Why does my 26 year old daughter hate me so much.

[cazakstan]

I have 2 daughters of 22 and 26. My eldest left home at 16 after an argument and for the past almost 11 years has visited and stayed occasionally. She's just finishing a masters degree and has nowhere else to live and so has been staying at home with myself, my partner and my younger daughter. I must admit my relationship is not fantastic...it's always hard with her...it's like she has always had a bee in her bonnet with me. It's easier with my youngest daughter...what you see is what you get and we have a great relationship...but...my eldest...god...for the past 11 years it's been like walking on egg shells...she criticises almost everything I do or buy for her. She,s well travelled, educated, has a steady boyfriend. It has been getting harder each visit. Yesterday she would not stop criticising my younger daughter...my mother was here visiting...my youngest ended up in tears and left...even after that my eldest did not let up.. even after I asked her several times and then told her to shut the fuck up. My mother said she thought WW3 was about to erupt...she offered to take my eldest home with her...I said that was a good idea...give the situation a couple of days to cool off. It ended up with my eldest saying that she would be homeless, not be able to finish her masters and that she would never see me again. My mother left with my eldest. I had little sleep last night. I messaged her this morning saying that I did not throw her out, that she needed to get on with her life and not be making comments on my daughters life or mine, also that she needed to lighten up. That I was her mother and that she would always be welcome home, that she needed us as a family. 10 minutes later she replied...we were not a family, we do not behave like a proper family, that she has got on with her life without a family and continue to do so. OMG. My mother phoned me early evening to say that my daughter needed her books and clothes...I said that since my daughter was being so nasty to me that it was maybe best that my partner drop her stuff off thus avoiding a confrontation between her and I. My mother passed the phone to my daughter who immediately called me two faced then said why can't I talk to her like an adult. I hung up. I hung up to avoid any arguments. So that's where I am...I love her but don't like her. I don't like her animosity towards me and I cannot bear to argue with her. I want her to be happy and to get over whatever it is that makes her hate me.

Not your first post. Your most recent post

"Be her mother". How rude is that.

really? that's a personal attack in your opinion?

That's not a personal attack. Their relationship has barely functioned for years. It's a fact.

I think you may be a little confused about what a personal attack actually is.

caster you've regularly focussed on individuals on this thread implying they are emotionally poor lickle things who must have ishoos. i've suddenly noticed that you've never shared anything about your own situation or relationships with your mother or daughter. only constantly focussed on others to try and undermine their views.

that is a bit.... odd.

Do you want the mum to come back on or not?
If you do, it is going to have to be a lot more delicate than that.

Last night I was on a thread with a woman who was near to committing suicide. There are times and places on here, where you have to tread very delicately.

We want the op to come back do we not, for all the family's sake.

Oh I have ishooos. I'm happy to hold my hand up to my ishooos and I don't think they undermine the credibility of my opinions (I know you don't think they do but caster seems to). My ishooos are the whole point of my contribution, unless the op wants to end up permanently estranged from her daughter something needs to change.

Oh and I should add that my father made periodic attempts to contact me, but instead of saying " I'm sorry, my behaviour was wrong and cowardly, I miss you, you are a wonderful daughter and I would love to repair the damage I have done to our relationship when you are ready to let me" he said "whine whine moan moan poor ickle me your mother was difficult there's nothing wrong with falling inline with someone else poor me poor me poor me".

And I was repulsed frankly.

The op may well have scarpered by now.
Who knows.
But I think for this particular op to want to speak again on here, right now it isnt right is it.

We want to help her towards mending her relationship with her daughter do we not?
We are unlikely to ever have the daughter on this thread. The mum is the person we might have. Long shot I know.

cazakstan-I have experienced the hurt and nastiness that can happen in mum/daughter relationships.

My advice is to remember that there are TWO perspectives to this. Neither is probably accurate. Both have become tainted by history so that every communication is fragile and prone to misinterpretation.

That includes your reaction. So you must step back and rethink which is very hard to do when it seems that someone is hellbent on attacking you.

I felt like I was a victim of emotional abuse. Having been in an EA relationship with her father it felt as if she'd learnt rather too well how to do it.

We had joint counselling and separate counselling. I recommend it.

I bit back my emotional retorts to very nasty behaviour. However I did not accept abusive behaviour. I extended frequent invites to build a better relationship.

My counsellor advised me to refuse to accept the nasty behaviour - this was very frightening because I worried about driving her away or losing her. I stood up to it but in a calm measured way. I e-mailed several times - long deeply considered e-mails always telling her I loved her and wanted to change things to be better but also saying I would not tolerate certain behaviour. I acknowledged my failings (even if they were not due to negligence or lack of care...I had failed her) Sometimes this was quite hard because I'd been through a really awful time with my divorce and had worked really hard to protect them...to acknowledge I'd failed... hurt very deeply. I had failed in a situation where I was always going to fail...I'd still failed and they needed to know I wished it wasn't so.

We now have a great relationship - it's taken months/years. I still feel scarred and hurt badly by her but as other posters have pointed out we are the parents...it is a parents role to suck up hurt/rejection and love them still - this does not mean tolerating abusive behaviour.

My advice: she needs to know you want a relationship with her. She needs to know there are boundaries to her behaviour. You need to consider how she feels and what hurt she has experienced and felt regardless of whether you feel she should feel like that. SHE FELT IT. That's what matters

Chubfuddler
I do agree that with the best will in the world, by some children, the mums or dads will not be able to, or even want, to mend a relationship.

The op may be that sort of person. But , from what little she has written, I dont think she is.
I think she would acknowledge though, that she probably, may have, quite a long way to go.

Wow this thread is a fucking car crash

A great post HenWithAttitude.

I think that there is a lot of assumption being made as the OP has failed to return. Obviously that is natural as she has not supplied more details for us to get a more balanced perspective of the situation. There is a lot of reading into this and IMO projection of personal experiences. I'm not saying that what some have posted isn't the case but I do agree with castor that we don't know all the details and it does sound from the op that the mother does want to change things. We are all presuming a lot of the back story and we just don't know the facts. As such I do agree that some of the comments to the op may be unfair.

I stand by my earlier post at the start if the thread to suggest counselling with a third party to get to the bottom of these issues. Without more information to go on all analysis of the situation is speculation which may be right/may be wrong but agree much is not supportive of the op.

great post and exactly what many have tried to say i think - that you have to be able to hear and acknowledge their feelings and be willing to face having to hear stuff you may not agree with but needs to be acknowledged as real feelings even if not seemingly justified by reality from your perspective.

i'm sorry you went through all that but really commend you for working it through and not giving up. your daughter is lucky to have you x

Totally agree henwithattitude. - that is the kind I advice the op needs. Not projection of others bad experiences which may or may not be an accurate view if the situation with her daughter.

OP, I think you should ask your daughter:

What is it you would like me to do?

If I commit to doing it to the best of my ability, but sometimes I make mistakes, are you going to be able to live with that?

You won't know why she hates you until you ask her, rather than asking MN.

For it to make any difference you have to ask her expecting that you may be shocked and hurt by her reply. If you can't go through that painful process, you should keep a respectful distance.

I think it's very easy to make judgements on other mums when you have not been in their position yet.

Parenting teenagers is a completely different ball game to parenting 8 year olds. The talk on this thread about the OP not going and getting her 16 year old child would be kind of funny, if it didn't demonstrate a complete lack of empathy and understanding.

Agree with ShirleyFuckingKnot.

Shirley I take your point that it is easy to be judgemental when one has not had personal experiences, but as someone whose eldest went through an incredibly difficult patch at 17-19 I do feel very able to say that a decent parent keeps the door open. It may not be possible to drag a 16 year old home, I agree, but would love to hear that the OP spent the four months trying every which way to reach out to her child and resolve the issues.

This thread seems to have descended into looking at one, historical, aspect of the situation. Personally, I would just like the OP to come back and tell us about how she envisages having a better relationship with her eldest child, and her thoughts about her child's feelings.
Because that really would put a whole different spin on things.

I have read all the posts on here and from what I can make out it seems that there are an awful lot of people out there who are too quick to judge...I have not given too many details about this because I simply just don't know where to start...I had thought that over the last 10 years that mostly everything was fine between myself and my 2 daughters...they wind each other up and fall out from time to time but who doesn't. The issue really was with my eldest constant comments towards others including myself and my youngest daughter, she had just been going on and on and on...and would not let up...then everything just blew up. My own mother was here and I can't help but think that this added to the situation...if she wasn't here that afternoon everything would have just gone on...My daughter was I think showing off.
I wish that my own mother had not visited as earlier that morning the three of us...me, and both my daughters had enjoyed a lovely girlie morning shopping, came home and made lunch...everything was fine.
And now..my oldest daughter is over staying at my mothers after picking up some of her stuff yesterday afternoon...I did get a message from her yesterday morning saying that everything had blown up out of proportion... I sent her a message back saying that I agreed and thought that we should try talking to each other. I thought that she would return home.
As it stand now...she has deleted me from her Facebook account and I feel hurt by that.
I sent her a message last night saying that I was so so very sorry for any hurt I have caused her, that she is welcome home at any time, that if she wanted to come home and needed me to fetch her I would at anytime and from anywhere.
Over the past ten years I have been there...
All through uni...and the problems that came with that. The phone calls home when she couldn't figure things out herself and wanted advice.
The endless trips to support her almost 600 miles a time.
The calls from the other side of the world when she'd lost her case or ran out of money.
All normal stuff...
She spent a whole year in Australia with her boyfriend and the dilemma of leaving him over there whilst she did her masters...
Over the past 2 years we have spent hours and hours talking about her life choices both good and bad....the times she has called me sobbing over her boyfriend or her uni work...almost every time she say thanks mum.
Then there's all the times she's put pressure on me to make a cakes for 50 people the very next day she asked for it...
She knows that I love her to bits and that I am so very proud of her...
we're just normal. Who can honestly say that they never have any problems with family...

Your first post reads "for the past 11 years it's been like walking on egg shells...she criticises almost everything I do or buy for her."

Your latest post reads "I had thought that over the last 10 years that mostly everything was fine between myself and my 2 daughters"

So it was mostly ok or you were walking on eggshells and being criticised on almost everything?

Glad you are back.

Wow,you left a lot out of your previous posts!

Now all sounds like a cross between a row[of which you all probably have too often], and you cant take her critisising you and her sister.[your mum being there doesnt seem to help].

But I dont get why you think that she hates you?

And also wonder if try and avoid confrontation - maybe because you have had enough of it with your own mother perhaps?

Should read "And also wonder if you try and avoid confrontation.."

Gosh...a bit of both...when she's at home we do have to be careful with what we say...who doesn't walk on eggshells from time to time.
The thing with my eldest is that I have had no control over what has happened...believe me I tried everything when she left at 16...she's almost 27 now. I did have counselling at the time and I know that she did too...just not together.
My biggest problem here I think is with my mother interfering she certainly did then and although I can't be sure about now I suspect that she still is.
Please don't take everything so literally..
I have always supported my eldest in the best way that I can...I have been criticised many times over the way I cook...what I cook...what I buy for her...stuff she likes one time she doesn't the next.
One thing I can't get is that yes it's been hard over the years...but...just the past week or two before this happened she had praising me and complementing me on almost everything...to the way I looked, my relationship with my partner, my cooking. Then pow.
You know it's really hard... It feels like I can't do right for doing wrong with my daughter and with what I post on here...
We are certainly not dysfunctional...I think we're probably just normal after reading some of the stuff on here...

Oh...and if I don't post for the rest of this evening it's 'cos we're dropping my youngest daughter off for a night shift at the local hospital then going for a much needed drink...and no I'm certainly not a piss head. One glass of red wine and I'm shitfaced...almost.