I don't like my mum.......

[mojomummy]

.the problem is too long & labourious to write here .

The bottom line is, how do you tell your mum you don't really like her & don't want to see her anymore - or until she gets her shit together ?

She is about 3 stone overweight, the only excercise she gets is walking to the kitchen to make cups of tea or find something else to eat.

She lives in some odd odd place (Oh I'm an eccentric, she says proudly) & she is driving me round the bend & this has been going on for several years now.

I had a miscarriage in august & when I told her she said ( after I'd commented on her weight) that there must be something wrong with me. She keeps telling DD she is a good girl - ( DD rubs the window...cue bigfanfare, oh good girl)

I've just had enough, I'm pregnant again & I find that any contact with her makes me stressed & I just can't cope with her & her idiotic ways, please, does anyone have any suggestions ? (I've spoken to counsellors, friends, poor DH has had enough) My accupuncturist suggested that it's her life & if she want to be like that, it's her choice, but I guess I feel sad that I don't have the mum anymore that I used to love & think was the best thing ever. I've tried telling her evrything, but it's almost like she refuses to take anything on board.

We've just had a few days away & she got up late, ate too much, said after a couple of walks she done quite enough exercise. It's just goes on & on. & because she ruined our break too.

I think there are two different kinds of difficult relationship being discussed - for some people they become gradully disillusioned and outgrow the need for a parent, which causes pain and insecurity on both sides, especially if the parent's reaction is to become more controlling and critical in response to their role being threatened. However in my mother's case, and I suspect others' too, such a relationship never existed! One of my earliest memories is of crawling onto my mother's lap to comfort her because she was crying and I was worried about her. I have been looking after her ever since. It's very hard to contemplate ever making even tiny changes to a relationship like that. The mother is hypervigilant because deep down she knows that only a steady campaign of blackmail and guilt-tripping will keep things as they are, and that the daughter would pull away if she could. People who are insecure in the long-term like that become cunning and have very effective strategies for preventing change!! It's like trying to prise off a limpet with a lolly stick (and you don't want to hurt the limpet!)

Bloody hell. I don't really know what to say now

Meanoldmummy, do you know why your mum was crying, the reason for her depression?

Spidermama, Mojo - do you have any clues as to your mothers behaviour?

Two articulate, enlightened posts there meanonldM and forestfern. This thread is really making me think.

Mercy, it's so complicated and woven into the fabric of my mum's journey. (Her dad died in the war when she was three, she carried out a knitting needle abortion on herself at 17, she and my dad split up and divorced etc etc...) So much pain, so little learned. I feel I take the pain on for her because she won't/can't take it on for herself. Either that or I'm not allowed my own pain because anything I go through can't possibly be as bad as what she has had to endure. She scorns my pain (miscarriage etc).

I do know the reasons for her depression and they are pretty awesome reasons - horrific child abuse, followed by abandonment, followed by a really miserable foster family - it's one of the reasons I can never just stick two fingers up as my brother and sister have done. I'm the only one who knows all the awful details (q.e.d. cunning strategies for preventing me from abandoning her!) When I comforted her when I was two, it was because she was crying while periodically shouting "you bastard" to my dad who was blundering about drunk in the kitchen - I remember being afraid that he would come in and thump her, and that if I crawled onto her lap she would stop antagonising him because she wouldn't swear in front of me - sorry, it all sounds so mawkish but you did ask!!

My DH has the former kind of appalling relationship with his mother. When we first met he was always terrified of her because she was so controlling and critical, virtually kept him prisoner in the house and demanded impossible levels of achievement. Pathetically, I was jealous because he had a mother who seemed to care about him rather than wanting to suck his blood... I don't think either of us really understood the other's point of view for quite a while. The grass is always greener....

Why are my messages always so damn long? Verbal diarrhoeah, sorry!!

FGS Don't apologies.
Long posts but my God Meanoldmummy ... you really do have a tale to tell.

Spidermama I do feel for you. It all sounds like such a lot of pain for you and I know what it is like to have someone prevent you from healing properly.

"So much pain, so little learned"....it says it all!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Obviously I mean 'apologise'.
Sorry. It's the wine.

Have a glass for me...I am stuck with Lemsip tonight!!!

This thread is really helpful and interesting (even without any wine!!)

This thread has really hit a nerve with me. The book recommendation looks interesting. I am also trying to find a way out of a toxic mother-daughter relationship.

Meanoldmummy - your story nearly made me cry. Big hugs.

www.travelin-tigers.com/zlyn/bktoxic.htm
I would also recommend you read this from the same author (Susan Forward).

I feel that Meanoldmummy made an excellent point here:-
"I think there are two different kinds of difficult relationship being discussed - for some people they become gradully disillusioned and outgrow the need for a parent, which causes pain and insecurity on both sides, especially if the parent's reaction is to become more controlling and critical in response to their role being threatened". However in my mother's case, and I suspect others' too, such a relationship never existed!.

It is all too easy for people who are not in toxic relationships to say that you should get on with your parents. All parents make mistakes; this is okay and normal. Such minor parenting mistakes though are not causing untold and lasting harm to children who will become adults. This is entirely different kettle of fish from toxic parents who demean, control, abuse and constantly undermine their children throughout their childhoods so that they are affected by this in adulthood. They are using their children as a scapegoat for their past and blaming them for their mistakes.

I would certainly therefore recommend "Toxic Parents" to those affected by such toxic and painful mother/daughter relationships.

I have certainly become more disillusioned with mis parentes over the past decade especially since marrying (they were not too thrilled by this) and having a child. That's only part of it though: its now been my painful realisation that they have never been fully supportive of me and show favoritism towards my brother.

I went to bed about 9:30pm last night because I had to switch off thinking about everything. I've only just got up now so have missed lots!

My mum seems quite different. She loved me dearly/intensely/passionately. She threw her whole-self into me up until I started to do my own things around 11/12/13. She wanted me to be confident, so was always telling me I was good/clever/had lovely legs etc. Of course I grew up thinking I was special & had a bit of a shock when I discovered I was just an average girl with chubby legs. I practically just had to walk into a room & I'd get a round of applause ! However, apart from all this praising I don't think I was evr nurtured & cared for - it was fine all the time I didn't have an opinion, in fact for years I held my mums opinion

When I was 18 my parents divorced, I went to camp america & on my return I was made homeless. My grandparents took my mum is & said "there ws no room at the inn" for me. I ended up living in lodgings for almost a year. 6mths later I was seeing the dr on a weekly basis & having anti-depressants.

Because my mum & granny use the term 'love' so frequently, it just doesn't have any meaning. Afterall, they professed to love me, but never took care of me.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, just adding more of the things which cause me hurt & pain

meerskatunite - good link - thanks

Mojomummy - glad you're back, I felt really guilty posting my long diatribes on your thread! Your story was really upsetting - I can just imagine how betrayed and let down you must have felt. What happened to you was very unfair. To have been so loved and secure, and then to find out that none of it has any real foundation. 18 is still very young, it must have been awful for you to come back and find your home life blasted apart. Your mum does sound very selfish to me. I think the trouble with mothers is that you have to keep seeing and socialising with the person who has caused all the colossal bad feeling you are experiencing. With anyone else you could take a break from them (or run a mile) and have a chance to heal. Maybe its also doubly annoying to see them enjoying a "second chance" with our own children - not only do we feel they don't bloody well deserve it, but there's the worry that they might hurt them as well. I try so hard to bring my children up without degrading, humiliating and terrifying them...exposing them to her feels like letting them play on the railway! My mother is going through a bit of a weird depression at the moment. She's proposing to put her (v. disturbing) paintings up all over her living room and lay rubber tiles on the floor, to make it look like a modern art gallery. At the moment it's carpeted and decorated in a sort of tasteful Rococo - my kids are used to it. I'm a bit worried that it'll be unsettling for them. I know I have no right to tell anyone they can't change their home in case it upsets my boys...but I remember when she made my stepdad shave her head when I was twelve, and when she did her experiment to "mummify" fish and left them rotting and stinking in front of the house for two weeks - I dreaded coming home from school, and having to see the neighbours! and countless other weird and not very wonderful phases we all had to put up with. Black humour just doesn't cover it, believe me.

Thanks for the link Meerkatsunite!!

Hi meanoldmummy - thanks - it's good (in a weird way) to read & share other's experiences. It's also quite difficult say such things about your flesh & blood, but I think it's quite liberating to get it all out.

My 'stuff'has come to a head since having DD in June 2003. I feel almost everything my mum says is nonsense. I really don't like feeling this way, & the reason I posted was because I have to leave her be as I REALLY can't cope with her the way she is. I've tried to help her, but I'm just draining myself. The literature from MKU link was very helpful. I do feel better that it's ok to feel the way I do.

It's good to read the straight talkers on here too. When I spoke to a counsellor, she kept saying, ooh you're very angry Fiona ( that isn't mine name, but she got confused & called me this).

Perhaps we should have a dysfunctional mum thread & post when we want to let off steam !

So for all of you. There's nothing I can say except I wish you all well and thank you for sharing your stories.

Message withdrawn

It's surprising how many of us are suffering with difficult mothers! I have always felt as though nobody could possibly understand what I was living with. It is helpful to find that there are other sane, pleasant, intelligent people who through no fault of their own are putting up with nightmare mums! There is a subconscious assumption that if you are stuck in one of these relationships then you must be partially the cause of the problem and the need must be mutual. Poppycock!! But you're not allowed to wish your mother would "just disappear" - that would be unnatural and shocking! It would certainly be helpful for those of us with "problem" mothers to have somewhere to vent regularly. I agree about the counsellor. I've seen several, when I was younger and it was free but none of them seemed to have anything helpful to offer. It's a particularly intractable problem I think. For a counsellor it's like asking them to help somebody adjust to living with a heroin addiction without removing the heroin. The obvious route back to health and happiness is for us to ditch our mothers and get on with our futures. But we all have our reasons for not being able to do that.

I definitely think things have come to crisis point for me since I had my children (2002 and 2004). I think it's a combination of her being more poisonous and me being less able to tolerate it. There's more to fight for on both sides. The thought of her having any influence on them....shudder!!

Spidermama

After 33 years of failing to find the words for my mother, you did it for me.

"So much pain, so little learned".

I have a new mantra to help me put her behaviour into persepctive

Re meanoldmummy's last post...I think other people think we must be at least partly to blame.

I had a particularly horrible time between 13-18. My best schoolfriend once reacted to my suffering with the immortal line "I think it's six of one and half a dozen of the other". This was despite the fact my home situation was so bad that I never felt I was able to bring friends home (hence, she had never actually met my mother yet was judging the situation).

Looking back, it was quite a stereotyped phrase for a kid of fourteen to come out with. I suspect her mother had said it.

And on the issue of counsellors having nothing to offer, it's only people who've been through it, or are currently going through it, who can really offer anything. I've had three lots of counselling. The last lot was the best (I was 29 and I think the extra maturity helped me realise I couldn't change her, so I stopped waiting for things to get better).

The best bits of advice, the things I hold onto, have come from fellow sufferers (like the thing Spidermama just said).

I am in a terrible situation with my mum as she donated a kidney to me when I was 19 and treated it as something to get me sorted and out of hre way!I know deep down she did it for good reasons but she has never said so and has carried on treating all of us like dier ever since.I love the so much pain so little learned analogy it is spot on.I have now tried to see her as just an aging woman with no joy in her life which is all she is really and it does make it easier although xmas is always tricky.i have never had therapy but my sister has had yrs of it trying to come to terms with this and tbh she is no further down the road of recovery from it and often seems more upset by it than me.I think the best healing is to be a good mother yourself.When i had ds (he is 11)a lot of her crap just paled into insignificance My heart goes out to you all though because I think we measure our views of what a mother is against a media ideal of unconditional love and acceptance when the reality is not always that xxx