November 2022 - well we took you to Stately Homes

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

This is the latest thread, please feel free to write as much or as little as you please.

Oh God yes. I totally relate to every word. I just don’t understand what motivates it all. I genuinely don’t. I haven’t found the answer to being sucked back in. I still feel guilt and responsibility for my mother despite how bitchy she is to me. She is like a completely different person with my siblings. That makes me think ‘what’s wrong with ME’!

Yes it’s hard to get your head around why someone would behave in this way. I guess accepting it’s them and not you, probably takes a lot of work and therapy. The guilt is hard to shake but again healthy people wouldn’t try to make you feel guilty.

@Linda1818 The rubbish I’ve been through has been vailed in a way that makes me think I’m imagining it. Only since breaking contact have I realised I’m much happier. I’ve been watching reels by a few psychologists who approach this. One does videos where she plays the part of Mum and daughter which really hit home!

sounds like your parents are being financially controlling too which is horrible x

Hi everyone,
Does anyone have any tips for me please?
I'm NC with my father and have put several boundaries in place with my mother (long time divorced from my father) and one sibling.
My mother has had health anxiety her whole life and has recently been diagnosed with something new which will be controlled with medication. Due to another well-controlled medical issue she has, being on the new meds require her to go for routine check ups with the nurse at her surgery several times during the week.
I'm finding it really hard to show genuine concern. My sister keeps saying things about her (mum) feeling like people aren't giving her enough attention.
Sister is insisting on taking her to all appointments which, selfishly, I'm happy to let her - not least because I can't change when I work like my sister can. I can't even muster the will to call her to see how she is and I know the longer I avoid that the more I bury my head. I have had a brief conversation with her and have been texting daily.
I'm off work today and dsis has asked me to take her to today's appointment which I've agreed to. I had intended to take my aunt over to visit later - just to add another complicated aspect, they're ex-sil and always had a difficult relationship but are currently on friendly terms so I thought taking her over would be good on all counts - mum gets attention from someone who knows the right things to say, aunt (housebound apart from our weekly supermarket trips) gets somewhere different to spend a couple of hours and I don't have to think too much about what I should/n't be saying!!
Not sure it's tips I need, more a space to vent and hope I don't sound like a completely uncaring bitch

Oh god I feel the same as you about my mum's health stuff @Bottl - I have started to switch off.

She doesn't do anything to help with her health issues and won't give up drinking alcohol, so it's pointless discussing it. She's lived a sedentary fairly house bound life and spends her time complaining about her ailments. Infuriates me!

Infuriating is exactly it!
After numerous trips to hospital and the Gp over the last couple of weeks, the biggest thing she's taken away from it is that they keep referring to her as elderly and is appalled by it. I've tried telling her that's just their terminology but she is offended. I likened it to pregnant women over 35 being referred to as geriatric mothers and yes, she's still offended that she was classed as such 44 years ago when pregnant with me.
Anyway, visit number 1 is done now and I'll go back later on with my aunt which should be less stressful.

@winningeasy I'm 'lucky' that Mother's Day is celebrated on a different date in the UK, and my mother lives in Australia. For many years now, I've ignored both dates. If my mother is disappointed (and I know for a fact she will be) she's had the sense not to mention it to me. I still recognise her birthday and Christmas...that's enough as far as I'm concerned.

I have a mother who hates me.
A lifetime of it is too much to write but growing up, she would constantly put me down. She enjoyed watching me suffer. She made it clear that she never wanted a daughter, she wanted a son. She would his in my face as a child that she should have had me aborted.
She told me she thought I was lying when at 12 I was raped and there was a police investigation. Medical examination showed I was abused down there.

She denies everything and says I'm a liar and it never happened. She even speaks to me in a different tone to other people.
On a couple of occasions I have lost my shit and raised my voice and she says that I'm abusive. I held my hands up to it, owned it and agreed it wasn't acceptable. I then asked if we can discuss her treatment of me.
Nothing. No admissions, complete denial. She says I have it in my head that she doesn't love me and it is not true. I asked her to name one thing that supports that. To name one time she was ever on my side or was there for me. Name one hug or reassurance.
She can't because there isn't any but she will cut me off with something such as "I think we had best leave this discussion as we are getting nowhere" or "you are raising your voice (I'm not) so she refuses to talk" or she simply storms off.

im not seeking resolution as we are past that and she doesn't want that. She wants any tiny crumb that supports her being a victim of me being a monster to her.

Her lies include speaking to my friend and saying I'm not as nice as she thinks. My friend fortunately has seen it all with her own eyes but what mother wants to get her daughters friend thinking badly of her child?

My mum is the biggest misogynist I have ever met. She hates other women and has literally no friends as she has been rude to former friends in the last out of spite and jealousy.
Her only "friends" are her family members.

I plan to go NC but at the moment we are under the same roof and a process has to happen to separate that. She informed me she wanted to leave and I am supporting her to do that. I think she wanted me to beg her to stay and for me to ask what I needed to do to make her feel happy again. Well not anymore. I have woken up and agreed with her decision.

That sounds really horrible. What many of these women seem to have in common in an inability to get on with other women generally. They seem to have been brought up to see other women as competition.

@Leaningovermygrave I am by no means qualified to reply with any useful advice but goodness, what an awful time you've had and what an awful situation to still be in.
My father and both siblings refuse to have any kind of conversation about my childhood or the falling out with my father and I've concluded they never will but that's ok because I know what happened, how I felt and I know my feelings are valid whether they agree or not.
Living under the same roof must be horrendous. Is there a way you can move out?

Just got off the phone to my narcissistic mother and need to vent.

Background: Both parents narcissists, Neither really wanted children, ended up with 3 as my mother is a practicing Catholic. They made some EXTREMELY poor decisions that badly affected us as a family... moved around a lot as a child, up until I was in my late teens, lived in mainly what was then called the Third World. Mother always a stay at home mother, even after we had all started school. Father left mother for another woman when I was 21. That was 34 years ago...I've been no contact with my father since that time, and low contact with my mother since she moved back to our home country 26 years ago (I'm in the UK, she's on the other side of the world).

I rang her tonight... Somehow we got on to the subject of my father and the first of the bad decisions that was made. For the first time EVER my mother admitted we - her, myself and my two brothers - shouldn't have left our home country for the 1st Third World country and any sane person would have known it was terrible decision at the time. So naturally I asked why we did...and as usual, my mother blamed my father, saying that he wanted it, and he always got this own way.

She then went on to say that the reason my father always got his own way was because he'd always threaten to leave if he didn't. I said she should have told him to go ahead, but she said she couldn't, because she was financially dependent on him and that 'she'd heard terrible stories of what happened to women whose husbands left them'....when I asked her to explain what she meant, it turned out that it would have meant that she would have had to have got a paid job!

I was pretty shocked. We are talking about the very late 70s, early 80s here. My mother was still under 40 at the time, before she met my father she was working as a qualified nurse. She had lots of friends and family that would have helped...her family was (are) extremely wealthy and had already helped her financially in the past - and did again later on, after my father left her. I pointed that out to her, and of course she didn't really have a reply to that...

So I'm now sat here getting angrier the more I think about it. Basically, she threw our childhood under a bus because she wanted to be a stay at home mother, she expected my father to always be the sole breadwinner, and to financially support her for the rest of her life. Keeping my father happy so he'd do that was more important to her than the health and happiness of her 3 children. I always knew my father was a manipulative bastard, but she could have called his bluff and stopped it all. I mean, I'd already guessed all this, but to hear it actually confirmed by her...I'm SO angry right now.

Sorry this is so long!

There are some similarities with my mother there. She was also a nurse before she married. She tried to go back to work but my father ‘wouldn’t let her’. It was an unhappy marriage and she used me as a counsellor to off load on at times. Her belief was that if she left they would have to live in a council house and she wouldn’t be able to cope. Those times were different, even in the seventies. Women didn’t on the whole work, and a woman was expected to treat her husband as the head of the family. My mother was very religious and it was ingrained in her that a woman’s job was to keep her husband happy. Divorce was considered shameful even then. My mother’s family lived overseas and weren’t wealthy so she had no back up. She was trapped. She went back to work after training as a midwife in the late seventies .

I don’t think you can apply the same way of seeing the world to your mother’s situation as you would in this day and age. The . whole landscape was different. Supporting three children as a divorced mother, particularly if you haven’t worked in years was a pretty scary prospect. Especially without childcare or the means to pay for it. I imagine your mother was embarrassed and ashamed to ask her family for financial help.
I wouldn’t be too judgemental .

It’s interesting you say she was Catholic - so was I in those days - it really wasn’t socially acceptable to divorce and her wealthy family may not have tolerated it if they had a reputation to maintain. It sounds like she was in a coercive controlling relationship with your DF and was mentally / socially / financially ‘trapped’ as she saw it. I expect this made her miserable which spilled on to you.

Your anger and rage at your bleak childhood is valid and needs expression and processing. I hope you have been able to build sustaining positive and nurturing relationships since as your your child sounds emotionally empty.

Who let the flying monkeys in?

I had typed out a huge long post demolishing all the bullshit in the above posts, but sadly lost it. I will just mention that my mother's family PAID (above the market rate) for her to nurse her mother, my grandmother, for 5 years after she'd returned to our home country...and my mother was also claiming unemployment benefit at the time, and never declared her income (which was way above the permitted limit to still be entitled to any sort of benefits). Good Catholic, hey? Also, when we were living in the third world shitholes, not attending school for 3 years, they used to CONSTANTLY offer to pay for all of us to return to our home country.

When in 1991 - two years after my father had left - their divorce ended up in court as my mother was refusing to sell the marital home, she was told in no uncertain terms by the judge that 'her husband could have had a 100 affairs, it made no difference to the financial settlement' and that as a 'healthy woman of 47, with 3 adult children over 18 who were all in full time employment, she would be expected to get employment and support herself'....that went down well, as you can expect. She honestly had thought beforehand that the court would 'punish' my father for leaving her for another woman by 'giving' her the marital home and forcing my father to pay off the 20 years that still remained on the mortgage....they'd only owned the house 3 years when my father left. The fact that she'd very briefly held a part time job just before my father left proved to the court that she was more than capable of finding paid employment.

Luckily, the psychiatrists and psychologists who have been treating me for C-PTSD for the last 5 years (after 3 suicide attempts) don't agree that I'm being 'judgemental' towards my mother. In fact, they don't think I'm 'judgemental' enough and still to this day give my parents far too much leeway and credit for their frankly appalling treatment of myself and my brothers during childhood.

If I posted every shit thing they did this post would be 20 times longer than it already is.

I also know it's not just me who feels this way - my older brother has told his wife that he has no happy memories of our childhood. He is now basically NC with our mother. Neither myself or my two brothers have had any children of our own.

My mother was not 'trapped' - she has admitted herself last night that she was not 'trapped'. She just didn't want to give up that ex-pat rich lifestyle and have to work herself. That and her marriage was ALWAYS more important to her than her 3 children.

@sianiboo I hear you. I HEAR YOU.

A huge hug. It’s not helpful to be told you’re being judgemental.

You are completely free to be able to ‘judge’ your mother however you want. You’re judging your mother as someone who didn’t care for you as a mother and always put ‘appearances’ first.

My Hag of a MIL does incredible Oscar winning performances of nice kindly Catholic old lady, but behind closed doors she’s a savage animal.

Gosh, there I am being ‘judgemental’.

@BeautifulDayintheneighbourhood I think it's really insensitive and unfair to invalidate @sianiboo 's personal story of childhood neglect. I do not believe this forum is for weighing up the perspective of those doing the neglect and abuse. Only the victim can do that. We are here in solidarity to listen and accept completely what realisations each of us are having. It can be very damaging and retraumatising for someone to dispute their version of events.

Every parent had and has the choice to do the right thing for their children. Or at least not do the glaringly obvious wrong thing. Parenting is about putting children first. It doesn't sound like @sianiboo mother did this at all. It was not out of the ordinary for women in the 1970 and 1980s to have a job.

@sianiboo wow she sounds like a really irresponsible and deluded woman. To keep you off school for 3 years, how damaging? So sorry you went through all of that, it sounds horrendous. I hope you're on the road to finding some healing. You have every right to be angry and you can feel free to vent that anger here without judgement!

My mum wrote to me the other day, pleading with me to make amends with my Dad ( so obviously didn’t realise I was unhappy with actions from both of them. ) So she set out all the material things provided for us and me .
Its material stuff that she equates with love, can’t express things emotionally so uses those instead. I realised that some time ago . I looked it up this week and found a name for it. Well meaning but emotionally neglected themselves. I think it originates from their own childhoods . My father was abandoned to live with his grandparents and my mum was one of the youngest in a family of 10. Stories they have told makes me think they were neglected themselves.

Which for most stuff would make me more understanding of where they are coming from . Except they crossed a line with their attitude and victim blaming to the sexual abuse I suffered.

When my Dad said the things he said , all he needed to do was apologise and say he wouldn’t mention him. But he chose to double down repeatedly on his initial statements. And this is the consequence.

@MonkeyfromManchester Thank you. It took me 25 years to finally admit to myself that what we (myself and my brothers) went through was actually abusive. Like many of my age, we were bought up thinking that if you weren't physically abused, any other abuse, such as emotional, didn't 'count'.

It was only when I saw/heard how my friends/boyfriends/husbands families had worked during their childhoods that I realised how bloody awful mine actually was. Even then I tried to downplay it. I thought the material possessions, the constant travel, the 'we took you to so many wonderful places' (as so often spouted by my mother) made up for the lack of schooling, friends, family, etc. When I first saw the title of this thread, many years ago, I actually laughed, because it was so close to what my mother says whenever any of us dare to suggest that we had a shit time as children.

I learnt at a very young age that my mere existence was holding my parents back, that myself and my two brothers were a 'burden' and a 'inconvenience' that was stopping my parents from doing what they wanted...and of course, their wishes and wants far outweighed ours. They willingly put themselves through hell, we had no say in it. To hear my mother admit last night that she KNEW it was a bad decision at the time, has angered me more than anything I've heard in the last 30 years. All she had to say to my father was NO. They were married, my father was working for the government (diplomat), he would have had no choice but to pay child - and considering he was earning approx 20 times the average wage at the time - spousal support...if he had tried not to it probably would have put his job at risk. But of course that reality interferes with my mother's chosen position, as my father's poor victim...

@winningeasy Thank you also. Even at the private Catholic primary school I was attending before we left our home country, more than half the kids in my class had mothers that worked...yes, most worked part time, but they worked. It wasn't unusual at all. My boyfriend is 2 years younger than me, his mother worked from when he was a baby. My ex husband's ( a year younger than me) mother started part-time teacher training from scratch, she didn't even have O levels, when he started primary school...she qualified and started teaching when he started secondary school. She worked full time right up until she was diagnosed with terminal cancer when she was 67.

Feeling so grim today. Bipolar. And the mental health wear and tear of dealing with The Hag - the MIL. I don’t deal with the bitch anymore, I leave that to Mr Monkey. His dealings with her are medical appointments and that’s it.

She’s never been someone where it’s even remotely possible to just think ‘I’ll have a quick cup of tea with her out of duty’ as even a 20 minute cup of tea would be deeply unpleasant.

The last week or so has been just more of the usual hysterical rages and pity parties by the vile bitch all aimed at Mr Monkey. She has an appointment next Monday to get some skin cancer off her face. Mr Monkey is taking her.

The drama over this as she needs to have nightwear, a pair of slippers and a dressing gown is off the scale.

The Hag now claims she doesn’t know how to use her washing machine. If this BS of her being unable to put her machine on becomes a regular thing, Mr Monkey is going to have to sort things out.

We hosted her rancid dressing gown yesterday. It’s this hideous mauve thing that exudes her personality from every single one of its nylon threads.

It brings back flashbacks of the times The Hag stayed her bringing hell with her - and I was actually recoiling at it.

Her clothes are DISGUSTING. I’ve just put some of our laundry on and just thrown her nightshirt into the washer. Mr Monkey does all the house work here, I do laundry. This nightshirt is grey. It’s supposed to be white. I absolutely do not get why you scrub your house to within an inch of its life and have dirty stained clothes. It’s not like she can’t afford to put her washing machine on, she’s not rich, but she’s not struggling. It’s not like she can’t afford to buy a couple of extra nightshirts FFS.

hag could, of course, have the Carers who call round three times a day put on a quick wash for her…but she doesn’t use them apart as sounding boards for her endless misery and to put her pre-glaucoma eye drops in.

She’s getting reassessed for care next month. I am so angry that The Hag has £100 worth of daily care - I’m estimating what it costs the council - which she won’t use (despite being assessed as needing it).

She constantly moans about how terrible it is that she was all these medical appointments and hasThe Carers. FFS. NO idea of her good fortune.

That plucky blitz spirit missed The Hag out on its rounds.

It sounds very amplified for you right now. It must be incredibly intense, raw and exhausting.

I wonder if stepping back, detaching more and distracting yourself with warm, positive people and activities during this time would bring you a bit of peace and comfort?

If you are currently in a dip can you put in some additional measures to protect and enhance your own emotional health?

Would you choosing to not ask your partner details about her and also asking him not to mention his interactions as they are triggering for you and causing you unnecessary stress, help protect you right now?

You will likely do much better with having zero contact which also means zero exposure to any info of her via your partner so that you don’t risk getting fixated or ruminating which could lead you down a negative emotional and thought spiral which might unnecessarily preoccupy you.

@MonkeyfromManchester I feel really sorry for you, having to deal with your horrible MIL. There's not a day where I don't thank all the deities that my 'in laws' (not married to my boyfriend, but we've been together 13 years) who are Brexit voting, racist, sexist, homophobic arseholes are 200 miles away from me!

It's FIL who is my 'HAG' and he seemed to think that he could boss me around like he does his wife. No mate, to me you're just another middle aged gammon male, I don't have to respect you for one second! I've been NC with them both for 8 years this year.

I can understand why Mr Monkey still deals with her, it's just a shame she can't appreciate it and has to be so bloody vile to him. She's obviously too stupid to realise that she's doing exactly the opposite of what she needs to be doing to have people actually want to spend time with her.

I'm bipolar too and find it really hard not to let other people's drama pull me down. I've always been such a doormat, such a people pleaser and those are traits that are really hard to break. Putting myself first still feels so unnatural. But for our mental health,, it is so necessary. No one is going to do it for us.

p.s. I'm Australian and I first had a skin cancer cut off my neck 30 years ago, I was 24. I've had 2 removed from my face and 3 from my arm since. No one even bats an eyelid in Oz if you mention it, for elderly Aussies having bits cut off thier skin due to it is about as common as having your cataracts done (if not more so). The hag needs to get a fucking grip.

Agh, @MonkeyfromManchester - sounds like having those disgusting things in your house was really triggering. And that you had to TOUCH them too. Blurgh.

Perhaps tell Mr M that you're not going to be doing any of her washing again as you find it repellent and triggering. (Or you know what will happen - she'll start sending bags of hideous crap for you to wash for her every week.)

So it goes onto the carer's list, or it doesn't get done. It's just another weapon for her to use as she thrashes against her rejection.

Didn't the Russian's used to do something with cyanide impregnated fabric?

@UpperStreetGirl thank you. I’ve done my Calm app this morning, taken a bit of time out of my freelance work, went out for a walk.

I think it was the Fucking dressing gown that triggered me as @Sicario wisely observed. It reminds me so much of the fuckimg hag sitting on our sofa not dressed wearing the ragged thing and making our lives hell on four separate occasions of her staying here over the last three years. It was hung up on our landing drying and it made me flinch.

I am absolutely telling MM that he insists she washes her own clothes or the Carers do it. She is perfectly capable of hanging up her repellant greying clothes after the Carers have put the machine on for her.

The laundry is not becoming a task for us. We do enough. Rather, I’ve stepped out and MM and Slave Son do enough. That woman does NOTHING.

She’s perfectly capable of scrubbing her house so why not putting her washing machine? I bought her dial control simple one when the old one died.

@sianiboomy bipolar is a really sensitive to this kind of crap. I mostly manage it, take my meds and avoid crap, apart from this which feels really grim.

Good for you on avoiding the in laws. life is TOO short. Best way.

I’ve not seen the Hag in any very much since 2021. I can count the times on one hand.

It’s the bitch’s birthday coming up. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything like a birthday meal or sorting out a present for her now. She whines about not wanting a present (agreed) or a fuss. MM is considering taking her out, but it will be just him; he can’t bear the dynamic of him, Hag and Slave Son. MM will take her to the cheap local pub. MM says he doesn’t want to.

Personally, I would have binned her when I was 16 and gone no contact. But she’s rolled out loads of brainwashing to her sons. It’s up to him if he goes.

christ, yes, the skin cancer. Sadly, it’s a mild one, but they did find another patch on her leg. I think she has a scan on Mon. Sounds awful, but I hope they pick something else up and we wave bye bye. She’s had a shit life - much of it of her own making - and is determined that other people have one, too.

She’s just phoned wanting MM to do something for her.

MM: I can’t as I’m busy tonight.

I’m so proud of the progress he’s made.

busy tonight is watching a box set with me.

i hope everyone is having a decent Monday. Something I’ve been mulling over walking the dog…. Did anyone have a point where they just didn’t care any more? About their selfish parents, about keeping the peace, about being cast out, about any of it? For the past few weeks this big old voice in my head is just saying LEAVE ME ALONE DONT CONTACT ME