Hi. I’m trying to negotiate a better relationship with my difficult mum as an adult. I have asked for this forum’s help before and you were excellent. I appreciate some things can’t be fixed and you end up no-contact. That’s on the table but I’d rather it were a last resort.
Bit of background: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/4001273-I-stood-up-to-my-mum-she-assaulted-me
So that wasn’t great, it was about a year ago. She did apologise, but not really in a satisfying way. My boundary was, this doesn’t happen again, ever, and you need to get some help/support to change this behaviour pattern. There was effusive sorry and I’m a bad person but I always try to be kind, but very light on the specifics on what was actually going to change (plus a bunch of excuses about how it was really my fault or I was mis-remembering, plus other family members who wanted me to stop talking about it and forget it so we could go back to normal). We had a back and forth for a bit via email and in the end got assurance that she wasn’t going to hit, grapple or trap me in the house any more, and she was going to try even harder to be kind. That seemed to be about as good as I was going to get, so I accepted the apology and we agreed to put the thing behind us.
There hasn’t been a repeat of the violent behaviour, and I’ve really stuck to my boundary about not accepting the silent treatment, so there has been much less of that – win. She tried to pull it at a family gathering and we all just kept on cheerfully talking to her and ignoring her sulking until she got over it. There hasn’t been a repeat since.
Unfortunately, lately the verbal aggression and control-freakery is creeping back in. Family have been helping me with some house improvements, I’m grateful for the help (my work is 60+ hours a week at the moment) but her need to control everything is really grinding me down. The way she does it is like, ‘it’s completely your choice, here’s 6 [household items] I think would look good, but remember, up to you!’’ and I’m like, ‘thanks mum, I like number 3’. By her cat bum mouth reaction it’s obviously the wrong choice, so I have to play this kind of ridiculous game of guessing which one she has already chosen but it being ‘my choice’, repeat ad nauseum. I’m pretty chill about how my house gets fixed up but it’s beginning to not feel like my house, as she has picked out literally everything and we have quite different taste. There just seems to be no room for negotiation. It was offered as ‘we’ll help so things move faster while you’re working’ and it’s now morphed into this massive renovation project far beyond the original ‘fixing the broken bits in my old house so it doesn’t fall down’. It’s clear I can’t have the help that is helpful to me, I get what mum wants to do, her way. I don’t think I ever actually agreed to any of this, it was just decided for me, ‘it needs doing and we’re going to do it’. It’s actually getting quite disruptive of my work as I tell them when I have meetings or confidential calls, and they just turn up and start shouting or drilling holes regardless. I’d rather just deal with stuff myself with my limited DIY skills because the side conditions of the help are too much.
Today she came with my dad to help me clear a room, and was on form – me and dad were doing the heavy lifting and she was shouting orders (sometimes illogical / wouldn’t work / unsafe) about how we were to do things, then when we pointed out the problems (‘if we do it like that we’ll hit the door frame / take a chunk of plaster out of the ceiling’) she’d huff, strop, ‘you just do what you want, you don’t listen to anything I say’, (for her listening means doing what she says) while shoving past me when I’m trying to manoeuvre a heavy appliance. She was the same with my dad all day, but he just takes it and apologises, which makes me internally furious. Dad and I are quite similar, we’re easy-going and laid back, while mum cannot relax and needs to control, project-manage and supervise absolutely everything and lashes out when she doesn’t get her own way.
I’m so sick of it being like this. I think we need some sort of family therapy, but I don’t know how to put it out there as an option that will be even considered (or how you organise it – Relate?). I am getting better at boundaries and have had some success (much more needed). I’m learning from scratch as an adult as I never had any growing up. I think I need not so much regular, normal person boundaries as the Three Gorges Dam, given her behaviour, so it’s a bit of a learning curve.
Having read that over I’m questioning why I even want a relationship. I guess I don’t want her to be staring down old age alone. Her family (my grandfather/uncles/cousins) are NC with her already, I don’t know why – won’t tell me - but I’m guessing her behaviour. I want the entire dynamic to improve for my dad too. He doesn’t need to spend his retirement getting screamed at. If the relationship is irreparable, I will also lose dad and siblings as they will – not quite take her side, but they will prioritise ‘easy life’, i.e. let her do whatever she wants. I have no other family and a pretty limited social network, so going NC is really the nuclear option. Want to try other things first.
Appreciate any thoughts you have on where to go from here.