I tried to post on the stately homes thread but it says it's closed

[Caro486]

So sorry this May be in the wrong place.

Hi, I just found this thread and have spent an hour reading it so far. I am struggling a lot with my relationship with my mother and don't know how to fix it. Just thinking about her now brings a tension to my gut and I feel guilt mixed with anger etc etc.

Long story short is I feel so let down by her. Starting in childhood when she remarried someone and allowed him to emotionally abuse me. She did not protect me then. I was always told my real dad was useless and my new dad paid for everything and I should be grateful. So there was this thing where I was told I should love someone I really did not love, and made to feel bad for loving someone I really did love (my dad).

I grew very independent as a result of this home situation and in my teens I spent as much time as I could with friends' families. My mother didn't like this.

I left home as soon as I could finish school. I only really began to create a sense of who I was, once I had left home. I don't have many ties to my school days at all, the ties I made after leaving home are the ones which lasted. My friends became my family in many ways.

But still, the family kept up the appearance to everyone that we were all happy and cohesive and doing well. This was always the family presentation. Everything. Is. fine. Extended family were all presented with this picture. My mom
and stepdads work colleagues all received it. Nobody was to know how unhappy things were. I bought into this and didn't ever tell anyone, either. I would hint at it if friends were sharing stuff with me but then feel disloyal - after all my stepdad loved me (I was told, but never sensed) and most important he paid for everything while my real dad had skipped out on his responsibilities.

So fast forward to now and I have three kids. My mother maintains the presentation to all around that she is an adoring granny but the reality is she hardly sees them. She has been of so little help to me when they were smaller, very rarely looking after them. She doesn't call them or have any regular involvement with them although we live in the same town. As a result they do not have much of a relationship with her. To her friends and social media though she's the doting granny. It makes me angry. She could be that person instead of just pretending she is.

Her response would be that it is my fault. That I am so busy she doesn't want to be a nuisance. She never knows when is a good time to call. I'm always so busy.

Still to this day, I never see her without my stepdad. I have realized it is him that she protects above anyone else and to have a relationship with her, I must accept he is always going to be there. I don't ever see her alone because she always brings him. I can't ask her not to because then I am rejecting him and he's "done so much for me and loves me like his own." He doesn't.

I'm putting this out here hoping someone will understand how torn I feel. I am still wanting a relationship with my mother which is real and open but I have come to realize that may never happen. We will keep pretending and then she will eventually pass away and I will feel devastated that we never resolved things, and he will live a bit longer and I will visit him dutifully because to reject him would be rejecting her, but nothing will ever get sorted out.

I guess I'm just tired of feeling bad, like it's me who's failed in this relationship.

Any feedback would be great, because I don't know what to do from here.

I absolutely understand what you are talking about, and it's not your fault, you were a child and she should have protected you.

I'm so much further on than you in my journey - a year of counselling has made me a different person. I challenged and questioned my dad about things from the past, which he denied. Slowly over time I realised the relationship wasn't working - I would be sweaty with nerves and anxiety whenever he and my stepmum visited. So I went no contact in the summer and I'm a lot happier.

Funny but it was having a child myself which made me realise my childhood was abusive. It's passed down through generations and you have to make a conscious decision to do things differently. Although I find this bloody hard at times.

Some books I found helpful were Toxic Parents and The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller.

It will all be ok, just go with it. Deep down you will know what needs to be done to sort things out, be it trying to speak to your mum (prepare for more denial though) or going low/no contact x

Hi Caro

I have bumped up the current Stately Homes thread for you to read and post on there too. The previous threads are closed because they have 1000 messages on them.

Re your own situation it is not your fault at all that your mother is like this; she has abjectly failed you as a parent and continues to do so. She failed to protect you and still fails in this putting her man first and foremost in her life. She has also done the usual toxic parent behaviour of blaming you as her child for her own failings. She is a profoundly selfish person.

I think that ultimately therapy would help you (BACP are good and do not charge the earth). I also think that you need to grieve for the relationship you should have had rather than the one you actually got.

Thank you. We are low contact now but oh the guilt I feel. We can go weeks without a call (either way i should add). Then she'll call and be all "poor me I haven't heard from you in so long."

I'll move on over to the right thread as Attila has bumped it for me!

She was not a good parent to you and remains a rubbish example of a grandparent to your children. They as well as you do not need this type of poor example in their lives.

She will never be anything like a doting granny simply because she is not built that way. Again not your fault.

It is also not your fault your mother is like this, you did not make her this way. Her own family of origin did that lot of damage to her. What if anything do you know about her own childhood because that often provides clues.

You are really under no obligation to visit your mother and stepfather now. He emotionally abused you and she turned a blind eye to the emotional abuse of you. She failed utterly to protect you and continues to protect her H instead.

She is putting all the responsibility and therefore all the guilt for her own failure onto you.

Believe in your own intuition and experience, once you have run it through the filter of a sceptical brain. If your brain, gut and experience are all saying 'there's something wrong' - there's something very wrong.

"mothers who can't love" by Susan Forward is a good book (she also wrote Toxic Parents, which is brilliant).

Remember, to have a real and open relationship with someone, both of you have to want that. Your mother .. does not.

At a guess (only you know if this is true or not), at a deep level she knows she's let you down very very badly and not put you first in your formative and teen years. She is aware that this isn't ok. So she is heavily invested in pretending that everything is ok, that everything is happy. Your stepfather will go along with this, of course.

When someone who is failing you makes it (wrongly) your responsibility, then the guilt comes back on you. They make it your problem. But actually, the responsibility is largely theirs.

Realising this, you have to come to acknowledge that your mother let you down very, very badly. Irrevocably so. I think you need to read those books and untangle what's your responsiblity and what's hers. But once you realise your mother is insufficient and .. frankly deceitful in making stuff your responsiblity ... then you have to grieve the mother you should have had and long for. It's a hard realisation, but living as you are is also hard. There's a relief and a pain and an honesty in acknowledging things as they -actually- are, rather than as the picture your mother presents.

This isn't your lack btw. Your emotions and feelings are valid.

Once you come to .. some ... terms with the situation as it is, you can decide how much contact you want with her. But you do have to face that her husband will always come first, second and tenth with her. It shouldn't have been that way, but it was.