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?

That good or bad because reading it back just made me cry - not because my dd was incredibly rude tonight in front of her friends and it has really upset me. I shouted at her and now she's emptying the dishwasher to make amends. At least I suppose she can be rude in a freedom sort of way - she isn't usually. X

It is weirdly comforting, isn't it?

Sadly yes. I have come to realise , people pleaser that I am, my whole life I have been looking for love and affection , my relationship template is all wrong , this has led me to make disastrous friendships, and for years ,tolerate XH EA of me, when any normal person with healthy bounderies would have ran a mile from this man.
Reading this thread has recalled a memory of me buying a mothers day gift, a pen with her name enscribed, thereafter for the next few years I addressed her as " name" instead of Mum. I was only 10!

Thanks again for sharing, its really helping me.

Windymill I could have written your post word for word quite literally! apart from the bit when you were 9; I was 12, but it was over a similar trivial thing.

We live very close to each other - we should have twosome meet up sometime. With wine. Much wine.

Shit, shit and thrice shit. Every single post resonates with me. Bless you all for being so open and honest. As I first said, this thread is horribly comforting. Thank you.

I wrote a big post and lost it but no my mum does not like me and I've been NC for over 5 years.

Goodness Anonymousy - we might have done the same school gates and bus stops! We might even nod - we might even have met

That would actually amuse me hugely!

I think she does, never told me so but she can be very critical and judgemental...
She moved abroad 15 yrs ago as she remarried so has to stay....her 10 day stay last summer was horrific. Endless criticism of everything incl dd1 who is such a sweetie. She does play the poor me card.
She grew up Ina. Very dysfunctional household which explains a lot but boy oh boy she is hard work.
I too have chosen a card for Mother's Day with care....tricky.
I hope a will have a better relationship with my girls.

My mum thought I was the menopause when she got pregnant with me. I was the last of 6. She hated every minute of being pregnant with me, then I nearly killed her and nearly died myself. I don't think she ever forgave me for that.

She never hid the fact that she didn't like me. I had a fairly cruddy childhood, though my basic needs were met. I was fed, watered, my clothes were always clean. My mum hated the thought of being judged by others as coming up short. We argued all the time we lived together and, even in old age, she could still hit my hot buttons. I grew up with low self esteem, which was unsurprising considering my mum put me down at every opportunity.

It took til my early 20's to find any worth in myself. I did a lot of management training in the 90s, when it was popular, and lots of 'positive thinking' stuff and actually, it did me good. I stopped blaming my mum for things. I stopped making excuses for myself based on the way someone else treated me. It's an empowering thing.

I pray every day that my child will know that though she can sometimes piss me off, but that I will always ultimately love her more than breath.

My mum does that too Lois except it's usually "you're so oversensitive!" or "you're just being dramatic!" She never says sorry ever and so everything is twisted back on me. If it doesn't fit with her reality it didn't happen.

I'm nodding along to so many of these posts, especially the card one! The decision to limit contact was fairly recent - no more than one phone call every 2 weeks - but so far it is helping and I feel much better without her constant judgement and criticism.

My DM does like & love me but not quite as much as she likes & loves herself.

Oh god badasahatter, that has just reminded me of my mother's refrain "I always tried to meet your needs, therefore I have nothing to be sorry for".

What "needs" were those mum? God what a total bitch...

I am NC.

My mother dislikes me. Her behaviour over my life time has been appalling.

As an adult she couldn't believe I had friends - after all who could like me?

When I was about 10, she told me my father loved me but didn't like me and never would. That my personality made me fundamentally unlikable and I could never change it. She, throughout my life, loved to tell me how popular my sister was, how everybody liked her, how she was always surrounded by people wanting to be her friend even as a baby/toddler.

I was told that people hated me as soon as I opened my mouth as I had such a nasty tongue. I gave up talking for a year at one point. I have always had a problem in being able to speak when stressed (still do).

I find myself becomng attached to older than me motherly types and have to stop myself being clingy.

I have been with my dh since 17. He is fantastic but we have had issues in our relationship in the past due to my family and my issues. Our relationship is a lot better now I am NC with my family. I don't know how or why I was lucky enough to end up in a great supportive relationship. ILs are also fab.

I also have weight issues (much more under control since NC). I think subconsciously I wanted to piss off my mother by being fat (she despises fat people).

No, she's disappointed in me because I don't have a good job or loads of life achievements.

She only values academic achievement and is like a lot of middle class parents going on about what their children are doing.......

Oh well...

We do get on reasonably well despite this.

My mother never made any secret of the fact that she tried to abort me, failed and was stuck with me. Throughout my childhood she made it very clear, and indeed said openly, that I was the cause of the breakdown of her marriage to my father. Yes, the marriage broke down, but they never separated and I was stuck, an only child between two warring parents.

When I was in the throes of first love and not sure how the BF really felt about me, my mother told me that no-one would ever love me. Cue 40 years of abusive relationships, where I was grateful for any attention shown. Bad emotional habits that I will never quite shake.

No support at all and then, to crown it all, she went NC with me because she said I was a disappointment to her and it was too embarrassing for her to admit that I was her daughter.

That was 26 years ago. She is 94 next week, lives alone, with no other living relatives except me and my DDs, one of whom she has never met.
I cannot imagine what her life is like, but I know she nearly ruined mine, and my father just stood by and let her.

FolkGirl Your ds sounds awesome. :)

FolkGirl Bloody hell, you poor thing. That's awful.

ListenToTheLady I understand what you are saying re : rocking the boat. But you aren't the one doing that. She did it years ago & continues to do it. She just has you believing it is you because it suits her.

lolaisafuckertoo I don't think my mum had any medical/mental problems, as she treated my siblings completely differently. I wasn't physically hurt (until just before I left home when she started slapping me numerous times for heavens knows what) it was all emotional withdrawal. Telling me I was useless, unloveable.

scout it's difficult isn't it? I now am struggling with how I can ensure my DD isn't on a forum in 30 years time battling with the same. I don't know any different so don't know how I should be with her. DM would have me believe that children firmly need to understand who is the adult. I get that to a point but think its her code for "it's my way or the high way" which is how she came across when I was growing up.

On't know nearly ready but the day my son was put into my arms was the day I knew I could only love and nurture him and give him all I had. It was also the start of realising just how unloved I'd been. Dd took it to a different level altogether. The mould is fragile imo.

Good luck x

Seeing and holding my babies for the first time helped me too because my mum always told me it was so fantastic when I was born (her first child) because she recognised me as being exactly like her - all she saw was a mirror. She told me this as if it was a big compliment! "I knew exactly who you were, you were just like me!"

(She still has no clue who I am and how different from her I am...)

When my DC were born I was blown away by how not like me they were and yet I still wanted nothing more than to love and care for them. DS was first so I thought maybe it's because he's a boy, he reminds me more of DP. But then DD came along and it was the same – she's just her, they are both so vividly and uniquely themselves. It made me see that everything about my mum's "love" for me is about getting what she wants reflected back at her. She can't see other people for who they are.

That's so true listen.

A couple of weeks ago DM and I were talking about DD and she said "when you were little I always saw a lot of me in you, like you were a mini version of me*... With DD I see her as totally her own person, I can't see you in her at all".

*Even though at times DM will say "people say we're so alike but I can't see it". Which means she wants reassuring that we are alike.

I've always seen DD as her own person. She was a complete surprise and I was taken aback (in a nice way though) because she didn't look anything like how I imagined she'd be, and I've always been proud of how she's just her, completely individual. I want her to be her own person.

This thread, though incredibly disturbing in many ways, makes me realise that it wasn't just me. I wasn't such a uniquely odd child that I made my mother hate me. I think that our mothers were all struggling in their own ways with their parenting. I pray to God I never get like that and though I'm sometimes snappy with dd, I always apologise if I'm in the wrong and I tell her I love her. I sometimes wonder if I've gone too far the other way and created a monster who thinks the sun shines out of her ass. I'd rather that than the model that was given to me!

No she doesn't, she tried to kill herself last year and when she failed she told me she did it because she couldn't stand having me as a daughter...nice. I wish she had succeeded.

omg Heathcliff ... what a dreadful thing of her to say. So much viciousness. I hope you have loving people in your life now

Heathcliff she is mentally ill or just nowhere near the realm of mentally healthy, don't take on board any of the blame and shame she is dumping on you.