Does anybody NOT get very tense when their mum is visiting?

[Spidermama]

I get really wound up no matter how hard I try not to. It's almost like a visceral response. My mum has just gone after a four day visit and the relief is immense.

Is it normal to find ones own mum so irritating and upsetting?

I speak to or see my mum most days of the week. We are really close and I adore her.

She doesn't stop at my house.
She never stops tidying and cleaning and won't sit down - fine in her house but would drive me mad in mine.

So I'd get really wound up within about 1/2 hour of my mum getting to my house. And then I'd miss her when she was gone.

Can't live with her and can't live without her

Also thinking about it more deeply, we still have a parent -child relationship. This is fine at her house (the house I grew up in) but at my house I feel like I should be an adult, because I am an adult there.

Probably doesn't make much sense, but hey I tried

Get tense just thinking about my mother..

You are not alone in this at all-I get extremely tense.My mum has made me very unhappy and still does.She is so controlling and critical,she scares me-that`s an awful indictment of a relationship.
It would never happen between me and my 16 year old daughter.Actually a friend told me that history would not repeat itself because I am aware of it.I feel so angry as her mum was controlling and she just cannot see that she is the same.So Spidermama do not feel alone.I think my mum has caused a lot of the depression I have always had,well she is one of the factors.

Godalmighty yes.

Although things have improved in that I am now prepared to spend a few hours in her company and be really quite polite.

Spidermama, if my mum lived closer, then she'd be around all the time wanting to 'help'. Now I can just chill for 6m and then have the mad dash clean & tidy, 4 days of being scrutinised and then back to normal.
Sometimes I scare myself though, because I can see myself being just like her. I've got to watch myself not to be like that in about 20y!

My mum cannot abide her mother, they have got worse as they have aged almost like the gloves came off and they stopping trying at all.

My mother did some (lots) of not great parenting things which have left me with some "problems" also cannot afford therapy. Cannot have it out with her as she is queen of denial. Makes for forced conversations really.

I love my mum - we seem to share a brain. SO often she will be texting me when I ring her, or have her hand on the phone when I ring - she was about to ring me. I texted her something today - an idea I'd had - and she replied immediately saying she'd had the exact same thought (really bizarrely random) this afternoon, adding something else that I'd just thought of too.

I adore my mum - she's clever, kind, funny and my mum - I feel very, very sorry that not everyone has a mother in their lives like her.

Before ds - yes I would.

Since ds I like having her here. We always have a "moment" when she is obviously completely wrong and I am totally right. But overall I'm more relaxed as I don't actually have to do everything.

My mum died nearly a year ago -2 hours after the end of my birthday. I feel guilty in some ways I hadn't seen her for a while before she died but we never got along. I think I was a disappointment to her and didn't share her interest - religion. She closed me off at an early age (long stories) and I learnt 20 years ago that the truth wasn't worth sharing with her. She loved the children to be fair. This Christmas was my happiest for many years - I wasn't expecting it to be her last therefore felt no guilt about having fun. Don't want to sound mean, just had an emotionally repressed childhood. Dad seems fine - no longer a carer, lots of holidays, tennis, choir etc despite being 79 this year. Maybe some people just aren't geared to be mothers - at her funeral I hardly recognised anyone and her "congregation" obviously saw her as a much warmer woman than I did. As a parent I will try to be warmer, more forgiving, more open and less judging. Hopefully my children will be closer to me.

Messages like Hunker's really make me sad - I missed out. ot to the stage I couldn't even look her in the eye. She once accused me of being a prostitute because I had pink and white striped cut off trousers (c.1983). Also disowned me and said I would be the death of my father when she found my pills by rummaging through my wardrobe (I was 21 and with dh I am still with 22 years later) and even bribed porter in Hall of Residence to let her in when I wasn't there to check my room.

I really envy people with close relationships - as an only child I feel sad about lots of things.

But I've moved on. Hopefully I've learnt from her mistakes.

Sorry for rants. Sometimes it all just comes out!

I don't. But they live quite near so she would only ever come for a few hours at most. Not sure how I'd feel if she arrived for a few days - pretty sure how DH would feel though .

Anyway quite often when they come it's to help me out with the kids so I'm not going to complain about that.

I once did an experiment and waited to see how long it would take my mum to call me if I didn't call her. It was 4 years.

I think if she came to stay with me it would be her battering the door to get out before me.

God no. I relax when my mum is here. Going to her house is like going home, although she no longer lives with my dad, or in the house I grew up in.

SHe has the parenting thing just right. SHe helps out, has never once criticised how I bring up my children and often told me what a great job I am doing. The only thing that makes me slightly sad is the thought that I am not the mother she is. But I am learning from the best.

And she is a fabulous grandma!

I used to practically have a nervous breakdown the week before my parents arrived. and then a week of severe depression after they'd left. now it's a bit milder but yes. v. v. stressful.

I love it when she visits.

I get some semblance of my old life back.

I get to spend the day out shopping and sipping coffee and having a boozy lunch w/her.

Have manicures and pedicures.

Go out w/DH in the evenings.

Have lie ins.

Swan off at the drop of a hat to the shops or wherever.

LOVE it.

Have just realised how incredibly lucky I am! Have taken my wonderful mother for granted I suppose. She stays quite often (as she lives other side of country) and its fab. My DH loves it too as it means a very happy wife and no washing up. When DS was 1 week and only sleeping whilst being held upright she came to stay and sat up all night (for 5 days)holding him and just waking me when he needed feeding, that was the best present she could have given me!

Swedishmum. You sound like you've come to terms with it at least. I've been trying to for years. Intellectually I know to expect nothing but it doesn't seem to translate emotionally and I still feel hurt and tense within hours, minutes of her arrival.

Arfy I did a similar experiment after a particularly tense phone call with my mum and waited, without calling her, to see how long it would take her to call me. Meanwhile I had an operation which went worng and became infected (she knew all this through my sister) and I lost my job, but still no call. Eventually she called me because her dog died and she knew she had been re-installed in the neediness stakes. She was now top of the victim tree and all I could do was be supportive and sympathetic. There. Harmony restored for her.

That's the thing with my relationship. Either I mother my mum and look after her and listen to her go on about all her problems all the time, or I have no relationship with her at all. My needs don't come into it. In fact, she actually fears my needs and those of my brother and sister. If we are ever even slightly needy, she goes into retreat of somehow finds the neediness trump card and plays it.

I look at other mothers enjoying their grand children, happy, nice to their daughters and I feel so hurt. God I'm forty now and however much I tell myself to let go, stop caring, accept the status quo, howver many books I read it doesn't seem to get through.

All I can do is try to do better for my children.

Never got tense and always looked forward to her visits until we fell out last summer for the first time ever. I now realise that I have spent most of my life burying my true feelings towards her, and putting a rosy gloss on my upbringing.

I do remember feeling very irritable around her a lot when I was younger, which was obviously supressed anger.

I think there is a generationally handed down rule that says you are not supposed to feel or be upset/angry/critical of your parents and if you do there is something wrong with you. It is a load of tosh.

Spidermama, just read your last post and your role of taking care of your mother is not an uncommon one. There is a long thread on this subject if it's of any interest to you, started by me "my mother has cut me out of her life".

I feel exactly like beckybrastraps (although she's stopped telling me what a good mum i am, instead she tells me what a hard life i have. Lovely but i assume she means 'you're a bit shouty and tense' which is certainly true.

spidermama, can i suggest that you ask your GP to refer you for NHS therapy? It does exist at least to some extent, and although you might have to wait a year or more, believe me it's worth it when you get there.

im glad that im not the only person who finds their mum difficult! my mum goes on and and about how dificult things must be for me, but if i ask for support she is always busy or says just leave the kids at home alone (Aged 9 and 11). The very few times she helps she makes out how inconevenit it is for her! i dont understand her!! i dont want pity i just want support

My situation is a bit of an odd one really. My parents live across town from me, about a 20 minute drive (but my house is on the way back from my Mums work place).

I moved into my house about a year ago, in the process of getting divorced with 2 very young DDs. I worked full time until last month, am going to uni as well.

She has visited us 3 times, one of those times was boxing day. I cannot tell you how much it upsets me that she doesn't seem too bothered about spending time with her DGDs, she also always comments how untidy my house is, but never offers to help.

If DDs want to see GP, we have to go there, and she still pays them no attention, and yet I remember her being a really involved Mum to me and my sister

pages - I'm not sure that anyone goes through their adolescense without feeling suppressed irritation towards their mother! I certainly didn't. It doesn't necessarily mean that it has to continue. TBH although my mum is great in lots of ways she still irritates me but I have now accepted that that is the way she is.

becky - having read your post I've just realised that my mum is alway supportive of me in my parenting and tells me I'm amazing to do everything that I do!! Considering that I parent quite differently to her I think she is very generous and open-minded.

Absolutely right Pages.
There's a taboo about critisising your own mother. It's very damaging.

The thing is, I know it's not my mum's fault. She didn't decide to try to upset me and make me feel unloved. She did her best and she had a tough time and blah blah blah.
But there comes a point in your life where you have to say, that's all very well but I have been let down, hurt and damaged. Just because it wasn't intended, doesn't mean it didn't happen.