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?

This thread is important. Thank you for starting it.

I've read everyones posts over the last day and it's been upsetting, but faniliar, horrible that anyone feels like this, has grown up like this, lives like this. It resonates.

I feel ashamed that my mother and childhood has shaped and limited me as much as it has. I feel like by my age I should have got over it, caught up and healed. And I really haven't. She has damaged me so deeply and I feel like its too late for me to be happy or have a proper life or family and relationship.

I am terrified that I will leave the same poisonous legacy behind. I love my son with all my heart but can't provide him with the security and stability I promised myself I would give any child of mine. I really hope love is enough.

Miscellaneous Your post is so sad and I can relate to it completely.

I feel angry and ashamed. And pathetic and self indulgent, "My mother didn't love me, wah wah wah!"

But when it's the case from childhood, you really do know no different. I said to my counsellor today that I sometimes wonder if it's really worth trying to address it all. What difference will it really make?

It's only half a life, but I too wonder if it's too late to be happy or have a proper life/family/relationship.

"remember a heart is judged not by how much it loves, but by how much it is loved my others".

Well thanks a bunch Mr Wizard of Oz...

My mother didn't like me. She told me she 'tried everything ...' gin, hot baths, to 'dislodge' me.

I had a really awful childhood and adolescence - can't remember, ever, a cuddle or hug, instead, she seemed to enjoy being awful - for instance, suddenly slapping me HARD across the face ... when I asked, in tears, why, she said 'I don't like the way you were looking at me'!

WFT, as we MNs say? I was a very bookish little girl and if I was sort of looking into space, I was probably thinking about a book I was reading.

I was sent out, from age about ten onwards, all day at weekends and school holidays, with my small sister (and later my little brother), with a packet of jam sandwiches and told not to come back until tea time. When I think back what we got up to ... scrambling around on lethal cliffs, going on a dangerous beach and into the sea, roaming around local parks ... my little sister got her knee trapped in a tree we were climbing and someone called the Fire Brigade to free her (they used oil to slip her knee out). I got bollocked by the Fire Brigade for letting a five year old climb a tree (I was only ten or eleven, remember!) and then by my mother when we got home!

As for my adoloscence - I still SEETHE at how I was treated (and I'm 72 now, so OK, maybe I should get over it). But she made me feel foul and disgusting for ... having periods. Yup, I could never mention them despite the fact that I had problems, excessive bleeding, huge amount of pain, from age fifteen onwards. I didn't dare tell my mother, because any reference on my part to such things would have brought a huge shitstorm on my head. So, because of the excessive bleeding, I spent all my pocket money on buying new pants, since the once that got so bloodstained were unusable (I had no way of washing them without her noticing). As for when I started being interested in boys ...

My mother, and father, told me I would NEVER be allowed a boyfriend. I was destined to be 'an academic'. But ... when I was accepted, after A Levels, at a university, they refused to let me go, saying I couldn't because I'd 'meet BOYS' there.

Hmmm, I think maybe I should re-post this on the 'Stately Homes' thread, but I just wanted to have a good old rant. I must assure you, apart from still hating my long dead parents, I think I've been a great mother and now grandmother. The apple does sometimes fall far far from the tree.

God bless you all, who've had horrible mothers.

Blimey haven't read all 130 replies - before I do, a sincere thank you to all who replied, some of you seem to have had it very hard indeed and I know that it is not an easy thing to talk about.

I am both reassured and saddened by the number - I thought the thread would sink like a stone & I would be thought an oddball... seems I am far from alone, and I'm sorry about it, but grateful to hear that it might after all not just be me being "over sensitive"

FolkGirl strangely familiar. Is that good or bad?

I was sniveling to my councellor yesterday saying that i am trying so hard to change myself and make my life different and yet I feel like I've had all my chances and I messed it all up and I've gained insight too late...

""I feel angry and ashamed. And pathetic and self indulgent, "My mother didn't love me, wah""

Exactly!!! But trying to be reasonable - to quote my councellor, 'would you ever be that unkind to someone else?'

It's just hard to believe when you've been brought up to have no needs, and if you try and gain something you need (like, basic needs everyone else takes for granted), it's like you can't believe you deserve it or that the world really works like that for other people.

I hate the damaged person I am at the same time as knowing why I've become this person. I guess I should hate my mother more and myself less...

(sorry random assortment of punctuation in this post as I kept getting distracted)

my mother likes it if I'm suffering. When I'm not suffering, she criticizes my decisions thinly veiled as 'having her own opinion' in order to make me suffer.

She is Jealous of my friends and attempts to drive wedges between me & them; given the chance.

She likes to say things like...'well, its up to you, it's your life' loaded with sarcasm.

Weirdly though she showers me with money, which I have needed for practical reasons over the last couple of years. I am an only child and my dad died years ago leaving her reasonably well off so I accept on behalf of the children. I am restructuring my life at the moment so I will not need the money (finally growing up?) within the next six months. It will be interesting to see what happens then.

I just think it's terribly sad Misc

Well that's it, isn't it? I would never be that unkind to someone else. My mother has said and done some truly despicable things.

Counselling has helped me to understand that she didn't not like/love me because of a failing in myself, but because she lacked the capacity. She projected it onto me because there was no way she was going to be to 'blame'.

Oh, I forgot to add, when I was a teenager she once shouted during a row that she wished I had never been born, que me off for a string of totally unsuitable destructive relationships well into adulthood combined with my own ability to act in self destructive ways.

I do try to use my Mum's parenting style as a blueprint of how NOT to treat my girls and I'm always aware of it.

My mum was awful during puberty too, oldgrandmama. I had to buy my own bras and was the last girl in my class to wear one. She would never buy me deoderant or discuss puberty.

Keep them at arms length emotionally

Try to not let them get at you

And never give them ammo

My mother wanted to have children and so she had two. Then she did a serviceable job feeding and clothing us. I never felt it brought her joy.

She comes from a very damaged family who put up a good front of being the best family ever but who are actually pretty awful. These things take at least a generation to fix, so I try to remember that when my mother is being thoughtless, or self-absorbed.

Its easier now that shes old and infirm because she has become kinder, but only after I have made a huge effort. I have challenged her at times, trying to show her that she's not helping herself. I went NC for a while because I found it so painful being with someone who withheld love.

I think my mother also told me she wished I'd never been born - it certainly sounds very familiar. She also told me that if I wasn't good, she'd put me in a home.

Lois my mother said both those things to us too :( Taken years for us to realise it is her not us

My Mum told me repeatedly that she wished she'd had an abortion or "flushed you down the toilet" was another saying she liked.

Goodness, some of these stories are so sad.

I have been thinking about this a lot recently as I am getting tired of always being thoughtful towards my mother, always feeling like I am the one to blame if she is inconvenienced in any way, always trying to get her to take more interest in my life. It is exhausting and I have to face the fact that she is not going to start changing now. All I can do is not let it upset me, and I bow down to those of you who have already managed to do this. It must be such a release.

I also think that there are many aspects of my life that my mother is jealous of. While she is definitely happy that I have done well, she also resents it on one level. I went to university (she didn't, and her parents never encouraged her to go), I married someone who was fairly well-off and who shares everything with me (she had a husband who gave her a weekly allowance), and I wonder if this is true of some of those other mothers out there who are emotionally distanced from their daughters.

I think the great theme coming out in this discussion is how we are all so adamant that this will not be repeated with our own children. If it makes us even more determined to treat them properly, then that is a huge silver lining.

Oh yes I had the confidence of how she went to the abortionist (illegal in those days) but couldn't go through with it. Am pretty sure she was scared for herself and didn't suddently have an epiphany about wanting me though. And the bit about how lucky I was that she'd married my father (in an empire line dress) and ruined her life and her unhappy marriage was my fault but it had saved me from adoption or a home. And of course how she never ever wanted children to begin with because the process, including breastfeeding disgusted her. When I had my first baby she actually told me that I should go up to the bedroom "to do that" and when he was less than a week old (she did come to help) she sent me out for errands because it would do me good and I remember walking back from the shops thinking my insides would fall out. And she made me the tiniest lunches because I needed to get my figure back.

Ah that feels better - empathy would have been nice.

I am so glad I have a daughter - she is so special to me and I completely and utterly cherish her. She is 15 now and it is a privilege to have her - I wish my mother had felt that for just one day of my life.

oh yes, Aphrodite,
I also searched high and low for adoption papers when I was about 8/9, as I never felt I was wanted.
Thought it was only me, quite reassuring ,don't feel so"odd" now!

Thank you for this thread, DCP. So sad and so needed.

No she doesn't.
She didn't want me either.

I left home at 18, we last communicated when I was 19.

I'm almost 41.

"what to do"
Would you accept a friend doing that to you?

FolkGirl

Your post bought tears to my eyes. Similar background.
Although I met dh at 15 & I learnt through him & some lovely friends that I am loveable. It was HER problem that she didn't love me, not mine.

A counsellor once told me that it is easy to get stuck in that mindset & raise your children the same way you were raised & it takes a strong person to break that chain. Huge hugs to you & good luck.

This is a very sad and important thread as others have said. There seem to be a few DM threads at the mo - wonder if it's anything to do with Mother's Day looming... Oh and I'm another who picks MD cards very carefully...

To answer the original question - DM likes me when I'm doing/saying/being what she wants me to do/say/be. Most of the time that includes agreeing with her thoughts and opinions, letting her be the centre of attention, constantly reassuring her, doing things on her terms, putting her first. Disagreeing with her doesn't go down well. Speaking my own mind or, god forbid, defending myself when she comments/criticises, usually ends up with her being upset with me.

So in all honesty, I don't really know if she likes me. I suspect she thinks she likes and loves me, but it's all about her all the time so who really knows? She has told me she likes and loves me, but it's always been about her feelings of liking/loving me rather than how that sentiment makes me feel, if that makes any sense at all.

I'm sure if I did more to make her happy in the way she wants me to, she'd like me more.

Sad really as on the face of it most people think we're close but I've learnt over the past year or so that I need to hold back emotionally from her to protect my own sanity.

ListenToTheLady Snap with the surrogate mum! I call all my friend's mums mum!

To their faces & to my friends 'how's mum' ... slips off my tongue before I even realise I am doing it.

I'm dreading mother's day, because I always send her something, because I always have, and I don't dare stop. But I hate it. Don't do it this year. See how you feel.

FushandChups It's not you.

I haven't sent any thing to my mother for 20yrs. It's cathartic. She didn't give me a good childhood. Why should I reward her for that?

I think you should all stop sending them mothers'/fathers'/birthday cards. Right now. If you can't send a card with a verse because you don't mean it, don't send one at all (I mean this in a nice way, by the way).

I win on the card bingo. My mother is on her third husband; my father was her first. She shows off I don't send my step father a father's day card . I was 21 when she married him. I just can't cope with the showing off. To be fair he's put up with her for 32 years (she's got the money) and as he's 10 years younger than her he has removed significant pressure from me for the last five or six years. The DC think of him as "grandad" and he has been very lovely to them and treated them as his own (has no dc of his own) and I get around it nowadays by getting them a happy father's day card for grandad iykwim.

It's terribly perplexing - on the one hand I'm sure he's encouraged her to spend most of what should be my inheritance; on the other nobody else would put up with her.