yourself beforehand, exchange presents and leave asap. Box ticked, duty done, and on with your happy family Christmas.

The way I see it, you have two potential things to feel guilty about. Your mother being alone or ruining your children's Christmas. (And your own for that matter but I suspect you have a long history of not considering your own feelings.) I know which one I would choose to live with.

You already know that you can't change her, can't help her, can't control what she does. What you haven't yet learned is that you owe her NOTHING. She didn't even raise you. Your grandparents did.

I know she's sick but she's also an adult and there are consequences to her actions. Your children are innocent and deserve peaceful, happy memories with a mother who can be present and not spending their Christmas handling her mother.

OP, you just happen to share DNA with this woman. That's it. You didn't ask to be her daughter. And your children didn't ask to be yours. But you can step up where she failed. You just have to allow yourself the chance to do that.

@TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams this is the thing, she will assume she is coming. She always does. We had discussed in early November what she would buy. I think I am going to have to un invite her.

@Punkerplus no she won't want to be alone Christmas day. She will want to be up here with my family so she can tell everyone how much she does for us. Then so she can get a picture for SM so all her friends can gush over how much of a wonderful granny she is.

@MaggiesShadow it's a very hard less to learn/ unlearn I'm not sure! She has always made me feel like (and actually told me) that my being born ruined her life. She didn't get to have a 'real' family etc. That she could have meet a better man unlike my father who left us. Then she would have had 4 children, a good husband and a nice house. However, when the doctor suggested she get an abortion she said she wouldn't. I have a feeling it was only 'my fault' once my dad did turn out to be a total shit. I know how he left, left a huge impact on her.

But I am also starting to learn that, that wasn't my fault. It's just hard to unlearn the core feeling in yourself.

How will she get to your house? Because if she arrives ‘rattling and shaking’, and she’s coming in her car, then honestly, she should not be driving!! That alone would make me not invite her, but with all the other issues I’d absolutely be telling her this year we’re not doing a family Christmas and you’ll catch up in the new year. Let someone else put up with her.

Don't invite her at all? That might be easier than having her for part of the day.
If she starts talking about it suggest going to see her on a different day. Lots of parents don't see their children at xmas, even decent ones.

It would be
'I know uou would normally spend Christmas with us, however we have had conversations regarding uour drinking and the fact this is continuing AND you are lying about it, I'm afraid you are not welcome to our home. I will NOT subject my children and family to it. If/when you have proven that you have stopped drinking we may look at this again. Until then, NO'
Ball.is in her court. I understand uou feel the guilt, but if your children were witness to her behaviour how much guilt would you feel?

This is you giving your DC the childhood you should have had, no guilt there!

I hope you have a lovely peaceful Christmas x

You'll have to be clear that she's not invited. Something along the lines of.." As you know, I've been having counselling recently due to the events of my childhood and it's brought up feelings that I'm struggling with. Consequently I'm not up for hosting Christmas this year, but maybe we can meet up on the 27th/after New Year."

I'm sorry but not surprised to hear that she's said things like that to you. I don't know if there are studies on a correlation but in my experience, alcoholism and narcissism are very common bedfellows.

It's extremely difficult to unlearn that FOG (fear, obligation, guilt) that's why I said choose your guilty. Because I don't think you'll be out of the mindset by Christmas but it's a really good first step and will ensure a peaceful Christmas for you and your children. You can deal with the fallout in the new year!

I can't vote as I don't think you should invite her for Christmas at all.

You don't owe her anything.
But you do have your own dc that you can build years of Happy Christmases with.

I know it is always easier to say, when you aren't in the situation, but I wouldn't invite her up at all over Christmas week.
If you want to, you could drive to see her for lunch one day, but you don't need to do that either.

Look after your dc and keep your mother well away from your family Christmases.

@MaggiesShadow I'd never heard of the term 'FOG' before I'll certainly look that up.

I am lucky in that I am getting free counselling, it is a service in Ireland provided to adults who were abused as children. It was supposed to be a 6 session block to get me steady and add me to the main waiting list. Over a year on I still see her weekly!

It has been slow but I am getting their piece by piece.

I have been posting on here for years about her and I'd say if I fished all the posts out there would be a huge improvement in the 'FOG'

@pontipinemum Im Ireland also and glad you are seeing a therapist. Mothers like ours can be bitches. Have you looked at the 'We took you to stately homes' threads? Many of us affected sadly.

Don’t have her in your house AT ALL!! She isn’t someone who you want to be around you let alone your children!!

You could frame it as saying No to your mother is saying Yes to your family and then having a nice Christmas and you being relaxed.
Yes, you might feel guilty if you uninvite her, but sit with the discomfort and it is less of an unpleasant feeling than the dread leading up to her visit and the unpleasant ness of her actual visit.

You shouldn't feel guilty, I'm just saying you might. She doesn't deserve to have you in her life

You owe your children a happy childhood and a Xmas that’s happy relaxed and with you having your best happy time with them. Not her

Tell her Christmas at yours isn’t happening for her this year. Have a nice Christmas with your family. Don’t allow someone who either abused or allowed you to be abused to ruin your day (or life). And no need to feel guilty about it.

I'll go have a look. I didn't end up in a state home, but I am learning that quite a few relatives 'had me' for short periods of time. I have an aunt who had her baby in a mother and baby 'home' but she did bring her baby home. I can't imagine it was a nice place to be - even if she insists hers wasn't that bad.

@LeeshaPaper I am sitting here with incredible guilt and a fair bit of hurt today. It's really not a nice feeling. I felt like that last night too, and in the past I would have reached for a bottle of wine to 'comfort myself' I have no desire or intention to do that. But in the past I would have buried all these feelings under a fuzzy blanket of wine.

@BBKP her reasoning is that he was awful to her too - which he was. The verbal abuse he gave her and just degrading her all the time. But he would do that to me too. The S.A. was on the minor scale but disturbing. P.A. was very infrequent.

But it got so into my brain that I was never going to be good enough for anyone or anything in life so that I needed to 1 - stay skinny 2 - be grateful for what scraps I did get. 3 - follow his rules.

Be attractive, but if you actually attract a man or date one you are a whore. But let him take joy in men finding his teenager 'daughter' attractive. I don't mean a nice comment like you have a beautiful daughter. I mean in the pub from fully grown men 'phaw, she's a nice tight little thing isn't she' him 'ya, but don't bother you couldn't afford her' (he meant the amount I was able to drink - also the amount it cost to feed me, apparently 1 person eating 1 portion of food is gluttony) I was 15.

At 'home' my mother mostly stayed out of his way. She got drunk in 1 room, him in another. I was allowed to go between and pass messages.

I havent RTFT, but I wanted to respond to your last sentence here, in case my experience is helpful to you.

Years ago, dealing with a different type of trauma, I came to realise that I was shaping my life or actions as ‘despite’ what happened, and by doing so, i was still ceding power to another, still allowing them to influence my behaviour and emotions. It took a lot of effort and time to shift that mindset (which I’d seen as healthier than ‘because’) but even the process of consciously trying to stop defining any part of my life (myself, really) by what happened was transformative.

Please don't feel guilty, this is the result of her actions - old sins have long shadows! If she had been a decent mum to you, you would have been happy to have her over for Christmas. She wasn't, she was horrible to you and this is the stark result. She is immensely lucky to have contact with you at all, and she doesn't deserve any frankly.

I do think it would be best for you to go as low contact with her as you can. You have made boundaries over her drinking and she is not keeping to it, so you are absolutely correct to tell her she cannot come to you at Christmas so should look for someone else to stay with if she wants. It is totally disrespectful of her to ignore your boundaries and still think she can stay with you if she wants.

You have the strength to do this @pontipinemum - maybe your stance will cause her to reassess the way her life is going through her decisions to drink. (Probably not, but that's not your problem). Bless you, you can do this.

Oh no this is not about being put into care essentially our parents never think they abused us because they 'took us to stately homes' like in our case say Newbridge house or Kilkenny castle type thing, they took us on days out and didnt leave us locked up at home is the jist of it.