Offended my mother

[Naturebabe]

Tonight I have offended my mother without meaning to. It all came to a head. She is kind and well meaning so people think I should be grateful, and I am, but feel emotionally numb as she smothers me. I told her this tonight and she did not take it well.
e.g. she has a caravan she moves to wherever I am living to she can visit regularly.
When I was expecting DS, she moved into our house / her caravan for three, nearly four weeks from my due date. I felt under surveillance and would have preferred it if she had come once I'd gone into labour, but she ignored my wishes.
When we moved she offered to help with child care (great) however she started taking over, arranging my new kitchen and cooking the first meal there..
When I have moved with work, she has 'helped' me look for houses an got over involved, commenting or putting me off ones she did't like.
When I was 19 and had a first job abroad, she came on holiday there even though she hates flying, I got ill whilst they were there and they interpreted it as a 'lucky thing' they were there. I think the stress contributed to me getting ill.

This all sounds very mean, as she is a lovely person, but I feel I haven't fully been allowed to develop my independence and personality without her constant anxiety driven comments....

Yesterday I was talking about making soup and she said 'make sure you cool it down quickly and put it in the fridge (to avoid food poisoning). These comments are constant. There is always a danger lurking around the corner she has to warn me about!
Do I sound nuts?

You know as much as I understand your problems and wish there was some way of getting a happy medium in your lives so that both parents and daughters were happy, I am also very very envious. My Mam is dead 8 years and there are days I wish I had her around to disagree with, wish I could hear her voice, wish I knew she was at the other end of a phone call.

We always take things for granted and assume there will be a tomorrow, there wasn't in my case ( sudden death) and although time heals the shock and pain, it doesn't ease the longing to have her back. I would give anything to have her drive me nuts again lol. At least your Mams are there to care and drive you mad even if I know it has it's own set of issues too.Huge hugs and maybe a wee chat about being all grown up now or just saying yep I will make sure and do that ( cooling the soup quickly) and then just going off and doing it your way would be the kindest way of dealing with it. And as much as my mother drove me doolally when she was alive, my God you don't half miss that when they are no longer here ....And you only realise that when it is too late to do anything about it as I found out..

Nature you aren't going to be able to change her behaviour without changing yours. She isn't going to magically change into a different person. You have to change how you manage her.

You give in to sad puppy face because she has trained you to. The only way out of this is to accept that she will occasionally be upset with you.

It's fine for her to be upset you know. It doesn't make you a bad person. She's emotionally blackmailing you and is responsible for her own feelings.

The response to "but I only wanted to help and I know how hard it is for you" is a bright and breezy "it's not hard, I've been looking forward to it".

Respond to her words not her tone.

You love your Mother, and want her to be happy, but that's not a good reason for you to allow her to continue to make you unhappy and resentful.

You will enjoy your time with your mum more if you stop allowing her to treat you like a slightly incompetent teenager.

Oh, here it goes...

The good old "My Mum's Dead, you should be happy yours isn't" the argument we can't supposedly come back against because, like, your mum is dead. right.

so...no matter what she does, says etc, you are ungrateful if anything less than delighted with the fact that she IS trampling over your wishes and needs... even though you are in your 40s, you have to go along with what your mother says she wants.

This is NOT the action of a caring mother, these are where the mother has decided what she wants to do, and she then goes on to ignore any alternative suggestion by her daughter.

a caring mother would be fine with working out how their dd needs to be supported and fit in if that is within their power etc. They would offer and not insist. they would offer and understand if the answer was a 'Thanks but I've got this'

a caring mother does not then say 'I'm only trying to help you out, I know how hard it is for you', and insist on carrying on regardless of their dc wishes.

She does this because she loves you and this is how she shoes her love. By trying to be helpful and doing things she would like or have liked done for her.

How was your relationship before children? My mum was similar after I had children and I feel this is when she finally understood me and could relate to me because she had been a mum too. I had a senior career prior to children and she didn't show any interest because I don't think she understood it. I found it odd because I didn't relate to her ant differently...If that makes sense.

"She does this because she loves you and this is how she shoes her love. By trying to be helpful and doing things she would like or have liked done for her".

No. This is her way of exerting control, love does not come into the equation at all here. It is not NatureBabes fault her mother is like this, she did not make her that way. Her own family of origin did that lot of damage to her.

NatureBabes mother acts like this because she enjoys exerting her power and control over her adult DD, someone whom she still regards as a child and or incapable. Smothering like this is a form of control and is another controlling behaviour. Controlling behaviours are themselves abusive in nature.

NatureBabe in turn has to find some boundaries and impose them rigidly, not an easy task at all when she has been trained from childhood to serve her mother and not have any boundaries. She will also have to grieve ultimately for the relationship she should have had rather than the one she actually got.

Why ridgedly? Why not a soft easy transition to a more mature relationship?

These two will never have a mature and equal relationship; her mother is simply not built that way and that is no fault of the OP. OP can only change how she reacts to her mother.

Unfortunately you cannot apply "normal" rules of familial relations to those who are dysfunctional and emotionally unhealthy. The rule book goes out the window when it comes to dysfunctional families.
OPs mother is unable and also unwilling to actually want an equal relationship with her now adult daughter. I also very much doubt that her mother will like, let alone accept, any attempt from OP to assert her own self here in her mother's presence.

My aunt still tries to hold my hand across the road!!!!

Thank you for these coments. It has made me reflect on everything, and to break the cycle with my own sons.....

Blah blah blah...

Your post was all about you, you, you.

If that's your support of the op love... it needs some work.

Queen I've reported your post. That was uncalled for.

The OP (and anyone else who starts a thread on MN) wants support, not to find out your situation. The fact that you've lost your mum, does not mean OP should just suck up boundary-trampling from her own Dmum. (And others are NC with their own toxic mums, - a live mum does not always mean a lovely, loving mum!)

I'm sorry for your loss, but it doesn't help the OP.

Naturebabe, I hear you 100%. I didn't get relief until I moved to another country (although she followed me over for the first 2 months!).

Nobody believed me when I would say that my mother was a nightmare. Everyone I knew thought she was the sweetest thing on the planet, including DH - until she stayed with us for a few weeks and he realised how relentless her loaded commentary is. Then he apologised for not believing me - greatest validation ever!

I haven't read the books recommended by AttilaTheMeerkat, but I intend to. I read the website 9 Signs You Have A Toxic Parent and had a total lightbulb moment. She ticks all 9, without ever raising her hand to me or name-calling.

Your mother's behaviours might not seem like much to others. It's all tiny things that gnaw away at your confidence and self-belief because you hear and see these behaviours all day, every day, and can't escape it. Others don't see it, but it's real and it will drive you insane until you distance yourself (physically as well as psychologically, if you can!).

We've been trained all our lives, but we can learn new ways to manage this behaviour in order to have better relationships with our closer family members.

You need to get meaner. My mother is not allowed in the kitchen when I am cooking, because she will comment endlessly. She huffs about it and tries the emotion "you are so mean and unreasonable" line, but I ignore it. She really was unbearable before.