Help with my daughter (24)

[mumhelpwithdaughter]

Hoping you can help me with my daughter (she is 24). I have been to talk to someone as my daughter asked me to, after we last spoke. This person has suggested I talk to my daughter to explain why I feel the way I do but agreed an email to my daughter would be OK. This is mainly because I really can't face trying telling my daughter and watch her face have no expression like last time. Last time, I told her to come home to see me and I cried and told her that I need her to tell me that she loves me. She said she did, but I told her that really I know she hates me.

The person I spoke with agreed that how I feel is fairly normal but made worse due to a couple things.

I have always totally understood that my daughter has her own life now but it seems that she has forgotten I need to feel part of it too.

She might find it hard to imagine but I was 24 years old once, except I was also married with my own house (my daughter lives in a houseshare near her boyfriend, about an hour away from us, where she is doing teacher training).

However I have told my daughter that I never forgot I still had a mum who loved me dearly, as I do my daughter and I continued to visit her, sometimes unannounced, to hug, tell her I loved her and that I still needed her.

Since my daughter left to start university she has never come back unannounced/as a surprise. The first couple of years she left I hoped she might pop home unannounced on Mother's Day but never did. Once I remember her dad said he was just popping out to check the boat and thought he was really going to pick her up from the station - but no. I tried calling her every day at uni, sometimes she didn’t answer so I called her boyfriend instead which she said was intrusive. She wouldn’t give me a copy of her timetable or put an app on her phone so I could see where she was.

Then recently when she bought her car I thought this would be the time she started to pop back home to say hi. Guess she has been too busy.

I have tried sending her lots of messages (emails and texts) in the mornings before work telling her I love her and I need her to let me in.

The lady said that sometimes it takes something drastic for children to suddenly remember one day their parents might not be there. She was speaking from experience as she put off visiting her mum for only a few days. Tragically her mum was knocked down by a lorry and she never saw her again. I have told my daughter this in an email.

I am not going to beg her but I need her to understand that I need to be part of her new and changing life.

Not really the same, no. My sister says I got a harder deal from mum growing up than she did. She thinks our parents weren’t interested in her at all, but mum was quite obsessed with me and controlling about my decisions and relationships. At the moment, I’d much rather she wasn’t interested in me!

See also, my sister has been allowed to move twice as far from our hometown as I have, which is totally fine. I’m still in the same county as my hometown, 10 miles from the town where I went to uni, and apparently that’s too far and basically abandonment.

Are you the oldest by any chance?
can your sister ‘do no wrong’ ie is she a bit of a golden child?

Hi @Wallywobbles, sorry, I missed your post yesterday.

I sat down with a friend and talked it all through and wrote a reply to say that essentially mum’s email was emotionally manipulative and that I didn’t feel able to/that I wanted to open up to her or share things with her because of how she’s behaved in the past. She immediately rang me telling me to stop being silly, so I don’t think she’s willing to openly acknowledge her part in our rubbish relationship. I’m still intrigued by the idea that she may have regrets deep down, though, and just not want to openly admit them?

The mother needs help. You can write to her gp with your concerns.
Nothing might Happen but at least you get it out there in case she goes to gp for something else.
Go live your life set boundaries

Do not engage with who why what. Visit once a month or whatever and ignore her whines

Yes, I’m the oldest. I’m not sure if my sister was the golden child exactly, but she was certainly allowed to have more personality than me. My dad openly admits that he would hit her as discipline (‘a bit of a tap’), and she would chase him and hit him back. This is told like a lovely cute anecdote.

If I put a foot wrong or ever deviated from what my mum wanted for me, all hell would break loose (from my mum - I’m not sure my dad was that bothered? That might be incredibly harsh but I just don’t remember his role in any of it).

Save yourself another decade of this an go NC now. Your mother can't control you or abuse you now that you have moved out and she's trying to guilt you back so she can continue to do so. She won't change. Life is easier without a controlling, manipulative parent who only thinks about themselves in it.

Mum seems like she had serious issues. Good to set boundaries as it's not healthy at all.

Your sister is the scapegoat with you being the golden child in this family unit; a role not without price either as you have and are seeing. Such roles can also be interchangeable.

Your mother will likely ignore any boundary you care to set. I am not surprised to see your mother’s response either, par for the course sadly in such dysfunctional families.

I will also tell you now she has no regrets; your mother really does have no empathy and insight. As women like your mother cannot do relationships at all they need a willing enabler to help them, this person is your dad.

Indeed drop the rope and limit all interactions with both parents here going forward to zero sum. He cannot be relied upon either.

I think what you expect and what she does are two very different things. The more you hassle the less she will do. She is obviously having a great time at uni. I don’t think she needs to speak to you everyday. Arrange to meet up with her but don’t push her to make the effort. She isn’t you op and is doing things her way.

Wow, @AttilaTheMeerkat I hadn’t even considered that I was in the golden child role. It doesn’t feel very golden! My sister did feel that I was prioritised in a way that she wasn’t when we were growing up, but I never wanted so much attention as it feels invasive and intrusive. There’s so much more I could write about our childhoods.

She has no regrets. She is not capable of feeling regret because she cannot ever accept that she did anything wrong.

She’s simply panicking because she no longer has the same amount of control over you that she used to. She realises on some level that treating you harshly has made you distance yourself, so now she is trying a different tactic to bring you back under her control. She is rewriting history, making out that she is some neglected mother that only wants to be loved by her daughter. If you fall for her manipulation she will revert back to being nasty when she thinks she has you back under her thumb.

Mine tried to do the same thing. I never fell for it. You shouldn’t either.

Sounds as though she’s really struggled in lots of aspects of her life over the years. My mum was very similar, still is at times. I just act like the adult and keep loving her and showing her how to behave. She sounds sad and a bit lost. It’s not your responsibility to fix that and I can see how she has pushed you away over the years but maybe plan some things for her to look forward to. The cinema is a good one, less chatting but still a good opportunity to meet up. I think a few things in the diary wil keep her happy.

You do only get one mum. I wished mine behaved better too but I just keep loving her. It makes me feel better about things. They say your children come to teach you lessons in life.x

@mumhelpwithdaughter actually, I dont think you were the golden child at all! I think your mother felt she could control you easier than she could control your sister!! your sister seems as if she must have been harder to dictate to! At heart, your mother is a dictator more than a mother and likes to be in control of as much as she can! do not let your mother hinder you any longer. stand up to her and tell her that you are the boss of your life, not her! you go to live where you want to and you will perhaps let her know where you have moved to! you and your sister need to just break free, you more so! you will decide when to phone her. be strong. xx

I appreciate you saying that her struggles are not my responsibility, but then in the next sentence, you seem to say I should carry on placating her - is that not just rewarding her behaviour? So she knows that next time if she puts on the emotional manipulation and bombards me with messages and emails, it’ll work, because I’ll put things in the diary to do with her (when honestly I just want space from her after everything she’s been doing, in the past and recently).

’You do only get one mum’ - yes, and mine’s more interested in me mothering her than the other way around.

The control thing really rings true - she’s felt her control slipping as i’ve moved away, finished uni, stayed nearer to my boyfriend etc, hence this behaviour?

Exactly. The mothering her is also the same behaviour. You have escaped, be free. Honestly give it a few months of no contact, if you don't feel a massive weight has been lifted from you by then ... talk to your sister and negotiate a united front for low contact together.

I wonder why your mum works so much.

Why did she marry your dad? To escape her own parents? Could she have been abused or something so she married to escape, started getting hit by her husband, tried to work as much as possible to escape him....and now is starting to realise she's losing her daughters and she is lonely.

Or she could just be manipulative and controlling.

We don't know. But you would benefit from 1-2-1 counselling. As would she but I doubt she would go.

If you want to stay in touch Id suggest a phonecall once a week at a set day and time for a set length of call.

Visit once a month with advance warning. For a set length of time. With or without your sister if that makes it easier for you both with your mum.

No drop ins by either you or your mum. No unexpected calls by either of you unless it's to do with illness or accident.

See how the counselling goes.

Reduce contact if she does your head in.

I don’t know why she married my dad. I think they were about 23-24 when they got married in the early 90s.

He definitely hasn’t been physically abusive towards her ever - if anything, it’s more likely to have been by mum towards him (I remember her throwing a cup of tea across the living room, for example). He grew up with a physically abusive father and saw my grandad hit my gran. Dad is placid, meek, but also enables our mum in her behaviour and won’t push back against it or defend us at all.

We don’t know much about her childhood but her mum worked a lot in a specialist medical role, which I think was quite unusual for the 70s. Mum spent a lot of time with her grandparents when she was little, and she felt that her parents favoured her younger sister (sounds familiar).

Honestly, I think they got married and had children because it was ‘the done thing’. My dad has actually said to me in the midst of all mum’s recent stuff that he doesn’t know why he went ahead and had us 😔

I’d also love to know why she works so much. She worked part-time when we were little and was also a school governor, then went back full-time later and became a chair of governors so essentially had two jobs, one paid and one voluntary.

She never takes a summer holiday to go away anywhere with my dad, never has weekends away or even just days off to potter around and get jobs done at home.

She doesn’t even seem to like her work very much - she’s always complaining about it and about the people she works with. She tells us some of the things she says to them and it’s awful, borderline abusive stuff. She works with young apprentices and I’ve been close at times to finding out their training provider and getting in touch to say why they have such a high turnover at that workplace. So she doesn’t enjoy her job but because she knows people are scared of her (her words), she won’t leave because it would please them too much (again, what she’s told us).

@Ifyoureadthisyousmellofpoo
i wonder if your mum was difficult but not abusive.
when you’ve experienced abuse at the hands of your mum, in childhood, in adolescence, into adulthood and into even your 40s and whilst you have children of your own. When is it okay to say ‘enough is enough’? Or should we all just suck up the abuse as ‘you only get one mum?’
personally im acutely aware I ‘only got one mum’ and it’s a source of absolute grief that that mother chose to use me as her emotional punchbag for decades. Do I just continue to love her anyway because she ‘had a difficult life’ (something she regularly likes to use to excuse her behaviour rather than apologise for it or god forbid, change it)
ps I can’t love her. I have zero love for her. I can barely look at her such is her impact on me. She looks at me with barely concealed hatred with a fake smile plastered on in the company of others. If we’re ever alone I get unfiltered evil. But hey ‘you only get one mum!’

@mumhelpwithdaughter I’m going to be blunt. I doubt things are rosy between her and your dad. It looks like you have become her sole emotional focus and she uses work to avoid reality of life with him. She’s not happy. You can’t fix it. Only she can. I would actually advise against counselling with her. She needs her own. You probably do as well, but to come to terms with how you want and need to proceed. You are absolutely entitled to your own life. She can’t attach herself to it to fill the holes in her own. If she doesn’t sort herself out, she’s going to be an absolute nightmare if you get married and escalate further if you have kids. (Experience talking.)

She sounds like a bully. She bullies your dad, she bullies young apprentices, she bullies you. She bullies anyone she thinks she can get away with bullying.
interesting she’s taken on a chair of governors role. People like this often gravitate to roles like this for the status and the power that comes with it.

You seriously need professional help, this all sounds smothering, step back and work out how to act normal

No it is not obvious, but you now sound as bonkers as each other