For those who have a mum who doesn't want a close relationship...

[Xmasdayy]

.... does the rejection ever stop hurting? Does it ever stop being upsetting this sense you are missing out on something?

My mum had a truly horrendous childhood which severely damaged her in probably every way. She was abused by both parents but especially was physically beaten by her mother who ran off with another man and disappeared from my mum's life for many years. Her father was not much better really, was not physically abusive but was emotionally unpleasant and married a woman who didn't really want to be a step mum and who became emotionally abusive to my mum and her sister.

I think because of all of this undealt with and unexamined childhood trauma - mum has always refused to get help - she has never been emotionally available to me as a mum, keeps herself at a distance from me and hasn't been there for me. I do feel very alone in life in that way although not so much now I have a family of my own.

I watch long lost family sometimes because I wonder what it must be like to have that genetic emotional pull towards a mother something I've never really had. As a child I did wonder what it would have been like to be adopted and my real parents had come to get me, just a few examples of subconscious questions coming up I suppose.

This has obviously been very tough for me, being kept at arms length has been so painful and I e made lots of my own mistakes and been interested in unavailable people in the past because of it etc. Never feeling good enough.

I feel very sad for my mum and the cards she was dealt and I always have done. However how do I deal with this constant sadness about the lack of depth in our very surface casual relationship? I have had lots of therapy but I always come back to feeling sad.

I know radical acceptance is probably the answer and just to accept everything for how it is and love myself anyway. Its just hard sometimes.

Tia x

So many of us going through this. It is definitely the loneliness and the missing out on one of the closest bonds you could have that is so upsetting. Knowing that with a different mum you would have had that bond and closeness. Sometimes I do think it will be a relief once the inevitable happens. Just not to feel the pain and have to dance around it and tread on eggshells anymore. If that makes sense although I wouldn't wish death on anyone, obviously.

The other thing my mum always used to do was always take the other person's side in every argument/ fall out/ break up. Deliberately to oppose me I can sort of see now. And I would run out of prescription medication, she wouldn't keep a back up for me. I would walk back from brownies on my own in the dark sometimes at a young age. Always remember being alone in my room reading books during the holidays.

One thing I remember as a young teen was being allowed to comfort eat and become very overweight. My mum has short hair and was very overweight and I became a carbon copy . I lost a lot of weight at university and grew my hair . Do we have always looked completely different.

This really resonates. My situation was different wrt eating but my mother would seize on any similarity and make it about us being so close. She said I was her carbon copy. I look like her (that's another source of pain, actually, because my father used to use that against me) but I'm talking things like having a spider vein in the same place on our right cheeks. Insane. She made me show her my breasts once so she could see if they were like hers.

I just remembered, too, that when she visited me in hospital when I had the miscarriage I mentioned down thread, she had to get the details out of me so she could say that she had felt it psychically. I had absolutely forgotten that till this moment. I was so ill and that was her focus.

@VerlynWebbe I recognise this too - using your stories and life to show off to others wihtout actually having a close loving relationship. The last time I saw her she said she was really glad one of my children was so bright academically (in ear shot of the other one!) Because she could talk about them to a friend of hers who has a bright child. The priorities are disordered.

"Sometimes I do think it will be a relief once the inevitable happens. Just not to feel the pain and have to dance around it and tread on eggshells anymore. If that makes sense although I wouldn't wish death on anyone, obviously."

I've said it before that it will be a relief for me because then there's finally a proper reason and I can stop hoping for something that isn't going to happen and hurting my own feelings wishing for it.

Yes it's all about the stories. No real connection. Everything is disordered! It is so much more peaceful being detached (not NC but VLC).

I feel rejected by my mum, unless I make the effort (which I've stopped ) I don't hear from her anymore. My children ask after her and question why they haven't seen her. Truth is she doesn't want to know.

@BloodandGlitter yep feel the same. Of course there will be a sadness but also a relief and a lifting of the perennial headache of it all.

To everyone posting on this thread

It is a really hard situation to deal with, I swing between wondering why have I ended up with a parent like this? And feeling desperately sad and anger that she is like this, when I do see her I can barely be civil sometimes.

Agreed @Gingercatlover it has been really interesting hearing other people's stories about this as sometimes you think you are the only one without that special relationship with your mum. Sorry you have had the same pain. Sending love to you all and you should be so proud of yourselves for bravely taking life on anyway xxx

NorthernSpirit - my god that is chilling, i am so sorry for you and everyone who has been failed by their mother.
How on earth do they not realise the damage they are doing /have done ?

My mother was the same and my father was better but distant. What you said about if they couldn't love you who could really resonated as I felt that too. She and my father have both passed away now yet I still drift into those thoughts. I am very happily married but no children so I am loved. I am quite a philosophical person and just believe that whatever happens in life just focus on the positive and if not just roll with the negative. You cannot control what happens in life - only your attitude and although it is easy to dwell on the negative you can get into the habit of switching thoughts to the positive. I hope you can find some peace around this, it isn't easy but it is possible.

You're going through grief. Has your therapist acknowledged that and are they used to dealing with this. You're grieving what could have been, what should have been, and what you're probably never going to have.

I'm so sorry for your situation and for others on here who have experienced similar, like @BloodandGlitter .😥

I am not close to my mum. She was not able to parent me growing up. As a young adult I moved abroad and we are low contact. I've had therapy and am doing the work to break the cycle and be a good mum to my DC. 💐 to everyone on this thread.

its probably a misunderstanding to perceive that a relationship isn’t what she wants … she just doesn’t know how. She has only had toxicity and negativity modelled to her and she’s probably closed herself off a long time ago, subconsciously. I have a relatively similar situation with my mother.
i would try to look at what she has achieved. She may be cold and not everything that you want or deserve in a parent, but she has nevertheless broken the chain of abuse. She has raised in you someone who doesn’t need to respond to their upbringing in the way she has, and who is capable of raising a family on a loving environment. It’s really hard looking around and envying other parent/ child relationships … I think you have to just accept that source of sadness will live alongside the other many sources of happiness in your life, and celebrate what you do have.

I’m learning to parent myself by fostering a thick cloak of self love whenever I need it. I realised that my internal dialogue was distrustful of myself and is clearly my parents voice. I’m getting rid of that s**t!

@stardustbiscuits I don't know. I did have a hot and heavy relationship with alcohol when i was younger and could easily be dead now if I hadn't straightened up. I was so unhappy and so insecure. I think my mum felt she was an okay mum because she never hit us but I've had to battle through life alone from an early age and that is my driver for my children, I never want them to feel they haven't got love and support.

I think you are definitely right that the sadness will live alongside the things that make me happy, my own family etc and I will just have to manage that. Because the sadness and regret for what could have been never seem to completely to away, very sadly.

@speakball brilliant idea!!

So sorry you are going through this OP. I don’t have any answers but you are not alone.

I was pushed out when my DB was born just before my 3rd birthday and left to fend for myself emotionally. Then pushed out further when dsis was born a few years later. DM made a half baked attempt to win me back when I was 15 but emotionally I was independent by then as I had been forced to manage without her while she prioritised the little ones, cleaning the house and gossiping with a next door neighbour etc.

My mums father was verbally abusive and played favourites playing her and her brothers off against one another. My grandmother was lovely though. My DM does the same with me and my siblings. She makes out she is this lovely, kind old woman like my grandmother but verbally she has been very nasty cold and distant to me over the years. I can see through her now but it still hurts.

I have alternated over the years between trying to go low or no contact with her to trying to really work hard to put in the effort to change our relationship so we could maybe have the loving mother daughter relationship that I have always wanted and needed.

I am the one who has tried to maintain the relationship over the years and have found out to my cost if I get too close I get a verbal kick in the teeth/punch in the guts. To show me my place in the family as
the black sheep.

I have taken the blame and thought I am maybe too difficult to love or I have sometimes dared to have spoken out and aired my grievances as I was encouraged to do to be honest and to help put things right. Naively thinking this might help finally sort things out but it has always resulted in an argument, crocodile tears, upset, denials, lies, blame, me being seen as argumentative and an even bigger gulf between us with me being portrayed as awkward, jealous, nasty, bitter, heartless and angry and her as the poor fragile innocent victim etc.

She is well and in her 80’s now and I have stepped back for my sanity and only see her on my terms once a week or a fortnight for short visits. I don’t try for more than this as know any other offers get thrown back in my face and me and any offers are almost always rejected and declined in favour of a less favourable offer from another family member but seen as better as its them.

I know I am being portrayed as uncaring, distant and she really doesn’t know why I am the way I am. She gets visits from db, dsis and dn regularly and I don’t fit with the false wholesome family dynamic that all have a laugh, all get along so well and all love and care about each other so much etc. It’s hurtful but I have tried over the years but know I am better out of it and I don’t have a genuine place in my birth family and never have had for a long time.

I could have written so many of these posts. DM is dead now and I'm only just working through all my feelings about what sort of relationship we had - she was a child of war and I think that trauma resonated throughout her entire life. I've reached the stage where I feel enormous compassion for her - she came from a generation that would never ask for help. Now I reframe everything as she gave me life, she taught me to walk and read, she battled through as a young widow to bring us up and educate us and she was proud of us. She just told everyone else rather than us.

Hugs love and peace to all my sisters here.

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain , I think it’s wonderful you can feel compassion for your mum . I just seethe when I think about how utterly selfish and self absorbed my mum is . I also dread being the same with my children.

You will not be like her with your children because you have two qualities that she lacks - empathy and insight. Also your mother had a choice when it came to you and she chose the same old that was inflicted on her. She never sought nor wanted to seek, the necessary help. Many adult children of a narcissist parent have such fears.

@AttilaTheMeerkat yes I agree with my mum I was always suggesting she get some counselling or psychotherapy to deal with the abuse and abandonment she went through as a child and young adult. Mum refused to get help but was always talking about how bad she had had it so was always going around the hamster wheel. I did really try to help her and I knew that the trauma was coming in the way of us developing a proper relationship. Especially because she had been abused by females I felt she resented me for being a girl. I am disappointed she didn't try harder to get herself mentally healthy so we could have a good relationship.

@AttilaTheMeerkat do you think my mum could have become a type of narcissist because of the trauma she went through as a child? There was definitely a lack of empathy with me and also she was quite grandiose about herself and her own intelligence. She did seem to enjoy humiliating me sometimes too. I do wonder about that sometimes.

Thank you. It's taken me a couple of years to come to that conclusion. I think she was a very damaged and unhappy person.

I have been thinking a lot about the issues on this thread , one thing that definitely makes things harder , is that dp is from a fairly traditional working class background. It seems like all the mums and daughters in his circle are “ best friends “ . We have been together 20 years, and I still have to explain that my mum and me don’t get on .