Appalling behaviour-dressed up as old age-it has to be addressed

[BlueLegume]

Hi all, having followed and contributed to several threads on ‘Elderly Parents’ I want to thank so many of you for helping me look at my/our situation. I won’t name check you just yet but you know who you are. This thread is not to be unpleasant about the elderly who are having a hard time. It is to address a very honest point that my parents have always been difficult. Impossible to discuss anything important with, always known better and having watched them alienate good decent people I am angry that they made no effort in life to do anything other than fun stuff for themselves and now expect me and my siblings to pick up their mess. It seems so many middle aged people have fallen foul of these ‘war babies’ as my mother still refers to her and Dad. Yes I accept they were born at the end of the war and they will have had to live in a post war country. For our mother that is all she talks about. She doesn’t accept they had the boom years post war which she has photo evidence of living it large in the 50s and 60s. She was an incredibly authoritarian mother yet after a few drinks would party all night. Always a case of do as I say not as I do. Now as I approach 60 I am wracked with worry and anxiety because she now ‘can’t cope’. It’s ruining life . I have all the therapy theories and have shared much of it. That said I am mad at the fact I am still dictated to or it feels so by her. Father is in a nursing home after a lot of denial that was what he needed. She will not have any help in the house so it is all falling to us. We are broken. My own family are fed up and rightly so. Selfish as it sounds I did not retire to look after a very unpleasant woman who has never liked me. I appreciate that sounds very bitter.

@HoraceGoesBonkers great description. Unfortunately there is simply no middle ground whatsoever. It is either suck up their way of wanting things done or back off. It is a horrible situation to be in because someone always has an opinion- in my sister and I’s case our brother. We have had so many contradictory comments from him it is almost laughable. We take action and try an fix something we get accused of ‘swooping in’. We give Mum options of things we get accused of not making decisions. All from the son who by his own admission used to call her once a week and leave his phone in his kitchen just letting her prattle on whilst he did things around the house. the son who contacted me earlier this year ‘in shock’ at the state of her storage shed….and was taken aback when I informed him she had always hoarded in there as long as my now adult kids could remember when they used to ask to go and play in ‘grannies shop’. They are in their 30s. But only now does Golden Child notice.

When she was alive and I used to visit, I used to try to approach with the ‘clean sheet’ philosophy. Put all the previous negativity behind me. Don’t go in anticipating trouble. Start each visit with the optimism that this time it might be different. Dont let her get to you.

Within half and hour she had me worn down and sucked any good will and mental positivity out of me. I regularly left her house sobbing tears of frustration and anger at her emotional manipulation and that yet again, I’d let my guard down and she’d got under my skin.

I am genuinely a half full person, I believe there is always a bright side to everything and a solution - even if it’s not always immediately apparent - but she used to suck me dry and it used to take me a day plus before I was sufficiently de escalated to return to normal.

I never understood whether she was intentionally undermining me, or was so unaware of anyone else’s feelings that she believed her wants and demands overrode everything. She never changed. Even when I was a child, there was this pattern of behaviour. It was almost a power/bullying thing. She could be incredibly awkward for no justifiable reason, just simply because she could and she wanted to show me she had the power to control my life.

And yes, same here, I loved my dad but on hindsight he enabled her terribly.

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas yep again you speak of our life exactly. I have given her the benefit of being depressed/lonely etc but the reality is she loves to exert control over people and ALWAYS has done. Absolutely to her needs/wants over riding anyone elses. I have a real moment in time memory when I should have broken the cycle years ago. It must be about 25 years ago and she had taken my kids out for the day - they hated going but she insisted. I had said bring them back for 4pm as they have school the next day and I will make a meal for us all to enjoy at around 5pm. She turned up 2 hours late at 6pm and when I said ‘where have you been?’ proceeded to admonish me for being ungrateful. In order to calm the situation’I’ apologised and made it that I should not have raised my concerns. I often wish at that point I had said ‘no Mum you are in the wrong. I did not ask you to have the children, you insisted. When I asked you to be back for 4 pm you ignored my request - that is disrespectful.’ Of course I didn’t do any of that I cow towed to keep the peace. That is just one of many situations but it really is one I wish I had tackled.

Its funny isn’t it, if you put boundaries in place, you’re apparently being cold hearted and selfish - a thing I was regularly accused of when I wouldn’t drop everything and dance to the tune. She often used to say that she hoped my daughter wouldn’t treat me as badly as I treated her. If I was as self centred as I was accused of, I wouldn’t have put up with the emotional manipulation and would walked away years previously, but like a dutiful and guilt ridden daughter, I did the ‘honourable’ thing.

My mother did nothing she didn’t want to do and if something didn’t suit her she would pull the sickness card out or the imaginary heart condition. Like so many other parents on here, if she wasn’t the centre of attention at any event, she would either create a drama to ensure she was or have a massive sulk to ensure it was ruined for everyone else. Like a toddler, any attention - even negative attention - was good as she’d successfully made it all about her.

Absolutely. My father told me, before he deteriorated but was in hospital that my mother wanted the kind of relationship with me that my aunt has with our cousins. They are very close because my aunt nurtured her children. Our mother criticised and judged me so why be shocked that I’m not keen on getting close. If she’d been a “friend” I’d have withdrawn from her toxic behaviour years ago.

Mine used to look after my oldest occasionally but would always have to rush off early or create some sort of massive fuss about it and/or insist that we do a 2 hour round trip so she could look after him at her house. She'd say this was because she had to go home to check on my Dad but at the time he was perfectly fine pottering about by himself.

At one point we'd dropped him there so I could work and she phoned me to ask me to go and collect him for an hour in the middle of the time she'd agreed to look after him (so another 2 hour round trip) so she could go to church. I said no then.

When we moved house she seemed offended we wanted to use paid for childcare.

I stopped asking them at all because it was never ever worth the hassle; any childcare was used as an opportunity to control what we were doing.

She would never volunteer to take my DC to sport or so I could do my sport, or go to the cinema or anything like that which would have actually helped, but would try to invite herself to competitions she got wind of. She also now makes out she was far more involved than she actually was.

Totally this.
It was always pointed out to me how other ‘girls’ had loving, respectful relationships with their mothers and how they made far more of an effort than I did to visit and look after her.

She didn’t get that we would never have that kind of bond because she had never put the loving, nurturing building blocks of a parent in place when I was a child. I was viewed very much as a doll that she could dress in her own likeness and play with until she was bored. She loved babies because their needs are pretty simple. She just couldn’t cope with children once they developed independent thinking and their own personalities.

She had this sickening habit of insisting I regularly told her how much I loved her. I always believe you know if you’re loved by the way you are treated by those around you. You don’t need false words - because that all it was, a mantra.

You are so right about how, if she was merely a friend, you would have withdrawn from the toxic relationship years ago. I often said exactly the same to my DH; if she wasn’t my mother and I feel a moral obligation, I wouldn’t be doing any of this.

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas goodness you and I are the same person 😬. Constantly comparing me to other peoples daughters. Her favourite “put down” was and continued to be “your just like (her sisters name)”. Said sister is our mother’s younger sister who our mother sees as wayward as she “had to get married” at 18 as she was pregnant. My aunt went on to have 5 children with the same husband. She is fun kind and caring with a great sense of humour. Mum uses the phrase as an insult because her sister is really the only person who has ever stood up to Mum. She won’t take Mums nonsense.

My sister is the Golden Child. She seems to have no awareness of what my mother’s life is actually like. How she spends her time, who her friends are, etc. She just makes it all about herself all the time and my mother makes the right noises. It’s odd isn’t it?

Being an only child, I often wondered if it would have been better to have had a sibling to share the load - but reading others experiences, I suspect she would have played us off against each other, so would have been worse.

Her flying monkeys were her friends and some of her relatives. I was always told by outsiders how lucky I was to have such a charming, witty and generous mother. She could ‘sparkle’ socially, especially to males, but would slag off her ‘friends’ privately. Those that told me I had a duty to look after her and how vulnerable she was, would have been very shocked about some of the spiteful comments and downright lies she repeated about them over the years.

It's not age that is the problem here, but the personalities of the individuals involved.

@Mischance absolutely you are right. I did caveat further up this thread that perhaps it shouldn’t be in elderly parents thread as it’s not to bash all elderly people. It sort of mushroomed as a thread started by me to have a bit of a rant about the mess I’m dealing with.

Oh God to the "sparkle" socially, people used to think my mum was amazing at weddings etc. They didn't have to deal with her paralytically drunk spouting venom. At 85 she still drinks far far too much.

Every single good or bad situation I have had in life she has made worse. She hasn't an empathic or caring bone in her body. Her first response is always lashings of criticism. If pulled up reverts to a passive aggressive laugh that I just so cannot deal with.

I loathe her I really do. I don't know if it is being menopausal or what. But what right does she have to demand anything, absolutely anything from me when since birth I was labelled difficult and she had do nothing but rip me apart all my life.

I do have two big sisters and it does help to share the burden with them, we all feel the same. However she does play us off against each other and now does it with our children, vile.

I just want her to leave me alone. She lives in a village and like many has fallen out with all her friends who are lovely people.It never ends does it.

In a way it's both though. I think most people wouldn't leave their elderly parents in a genuine emergency.

I got so worn out by what mine deemed an emergency, though. And almost inevitably if there was a crisis my DPs had contributed quite a lot to it by not planning, then wanted to create a fuss for as long as possible. I remember sitting for hours in a hospital with DM then when my DH turned up to take me home so he could go to work and I could get the kids ready, DM suddenly came up with a whole bunch of extra things to delay me.

A lot of folk do have more genuine problems in old age and it can give some of the characters on this thread enormous scope to be manipulative and cause as much disruption as possible.

@Mischance you are correct,my mother has been awful all my life. I read @BlueLegume posts and they resonated with me and she kindly started a thread.

I think these women have always been difficult to deal with but as they age and need help it is difficult for our daughters to reconcile our often,in my case abusive childhood with being a decent human being and helping.

This thread is very helpful as the other daughters really understand the difficulty x

@Lexy70 agree completely with your reference to struggling to reconcile the past with what society deem as the right thing to do when society has no idea of your own upbringing or formative years. My low confidence was a mystery to me until I met my husband who within a week of meeting me pointed out how dreadful my mother treated me. That was nearly 40 years ago. He gets so frustrated at me trying to help her as he reminds me nothing I have ever done has ever been right from my mother’s perspective. I’m glad the thread is helpful. As a daughter taught I was a ‘bad apple’ and nobody would ever love me you deserve to have a place to share information without feeling ashamed that you are so awful your own mother dislikes you.

Is it a generational thing? Were our mothers brought up in an era where these sort of views and expectations of their daughters was the norm, or are they just unpleasant people irrespective of whenever they were born?

My mother was always a witch. I was regularly hit for imagined ‘crimes’ and told that when I was a parent I would do the same.

I am, and I didn’t. I’ve disciplined my children when appropriate but I never pulled them around by the hair, hit them with a stick, cut hanks of their hair off, humiliated them, shut them in a cupboard in the dark, piled guilt on them because they made a genuine mistake, ripped up their homework because being left handed they smudged a word with a fountain pen, told them I wished I’d never given birth to them or that I was ashamed of them. That was ‘normal’ discipline in my childhood home. My daughter is a teacher and she said that now those would all be serious child protection issues, but in my childhood to outsiders we were perceived as a ‘nice’ middle class family.

Not looking for sympathy, just trying to
understand the mentality of a mother who seemed to think this was the correct way to nurture a child and couldn’t reflect in her later years that maybe the reason we didn’t have a good relationship was as a result of this cruelty, not that I was not a very good daughter.

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas the more this thread progresses I think it’s increasingly clear the issue is our mothers personality as opposed to being elderly. My childhood was very similar to yours. Very respectable to the outside world but lots of silly secrets behind closed doors. Lots of threats about “never speaking to you again BlueLegume’ unless I did what she wanted. In recent years I’ve sat and watched the very slow car crash that is old age having made zero efforts to adapt the house so Dad could manage as his illness progressed. All our mother’s fault as she refused to accept a diagnosis. I can’t actually write something she did as it would be very outing but needless to say her “knowing better” saw my Dad really struggle as his illness progressed. It was cruel.

I also think back to my mother convincing me and potentially herself that everything she did “is for your own good”. Bollocks frankly. She had an obsession with appearing “perfect” to outsiders. We’d all be dressed up for church where she used the aisle as a catwalk and then proceed to bitch on our way home about what others were wearing. Being fat = no self control. Being thin = good. She was thin, but not naturally. Minute portions and a laxative habit. Sometimes I have to recall the past to remember not to get sucked in to her world.

Oh yes. Public image was all important.

“People don’t need to know our business” was her mantra. In other words, don’t you tell anyone about what goes on in our house.

Facts were reinvented to always portray her as the heroine or the self appointed expert. Pathetic lies too. She was brought up in Shepherds Bush in London, but told everyone it was Notting Hill. Who cares? She left school at 14 - which I appreciate wasn’t fair on her, but she told everyone she was educated until 18 and left school with loads of qualifications. Highly critical of girls ‘who gave themselves away before marriage’ but was pregnant with me at her wedding. Was convinced that she was gifted with second sight and was psychic, but was way off on so many things - but many people fell for it.
Told people she had a heart condition to gain preferential service; completely untrue. Treated service staff like dirt. The times I cringed when she was unnecessarily rude to sales assistants or waiting staff.
She would also relate these incredible stories to others that painted her in an amazing light in front of me and try to use me to validate them by agreeing these fantasies actually happened.

I’ve never been able to watch Keeping Up Appearances because it was my mother to a tee. Even the way she dressed, the mannerisms and the petty snobbery.

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas same to Keeping up Appearances however I would also add in abit of Kathy Bates in Misery with James Caan.

It can't be a surprise to reach extreme old age to think your husband or you may pass away. But nothing, nada has been planned, sorted, adjusted. I have regular nightmares about what she will be like when dad dies. My DH has Stage 4 prostate cancer. The last thing I want to think of is life afterwards.

How old should children be before you start setting boundaries?

@MereDintofPandiculation my husband has just told me to choose between him and my mother. She is and always has been awful. She has nobody.

I’m so sorry @MereDintofPandiculation I hadn’t picked up your DH’s cancer was so advanced. I hope he’s comfortable.