Noticing a similar thread on this topic has got me thinking.
I would welcome advice on this.
My mother and I have always had a really difficult relationship. I would say she was pretty absent emotionally when I was growing up. This got really rocky in my teens and I left home quite young. She has never forgiven me for some of the things I did when I a teenager (nothing terrible, but in her eyes they were).
Throughout my life she has put me down, made passive aggressive remarks, been downright bitchy at times. When I am with my husband she speaks to him and virtually ignores me. If I express opinions when he is around she puts me down or shuts me up.
She is the sort of person who will put on a big show of being a lovely grandmother or being really interested in members of her family who she doesn't need to see or speak too regularly. However on a day to day basis she is disinterested, unsupportive, rude and unhelpful. She has never been there for me ever when I have needed her. In fact she seems to take pleasure if things don't go well for me. She can be spectacularly tactless and I would say downright cruel.
Anyway, we have lived hundreds of miles apart for most of my married life. For a six year period we moved back to live closer to my parents when the children were young , but she and my father really weren't interested. They would insist we only visit with one child at a time, as apparently they couldn't cope with more than one. She would find things to criticise and never did anything to help me at all. In the end we stopped speaking to them for 3 years as I was so upset by it all.
I recently moved back to the area because she is now widowed and elderly and i am concerned for her despite really not liking her much. I've bent over backwards to help her, sorting out her affairs and doing practical stuff. Things seemed to be in a better place, until one day she demanded I come round on a triviality. The conversation turned nasty and she started to question a statement I had made about my childhood. It then led onto her pet subject - what a bitch I was when I was a teenager, in her opinion. She said some unforgivable things and i left. I haven't spoken to her since, and that was in September.
My husband says it's a lost cause, I should let it be. He witnessed her behaviour and was appalled. However I can't reconcile myself to never speaking to her again my life. I have written several letters which didn't have the right tone so didn't send them. I can't face speaking to her, as i am afraid it will descend into a slanging match. There is so much hurt on both sides, I don't even know where to begin. She will never apologise to me, she never does, and has made no attempt to put things right. My husband says he thinks she engineered the argument because she doesn't want me involved in her affairs any longer.
I have two siblings who always take her side and show no support for me. My brother lives 20 miles from her and never visits or helps her, he's a user. My sister lives at the other end of the country and though she has a reasonable relationship, it is all take on her side. I feel really isolated and upset.
What should I do? I am now determined to leave the area again next year and not come back if this isn't resolved, I really feel I have had enough of the whole family.