Not just mother & daughter, “we’re best friends”

[Calmondeck]

Yesterday my mum said to me, “we’re not just mother and daughter, we’re best friends”.

It was in the context of her telling me about her friend whose daughter also lives overseas.

I felt a bit drained when she said it to me. My mum and I were always very close, spent lots of time together, and during uni days we did lots of travel together (at shared expense). My father cheated on my mother during high school but they remain together, unhappily, and I’ve felt since about 14yrs old that my mum is very emotionally dependent on me.

She has really struggled to accept that I live overseas now (8 yrs), am married, and have young children. Almost every conversation we have is her recalling holidays together from the past, and she is very unhappy that I won’t leave my young children (both under 3 yrs old) to spend a few weeks with her travelling. She projects a lot of her feelings about my father onto my husband, with no basis whatsoever, and it causes friction in their relationship because she presents herself as knowing me best, which grates on my husband.

I’m starting to dread calls together and I get fatigued having to rehash once cherished holiday memories like the period of time we’re in now has taken away all her happiness.

grateful for any advice

Some of these messages are written through some very naive lenses. Unless someone has been the victim of parentification, they cannot know the suffocating desperation of feeling like their mother's happiness depends totally on them. It's difficult to understand what it feels like to feel like your existence has been to cheer your mother up or to be a listening ear. I live abroad and my mother resents it so much. She doesn't really care that I'm happy, have a good life, lots of prospects, am settled and have a great quality of life. I'm not there to fulfill her emotional needs. It hangs over me like a black cloud every si gle day of my life, that me being happy makes someone else so very unhappy. I stay in regular contact and go home as often as I can but I know its not enough. The guilt is always there. Its not about my mother missing me. Sometimes she doesn't even seem to like me, and certainly she doesn't love me enough to be happy for me.

Op I don't know what to say except I get it, and it's absolutely awful. The posters who say that your poor mum just misses you don't know the damage that this level of emotional incest can create. I've been in therapy on and off for years and it's not just because my mum misses me.

@Calmondeck she needs to leave your dad for starters, she clearly missed you but I can see why you feel suffocated with it. Keep communication open so you don't end up snapping and falling out. Sounds like some therapy would do her the world of good

I think your comment is very damaging and hurtful to anyone who was used by their parents as a therapist growing up, and who have been messed up by feeling an aching burden to meet their parent's emotional needs.

'What's the harm in that?' You ask. Nothing, if it really is just as simple as a mother missing her daughter. However, the OP gives greater context which outlines a life of taking on a parental role with blurred roles in the family. The consequences of this can be, but are not limited to:

Anxiety
Depression
Substance abuse
Addictive tendencies
Eating disorders
Very low self worth
Low self esteem
Chronic guilt
Poor boundaries in relationships
Easily manipulated
Toxic shame

That's the harm.

If your mother is truly your best friend @Calmondeck then it will be easy to say Mum I need help, I'm overwhelmed and part of that overload is the pressure/obligation from yourself, what I need is space both physically and mentally from you right now.

A best friend would respect that but I strongly suggest your Mother won't she actually sounds pretty toxic to me dressed up as closeness or a special relationship.

Wishing your little one well with their treatment.

What else does she have in her life? Has she ever 'parented' you, or has she always gone for being friends?

Doesn't she understand how much pressure you're under?

Don't be so daft.

Think about it.

Put yourself in the OP's position. She has a toddler with cancer to look after, and her mum is sad that OP won't go on holiday with her??

Your relationship with your dad is nothing to do with OP's relationship with her mum.

She has a toddler with cancer. Kids aren’t always alive later either. I know which I’d be spending every spare second with.

I’ve lost both my parents and you’re talking out of your arse.

Any mother who moans and whines about her daughter not going travelling with her when her child has cancer (and expecting her to leave them no less!) is a selfish piece of shit. It’s horribly selfish narcissistic behaviour and shows a complete lack of love and care for her own daughter. A loving mother would be supporting her daughter not trying to emotionally guilt trip them when their toddler has cancer. Despicable behaviour

I sympathise op, I have (had as I don't see her that much) one of those. What fully functioning adult adult wants to be best friends/reply on their child. Lots of articles on Parentification/Enmeshment and emotional incest where a parent makes you a surrogate spouse.

My most fond memory as a very small child is my mother saying quite aggressively " you know I'd kill myself if it wasn't for you". Err no mum I didn't know that, I am six. Oh and "you know I love you more than I love your dad".

Patricia Love - The Emotional incest syndrome is very good read - well it isn't as no one should be having to read it but you know what i mean!

Before I get jumped on for using the word incest, google emotional incest it's not the same.

Well said.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll see if I can download that tonight. I've done a lot of reading on parentification and emotional incest. While i was in primary school, my mother told me all about how she had been sexually assaulted by a previous boyfriend when she was a teenager. She told me so much and I will forever have the mental images burned into my imagination. I had therapy and I told her that the therapist said that she shouldn't have told me that. Mum said it was either that (tell me) or kill herself. She no longer tells me things as I put an end to it a good few years ago but I feel like she has a real burning resentment inside that I don't listen to her problems anymore. She kind of acts like it's a big deal not to burden me and that I should be really grateful she isn't sharing these horrific details with me. She shared lots of other PTSD-inducing information, a lot of which messed me up. I would tell her how upsetting I found it and she would get annoyed and say 'I don't know why you're getting upset, it didn't happen to you!'

My eldest son moved abroad a year ago, I miss him like crazy he is my best friend. However I knew he was going to a better life and have been to visit him several times but whenever I go I tell him go about his normal day do whatever he needs and then we can spend time together when you have done whatever you need and if you.just want piece and quiet don't worry I will go out for a walk or a pint.

Your mother as to realise you have other responsibilities and as I tell my son when he as children he will see they should and always be his number 1 priority. It will be hard for her I am sure but you have other priorities now

Look up maternal enmeshment - your mother has used you as a life partner/adult friend substitute. It's a terrible way to parents because parents should never ever turn their children into friends because they created them. The implication is you've been raised, shaped and moulded to be what your mum wants - a friend - rather than encouraged to individuate and be your own person. Can you imagine if adults said - "I'm so lonely, I think I'll have a child so I can have a friend." That's sort of what its become even if she didn't have you with that intention. But you're not a robot programmed by it's maker or a pet trained by it's owner.

I would maintain the distance and put in even more. Your mum has been so focused on her own needs for so long, she's forgotten that you have needs too. Not sure without therapy for her and you, things will ever get better. I did this with my mum - we speak monthly and I live in another country. It's helped me so much not having her lean on me for all her emotional needs. She doesn't like it but tough. I couldn't spend my entire life looking after her and feeling guilty for doing my own thing. You can't either. She'll survive and adapt eventually - but at some point you need to do what's best for you. A genuinely loving mother will understand and want that for you.

And I would further consider that a parent-child relationship should never ever be friendship as it's not an equal dynamic. One person literally created the other... Can you imagine if teachers said their primary school or teenage students are their best friends? Relied on them emotionally. It's no different when parents do it. Just because someone gave birth to you or looks after you doesn't give them a right over your body or mind or time. So many mothers act like they've done their children a favour giving birth to them - kids don't ask to be born. But parents do have kids for unhealthy and toxic reasons, all disguised as love and family, rather than their own inability to deal with adult life or enjoy adult relationships where they can't use guilt to get what they want.

My MIL can be this way with my DH. She has very little outside her immediate family and seems to rely emotionally on him.

Yep that resonates - mine revealed when drunk that her dad had abused her (I was an older teenager but still) but it struck me recently that she had him living with us when i was a kid and she left me on my own with him - surely that's not right. And lots of other stuff from her childhood. She also had a bad time when she had me (I was a mistake) as my dad was in hospital at the same time - she used to say - you are never nearer to death then when you are having a baby. Again no need for a child to hear that.

I think they do it so much that you just think that's what parents do, as discussed it has the other impact of making you think you can solve their unhappiness and in turn makes you a major people pleaser as you want to fix everyone or help their bad mood. You are in a good position that you see it all, which doesn't make it better that it happened to you/us of course.

I'm sorry that you experienced similar. I can't even remember how many terrible things my mother told me about her life, always with the double burden of making sure I never told anyone. Sometimes I had to keep what she told me secret from my father. I remember being a little girl and saying 'I feel like I'm the mum and your my daughter'. I wasn't being cynical in any way. I completely felt like the roles were reversed and she would laugh and found it cute. Later in life when I tried to confront her about this, she got angry and shut me down.

Being parentified messed me up. I have a secrets ban in our house and regularly tell my kids that I'm the parent and my job is to worry about them, not the other way around. My mum needed a psychotherapist but didn't want to shame the family with her dirty laundry, and so used me as a sounding board. She doesn't think she did anything wrong. Some people are so focused on just surviving whatever their trauma is that everyone else is just collateral damage. I think our mothers didn't get proper nurture from their mothers and look to us for that source.

Crikey well done for being so perceptive and being able to vocalise it 'I feel like I'm the mum and your my daughter'. That is really an admirable thing to be able to do in such situations (I did not do that!)

I remembering being so cross on her behalf, and feeling so frustrated that I could have punched a wall. I kept saying 'I just wish I could have protected you!' about things that had happened before I'd even been born. I had such a deep pain for her and really felt like I could have made everything OK if only I had have been there. I kept wishing I had been her mother when she was a child, or her friend in school or some other kind of role to protect her from the abuse and assaults she endured the whole way through her life.

Anyway, I'm derailing the thread. I started off wanting to stick up for the OP and have ended up splurging my guts instead. Sorry op! I get it.

Why did you bother posting ByUmberViewer?
OPI know you love your mother but parents have to let their children go.
She is an adult and you have a great deal to cope with in your life. She is being very selfish and she needs to do some growing up.
I am afraid you need to have a very frank conversation with her. Other posters have said that nothing will ever be enough for her so you might need to go NC unfortunately.

Sorry but I strongly disagree. It is the Parents job to look after the child not the other way around. OP has a different life now. She is no longer the teenaged daughter. The mother needs to know that she is causing her daughter distress.