Musing on whether you currently have a functioning relationship with your mother, should you call her on her previous terrible behaviour.

[DottyboutDots]

My parents are divorced. Both of them are difficult characters but the most excellent fun and dynamic on good days. My father has an amazing ability to compartmentalise his life, which is convenient as it means not seeing his wife whom I loathe on many levels, she was not the OW, just an out and out bitch.

My mother also did some horrendous things to me as we were growing up and is a damaged person from her youth. My DBro acknowledges how she was always lovely and supportive to him but was underhand and almost jealous of me.

Fastforward to now, we have three lovely children and my mother travels down to see them four times a year. They love her and she adores them. The problem is more that now her and I are able to talk normally, after years of me struggling with her, she seems to think that she can rewrite history.

Yesterday, over the phone, she started talking about my dad being a sociopath, as she's just read the study on people in the board room being borderline psychopaths. This irritates me immensely as she is forever trying to point out his flaws while painting herself as perfect. I just replied that, yes he probably was but there is noone in our family who is perfect, to which she replied in a really hurt tone "Sorry for being so over emotional". I calmly said that i wasn't saying she was over emotional (she uses tears often). Anyway, she was then slighted so cut the call short.

Why do I still feel the need in my 40s to make her realise that she isn't the all encompassing perfect one? It's made me feel really down this week.

Fuck, that was long!

Focusing on how you can mitigate against the continuing effects on yourself and your own daughters is IMO a more helpful process than expecting an admission of any sort from your mother. That's likely to be fruitless and in any case isn't the most pressing issue, in my view.

I need to memorise this!

Really good advice. I am currently pregnant and don't know the sex, but have a feeling it's a girl, and while part of me longs for a daughter and all the closeness of that relationship another part of me is terrified of not loving her, not being a good mother. Another little boy would not test me nearly so much, I feel.

Sorry to hijack your thread OP.

I am currently trying to detach more and more from my mother, without her noticing and without involving anyone else in my original family. I want to focus on my own family. But her behaviour seems to be getting worse at the moment, so it's difficult. And I now see straight through her, as does my DH, so that's also hard to deal with, I feel quite enraged and maddened by her on a regular basis.

Sad to say, I have realised now that when she's gone it will be a relief, I think. She makes me so uncomfortable in my own skin, it's a real physical reaction.

redrubyshoes that is good to read how much you love your DD.

I have had these conversations with my mother. They were difficult. As you might expect, we still have differing views of what my family was like - but we do understand one another's views better. She's keen to make amends somehow. I manage her attempts to do so - no-one can give me a secure & happy childhood now, so this is mainly about allowing her to feel better about things. I don't mind her doing this. I have quite a bit of sympathy for her as a fellow woman, though I still think she was a pretty bad mother.

It has been so helpful to read all of your accounts. I too got locked in a basement regularly until I weed or pooed myself. Oddly enough she was both neglectful of me and obsessed with me at the same time - as long as she has me under control in every way.

Do any of you feel that your relationship with your mother and lack of confidence in yourself/your identity has affected your career? I feel that mine certainly has. I have never been able to deal with female bosses (I never understand exactly why) and always leave suddenly or get sacked. With male bosses it works, but I still find it very hard to be proud of myself, to do normal things, progress and develop in a normal way, because of the shaming throughout my childhood.

Sorry to take it off topic OP

I too have difficult relationship with my DM, who can put on a show for everyone but is very different, critical and a bully behind closed doors. At one stage she accused me of being the reason she wants to commit suicide. Every special occasion in my life has been overshadowed by her behaviour. She has sneaky ways of making me feel like shit. Another time she told my new husband things to try and make him think badly of me. He thinks she is a dangerous manipulative woman and stood up to her.

I love her because she is my mother, but I have lost any loving feeling. That is long gone. I love my father too much to hurt my mother so pass myself and we carry on as if nothing ever happened. It hurts. Honestly, no one knows about this outside our family unit.

If I were you OP, I would not bring it up with her. You are hurting because it is meant to be the most natural relationship in the word.
My mum is always saying she misses being friends with me. She will never, ever be friends with me. She has gone too far.

Kayfish - the opposite with me on the work front. I am more determined. However, I cannot take any sort of criticism at al. Very sensitive to any comments/jokes. This has affected me from having a large group of friends as only trust people I know who are genuinely kind.