How to deal with mum now her divorce from dad is final?

[Theamofm]

My parents split nearly 3 years ago. They were married over 30 years but I don't know why mum stayed with him that long. He was controlling and abusive, had affairs and I begged her to leave him all the time, when I was old enough to see it.

Anyway she's always stood by him and took all the BS and then during covid they fell out and mum found out he was seeing someone else. She suspects it was happening before because he literally moved in with her as soon as mum knew.

Mum still talks about dad and she cannot get over what he's done to her. I try everything to build her up and take her out new places (cos dad never did!) But she still always goes back to talking about him. She lives alone and makes no effort to do anything, she works and then stays in bed when she's at home unless I've made plans for her. I tell her to come for walks or for her to walk down the street to the shops but she won't.

It's draining for me (only child) and as much as I love mum it's starting to wear me down. I need help, how do I make life better for her?

Her divorce has just been finalised and I'm not sure how it's going to go whether she'll slip into depression or whether she'll feel free. How do I deal with it? Do I make a thing of it, celebrate it or ignore it? Thanks.

Hi op. You make it clear you don't want to talk about dad, you end conversations if she doesn't respect your boundary. You model to her a healthy life but maintain an internal boundary that she is an adult and you can't make a life for her. I'm wondering if you were the parentified child and became her therapist from an early age? It would help to do some reading about parentification as you learn to draw clear lines.

Your relationship models given to you from your parents are damaging and dysfunctional. You need to learn boundaries with your mother for your own sanity. She was codependent on him but she has modelled you being codependent too. She is not your minor child. You do not have this level of responsibility for her. She is responsible for her own recovery from this. She might choose never to recover from it, lots of people don’t bother because it is much easier to wallow or pretend than do the emotional work on yourself. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries and decoupling from the dysfunctional patterns.

I suspect that you may think that as it has been 3 years then she should be getting over it a bit by now? She may well still be with him if it hadn't been his decision to leave. You really don't know what it is like until you have been through it. You may think it is better for her but she obviously doesn't. There are some people who never allow themself to get over something like this or are unable to.

I have a friend like this who will not go out unless with me or her family. She constantly refers to " better times" meaning when she was married ( and he was a serial cheater) and talks all the time about life in the past. She complains about her life but doesn't do anything to alter it eg even go out by herself to somewhere, have a look at the shops, have a coffee whatever. I think that deep down inside there is either that desire to move on or not - I guess am saying your type of character determines your actions. As regards the finalisation then I would ignore it tbh unless she wants to talk about it. I know my friend's daughter says why don't you try this or that but she doesn't. You can only do so much and I totally get why it can feel draining.

Op, you are clearly a caring daughter, but you run the risk of your mum relying on you for her life and happiness if you let her. She is an adult. Whether she likes it or not, her husband behaved how he behaved and she needs to deal with and move on as best she can. You need to set and enforce boundaries and step back and stay back.

She is already depressed if she isn’t bothering to get out of bed unless there is work or you coming over.

You can’t help her or should’ve the issue for her. It will be up to her to deal with it and get over the divorce and her marriage (it won’t just be about the affair and the divorce, it’s also coming to terms about the way her whole marriage went etc…).

Id send her to see the GP and encourage to go and see a counsellor/psychotherapist (don’t expect quick results!). That way she has someone to talk to re your dad. She probably needs that more than anything else but you are not the right person to do it.
In the mean time, I’d tell her you can’t play the role of a counsellor but that you’d love to spend time with her doing ‘fun things’.

My MIL was like this. FIL left her 15 years before I met her and she wasn't over it.

But she was a perpetual victim. Until the bitter end. There was absolutely nothing anyone could do to change her mind. It always felt to me like such a waste of a life.

You cannot change your mum. You can steer her in the right directions, but you can't make her choices for her.

Less than 3 years is not that long to be "getting over" this sort of thing. I'd only been with my ex for 20 years, the relationship was less unhealthy than your mum's, I was presumably a good bit younger, but 3 years after we broke up I was still very much upset by it - even though I had started dating again. Your mum may well feel like that's it, she's going to be alone forever. She's grieving the life she thought she'd have at her age/in old age.

Has your mum had therapy? Could you say something like "I want to be there for you, mum, but it doesn't feel like I'm helping, and it's really hard for me too. A friend of mine had counselling and she says it made her feel much better, I think you should try it too."

And you surely don't want to (indirectly) celebrate the fact that your dad has been a shit and your parents have broken up? Your mum might want to, but if so she should do it with her friends, not with her dc.

You need to get a little tough on her, I'm afraid.

"Mum, I love you, and I know you have a lot of pain to process from your marriage, but I will no longer talk to you about dad. It's causing me tremendous stress, and it's not good for you, either. If you need help dealing with it, you need to see a therapist."