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?

different I think it's the one thing I am most proud of, that both my brother and I have broken the chain. There was absolutely no way my children were going to grow up thinking they were unloveable. They both know they are loved by me.

My 15yo son said the other week (because obviously the shitty family who have let me down have also let them down) that as long as he knows I love him he doesn't care about the rest of them. I asked him if he did know it and he said of course he did and gave me a huge hug (he might even have had a wobbly lip and shed a tear, but he's a big strapping 15 yo and he wouldn't want me to tell you that )

nearlyready God - do we have the same mother?! This is mine exactly. There is no disagreeing with her. Her views are Law and anyone disagreeing should insert dreadful consequence here

My brother and SIL are also amazing parents and are overwhelmed with the love they feel for their daughter. My SIL had a similar experience growing up.

Our children will never doubt that they are loved. Never.

I wonder if any of you had this: if ever I tried to broach something with my mother - either that she had said or done, or that my father had - she would turn it back on me and say "oooh your do hold a grudge, don't you?". Call it that if you will. I'd love to ditch all that shit in my head. She's dead now, which is lucky.

Oh yes, Lois.

I have also had in the last 10 years:

"You've no idea how much I used to worry when your dad had hit you. I used to dread the phone going on the days you had PE in case someone had asked you about the bruises"

and

"what do you mean, your dad hit you? No he didn't! He gave you the occasional smack on the bottom when you deserved it but nothing else. Goodness you do like to tell tales, don't you"

and

"Of course it bothered me when your dad hit you. Why do you think I used to leave the room? I didn't want to have to see it."

Fucking. Crazy. Bitch.

I get "have you been having counselling or something?!"

And "you're just so bitter and twisted aren't you?"

Just to clarify - dad 'hitting' was a short cut for an unexpected slap across the face; a dragging across the living room by the hair for a bit of a repeated heavy handed slapping; being hit with a wooden spoon; being slapped around the head; being dragged upstairs by my clothing; having my arm twisted up behind my back in and various other 'restraint' techniques my dad was familiar with...

I also had, "I don't know whether you remember what it was like for you being little, but your dad used to hit you, you know".

Really, mum?! You see i'd forgotten all about that

Lois No, mine just calls me a liar. Literally "you are a liar".

My Mum's slapping with all her strength across our face, dragging round by hair up and down stairs, choking, kicking, spitting in our face was "well I know I had a bit of a short temper" or "I was the disciplinarian, their Dad was too soft!"

differentname I know how stupid it is to keep sending her something and DP tears his hair out over why I do it. But I just can't face rocking the boat.

I know what she would say if I didn't send her anything - she wouldn't blow up, it would be all "I noticed nothing came for mother's day, I expect it's because you're too busy, but I UNDERSTAND, you poor thing, I know what it's like, your children are such hard work" etc and I will just want the ground to swallow me up and want to scream in her face. I just can't bear it. Because all that is massively self-delusional code for "We are so close, you and me, I understand everything about you, you are a mini-me, and I keep tabs on everything you do, and don't do, and I will convince myself that you love me whatever it takes."

If I actually explained to her that I hate how she treats me and I haven't forgiven her for many things and I think she is narcissistic and hurtful, then she would blow up and throw it all back in my face, get hysterical and cry. Then I would have that to deal with.

Faced with either unbearable tongue-biting or unbearable emotional fallout I just chicken out and send the card. I wish I could not do it, but I don't feel strong enough this year.

I am considering telling her I want to go NC altogether. But I'm the only sibling who has not so far cut her off, and the only one with kids, her only GC. The pressure and guilt would be immense.

I bloody hate this.

I am in America. it isn't mothers day here. so I get out of jail free this time
I get told I am a liar too.
That I make up shit.
That never happened.
My sister defends our mum with
"she went out and washed toilets for us"
Though I remember being told her life would have been easier if we were in care, boarding school, dead.
My dad died and we got left with her. He was 34. we spent years locked in with a tyrant who to the outside world was a saint.
how many times were we told to "be good for your mummy"
We were inherently bad. Inherently a burden and pain in the arse.
There was nothing to be done about our actual worth as it was 0.
Following a visit to a clairvoyant (charlatan), she had our father disinterred and reburied in a different place. she thought he would be happier there.
She was upset (fucking psychotic) when I refused to attend the ceremony. She was raging when I rang my aunt (fathers sister) to explain why I felt no need to go through a second funeral. I had, after all, been to the first.
That didn't go well.

No she doesn't I don't believe. I'm the eldest and seemingly the disappointment. My siblings are all painted so perfectly and she is bond to their faults.

I went NC 16 months ago and I feel utter relief tbh. Yet at the same time, I feel such deep sadness. I hope, and they do tell me, that my children know how much I love them, and we have a wonderful relationship, all of us together.

Like PPs, it has definitely scarred me and I find myself struggling with self belief when in a relationship, so much so that the two longterm ones I have had (both over 10 years) have failed.

Horribly, I am comforted by the posts on here, knowing that I am not alone.

It is weirdly comforting, isn't it?

Indeed Lois it is.

Comforting because we have never been allowed a voice. It is a terrible taboo to even suggest

1. out mothers don't like/love/care about/pretty much give a shit
2. to have felt so alone with it all these years
3. to know for a fact others have experienced it. I have tried to tell very good friends who look like I have done a shit on the floor. then made a sandwich out of it.

Bloody Hell sparkly so many similarities...

listen that rings so many bells with a close female relative. Violent, utterly irrational, emotionally utterly abusive .... a true nightmare, scary as all hell. I really believe she was so irrational that she could have had power of attorney forced on her. She couldnt go into a home because they'd not put up with her behaviour; even the at-home carers refused to go near her.

Then she'd say "you're just like me!" as if that was a good thing. God help you if you disagreed.

I'm still living in deep fear that she might be right, no matter how much I (and some level headed other people) tell me that I'm not.

I think one of the worst things is how people like this take away your own voice and your own personality. You dare not say a thing or do your own thing.

yes lola ... so much loneliness. People don't or can't believe you.

lola or they can recall a time they fell out with their parents and assume it's the same thing...

I think what is the common link here is mothers with personality disorders or emotionally disordered in some way but have evaded diagnosis. my mother actualy went to a psychologist regarding a housing issue and lied the whole way through it and felt delighted with herself that the pscy agreed she had problems. I once suggested perhaps she was a shit liar. that wasn't a good discussion

I have also found this thread strangely (horribly?) comforting.

For years I second-guessed myself, thinking that maybe I was having myself a little indulgent pity-party, and that she really wasn't THAT bad-because she told me so!

She tells us all repeatedly that she was a GOOD mother. She rewrites history when something doesn't tally with her view of herself as a good mother. She accuses me of lying when I say 'But you called me a whore/Hit me down to the ground/Believed my stepfather when he said I was an alcoholic(at age 16)'.

I've had only one phonecall's worth of contact with her in the past two weeks. I am amazed at how much happier in general I am...

I had everything: lovely home, clothes, school, pony, finishing school, beautiful mother, marvellous imagery to the outside world. Inside I was told I was plain, sullen, dim, would never find a husband. Nowadys every time she sees me there is a snarky comment about my children's lifestyle - and mine - which in her eyes isn't good enough.

The only thing my daughter doesn't have is a fucking pony. Neither does she live with constant criticism - she lives instead with love and although she is quiet and shy we help her all the time to bolster her self esteem.

At 15 I told my mother nothing; my dd will pile into the car in 20 minutes with two friends and they will gabble and make me laugh. I never had that; my mother would never have put herself out to meet me - ever.

My mother destroyed my self esteem for years but she never hit me (except once when she completely lost it - because I wanted a packed lunch - and beat me up but that was an aberration and she swore me to secrecy and I had to tell my dad and grandparents I fell off a wall - I have never told a soul about that, I was 9). But generally I suffered no violence but this makes me wonder if she just didn't dare.

But I was awkward and difficult and nerdy and clever but she couldn't relate to who I was rather than who she wanted me to be.

Sorry that was a complete stream of consciousness

near I can see that like a scene from a film.