Relationship with my mum...

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I know there are people here with terrible relationships with their parents, so this sounds trivial in some ways.

I have never ever been able to open up with my mum over personal things. Now that she is old ( 80s) I realise that time is running out but I cannot be open with her and find her very irritating a lot of the time ( and always have.)

I know absolutely why we have reached this stage.
I grew up during the 1960s and early 70s when morals were changing but my parents never caught up with the ideas.

They were extremely protective and controlling whilst at the same time they clearly loved me and were 'good' people and parents.

But to give you an example, when I was 19 they would not allow me to baby sit for a relative with my then steady boyfriend ( of 2 years) because they thought we'd have sex when alone in a house. As if!! Similarly they banned me from visiting another boyfriend a year later when he was at uni, saying if I did so I could never come home again to live with them. (I lived at home and attended uni nearby.)

I found their behaviour crazy and once I'd graduated moved 350 miles away and have stayed away since, though we are on good terms and I visit them as often as I can.

However, during my teens my parents had such strict views re. sex before marriage etc that I deceived them a lot of the time in order to simply go out of the house! I wasn't a slapper- I'd only slept with 2 men by the age of 21.

Bu because of their attitude I've never ever been able to open up with them over my personal life. I left my DH some time ago, temporarily- and told my parents it was a type of gap-year break. They did press me on it for 'the truth' but I just didn't want to share.

They are very judgemental. In my late 20s when I had a new boyfriend after a long term relationship ended, they wrote to me and said they hoped I was not becoming promiscuous ( because they knew I was visiting a new man who lived a long way away and this would mean staying overnight.)

They still make similar comments to my brother who is 49, single and dating. They mutter things to him about catching STIs etc.

I suppose I am grieving for the kind of close relationship with my mum that I've wanted to have but never have been able to, because I always felt they were intolerant and small minded.

I suppose I am just offloading, but feel sad that I have had to distance myself the way I have and feel it's too late to do anything. I think they have no idea why I moved away and for years and years my mum talked about me coming back 'home' to live closer. I'd have liked to - I feel there have been wasted years and now it's too late- but do you think their behaviour was odd?

My parents were similar growing up. My mum always assumed me and my sister would be doing things we shouldn't with boys! I never told her anything and haven't got a particularly close relationship with her.

I feel guilty that they are in their late 70s and I haven't got the kind of relationship with them that I would have loved.

I want to have a better relationship with my children and hope that I learn from the mistakes that my parents made.

I don't think my parents had great relationships with their parents though, so just carried on parenting the same way.

My Mother was exactly the same. She had such a dirty mind. I remember being at my boyfriend's house ( with his family) when a pea souper fog came down. My future mil suggested I stay the night, bunking up with my future sil. She was worried about her son driving in dangerous conditions. I rang my Mother. She said I had to come home or be branded a whore. She said she would prefer me dead rather than lose my virginity. WTF.