"But we took you to Stately Homes!" - Dysfunctional parents?

[ItsGraceAgain]

It's October 2010, and the Stately Home is still open to visitors.

Forerunning threads:
December 2007
March 2008
August 2008
February 2009
May 2009
January 2010
April 2010
August 2010

Please check later posts in this thread for links & quotes. The main thing is: "they did do it to you" - and you can recover.

Shongololo, I am glad, well, not glad, but relieved, to know that I am not alone with a Mad Missives Mother. Mine specialises in sending blank cards, yes, totally blank, but with her handwriting on envelope, to me, DCs, DH, for special anniversaries and birthdays. It's priceless, so touching.

Olderandhappier my mum does the totally blank cards as well i'm glad i'm not alone.

Why bother putting a stamp on it if your not going to write anything in it. I dont get it at all.

Good question. Can someone enlighten us?

they are loons. Worse. Passively rageful loons.

Actually scrap that, there is nothing passive about sending blank cards, or one's from whole countries is there.

Maybe i should send them a blank xmas card this year and see what they say

wish I had the guts! Im still struggling over sending any cards at all.
Just got one now from middle db. Has painted tree from youngest nephew on front and - designed by (name of nephew on back) so they have been mass produced for entire family . They do something like this each year.
sweet yes so why does it make me seethe inwardly?

sorry honolulu - full of flu so hard to think let alone put together a response. I agree with what happier wrote. Just didn't realise til I read it.

I am clearly failing to stay disengaged today

Honolulu, I'd tell your mother about the holiday and also tell her you don't want to get into any conversations about it. Maybe promise to catch up with her afterwards. I only say this because it's the sort of thing I do with my mum - like you, I try to avoid game-playing with her. Doesn't mean my approach is the right one for you.

Despite my anti-game-playing stance, I wouldn't be able to resist answering unsigned cards with the same!

It seems I'm going to be invited to my sister's for Christmas - my mother told me so. Mum's planning a family lunch before the holiday so, if that happens (it might not), I can amuse myself by playing Spot The Triangle

Or i'm going to start keeping them and sending them back blank next xmas saving money on cards anyway.

i was told by my councilor if i changed the way i acted with my family then they may change. I dont think this is true and i'me started new counciling with someone new next week. I think my response to xmas and my family has changed but they haven't. I dont think my family would care if i went nc with them

I only speck to my mum out of my whole family and once she dies then i will not have to worry about the rest of them. I just want to make sure i'm a good mum to my son.

therealsmithfield

I think the cards are probably done through school. The kids draw a pic and you buy a pack of mass produced ones (10) and the school get some of the money.

I buy them every year!

Just thought this may help you understand why...it's a school thing. x

On a side note....on my countdown I am 3 days to 'safe space' for anyone that remembers my previous posts.

oh dear this time of year is challenging, blank cards a new one on me, exmil sends them to me with nothing but her signiture, and if I am lucky(NOT) some sarcastic nasty note on the otherside of the card!

I am hoping that I won't get too many cards this year from toxic folk, I asked some of them to stop last year, I did get one from fathers sister, a bit of a long story to go into right now, I am raging this is the woman who stood there when he battered me with a belt, and humiliated me and scapegoated me for something her son did, I was six! Grrrrr... she did some gaslighting and that was the last I had to do with her years ago!

snowy I saw that but only after posting .
Sorry will look back over recent posts?, hope you make it to 'safe space'.

therealsmithfield

No worries!

I have name changed...I am more Snowy than I used to be...

I got a card this morning too

Adress to Mr and Mrs Nemofish on the envelope

Adressed to no one on the inside

I gues she can't remember dd's name

She wrote 'thinking of you at this time of you, love for you is always in my heart'

I may sound like a bitch, but why are you still married to the alky man who offered to show me porn, snogged me, but as he claims he can't remember anything, you believe him? Why didn't you protect me from abuse, bullying (at school and from your husband) why did you not give a flying fuck when you found out I was anorexic? In fact you like to make nasty jokes about what I went through, iirc.

She has never, in my entire life, talked to me in the mushy way she does in cards now. Part of her I think regrets throwing me to the wolves, part of me thinks she does it to appear like a 'normal' mother in case dh reads it. He's not fooled though.

It's just a card with crap written in it. It shouldn't get to me but it does.

"It shouldn't get to me but it does."

...and that's why she does it.

My revenge would be putting the card in the recycling....with the junk mail.

Just opened box from my mum which has been in the hallway for past two weeks. It was the box she alluded to in her recent facebook message.
I opened it and was shocked that she had not even bothered wrapping presents. It looks like they were sent direct from shop purchased on line. Im not disrepsecting the power of online shopping btw . It's something I love but do normally get gifts seent to me to wrap and sent.
I got 3 cards seperately and it is same as last year in that she gushes in my dcs cards (think last year she wrote something along the lines of, 'one day we will meet my darling g'daughter' in dd's card-she was 19months at the time)
Again this year she is curt and short calls me by my long name which she never did before.
Like you say briar it's designed to push buttons.
She hasnt changed from her stance in my last ever conversation with her where she said she didnt care about me not wanting a relationship but her grandchildren ...well I am depriving her.
You are right I should shred. I should give the bloody thoughtless gifts to charity.
I dont understand why I dont.
The closest I got was slinging her easter eggs for dcs up on top of a cupboard where they have remained.
I feel like I am still attempting to play at the 'good' daughter?..to cancel out scapegoat label perhaps.

nemo sending you a hug. And a virtual card with all you names on

briar Found you..am with you now. i think staying relaxed is so important. Last year i was trying so so hard to make it perfect and ended up barking at dh

We can't cancel out the 'scapegoat' label, coz we didn't earn the label...it was foisted upon us...we actually don't own that identity.

Try revamping the story therealsmithfield if you donate the 'gifts' to charity you are spreading your Mothers goodwill far and wide...how proud she would be....

I am not ignoring anyone here... so Hi to everyone else...it's just that some of the situations described are difficult for me to advise on now as I'm past the pacifying stage....so my 'solutions' would be rather harsher than you maybe looking for.

((Hugs)) and strength to all. xx

I understand Snowy. I told my mother to f off 5 years ago when pregnant with dd, so my responses can tend to the 'bin her!' side of things!

I get dh to read cards in case there's anything too 'orrible in them. And then he bins them if there is.

trs yes give them to charidee. I get something for the appeal for children in care every year and that makes me feel better - it could have been me there if it wasn't for my boyfriend's lovely family unofficially taking me in at 14 until I was 18.

I have stopped myself e-mailing / ringing my delightful mother several times today with "If you 'love me' then why x, y, z?" and "can narcissists actually understnad love?"

I keep thinking that if I just say this or that or explain my side of things, she will get it and understand. But I'm talking shite aren't I?

Can't help but agree nemo....the "oh just fuck off" option has saved me and my kids.

Her last attempt at communication was last christmas, which was to wish me a happy christmas"....no one else in "my" family, ie kids or h. And to understand the damage of doing that, which to a normal person seems perfectly innocent, is that she had been gaslighting my h (no still not promoted to "d")into believing that I was evil, and must be destroyed. How utterly confused must he have been? She'd been doing this from the moment she was allowed back in my life. ERROR!!!!!!

All those times I felt sick and anxious, that was for a dead good reason....because my body and my brain were telling me "danger" because it was/is fucking real. It was a danger to my very existence.

I am still angry that he didn't/ doesn't get it, but at the same time sorry that he was caused so much pain...and it was tangible and visible last boxing day. He just doesn't get what the hell happened. And then OF COURSE... she totally denied it. Because that is what they do.

Now try and explain that to a person from a normal family. The dynamics are so subtle and so ongoing, that no one.....(thank God for the Stately Home) would get it.

One of the best validations came from my teenage ds...

" that's why she buys such crap presents"

Well yes. That is why. He is still in touch with his wonderchild, God bless him.

My therapist said to me that it would have been better if we(sisters and I) had have been taken into care. They would be utterly HORRIFIED to hear that, but that's because they still live in weird world.

There's no way I could do this one foot in/ one foot out thing. I can't begin to say how amazing those of you who do it are! I simply would be in an early grave.

I just realised that I said I was ANGRY! And it fell out like it was ok! Well fuck me. Gleeeeeeee!

Nemo

Your Mother just can't get it...she hasn't got the emotional capacity...don't forget they are 'stuck' at 2 y/o's in their emotional development.

...and that doesn't mean you are talking shite at all...it means you are an eternal optimist who still believes in the good things in life..even after all the crap you've been through.

Well done for retaining your compassion and humanity.

yes older. I'll never forget all the faces dh has made when I have mentioned something about how I grew up / what we did / didn't do. Usually a mixture of

It has taken a few years for the bits of information to drip out of me, disclosing bit by bit, for him to 'get it' as he comes from a normal loving family.

I wish she could understand what she has done to me. She has killed me. I walk around a dead person at the moment. I am 33 and on anxiety medication, feel worthless, desperately fighting the urge to get off my head on whatever drug I can get my hands on, defeated, stuck, empty, guilty, ashamed, unable to trust, unable to form relationships (apart from dd and dh thank god) and she and her husband get to sit and sip tea and feel fucking good about themselves because they are right right right and they are rid of the 'little bitch,' the 'demon stepdaughter' the nut the crazy girl. She talks to herself you know. Made up all these stories about 'abuse.' Pah.

Fucking bitch I could kill her right now.