I’m so so fed up with my mum and I’m not sure if I’m being unreasonable and should have more tolerance for it.
our biggest issue is whether or not I will have children.
For context I am my mothers only child. She frequently tells me that she didn’t want kids and if she could do her life over again she wouldn’t have had any. However, in the same breath she begs for grandchildren constantly.
I am happily engaged and due to be married. She’s taken this as the idea that once we’re married we’ll have kids. I have told her many many times this isn’t the case and neither of us want children.
i am in my mid twenties and I am very career driven. I don’t want to explain my role in case it’s outing but think along the lines of accountant or solicitor. I am very proud of my job but it comes with long hours and little free time. I would not want to reduce my hours to have children. my fiancé works in medicine and therefore similarly has long hours. We enjoy the little time we have together and selfishly don’t want this taken away by anything.
i have also never been particularly maternal. I had some trauma as a child which perhaps has influenced this but either way I have never felt this ‘need’ for children.
when I tell my mum this she gets very angry and says it’s unfair she will never be a grandma. She says that I will change my mind eventually and that then it will be too late and i’ll be sad. She also loves the old “who will visit when you’re old?” I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to have children for one, and I also have lots of other people who I’d like to think would visit me when I’m old.
going back to the trauma mentioned earlier, I don’t want to go too much into it but essentially it was enabled by my mum. She has now ‘moved on’ from it and therefore feels I should have too and that it’s unfair for me to hold onto it apparently.
if I try and criticise anything she goes onto “oh so I’m just the worst mum in the world am I”
Shes recently been on at me for my weight. I’m 5’3 and about 11 stone so I appreciate that I am overweight. However, she acts like I need to join my 600lb life and that it’s going to send me to an early grave. She constantly comments about how much I eat and what I choose to eat and it’s exhausting.
the final thing is that she’s what I would refer to as an “elevenerife” person (you know the old joke, you’ve been to Tenerife they’ve been to elevenerife). Everything I ever do is nothing compared to her and her life. She always has to one up me and it feels like I can never be enough.
The latest example of this was that I told her fiancé and I had booked to go to Fiji for our honeymoon and she said “oh it’s nothing compared to Mauritius, I’ve been to mother and that was soo much nicer! Why on earth did you book there? You’ll hate it and wish you’d asked for my opinion”
she came to our house last week and all she did was moan that it wasn’t up to the same standard as hers. everything was apparently unclean or dirty, despite the fact we have a cleaner who comes once a week and I know our house is tidy.
We have two cats and a dog and she hates the cats. She pushes them out of her way and says horrible things about them being dirty or annoying. She says it’s their fault I don’t want kids and if I get rid of them maybe it’ll make me realise I want a proper baby (and not a “silly cat” that I can’t possibly love that much). She also has this idea that when she’s old she will live with us but keeps making the point that when this happens we’d have to get rid of our cats as she doesn’t like them. Obviously we’d never do that but still!
anyway, all in all I’m getting really fed up of these constant put downs and nags. I’m getting to the point where I barely want to see her and don’t enjoy being around her. I try to have a constructive conversation with her but it never goes well. I’m at my wits end with it all. she makes me doubt myself all the time and I’m just fed up!