Does your Mum like you?

[DevonCiderPunk]

and if not, how do you both deal with it?

Mine doesn't... she tries her best to hide it, but I just get on her nerves. About 10 years ago the penny dropped and I started asking around the family and it turns out that she can spend a good half hour telling anyone who will listen about my flaws. This was a very hard thing to hear, but I've always known it deep down. If I tell her something in confidence (e.g. depression, marriage problems) she will take it straight to others and exaggerate it. And if I am having a hard time she will always find a way to make me feel like I deserved it.

It's incredibly sad and I would do just about anything to avoid this happening with my own daughter. What to do?

I don't know if/how much she loves me but I grew up with the feeling that she certainly didn't care much and my siblings were her favourites.
I am the middle child.

Oh how I deal with it?

I moved as far as I could and have minimal contact.

I don't know what she says about me to other people when I am not there, but she still compares me to my siblings in front of me to anyones who want or doesn't want to listen. of course she lists their achievements only and all my flaws. There isn't other way round.
I don't care anymore.
Says more about her then me TBH, and people probably notice.

Devon, sending you these

No mine doesn't. Actually struggle a lot with it. She will criticise, get bored when I tell her something I have done. It's very, very sad.

You won't have that relationship with your daughter because you are so aware of it.

No. She doesn't like my dsis either. She only likes other peoples children. She would laugh at me with my friends when I was a teenager. She loves my cousins children and is really quite obsessive about them. She quite often says spiteful things to me and then plays the innocent eg "when you're like this I can see why your ex H (repeatedly unfaithful with prositutes, verbally, physically and financially abusive) treated you like he did!" She then tried to say that she had only said it to strengthen me against his repeated attacks .

She is very material and is never happy or excited about gifts I buy her, her response is always very muted and as though she is just being polite towards this piece of shit I have presented to her. She never asks me about my studying or life just talks about herself and her own life.

She bitches and back stabs me to everyone else in my extended family with the result that neither my dsis or I have any kind if relationship with them. They all have big family meals to which we are never invited, we hear about them afterwards.

She was also horribly physically and mentally abusive towards us growing up.

My mum does like me and love me. But she just isn't that interested in me. She cares but has no real emotional capacity to ever put me first (or anywhere near the top of her priority list). It's been like this since I was about 12. No real interest in my schooling or university. She never asks about my work, friends etc. She adores my children but has never offered to babysit for an evening so DH and I can go out for a meal (eldest is 6). All that may sound a bit woe is me but it is hurtful when you know that from a young age, your mum just expected you to sort yourself out while she was supporting every Tom, Dick and Harry.

For me, all of this came to a head 18 months ago. When I realised that as a mother of a dd myself, I was desperate not to go down the same road. The two things that really helped were reading "The Emotionallly Absent Mother" and a few months of counselling.

I now accept the situation for what it is. It doesn't upset me any more. We spend time together and it's fine because I have stopped hoping that she will step up a bit.

How I deal with it?

I used to really struggle with it and I was extremely screwed up in my twenties. Then I had my dc and now I couldn't give a flying f*ck anymore. I know what real love is now and she doesn't matter anymore, she's just a nasty bully, I feel sad sometimes but I have at least accepted that's how it is.

My mum wants me to like her. She is so narcissistic, the question does she like me actually threw me for a moment – it's never occurred to me! I don't expect her to actually like me, it's just not like that. She doesn't know me, because she never actually takes an interest in me.

If you asked her, she would effuse that I am wonderful and of course she adores me, because she likes to think we get on. But she constantly sits in judgement on me for everything - my weight, my parenting, my house not being adequate for her needs, my DP, my kids. She hurts me deeply with inconsiderate, awful actions, undermining criticisms and sneering.

I do worry about whether I can maintain a good relationship with my kids when they are older and especially my DD, because of my relationship with my mum. But I do know I like my DC, at least, and I want them to be able to have the relationship with me that they choose, and not try to force anything on them. I hope I can stick to that.

You can start by just trying to make sure you don't do what your mum does. Keep your DCs' secrets, don't slag them off to people, be empathetic and not judgmental – and you will already be unlike your mum.

Nope. She tells anyone, including me, that we have 'nothing in common'. She is very religious and I am not.

We don't talk or see each other much. It would be nice to have a mum, but I haven't since I was 17, and even then it was clear she didn't like me much, so it's not like I know what I am missing. I deal with it by pretending it's fine, and not thinking about it too much.

That is interesting sparkling, I need to be like this. But since becoming a mum recently, I love him so much that I think it has made me so sad she wasn't loving to me really.

It took a while mrs my children are 11 and 7 now and in their early years I felt like you do. However after she cut me off and refused to speak to me for nearly a year after I told her I wouldn't wean my 6 week old ds on her advice (thus missing her first grandchild's first year) and then did almost exactly the same when dd was born, again missing almost her whole first year, I just thought "you treat me like that but you won't treat my dc like that!".

Thank you all. It's such a difficult thing to talk about. I doubt myself all the time, and I work hard to protect us both from it as I know it causes her pain.

What I do find hard sometimes is watching the relationship between my MIL and my DH. They are very close in a lovely way. I would never begrudge them that closeness but it does make me think sometimes.

With my mum, I've accepted because I know the reason why. She had a terrible start in life with her own mother and was then brought up by a very cold step mother. No counselling, no self help guides. All swept under the carpet.

I don't think mine does but this is quite a new realisation for me. Actually, that might be unfair - she probably likes me but will never love me the way she loves my brother. i have felt in his shadow my entire life and nothing i do ever matches up - even though he really doesn't have a great life or anything to be of.

She doesn't listen to me and though she tried to help me with my marriage breakdown, all she could say for the first few calls whilst i'm a mess on the other end of the phone - they live abroad - was 'i don't know what to say', over and over. But i guess she tried to help

i also really worry about my relationship with my DD as i never want to be so emotionally distant or unsupportive. I guess, as a pp said, because we're aware it won't happen to us... but i genuinely live in fear that it will want to go and cuddle DD now and let her know I'll always be there for her

Do you ever wonder how different you would turn out if your mum (and dad in my case) adored you and was PFB (in a good sense) to you, specially when you were growing up?

I do. And I think I would fucking amazing if I had had some love, attention and encouragement when I was a child.

And this is the reason why I am so excited about Dd's life. She is so lucky she has her dad and me, I am waiting to see how well turned out she will be and all the marvellous things she will do with herself!

My mother didn't like me and she didn't love me.

I went NC with her a couple of years ago. It was the best decision I ever made.

I think the saddest thing for me is that she's retty much ruined my chances of being loved by anyone else ever because she made no effort to hide it, or change it and I always knew growing up that she didn't like me because I was unlikeable and didn't love me because I was unloveable and, because I was a child and she was my mother, I believed her.

I'm now in counselling and incapable of having a proper relationship.

I know I have a different relationship with my children.

I do wonder what it must be like to have a proper, loving, reliable mum who doesn't pull the rug out from under you all the time. I don't expect my mum to ever change, and I wouldn't want her to now, because I will never trust her anyway.

But I do still get jealous, sometimes to the point of tears, when I see other people with their nice mums, mums who genuinely help out with and love their DGC, are emotionally supportive and fun to have around. Sometimes I feel myself gravitating towards other people's mums or nice older women of "surrogate mum" age and have to stop myself before I get too needy. Something deep inside me wants to shout out "be my mum!" (Luckily I've never actually done it!)

I've been divorced twice folkgirl none of my relationships work out! my boundaries are too poor and I just don't know how to conduct myself healthily in them. I find myself very heightened emotionally and literally can't cope with the feelings they create especially if they are not reciprocated, I never know when to give up and walk away, always hanging in being treated like crap. So, no more relationships for me. It's better for my dc and myself that way.

sparkly You know, I post a lot on MN about my mother and the way I feel as a result of her. Counselling has revealed that I choose abusive relationships because that's the only model I recognise and that I can't tell the difference between someone who isn't abusive and someone who isn't interested.

But what you've said has been like a lightbulb. I can't cope with the feelings relationships create either. I can't handle it. I find it is a relief to end a relationship because the feelings are just too much. I hate it!

i don't know afrodite - that is my brother and he has had my parents fighting his battles, making allowances, defending him and his choices his entire life... he's 40 and they still do it! He takes no responsibility for anything he does and has few friends, no significant other or really any prospects. It could have been very different as he's not a bad man - just indulged and coddled.

I think healthy levels of love, support etc - absolutely! PFB - no thank you (but that could be bitter second born, as the PFB i expect its pretty sweet!)

No mine doesn't. I've responded by not liking her much either. Every now again when the stars are perfectly aligned we'll see eye to eye on something but the moment doesn't last long. It's very fraught.

My biggest fear is repeating this pattern with my DCs.

I think we sound extremely alike folkgirl I bet our mothers would get on like a house on fire!

This thread is enlightening. I am sad to hear it affects relationships. I am married to a very kind person but my mother tried to sabotage it in the early days. Literally started telling him my flaws. Told lues to my father who then got aggressive with dh. No one knows this in rl. cant belive I am writing it here.

DH put his arms around me after and listens to me, only for him I wouldn't be coping as well with things. I know I am lucky. I have moved on with my life in spite of it all.

It has affected my friendships. As soon as someone criticises me, I move on :(

Really sad messages. Hugs to all us motherless daughters.

I don't speak to my mother either. She doesn't like me.

I only realised a few years ago. I had spent years grovelling for affection. I even begged her to haunt me when she died as I couldn't live without her.

ffs. Now I have dc of my own I realise what a sad shrivelled up miserable fucking bitch she is.

My mum doesn't like me at never has and I really struggled with it for a long time. Just before my wedding she asked my dh why he was marrying me as he could do a lot better. That is one of the kindest things she said. She has no interest in me or my kids. I had some counselling about 10 years ago and learnt how to distance and protect myself. We had a very superficial relationship but it worked.
My problem now is that she has terminal cancer possibly months left and I find myself struggling all over again. So I suppose deepdown I never really gave up hope that she might change

No, mine doesn't. It has taken me years to get to a position where I can deal with that fact and has been deeply hurtful.

She doesn't really love anyone properly. She is always angry with the world (sometimes masked by a veneer of sickly sweet happiness).

I deal with it by keeping her at arms length and limiting contact.