Mothers who are jealous or resentful of their daughters

[nodneat]

I have suffered this, it had resulted in low self esteem and depression. Constant comparisons, no compassion, love or support. I recognise now, this was a failing in my mother and she didn't haven't the skills to parent.. or did she?
So, any mothers out their who undermine their daughters, contradict, or are jealous. Is there something I'm missing? I'm very sad about it, but am finally coming to terms with it and moving on...

Yesterday I walked in my parents kitchen..I'm 34. In my prime..lost weight and still baby faced. I had my hair tied back for work. My mum came through looking rough herself and said "look at you with your hair scraped back"
She uses sentences like "your bluddy thick" on a regular basis.

I was also never hugged or cheered on growing up. I think of my mum and how she makes me feel. She makes me feel like a mess. Like I'm not real. I'm not who I feel I am around other people. Its hard and I've naturally pulled back further and further. I rarely call her now. I rarely visit.. I live 10 minutes away and I have seen them once in the summer holidays. Because I genuinely hate it. I hate how she uses me so she's still got a child to pick at infront of the rest of the family.

I don't know the answer. She has 4 girls and the only one she's positive towards most the Time is the 3rd child. I'm.4th. The 3rd child has stayed home and focused on her husband and kids and she's more harsh like my mum. I think she can't stand me because I'm very empathetic and caring. Alot of the jobs I've done are helping people and in other areas of my life my personality is always complimented.

My mum caused me to have quite a damaging eating disorder through years of commenting on my weight and showing me clothes she wore when younger that I couldn't fit into. She was really bad while I was a teen but we seemed to start getting on as I got older, moved away and took less notice of her. Our relationship now isn't perfect, she's still overly critical of everything I do, but she dotes on her grandkids, my DC. I just open up to her very little which is a shame. It has helped guide me on how to be a better parent though.

I opened this thread to post that my daughter had the most gorgeous lips that I am jealous off, I totally misread the tone from the title.

I am so sorry for all that you have been through, your mothers sound horrendous and I can't imagine how damaging it must be.

My mum was/is like the mothers on this thread. So, I will put my hand up and admit that I am envious of DD for having the parents she wants,needs and deserves, for being loved unconditionally, for feeling supported and safe always. However, I turn than envy inward and just sad for the kid I once was and try even harder to be better so she never ever has to feel like I did. It would break my heart if she ever did.

Re: therapy. Very good points made.

I've had decades of it and so have my sisters. My older sister is very bitter, including sometimes toward me, which I accept now, and steer clear of her as a result. I'm getting too old for this shit.

I know I'm a complete basket case and I also accept that. However it is possible to feel this while also feeling some compassion for my childhood self.

In terms of her childhood ...

My mother was a petulant, spoiled only child from an upper working class background who looked like a 1950s film star, and I wish to god my father hadn't married her. The idiot.

Of course she was immature and that's why, as he so often liked to say, he was 'walking on egg shells all the time with your mother'. Well, pops, that's what happens when you marry an 18 year old from another country, bring her to live in your very different world, and have a bunch of kids in a big house in a social world that she can't emotionally and practically manage, and you spend all your time running your big, fancy business.

Everything about her was fake, and any stories about her background were reverse-engineered to help her succeed socially. Depending on the company, she either grew up in a slum or Downton Abbey. My father was a terrible enabler and her parents knew to keep their mouths shut or feel her venom (as my sisters and I learned). She thought nothing of cutting her daughters down in front of company, from when we were small, frequently setting this up to happen to cause us the most shame. It was one of her skills.

There's nobody alive now who would know about my mother's childhood... I wish I had thought to ask her before she died, but I was young and didn't think to do that - and honestly I wasn't close enough to her to ask her much about herself - I kept my distance from her as much as possible.

That was thought-provoking about raising children triggering sorrow at the memories of your childhood - I can well understand how that would happen - but at least your children will grow up knowing they are loved and appreciated.

I live knowing I will never know what happened in my mother;s youth, and I do wonder if I would have raised children well had I had them, but I couldn't have children due to a health problem - I hope I would have known to raise them with love and encouragement

I look and listen to young future mums talk about pregancy and breastfeeding now,, and hope that they will also try to learn as much as they can about how to parent their children! I suspect narcissistic jealous mothers were somehow unloved or unlooked/unappreciated as children themselves. I think they are jealous of our lives and opportunities. The nurse I knew who had the jealous mother - her mother used to flirt with her boyfriends - I think now that the mother wasn't coping with getting older? Maybe jealous of her daughter's youth and attractiveness?

When I was growing up, I was constantly in between a rock and a hard place - if I did well at something (say a school subject), she was furious or ignored it - but if I did badly at something, she was even more furious. So I could never win - do well and it was ignored or made her angry - do badly, and it made her angry. I'd love to know if anyone else has been in this position with their mother? Damned if you do and damned if you don't!

That's interesting about not being addressed by your name SuffokUnicorn - my other only ever referred to me as "the girl" and never by my name either!

I wonder if your mother was overweight...? My mother was rather obsessed with appearances to other people.

What I notice about everyone's comments is how much we have been affected by poor mothering for our whole lives, and how much it has affected relationships with other siblings. I don't get on well with my two older brothers and wish we did get along - but she adored one of them and hated the other..

I think it's really helpful to read each other's stories - I can't reply separately to each one but I think the damage done to us is similar - lack of self esteem, damage to other relationships, body image... wow. Maybe it's a good thing to talk to our children about as they grow up - about parenting well when their time comes - I always envied friends who had loving parents and they seemed to have happy, relaxed family life - I was always on tnederhooks trying to avoid her rage and criticism.

I'm new to mumsnet and not sure what I can mention, but there is a utube channel called The Crappy Childhood Fairy and I have found her very useful about CPTSD - I am always wary of utube advice, but some of her stuff has been helpful to me.

@Turquioseblue I've never had any faith in myself because my parents never had any faith in me

Amen to that. My mother in particular acted as if I was going to get pregnant if a boy even looked at me when I was a teenager...she made sure that wasn't going to happen by making me look as ugly as possible.

When I finally did break free and started having my hair/dress as I wanted at age 18, she came out full force in her jealously of me. I was the only girl, which really didn't help - my two brothers didn't get half the shit I did (my mother is also a raging misogynist).

I married at 21 mainly to get away from my parents...came back from honeymoon and my father had left her for another woman. The next 5 years were a nightmare, my mother said to my face (and has done constantly ever since) that my father leaving her was my fault, I'd 'made him feel old' by getting married (he was 42). An already long story short, she ended up moving back to Australia - where we are originally from - 27 years ago and I've been very low contact with her since. Haven't actually seen her in 14 years now...

I know I'm a massive disappointment to her. I haven't had children (neither have my two brothers) and I haven't married a wealthy man. Those two were her sole ambitions for me when I was growing up.

My mother had children because she is Catholic. Neither of my parents should have had children, they were shit at it and didn't bother to hide that they hated the experience.

My mum despised me and constantly told me I’d ruined her life, she should never have had me, that I was an ugly grotesque creature. I’m really tall and she would look me up and down and say I looked like a drag Queen if I was dressed up to go out.

Unbelievably, this has given me self confidence and a dont-give-a-fuck attitude. No idea how. She died 9 years ago and I don’t miss her.

I was determined to heal that generational trauma and me and my daughter had a great relationship. I don’t remember even ever having cross words with her, she’s such a nice kid. Then she just decided she was going to live with her dad, there was no drama, no catalyst, no one did anything wrong, and that was it. Ive seen her birthdays and Christmas since. She’s completely indifferent. When we see each other it’s fine, she’s just not fussed. She’s an adult now 🤷🏻‍♀️

@ZiggZagg I loved hearing about your feelings towards your daughter. What a wonderful relationship to have. She will surely thrived because of your warm, generous love.

My mother was jealous of my dad being close to me. It drove a bigger wedge between me and her than between me & him.

Hello

she was never what I would call overweight she at one point was 13stone and at that time I had lost 10 stone in 9 months bearing in mind I started at size 24 her response was ‘what about me’ how do you think it makes me feel? Umm what she then starved herself to a size 10 and remains at that size

I was called it,that, she, her,. When she did have to address me by name infront of teachers etc you could tell it made her uncomfortable because she wanted to say IT and it made me feel uncomfortable even now when she occasionally says my name I get pins and needles everywhere.

when I phone her she answers with Yeah I know who it is

i call myself the original non binary 😂 because laughing through trauma

I think she was jealous of my appearance. I did some modelling- very low level hair and beauty- things like my photo was used on the wall in chain hairdressers in the city, or cosmetics catalogues. She would say I looked like my father and frequently say I had an evil streak.

I was always on the straight and narrow and achieved highly academically. I did my chores without being asked.

She favoured my sister, who was lazy and cruel and would lie to get me into trouble for the fun of it. They would join together to make fun of me and frequent insults were about me being 'short' as I'm just under 5ft 6 and they were 5ft 9/10 and too thin also that I was too pale. They were obsessed with appearance (my mother would find fault with something wrong with me just as I was ready to leave the house - she did it so much that my usually indifferent stepfather mentioned it once) and they would say that strangers would say they could be models. Even today I'm anxious about looking right and my mood can be tied to my appearance.

I had no privacy. They would open my letters and rummage though my room. If they found something 'incriminating' they would come up with an excuse as to why they'd been in my room. Incriminating was things like a silly love quiz I'd ticked the answers on from J17 and she went through it in front of me. She was ask of if slept with my boyfriends. All horribly inappropriate.

She did also hit me though. Usually slaps across the face, occasionally hair pulled, but mostly my upper arms as I once confided in one friend (showed them the bruises) in the summer holidays between leaving school and starting college.

. I definitely think she was jealous. The irony is that my sister was asked to leave the home after failing college at 16 (by truanting) so they put her in a shared house for girls, but they're now in touch and my sister has made Facebook posts about 'my lovely mother' and photos of them out together (I unblocked them temporarily a few years ago to look). That makes me sad and cross. I went NC (I have 100s if examples of their awful behaviour) and haven't seen them for 15 years. I expect they've made something up about me. They always did pretend to be a respectable middle class family.

Sorry for the messy essay!

I do have a brother I'm close to now, but he's a half sibling from my father's second marriage.

Yep. The expectations on me were stupidly high, even more so because I was a girl.

But if I actually did well it was met with derision, minimising, sarcasm etc. If teachers took a shine to me , she'd tell them all the "horrible" things I did at home, or she'd be very rude to them while also using their words as a stick to beat me with (so eventually I ended up being crap and staying away from everyone) "Miss x said you're brilliant, but you're not are you, look at this work/grade. It's shit. You're so lazy , you could do it but you just refuse to" bla bla bla.

A common conversation (at least when I was still young and stupid enough to care) :

Me running in all happy, proud and excited: mum,mum, guess what? I got a 10!

Her: at what? PE? Art? Music.. no not, music you're tone deaf.

Me(deflating): no mum, in maths! I got a 10 in maths!

Her: did everyone in the class get a 10 then?

Me: no mum, just me and x,y,z.

Her: ah yes, X she always gets 10's in everything doesn't she? She's such a nice ,well behaved ,clever girl!

Me... slinks off once again.

When I got my baccalaureate grade, 9.10 average(max being 10) she refused to believe it or congratulate me , told me to go and check the results again to make sure they were really mine, it must've been a mistake. She went to check for herself, but by then the moment had passed so there was no need to congratulate me anyway.

She also complained I was fat (and thus less, ugly etc) but interfered every single time I wanted to do something active , do a sport etc. For example I was never allowed a bike.

Another one here for the weird maternal jealousy club (my mother, not me)! She admitted to being jealous at one point. I think later on in life she was genuinely trying to work out what she'd done wrong and make amends but it was heavy going. She died almost 10 years ago so I guess we will never know 🤷‍♀️

They would never admit it as they are totally unaware I think. Abusive people have low self awareness I think. My mum denied ever hitting me dispite beating me daily. She was constantly telling me she was trendier than me, looked younger than me, thinner than me etc but her hate came from more than one place. Such a sad way to choose to live. I struggle to accept she could get away with and no one stepped in.

Therapy has helped

called my hair a bird's nest even though I modelled for Vidal Sassoon

How coincidental. Vidal Sassoon was one of the salons I modelled for! I've just said something in my last post but didn't name them. My mother would be critical about my hair too as part of my appearance - about how it wasn't looking in good condition and how my sister's hair was so much longer and nicer.

I parent completely different my son is 8 he tells me everyday he is having the ‘best day ever’ he wants for nothing he is clean fed loved and cared for. At bedtime we always discuss the day we’ve had or sing songs he gets taken out on nice day trips etc I never had that I spent a lot of my childhood crying or talking to myself I was painfully shy and she said I was an embarrassment and couldn’t take me anywhere bearing in mind she never gave me any confidence I never felt loved

some may find this strange but I’ve never suffered from jealousy

im from a family of 9 and I was the black sheep scapegoat who was ignored I would never treat anyone like that

There are so many parallels between mine and others' experiences.

My mum would also tell me I was fat. My daughter is the same size I was at her age. Our measurements almost identical. She's a size 6. Because of that, I spent years wearing the wrong size clothes and looked stupid because of that I assumed it was just because my body was wrong and couldn't be dressed or look nice.

My mother always maintained that women were the problem in every situation (biggest misogynist I've ever met!) She was really sneering about women whose husband's had affairs.

When my own dad did amd left, she couldn't cope with it because her narrative meant it was her fault. So she should at me in the back garden that I was the whole who drove my father into the arms of another woman - just so the neighbours would know it wasn't her fault.

She was obsessed with conparingour bodies. We were totally diffeent shapes - she was slim and had a 'boyish' figure. I was slim but curvy. She constantly told me her legs and boobs were nicer than mine. She criticised me relentlessly. I wasn't physically attractive so no one would ever love me. And didn't have any of the other qualities that would enable a man to overlook that. If a man showed any interest in me, she would either deride it or encourage me to be grateful. The best I could hope for was that someone would settle for me and i should do everything in my power not to be dunped - even to the point of not challenging him and learning to behave myself if i was hit.

When I was 21, she had a boyfriend. She would ask him who he thought had better/nicer boobs - me or her. He would say he'd have to see us both topless to judge and she would giggle coyly like they were flirting. Gross.

She had breast cancer when I was 23 and had a mastectomy. Obviously, awful for her but at least it stopped her telling me she had nicer/better boobs than me.

im from a family of 9 and I was the black sheep scapegoat who was ignored I would never treat anyone like that

I definitely felt like the scapegoat, too.

I couldn't understand what I had done wrong, and I still waste time thinking about that. My sister and step sister were treated very differently.

I was made to buy my own food as I was vegetarian and pay for college lunch and travel, everything really, yet my sisters had piano lessons, riding lessons and a horse. At one point I lived on beans and toast, as it was often a choice between buying food or travel. No wonder I was so thin.