If my relationship with my mother was a website it would be called OnlyCrumbs

[Bluddyellfire]

I’ve spent a bit of time lurking in here recently, gaining strength from reading the experiences of others and it’s reassuring/ devastating in equal measure to realise that so many people unfortunately find themselves in a similar position of having a terrible relationship with their mother, the solution to which seems entirely to sit with the mother and not the daughter, at a time in the daughters’ lives when they could very much do without it. I typed out a really long post but I don't want to say it all now for fear of outing myself to maybe family members who would recognise me from the details.

Basically she's bloody worn me out with the endless talking me down, criticising, minimising, dismissing, talking over me, laughing when I say she's upset me, my entire life I could go on for pages. So much of the same sort of nonsense many other people have posted here previously.

From reading about how hard others have tried, like I have, I’ve concluded that it’s not me, it’s definitely her, and it was interesting to consider the theory that the performative indifference (I put myself through university as a mature student - why? What will YOU need a degree for???), been promoted several times at the organisation I've worked at for 20 years (REALLY??? Oh, right, they've not sacked you then...), I'm paying a mortgage on my own (no biggie apparently although she's never even worked since she got married 55 years ago beyond a bit of cleaning or a couple of evenings a week in the local corner shop in her 50s, never really taken much responsibility for anything just relied on DF), she just sniffs/ tuts/ shrugs/ makes 'that' face about it all then starts on again about how well DB is getting on, the idea that it could be rooted in jealousy/ regret around never having had any independence herself despite actively seeking out and maintaining a marriage and lifestyle in which she was completely dependent (her choice so here we are), I’m enabling her moaning and whingeing as well as wearing myself out, by keep offering solutions when what she actually wants is to wallow in the (non) problems (ok then, keep them, I've enough of my own), and I love the grey rocking suggestions, I’m on a steep learning curve here lads but I will be deploying that particular tactic henceforth before my head comes off completely! Bottom line, if she’s not asking for a solution I don’t need to find one and even if she IS asking for advice, she doesn’t have to take it, it’s on her if she doesn’t. I can’t fix her and I’m not going to let her wreck me.

I got about 3 hours sleep last night because I was so wound up after some snippy comments earlier in the day while finally getting her hearing aids fitted when I challenged her idea that they probably won't make much difference and anyway she actually CAN hear people perfectly well. This was after I said how frustrating it had been that she would start talking over me when I was halfway through saying something, that I'd thought it rude (er... no not really, she didn't think it was rude to talk over the top of somebody) but now I realised that she hadn't been able to hear me all this time, so it will be great to have proper conversations again, she just laughed and said she had to get going. As did I due to bunking off from WFH from my non job that she knows nothing about and which makes no demands of me.

I could carry on for hours I've got so many examples but I know a lot of people on here will know exactly what I'm up against and I'm here to say that I'm not doing it any more. I have a lifelong health issue which is minimised, laughed off, you give in to it, etc. SIL happens to have the same condition and DM will go on and ON about how SIL has 'had' to drop her hours because 'really she can only do so much' what with DN and a house to run etc. House to run??? Jeez. HTF does she think I manage with 'a house to run', a full time job never mind a couple of days a week, and no husband?

I was never good enough for her and at 50+ I'll clearly never be. But I'm good enough for me. She can keep DSIL, very mindful, very demure, and I'll keep my head on thank you. I'm attempting a bit of entry level grey rocking to see what happens, today she was asking can you freeze butter, so I googled it and sent her a link to something like 'everything you need to know about freezing butter and marg' on Good Housekeeping website and left it at that. I'm also encouraging DB to step up a bit seeing as he can do no wrong. He's seen a few tinges of it from her recently in the family Whatsapp chat where previously it had all been between me and her but I've engineered a few good po faced interactions with her in front of him as it were in the group chat, and he's slightly horrified, which is good I guess insofar as it shows it's not me. When I see her it's 3 solid hours of moaning, when he sees her she's a vision of radiant charm and pleasantness so up until now he's been a bit 'don't know what you're on about, she always seems fine to me'. He sees it now.

Anyway thanks for reading, it's clear I'm not alone and what I'm going through is familiar to many, which comforts me greatly.

🍷

I vey much relate to lots of things you have said.

i like that you said “i am good enough for me”

thanks for that <clutches phrase to my own heart>

There is a thread called cockroach hotel which is about this shit, but personally i decline to wallow in misery.

my only advice is reduce your contact, less hours at a time for sure.

she will never change so pursuing love and approval is pointless.

I really relate to all you have said. Honestly, just disengage. Stop doing anything for her. Don’t take her to appointments, engage in conversation or make any effort on her behalf. It’s not worth it. Prioritise you. I do nothing for my mother anymore bar the very occasional thing. She doesn’t appreciate it, treats me like shit and never ever apologises. She’s never helped me in my life. Why should I help her anymore.

Narcicissm. There is lots on YouTube and Spotify podcasts about it. It helps to understand it I find.

Absolute sympathy for you @Bluddyellfire highly recommend the following book
YOU'RE NOT CRAZY- IT'S YOUR MOTHER: Freedom for daughters of narcissistic mothers By DANU MORRIGAN

Also Danu has a website https://www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com

Sign up and you get emails which contain information and advice and are very balanced so not to vilify your mother - but are helpful in dealing with a situation so many of us are in. Sadly as they age these people do not mellow. Good luck and keep talking on here - lots of very good people with support and advice for you. 🥰

Your post made me think of the book Motherwell by the journalist Deborah Orr. The title being both the town she grew up in, and a reference to her relationship with her mother. I think it boils down to a resentment of you living a life that she didn't. Whether that's due to envy or feeling you should have lived an identical life and not got ideas above your station, who knows.

Hard relate here too OP. Being ignored, minimised, dismissed, feeling like they're on everyone else's side but yours. It's fucking horrible, and really corrosive to your sense of self worth

I've been limiting contact with my family for years - I definitely feel better the less I have to do with them, but it still hurts. It's really shit and I get it x

You might want to read/join this thread, OP, for children of abusive parents:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/relationships/5365921-july-2025-well-we-took-you-to-stately-homes

In hindsight I've been (breathtakingly naïve) rather optimistic to think that the piss and vinegar would ever stop. This is the woman who attests that I was 'never an affectionate child' (unlike DB who always was/ is 'naturally affectionate') and that I 'didn't take to breastfeeding'. She's been gaslighting me literally since the day I was born hasn't she...😬

Thanks, I'll certainly look into that.

Funny enough I remember when she published that and reading interviews etc where she was discussing how the book had come about etc, it resonated all too well and I thought that I'd have to take a run up to the subject matter if I was going to go there, but perhaps it's time, I've nothing to lose apart from something I never had anyway 😟

Oh they sound very much like my people, thank you! Mine is, 'but we DID give you opportunities, we sent you to boarding school!' (YES, you SENT ME AWAY because I was 'so difficult' and anyway as a forces brat the MOD paid for it).

'You've always been obsessed with things not being fair'
'Your sense of injustice is too well developed'
'You've got an inferiority complex'

I've set myself off again sorry 😶

My son summed it up rather astutely, recalling the text exchange on her most recent birthday, he doesn't get much more out of her than I do.

DS: happy birthday Granny! x
DM: thanks
DS knowing full well I was taking her for lunch: are you doing anything nice today? x
DM: no not really
DS: ok well I hope you have a great day anyway x
DM: thumbs up emoji, end of

He said if she WAS interested in either of us, then she'd BE INTERESTED, but she just isn't. Face it Mum, she just couldn't give a fk.

And he's not wrong.

@Bluddyellfire i feel EVERY WORD you’ve written deep in my bones. I’m never enough, I’m never respected, I’m never allowed to struggle because I can’t possibly have had it as hard as she did. I’m always wrong, I’m always the emotional punching bag, I’m always expected to be the problem solver.

I’m proud of you for realising you are so bloody enough! 💐💐💐

Fks you right up doesn't it? First woman in my family to graduate. Still the only woman in my family to buy a property in her own right. She just cannot be proud of me,

At the audiologist last week they were doing a credit check bc she wanted to put her hearing aids on the interest free payments thing, woman asks her if she has any dependents ie kids under 18 she's responsible for, DM says 'not under 18 but financially dependent maybe' and nods towards me, I nearly lost my sh1t, I haven't asked her for money in 25 years and the last time I did it was because I never ever had done, and DPs had been bankrolling DB for years by this time and never even asked me as a singe parent how I was getting on, or said here love, this is for you because we've given DB something.

As a matter of fact my DDM fell out with me for most of my pregnancy bc I wouldn't accept £ to 'do the sensible thing' about it, it took BOTH of my grandmothers to persuade her she'd showed herself up on that one, and I doubt either of them ever knew about the £..................

YOU'RE NOT CRAZY- IT'S YOUR MOTHER: Freedom for daughters of narcissistic mothers By DANU MORRIGAN

Thats a great book. Very readable and spoke to me the most out of all the books I read on the subject of toxic or narcissist mothers (apart from Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller, which I also found to be an excellent book). Danu Morrigan has a real gift for writing.

Oh, OP how did you not burst out laughing at the audiology appointment, that's ludicrous.

But the way she treated you when pregnant is just horrible, I'm so sorry.

It's not you, it's your mother.

Narcissists like she make for being deplorably bad as parent figures and in addition cannot do relationships at all. She needs a willing enabler to do that and that person is your dad. The men in such women's lives tend to be either as narcissistic as they are or are otherwise discarded.

Keep your mother well away from your kids. She was not a good parent to you when you were growing up and she is a shit grandmother figure to your children too. She will harm them in not too dissimilar ways as to how you have been harmed. You need to drop the rope and all contact with your mother now before she further destroys you emotionally from the inside out.

And you are good enough. She is not.

I hope you gave her a piece of your mind after the audiologist.
I would've lost my shit then and there! You have the Patience of a saint.😐

@SplendidUtterly What would have been the point? I'd have only been 'over-reacting' or 'being ridiculous', just like I 'always' do... So I had a good look round when I got home and unfortunately, between her laughing at me telling her it had been upsetting to not be able to talk to her properly and the 'financially dependent' jab, I found that that was the absolute very last fuck I had left to give to it😁

FUCKING HELL SHE DRIVES ME FUCKING NUTS!!!

She enjoys playing with you, like a cat with a mouse. Give yourself the present of a whole month with absolutely no contact, see how you feel after that.

I'm a gnat's badger away from it right now. We're back on where she lives and how they've all mysteriously fallen out with her for absolutely no reason and she wants to move to basically somewhere exactly the same, and people definitely won't fall out with her because where she is they're all bitches but they won't be here, there or this other place. I've met most of them where she lives. It's definitely her. All of it.

Just do it today. Think of it as an early Xmas present to yourself. It's a scary step to take but you need to do it. Let your DB know what you are doing and tell him you do NOT want him to pass on her tears/tantrums/insults about this.

He never sees it, is only just beginning to get the picture after a couple of recent tantrums in the family WhatsApp. I'm feckin exhausted but he's box fresh. She moves everything around, the endless deflection, putting it back on me, telling me she's basing decisions on stuff I never said. Something earlier about changing her mind about moving to one place, not because she'd realised it wouldn't solve any of her problem but because I'd said I'd seen 200 lads riding round on quadbikes???

If you remove yourself from the family WhatsApp then he WILL see it. And you will be away from her tidal wave of crap. I dare you, do it today...