Awful email from my DM

[Toastandstrawberryjam]

I have posted on here a bit before about my marriage and DH moving out. (Can't link on phone - sorry). But basically after 20 years of EA I asked him to leave, divorce is now under way.

From the start my DM was incredibly unsupportive, her first reaction being that it would mess up the seating plan at a family party! Over the last few months she has gone from ignoring me, to telling me I'm overreacting and should have tried to make it work. I told her a few home truths about it all and we settled into a somewhat normal pattern of occasional emails where she just ignored the situation.

She hasn't seen or spoken with my DDs since this all happened.

Anyhow this morning she sends me an email. A long email. It tells me exactly what life on my own will be like. A full detailed awful explanation. The rundown house with no nice furniture. Awful neighbours. DDs going without everything. Never a hope of doing better for myself. Saying goodbye to all the nice things I have.

But not to worry! She has a solution. I need to let DH move back in. We should spend more time together. Have lots more sex. I should stop putting the children first and concentrate on him. It goes on and on and about how great that will be.

She knows that his behaviour was so bad my DDs don't even miss him. In fact they say to me regularly "please don't let daddy come back".

I don't know how to reply to her. I'm utterly broken by this. I never expected support from her, but this is absolutely vile.

My DM did similar to you op when I finally left ex, this in spite of the fact she ad seen me bruised and battered. She kept saying she totally understood and would stand by me if I wanted my marriage to work..... My brother and Father told her to shut up in the end.

OP I cannot predict your future, but I can tell you I have two DD's and after spending time coming to terms with my life and creating a loving and secure environment with my DD's in which they know I will never ever let them be hurt, I have a lovely DP and he comes with baggage, two cats to be precise but they're really cute. I'm in the neighbourhood where I've always been (will move soon tho, up), have lovely neighbours, have amazing friends who have variously rallied round when I fell ill to do the school runs for me and bring me food wen I was extremely ill at one point, I am happy and confident in my own skin and my DC's know they are loved and valued and can now see what a healthy relationship is.

Don't speak to my DM much at all as I don't like her to be honest.

momb's reply was very good. you are a big person for being able to forgive her for allowing her be so passive when your SF was abusing you but you can't stomach her suggesting you put your dds through the same shit.
well done.

if they buddy up to each otehr, let them get on with it. as springydaffs says, I thinkit is a real possibility.

If it were, say, another mother at the school gates who said those nasty things to you, I suspect you would just go out of your way to avoid / not talk to her in the future. It shouldn't be any different when it's your mother. There's a lot of societal pressure to make us feel that we have to be nice to our mother even when she's not nice to us. It's rubbish. She has treated you appallingly all your life and you are doing the right thing protecting your daughters from that.

I've never heard anyone say "I had a very unhappy childhood; we had cheap and nasty furniture." Kids don't care about the furniture, they care about being loved and protected and secure. You are giving them that love and protection and security. Well done and keep it up!

Hi Toast,

Your DM sounds highly toxic. You are doing brilliantly breaking away from years of abuse and getting your DDs away from an EA dad. It is extremely hard to do. I am down the line a little bit, but I am still battling with guilt, feelings of failure, and confidence issues - and I don't give myself enough credit for being brave enough to get out of it. It is hard for me and I have a mum who has been amazing. And my dad. I utterly feel for you. Even with the support that I have had, I sometimes feel so alone. You just stick with it. Don't engage with your awful mother, who colluded in you having a horrible stepfather. She is even 'threatening' that your children will have one (horrible SF) if you put an end to your abusive marriage. The difference is that YOU are not her, and that you are putting your children first in getting them out of an abusive environment, not allowing your children to be abused and then blaming them for it like she did.

Strength to you. Recommend the printing out of the email and burning it.

Your DM is the reason for your 20 years of EA.

She groomed you to be abused, she allowed you to be abused and made you responsible for your own abuse.

Block her emails and BIN her from your life entirely. Seriously.

You are a great woman and a super mother. Your children love and trust you. You are all they have. You are doing a good enough job for them.

Please go NC with your family. Please make sure that everyone IN your life is adding to it. If they are not, bin em.

You have to be ruthless. it's OK to choose decent people to be in your life.

I know what will happen next. At some time later today, or possibly on Monday if she really wants to prove her point, she will email me again. It will say that I'm overreacting and not listening to her, when she only says these things because she cares. And she knows more than I do and knows what will make me happy. Blah blah blah.

At which point I was thinking of sending her an email saying its NC. I don't want to get into a discussion with her.

Thank you all. So very much. This is all so bloody hard, trying to make life work when I don't know how to be a grown up. But if being that means I have to be like her I will pass on that.

I think you know hell of a lot more than your DM does about being a grown up.

Start deleting emails unread. Or divert them to a folder so they won't blindside you

Toast

re your comments that I have put in quote marks:-

"At some time later today, or possibly on Monday if she really wants to prove her point, she will email me again. It will say that I'm overreacting and not listening to her, when she only says these things because she cares. And she knows more than I do and knows what will make me happy. Blah blah blah".

She will likely e-mail, you again; such toxic people like your mother are known for doing so. This is typical behaviour of such people and they always want a response. I would urge you to block her account now and save yourself further pain of having to read any more diatribes from her.

"At which point I was thinking of sending her an email saying its NC. I don't want to get into a discussion with her".

Radio silence from you must be maintained; you will already be in a discussion you do not want if you at all reply to any of her missives. A reply is precisely what she wants, it opens the door for her to bother you even more.

You will not become your mother because you are not her. You are two very different people.

She is posting from a place where a man, a husband can do no wrong & it is up to the wife to gloss over his behaviour & accept her lot. Of course, we know this is damaging, but in your mothers era it was the norm (not saying it is right)

I wouldn't even dignify that with a response. Delete. Move on.

She expects you to contend with it, because she did, almost like she needs the reassurance that what she did was right, so you must endure it for her to be able to know this.

She let you down then, she is letting you down now.

Time for NC, I think. This relationship will do you more damage than good!

I am sorry, but she is never going to be the mother you want or deserve.

Set up your email setting so she just goes to your junk folder, cos that what it is, junk.

She's done a number on you, but screw her you're much much better than this!

Do people like her respond to just ignoring though? That's my concern that she will start phoning me or even turning up. I mean she never has before but if I'm not actually agreeing with her.....I have no way of knowing what she will do as I've not ever said she's wrong!

I would ignore, but then I knew that my mother wouldn't have the balls/was too lazy to do much else.

In the end, you have to do what YOU are comfortable with, without getting dragged down.

You left your dh because of EA, don't let your mother take his place!

My mother can be an utter bitch if she puts her mind to it. I wouldn't put anything past her. That's my concern.

I think she will just befriend my STBEH and they can have each other as far as I'm concerned.

ignoring is best course.

any attempt to justify or explain your actions just wont work anyways.
yes she may try but store up some lines if she catches you eg by phoning and for some reason you dont see caller display "sorry got to go, terribly busy, bye" and put phone down.
turns up at door dont open.
lines to say, practice eg "sorry I dont wish to see you bye"

if she harasses you or your dc you can issue warning "please dont harass me any more or I will be contacting teh police" then do it, report to police for harassment.

Let them be friends. Let them wallow in each others shitty lives & blame you...who the hell cares?

You know the truth. That makes you far stronger than them

There's an old saying

"some people are never happy with you until they've dragged you down into their own gutter".

You have done exactly the right thing in kicking him out and you are so right to listen to your children rather than your mother.

Stand by your instincts, your common sense and your love for your children. you are right.

How to handle this situation with your mother? Yes, a NC email sounds right (you know the 'im only saying this because I care" line is crap, right?).

If she rings, then you can put the phone down and then you can block her number.

If she turns up on the doorstep, then you do not have to let her in. You can tell her to go. And if she kicks off, call the police. They can and should help.

strength to you, you have done amazingly well.

I wouldn't normally say go NC with a mother. However- go NC! She's toxic.

You say that you want someone to love you. I can understand that. It's a real cliche, but you will never get that from her. The only way for you to get that feeling of love is by stepping away from her.

You may live to find a wonderful friend or partner who truly appreciates you for who you are. You may well discover that the adult relationships you have with your DDs is what brings you satisfaction or happiness. You may even find that living your own life and standing up for yourself brings you far more satisfaction and self-love than you ever expected.

But you certainly won't get that kind of love from your mother. She decided that hanging onto a man, hoping that he would love her, was worth any sacrifice - including you. She certainly doesn't sound like it made her happy. The love of a bad man, or a bad mother, isn't the right kind of love. It won't make you happy. Look elsewhere to get that kind of feeling, and include yourself in the list of people who do love you.

Get an answerphone if she'll phone on a landline - and don't listen to the messages - or block her number on a mobile if you can. And if she turns up? Well it's your house so she's not allowed there if you don't want her there. If she does turn up just kep the door closed and if she persists in hanging around just call the police. (You won't mind doing that if it comes to it, I assure you, and a few size 9s around will stop any nonsense in its tracks.)

She doesn't have a key to your place does she?

Just don't respond to her. That would be engaging with her and her delusions and would likely set you back rather than strengthening you. (All of those years of 'training' could kick in again.)

You are starting to see clearly at last and are breaking a cycle of behaviour that may have been going on in your family for generations.

Your mother taught you that any marriage, no matter how crap and abusive, is better than no marriage. Children can be sacrificed for that marriage. All that matters is the outward appearance and material comfort. You learned that because it was how her marriage was, and how you were treated.

She probably learned that from her parents marriage. And her mother, from her mothers marriage. Which is no excuse at all, by the way, maybe just an explanation. They weren't as strong as you. She's so resistant because frankly you are showing up how wrong/weak she was. She knows it isn't right to lock a teenager in the bedroom to prevent her stepfather raping her. She can't face what she did. She has to stick to her script of putting up with anything for appearances sake.

You are the one to break the mould and say 'no! this is NOT right'. Which makes you pretty fucking amazing, actually, and brilliant not to be now sacrificing your own children in favour of an abusive man, and teaching them the same lesson.

You know she's talking utter codswallop about your future. What your house is like, what your furniture is like, how much money you have, doesn't mean shit at the end of the day. (and if that sounds trite, believe me, I've lived in absolute shitholes and been skint and wondered what I was doing to my son, but it didn't matter), What matters is how happy you are. And you and your daughters are already much happier.

I suppose how you deal with it now is down to how you can take her attitude. If you feel pity for her for being so weak and misguided, and for harming you both as a child and now, perhaps you can continue with contact, at your level of comfort. If you feel just anger at her for being so weak and misguided, and for harming you both as a child and now, then go no contact. No one can make that decision for you and no one should judge you for whatever decision you make. She hasn't been much of a mother to you. You don't owe her anything. The point is whether she can ever offer you anything. If you decide to keep contact, you'll probably have to talk all this through for her. If she were willing to go to some sort of family counselling with you, that would help. If she isn't willing to do anything towards your relationship, I suppose that's an answer for you.

As an immediate thing though, flag her email account as spam, and stop even reading the garbage she is sending.

Lordy , she really is deluded. Feel sorry for her at having not developed a sense of herself, and assertiveness, as you have. And feel proud that you did that despite her, not because of her.

Ignore the email.

Ignore, ignore and ignore.
She may send more emails but just don't engage.
Ask yourself this- does this email ask a question, does it require an answer? No it doesn't
What is its purpose? To provoke a response. Don't give her the satisfaction.

lovereasdingthanks

I completely agree

And there's nothing to stop you deferring the final decision while you get yourself sorted out a bit.

You could email her that due to her lack of support for your current situation, you don't feel able to deal with her right now, and will not be having any contact, in person, by phone, text or email, for a period of 12 months. Then you will review if the two of you can continue to have a mother/daughter relationship. And then ignore any attempts at contact.