Hello, is this the Vent About Your Bloody Mother room?

[UnquietDad]

If so, I need oxygen.

I will be back in about two hours. Someone get the drinks in.

Soon after I met DH my mum came to stay with me for a few days, so naturally I gave a little dinner party to introduce her to my friends and new boyfriend.
During the conversation, she was trying to pin down a particular era of American history but having difficulty in labelling it correctly 'You know,' she said brightly 'when the blacks were causing all that trouble in the South.'
Stunned silence.
'Do you mean the Civil Rights Movement, Mother?'
'Yes, that's it.'
I thought DH might think twice about becoming part of my family after that little incident, but then I hadn't met MIL then...

UQD - have you tried agreeing with her?! 'Oh you're so right' in an ever-so-slightly-sarcastic voice? and definately keep points - for each 10 points treat yourself to a bottle of wine, cream cake, new shirt whatever - then you'll be desperate for her to comment so those points add up!

Re hanging up to end phone calls, I have been known to go outside with the receiver to my ear and ring our doorbell

Message withdrawn

Hi Unquietdad, sympathies from this house. My husband is the only child/son to a BM (bloody mother). I have yet to hear her say something motherly and kind about him or even to him, eg darling, sweetie, some other affectionate name...or a pleasant thankyou if he does something like help clear the table after a meal.

AAARRRGGHH

I always remember our wedding....

My dh was youngest child, not really a wanted child, and he had largely been brought up by grandparents and streetlife.

At our wedding his mother (after several sherberts) asked me if I would "look after my baby".

I bit my lip, and didn't reply "A damned sight better than you ever did".

I'm about as certain as I can be that my sister never had a child, so UQD can't be my nephew. She too is a Daily Mail editorial soundalike, and a master of the "But Anyway". She's a kindly soul to real people though, rather than to imaginary social groups, so generally we get on fine if we stay off politics. I tend to close such conversations politely but firmly with "Well you know that's something we'll never agree on". Works ok with a younger sister but I can see a mother not falling for it.

If she treats me to her views on child rearing, though, I can't help thanking her a trifle sarcastically for sharing the benefit of her greater experience in this matter.

Unquietdad, I'm not sure if this is appropriate for you or not, but this thread may help. The OP may not seem your situation but as you scroll up there is lots of experience of difficult mothers.

Some of your mothers have said some terrible things but try this one. I have actually name changed because I am too ashamed to be linked to this comment.

In the middle of Shepherds Bush Market - "Goodness these negroes have huge teeth".

I want to die even typing that. In no way is it a one off either.

Feel for you. I remember your last thread about her and she did sound a lot like my mother. Defensive and sactimonious are my mother's middle names.

UQD - you could be talking about my stepmother. I feel for you, because I do console myself with the "at least I'm not bloody related to her" line. Though her children (2 teenagers) are surprisingly normal.

I have come to the conclusion that You.Have.To.Laugh.About.It.
Though dd is not of an age yet to listen to the drivel. And I will not leave dd alone with her even for a minute.

Sometimes I write a Letter back. I have never posted one, but it sometimes makes me feel better.

I think dh's mum won the prize for unpleasant comments. When dd was born brain damaged she suggested we 'had it adopted and have a proper baby' My jaw still drops when I think about it. DD is now 3 and they still try and pretend she doesn't exist.

Thing is, she is not a bad mother. As she keeps pointing out.

And she hasn't said some things as bad as one or two of the comments on here!!

I think it has gone beyond being what she thinks /argues about, and is now more about the way she does so. We don't take kindly to being lectured, but she seems to think it is her role. And she will never let it go if she is in danger of not having the last word. Even my attempts to draw a line under the conversation "You don't say those things again or we will leave" were turned back on me. I spoke firmly but calmly. She! Took! This! Tone! And Said! There Might! Be Things! For! Which! I ! Ask! You! To! Leave!!

Ultimately, though, she knows we hold the trump card - because she needs us, and she is desperate to have us there and to see the grandchildren. So we come on our terms or not at all - it's going to be that way.

Oh yeah, the "You can do it our way or you can fuck off" approach works wonders with my hugely infuriating FIL, but possibly due in no small part to intervention from very sensible MIL, who knows we are dead serious about the "fuck off" part.

UQD I had to check your profile to see if you are my brother! Obviously you aren't but you have described my mother perfectly We get Letters. We also get emails

After one particularly nasty email that caused me to contact my brother for reassurance, her next remark was along the lines of she would have to go back to letters because emails seemed to upset me. WTF? It wasn't the medium that upset me but the words in it!

I've tried ignoring/ asnswering back/ changing the subject but nothing works, and anything she believes is a Fact, whether anyone else agrees or not.

I know the "Fact" thing. Too well.
I get "But you don't seem to see that what I am saying IS the TRUTH. I'm not making it up. Why would I be making it up?"

Got the best one the other day. "People" - which after interrogation I found to mean me, DW, people we know and politicians - all secretly agree with her, but are "frightened of losing their jobs" if they speak their minds.

Oh, and, "Do you watch the news?"

Note, not "Do you watch the news?" casually as a normal person might say it, but "Do you watch the news?" with face and... I wish there was a smiley for [pursed lips].

by news does she mean Fox news with an added dose of 'Daily Mail'?

She means "Today" and the "Telegraf", but I bet she and O'Reilly would get on famously...

UQD and everyone else, do we all have the same difficult female relative, possibly cloned?

It's just I'm sure my grandmother is making repeated appearances on this thread... feeling much better to realise how many other people out there are cringing

What gets to me is the lack of self-reflection. If I had said something which caused a relative to get angrier with me than they ever had in their lives, I'd be mortified. I'd be examining my opinions and utterances and thinking "My God, what did I say?"

We all have opinions which we know will cause ripples, and so we are careful about when and where we voice them. She has none of the usual mechanisms for doing this. Nothing occurs to her as being a contentious opinion.

This is why it cuts no ice when I say "yes, I got cross with you once" (and I've apologised to her for that) "but we have bitten our tongues so many times this year." And we have. There have been so many times when she was obviously trying to "draw" us (commenting on black people on TV and stuff in the paper and so on), and it has just got intolerable.

My mother has said, all my sodding life, 'I think you'll find you're wrong about that, darling'.

On a wide variety of issues of PROVABLE FECKING FACT. But no. Oh no. Oh fecking no, she has Spoken and if you try and point out she is FACTUALLY FECKING WRONG she will go into an almighty Huff for an unspecified period.

Get her addicted to internet chatrooms on her pet topics and let her go wild on them.

ye gods. I wonder if us females hit 60 or 65 and suddenly become 'unreasonable'
eeeeeep

OMG! The pursed lips and "Do you watch the news? That's my mother! Accompanied by cold angry face and frown. Shall I tell you what happened? (and then proceeds with an utterly illogical argument or one backed up by something she read in the guardian or heard on radio 4 - yes, different newspaper and even similar politics to me, but still extreme and just as annoyingly sanctimonious, no room for a different viewpoint than hers.)

your right to be angry. And remember, she knows how to push your buttons because she installed them