help me to deal with my mother!

[schooldays]

I have had an issue with my mother since forever. She is a very upsanding member of the community etc etc and thinks she is some type of saint. She is a complete snob and nothing i have ever done is good enough. In fact i think she is appauled by me having a child in my early twenties and now i have recently seperated she is not a happy camper. BUT she doesnt overtly tell me that she is disappointed. In fact i think she does love me but anway this is my problem. SHE WONT STOP CALLING TO SEE ME!!!!!! She calls in un-announced whenever she feels like it. She loves a good chat so she starts these monologues of pure sh*te that bore me to tears. I have asked her twice now to let me know when she is thinking of calling so i can organise myself. She minds my dc's sometimes but althoug i have asked she refuses to comitt to a particular morning or whatever so i know what my week might look like. She basically wants to pop in and out as she wants with no thought of my life. THis particularly upsets me when i get a morning to myself with dc;s in nursery and in she comes asking personal questions and generally making my blood boil.

Also she talks about me behind my back all the time - although i ask her not to tell people w,y and z she will invariably tell people my personal business (what she observes when shes here to things i tell her in confidence - in a weak moment.)

So what to do - i am too cowardly and lacking in confidence to literally tell her to go away and i can see from her point of view that she thinks she is just calling in to see her daughter and granchildren and whats wrong with that and why am i such a cow of a daughter that i dont want to see her etc etc.

Please advise this is really really making me upset. I need space now as im not in the best of form and i have always been a very private person who likes their own space and thinking time.......

siblings think is quite funny - all i get is "ah - shes your mother what can you do?" - basically its not their problem so they dont care. plus from the outside (and if you dont care!) it prob sounds very bitchy that i dont want my mother calling to see me. plus they all have perfect lives (cause mother doesnt see what goes on with them she thinks they are perfec) so she wouldnt dream of speaking to them the way she speaks to me. they are so lucky - they get to phone once a week with the headlines and visit every couple of months with dc's all spruced up and smelling lovely! and it looks great. she doesnt know they get drunk, fight with their spouses, overspend, slob around in pj's on a sat or whatever normal people do. she thinks they are pollyanna all day every day.............

who cares what she thinks. Seriously. Ask yourself why it matters so much what she thinks of you, versus what she thinks of siblings. I mean this kindly.

I dont care at all to be honest. I just dont want her calling everyday doing my head in - it actually reduces me to tears at times. Or sometimes like todyay i was cleaning the house in great form and then she calls and its like all the life has been sucked out of me and my energy is sapped and i spend the rest of the day doing absolutely nothing. I have ME too by the way so my energy is very precious to me and really needs to be minded once i have any at all IYKWIM. She knows this and still wont lift a finger to help me. If i am tidying she just follows me from room to room talking. and sometimes literally stands in my way so i have to say excuse me to get on with whatever im tryin to do. I think for the most part she is completely unaware of alot of this.

Well, she's going to continue to call every day. And to be oblivious to your needs. And if you try to make her "aware" of this, you are likely to have another scene with crying like last time you tried.

So the two things you can act on are:

• stop letting it do your head in, i.e. stop giving a toss that she is not a better person and better mother to you

• hide or tell her to bugger off when she comes and you can't handle it, and again, not give a toss about her reaction to this.

The largest part of your being upset is that you would like her to behave differently. You're only going to frustrate yourself with that line of thinking: her behaviour is under her control only, and clearly, she doesn't want to behave any differently. So stop seeking change from her: just avoid her completely, and detach emotionally for those times when you can't.

She's not going to change, so you have to.. Pick out the advice from this thread on what would work for you.

If she follows you about, ask her not to. If she gets huffy, say, look, arrange a morning to come or we can meet. If she storms off, then leave it a few days, call and arrange a coffee elsewhere. Don't run after her. To get what you want will cause upset.

She talks about you to your dsis as there is no other conversation as they clearly don't tell her things! Follow their example! And did you say they live a long way away from her, not dropping in distance??

Bless you, you have my sympathy. My mum is like this too. I have to confess she called unannounced the first day the kids were back at school (after 6 weeks of them 24/7) and I hid in the bedroom and didn't answer the door! She then sulked all week and didn't email me at all but had obviously got over it by the weekend because she asked if I had been in that day and I said ooh I was washing my hair, I thought I heard the door, all very vague. I'm not sure if she realised or not but hopefully it will make her think about just popping up. I go and see her pretty much every weekend but like you, it sucks the life blood out of me and I need time to recharge. I do feel sorry for her but she says so many nasty things that it only runs so far.

There's a reason your siblings don't live down the road from her

Can you send her a letter telling her that as you have ME your energy has to be carefully conserved, and so if she drops in at a bad time, you won't be answering the door or phone, but if she really wants to help then you will have a list handy of things you need doing (shopping, collecting dcs) which you will leave outside the door.

Then when she turns up and sees the list she may actually do something useful.

If your siblings say anything to you about it you can just say it's a lot easier than moving house.