Help me process my anger with my mother, is a somewhat Brexit related story

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I am NC for this. I am just really angry and wanted to put this out there. Not sure how it will help but maybe just to vent.

Basic story is about two families:

1. My husband and I are British (but both grew up in another country) and absolutely avid Europhiles, and I have been very active in the anti-Brexit, pro-EU campaign since the referendum. All the marches, volunteering etc etc. Then Brexit actually happened, which I really did not think it would, and it has impacted us hard emotionally and, in the future, given that we have property and business interests in the EU, potentially financially. There are also other family, and in my case, strong ideological reasons for being gutted at leaving the EU.

1. My parents are elderly (late 70s) and have always been completely irresponsible with money. They do not live in Britain. They have no pension, no policies of any kind, no property and no income other than my father's small business, which he continues to run even though he is nearly 80. This is going to have to stop some time soon and he is also in quite poor health. I support them financially to quite a large degree. If my father dies my mother essentially is destitute (except not, of course, because I will be expected to support her. Oldest child, professional, good income in Britain etc).

So, my husband and I just, since Brexit Day, have decided to move (well, retire actually) to Ireland. We can get our EU passports back in 5 years, which means an enormous amount to me. We have however no ties whatsoever to Ireland, DH has never been there and I once went there for conference for three days twenty years ago, We have despite that made all the arrangements to do this. I have a pension lump sum due which will mean that, for the first time in my life since I left my first husband and he fleeced me for everything I had in return for my freedom, I will be able to buy a property (in the part of Ireland we are going to go to we can, we have never been able to afford a property in England).

So I phoned my mother tonight and told her of our plan. Her response was "well, that is a completely crazy idea". I had to bite my tongue so hard not to say no Mummy, what IS a completely crazy idea is to be nearly eighty with no assets or pension of any kind, with no plan whatsoever about what happens when Daddy cannot work any more or he dies.

I said nothing but feel so angry. I don't know why, this is not new ridiculousness from these people. When I left X country (where they live and where they grew up) for Britain in the 1980s, to further my career, my father told me "I don't know why you are leaving, you know you will just have to come back". I never did. Why am I so angry now?

@Clockonmantlepiece you would have also called me mad as a hatter at 24 when I arrived in the UK to live forever, having spent a single week here on holiday at 20 and before that not having been here since I was a baby! It worked out well because I made it work (and it was not easy, not even remotely). Sometimes you need to take a side step in life.

I made this thread to analyse my feelings about my mother, not question my retirement choice...(and this is just my first retirement, when my son finishes education we could very well move on. Or we could always return to Britain if we want to, we are still all British after all, and after retirement and the end of my son's education,we can basically go anywhere!).

The question about who would be our son's guardians if we are not here or cannot look after him, yes it will be his sisters, who both live in the EU at present. At least one of them looks likely to remain there (looks very much like she is going to marry her EU boyfriend and stay in his country, where she is studying right now). So that is important too, in terms of my son getting his EU citizenship back.

Your first mistake:

"it has impacted us hard emotionally and, in the future, given that we have property and business interests in the EU, potentially financially."

You are very far from Serenity. What is Serenity? It is acceptance, and living one day at a time.

Why are you catastrophising like this? I think you need to absorb a little less Project Fear, and a little more optimism!

Two helpful thoughts for Serenity:

If you change the way you think, you will change the way you feel.

The Serenity Prayer goes like this: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Why are you acting as thought the world has come to an end? The Conservative party are going to a spending spree that is actually no different to Labour's plans!

Just calm down, the borders are not going to suddenly shut down, there is not going to be economic war, and I am not too sure what you are so terrified of.

Remember the old rule: never make life changing decisions during duress or FEAR (feelings experienced as reality).

Give it 2 years, and then make a decision. The fact that Sinn Fein has just won the election should give you pause. Watch and then decide.

@UYScuti my mother never actually tells me what to do, she is way too passive-aggressive for that. She just pulls a funny sour face if she is actually with me, or sighs and calls me crazy if she is on the phone (when I was divorcing my abusive XH she even colluded with him to get everyone to think that I was having a mental breakdown and needed help rather than just to LTB!)

@ScreamingLadySutch I am afraid that I don't believe in God, and I am not looking for serenity, whatever that may be, but for my son to have a future in the EU. And also a change of scene, a bit of adventure, something new, while still being able to make my living. Once again I ask, why is this any different from people wanting to retire to Spain or Provence? I am not terrified of anything, I am trying to have a good and interesting life and maximise the options for my son.

PS Acceptance (ie passivity, collusion, inaction, tolerance of a bad status quo) is anathema to everything I believe in. I grew up, as I said, in a fascist environment where the status quo caused suffering and death and we were urged to accept it because it was inevitable (and indeed "God's" will). I could have accepted that and stayed within the system (which worked fine for me and my family, in the privileged class in that country).

I could have accepted it when my parents told me that I would never make it in the UK and I would be crawling back home, so I might as well not try. I could have accepted it when everyone told me the career I chose was too hard and impossible, especially for a woman, why didn't I do something easier. I could have accepted it when people told me I was mad to leave my husband because he was so intelligent, funny, debonair, brilliant, why would I be so stupid. I could have accepted it when everyone said I was mad to take on two stepchildren from another country who I had met once and raise them as my own. I could have accepted it when they said my son would never learn to communicate and his severe self-harm would not be possible to eradicate. I could have accepted it when the Local Authority told me that they would not fund a specialist home education programme for him.

I don't do things that way.

Sinn Féin did not win the election. They got 25% of the vote. It was one of the lowest turnouts for years.

Roughly 50% of people voted for centre right parties. The largest party (Fianna Fáil) got 38 seats, Sinn Féin 37, Fine Gael 34. 80 is needed for a majority. There are 142 seats held by people who are not Sinn Féin.

Labour got 37 seats in 2011. They have 6 or 7 now, something like that.

Another PS: I have deliberately not revealed my actual political position, either on UK or Irish politics, except to make it clear I am a Europeanist and anti-Brexit. Don't make assumptions about what my political views are here, or would be in Ireland.

That was addressed to @ScreamingLadySutch

Musing a bit more, I think that by far the biggest "leap" into the unknown I ever took was taking on my stepdaughters.

I was in my forties, had never been a parent, they were eleven and twelve and were coming from far away, would only see their mother once a year at the most. My DH was working away for weeks, sometimes months at a time, so it was mostly just me and the children at home in those days. We did not know each other before they came, had just met for a family Xmas. There was considerable financial implication as they had to both be sent to private schools. And that was not a decision I could just try for a bit to see if it worked!

In my opinion that decision which DH and I made all those years ago makes the (perfectly ordinary and common, and in the end reversible if it does not work out) decision to retire (with a very good pension, some capital and a continuing thriving business), to another nearby country, with comparable healthcare and standard of living, pale into insignificance! Would people not agree? I can understand my mother's negativity, that is her (usual and predicable) way. But why so much negatively on here?

I know it is none of my business but I am so curious about this expensive hobby! It sounds like you really need to prioritize your sin over your parents - I mean, I wouldn't abandon them but it sounds like they are expecting too much to the detriment of your son. Have you ever really talked about finances?

I don’t think it’s a Brexit issue at all. It’s a parents are dicks issue. Cut off their pocket money.

Your husband met you for ONE night, then took his children away from their mother - to another country - to live with you?

And he didn’t even take them away from their mother to live with him, but more to live with you as he was working away anyway

I am exhausted by your posts. You are right you need to sort out your anger. I have never read a rant like it! Your life of decisions made on the basis of little experience has gone ok up until now but is risky to say the least. You seem to thrive on taking a leap of faith with no knowlege. Hope it doesnt go wrong this time. As for your parents, you can dish it out but you cant take it

No no no, they came to live with us about a year and a half after we got married! He didn't take then away from their mother, it was her idea, she approached me and asked me to give them an education in the UK, which I was delighted to do (at that stage I had had three miscarriages, I did not believe I was ever going to have my own children, and I was so happy to have them).

If I cut off my parents money they will die, they have complex medical conditions and no way to pay for the health care they need.

The hobby is breeding and showing highly pedigreed dogs...totally useless and in my view immoral, they live in a country with sky high poverty and child mortality, and their dogs live like kings (I don't like dogs by the way!).

Yes, fair point about the anger! I am trying to get rid of it right now, that is what I seem to be doing!

All of my decisions, including this one, have been made with a great deal of knowledge, thought and research, just little experience of the thing I/we have decided to do.

Not the same thing at all...there are lots of decisions you have to make based on knowledge rather than experience. If that was not the case no-one would ever move anywhere they have not lived before! Or change career to one they have not done before (which is actually one thing I have never done, I have worked in the same place for twenty-five years). Or became a parent (or step-parent) for the first time. Etc etc

What do you mean I can dish it out but can't take it? I have criticised my parents on here, an anonymous internet forum. And to my therapist. Never to them. It would not be worth it.

I am aware I have posted a lot and sorry for that. I am off work atm, sick in bed, and obviously these issues are swilling around in my head right now and I feel like pontificating! I will shut up for a bit, sorry about that. I will read whatever people write though. All your points are really interesting and I am grateful for the input, positive and negative.

I am someone who is not afraid to drop everything, up sticks and make dramatic moves - recently did it again. I have often been told I am completely mental to 'give up such a good life', until my loved ones see that I end up with a better one.

But they are acting out of their own way of seeing the world. Why would this make me angry with them? If anything, I feel a bit sorry that they are so 'stuck' (IMO - they are probably perfectly happy in reality)

Could it be that you are angry because somewhere deep down, you believe the same as they do - that this is a mistake? I'm not saying you shouldn't go - far from it. But I think consider what is driving the anger - anger is the bodyguard of fear after all. It's often that need to control the uncontrollable in order to feel safe in some way.

It may also tie into your view of acceptance. I have a different view of acceptance - I don't see it as rolling over and dying, but more as seeing the facts of the matter and removing my resistance to the consequences of those facts. That means I can then respond from my own self, without worrying about what someone else is or isn't doing. I can be me, without needing another person to be anything other than themselves.

So of course, the times when I'm ranting and swearing - I'm not doing that - and I know I have to go inside and see what's going on with me that I've made it matter so much.

Hope you feel better soon

@Apileofballyhoo thank you so much for the correction. What does that mean then, a coalition?

@Mediumsize OK, you don't like references to god,

you can also describe serenity as 'truly understanding that having a temper tantrum when the world does't go the way you want to, is a complete and utter waste of time and energy and can be, and often is, counterproductive' .

Well, hoping your aggression is helping you. You clearly know exactly what you are doing so your only option to make the world go the way you want it to, because you have everything else sorted out, is cut off your parents funding so they die quickly. .

What exactly do you want here? for your rigidity, absolutism, rather large ego and rage?

"seeing the facts of the matter and removing my resistance to the consequences of those facts. That means I can then respond from my own self, without worrying about what someone else is or isn't doing. I can be me, without needing another person to be anything other than themselves. "

Well said @ChristmasFluff. What I was trying to say, but you say it so much better.

That is a nasty way to put it. The one thing I am not doing is having a temper tantrum, I am processing my anger in such a way that it affects absolutely no-one in my real life. I am not aggressive. Not at all.

And saying I want my parents to die is just mean, they will soon enough, they are both unwell, but I have paid their medical costs for nearly thirty years and will continue to do so. I don't resent that. I was instead angry at my mother's criticism of my choices, given their complete and chronic lack of wisdom in their own choices...

And how am I the one who is rigid? I have time and time again embraced change and researched different possibilities in my life, and then taken different paths from those expected, even though these have not been at all easy.

My parents are the ones who have remained totally rigid and behaved exactly the same throughout the years, whether it is their complete financial irresponsibility, refusal to ever change anything in their life (eg to downsize lifestyle or stop breeding expensive dogs when their finances took a downturn some years ago and I had to step up and support them), or their always having to sneer at/criticise/portray as unhinged all my major life decisions.

If you don't want nastiness, don't be nasty. You tend to get what you dished out. If your currency is nasty, you get traded in nasty.
Instead of THINKING what 'serenity' actually means you airily said you don't do God or whatever it is you said. Mocking God (actually it is a spiritual statement) signals a bullseye on the big ego you had just flaunted.

Bang.

Show a bit of humility, because lack of humility is part of your problem. If post after post is saying whoa, slow down, think this through ...

Your frustration at your annoying parents disregard of their own choices is valid. But your annoying mother is also saying whoa, slow down.