February 2025 Well we took you to Stately Homes

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

A new thread indeed!.

cheekysnake if you could wave a limited magic wand what do you want with your mother? You're you and she's herself and the past is the past. What would you like going forward?

The word sorry means very little in and of itself. You need to be able to feel and see someone's apology in deep acknowledgement full reflection and a complete change of behaviour. When I harmed someone I love I feel and felt abject shame and I apologised very very sincerely and utterly changed my behaviour.

Not only did your mum allow your father to terrify you but then skipped off into the sunset with number 2 with no doting loving granny for your kids. Balls. She's sown nothing she reaps nothing.

My son and I were talking about apologies and he asked what my ex sister could do to get me to forgive her. I thought about different scenarios, a letter, wearing a hair shirt, a scolds bridle, taking a full page ad out saying 'I'm a cunt'. I thought carefully and realised the answer is nothing.

Basically I object to the structure of her personality 🤷🏼‍♂️

Bitterness is another matter though isn't it. Why is there such a fear of being bitter, what does bitter mean? Is it possibly some internalised misogyny that gives us a fear of being bitter? Maybe there's a parallel path of yes, I'm bitter about the past but serene about the future?

What would a man do? Probably not answer the phone or say 'yeh, whatever'. They wouldn't notice the steaming pile of shit if the shit wasn't theirs. And probably even if it was!

I was talking to a close friend about her mum and how great her mum was. I asked her how it felt to know your mum loves you and she thought hard and couldn't really describe it.

We thought it was maybe like being born with two feet. You never think about it, but if you're born with one foot you'd think about not having two.

Something about my mother has always puzzled me. She always made me feel physically sick, I hated the smell of her (not anything objectively offensive) and I really struggled with having to hug her goodbye or anything. I remember that from very early, like aged 3.

She said that I wouldn't take a bottle at all and from three weeks they had to use teaspoons or a sippy cup with tiny holes. I don't blame her for that. But I wonder if refusing to feed was a rejection of her by me from birth?

Yeah that makes sense. There is no sorry and deep shame. There is sorry I hope you are kind enough to accept this and I get something out of it. I dislike this about them. It’s always on the other to be kind enough or nice enough or overly accepting and soft to accept a sorry. When I stopped accepting the sorry then I was cast as the horrible person. Or the bitter person or any other negative word that exists. I wonder if this is just a female expectation like was said.

We shouldn’t use these words in such a negative self shaming way. Yeah Im bitter sometimes and angry and jealous and any other bad taboo word, but I’m human and I’ve had terrible experiences so what do people expect. As with all things as long as we visit and we don’t stay in the feelings then it’s ok in my book. Don’t shame yourself because shame often takes overs a deep feeling that drags you right down into childhood.

One thing I’m struggling with, and what I’m unpicking with my counsellor next week is whether I confront my mum or not.

A lot of people who I speak to say there’s no point as she’ll never take accountability, but where does that leave me? Full of bitterness and letting her away with all the harm she has caused and still does?

How do I go no contact, or minimal contact without explaining my reasons to her? I can’t just go off radar because she will know something has changed so surely I have to tell her. It just doesn’t make sense to me to not say anything to her.

I think for me it means being angry about it forever, to the point where it spoils my enjoyment of my life now because I'm emotionally stuck ruminating on things that happened decades ago that I can't do anything about. And I suppose accepting the longer term fall out of growing up in that house (the over sensitive fight or flight response which means I tip into anxious and panicky frequently and easily, the poor health) without letting it get me down quite so often. My mother is the only remaining link to that time, and I do cope (and feel) better when there's less contact because I suppose she's a constant reminder of it.

@Dogaredabomb Honestly, if I had a magic wand, I don't know what I would want. I was happier with what we had before, when I only saw her a couple of times a year and I knew that someone else was carrying the load and in between those visits, I barely even thought about her, she just wasn't on my mind at all. I would go for weeks, even months not having the difficult thoughts. I did find the visits incredibly stressful when they happened. Covid was lovely in that regard. What I've got now is major FOG.

I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, I don't want to cause upset, I don't want a big argument, I don't wish her any ill will. I don't want to her to ask anything of me because I have nothing left to give. I don't want her to call simply in order to emotionally dump on me for an hour, which is what happened this week. I want to feel nothing when I have contact with her rather than feeling like I have flu for a week afterwards.

FWIW your description of her ignoring the impact of my father and then waltzing off into the sun w no.2 is basically how I feel about it, it made me laugh.

I think the question to ask yourself is what is your goal in confronting her? Is it to give her the chance to be the mother you always wanted her to be, to show up and fix her behaviour and apologise? Is it remorse and understanding and a changed relationship? Or is it that you just want to honour your values and be honest so you can know that at least you didn't leave her hanging and made her aware of why things were going to change? Think about this. Hard.

I tried to talk to my mother. I did a load of therapy and realised, she's never really helped me or taken an interest in me. My mum is a good person and she can get distracted. And to be fair, ive been abroad and im pretty independent. l'll tell her and it'll make the relationship better. Simple! And instead I got talked down to, gaslit, lectured, dismissed, invalidated. On a loop. That happened for a few years, then I got engaged, then married, then infertility and she played the same non-existant role in my life and my eyes were very much open. I told her she never was a mother to me. I stopped answering the phone. I stopped visiting. We had an almighty phone call where she...half apologised about things that happened 20+ years ago, denied things that were happening today, blamed as much as she could on me, made it all about her and guilted me about getting old, only a few years left blah blah.

It was all honesty very re-traumatising. My life was hard and I kept just looking for a mother. And instead I got traumatised again. I walked around not knowing what was real, wondering if I was going mad, feeling so bad about myself. I'm still susceptible to feeling that way if I think about it too much. But I learned the hard way that the woman is not for changing, my feelings and wellbeing will never matter to her, my life and experiences are not as important to her as her own, and she needs me in an invisible role to be able to function as a mother. She's not about to acknowledge she did a thing wrong, and she will hold me accountable for saying a single thing that she doesn't like via scapegoating and discarding.

Anyway, this is longer than I intended. But I'd implore you to really think about what your impulse to have a conversation with your mother is all about, and what impact her emotional abuse is going to have on you. You're allowed to just go off the grid. You're allowed to not answer her calls, or set a boundary and ignore her violations. You don't owe her anything. Healing requires your needs to matter more.

I think, TBH, that you have to let go of the idea that there is some form of retribution or punishment you can give your mother, or that not trying to punish her means that she's got away with it. It's human nature to want to lash out at someone who has hurt you. I get it. I did have that conversation with my father, sort of anyway. Shortly after my mother told him she was leaving him, he cornered me in the house (he refused to move out) and said that she was only leaving him because I had finally managed to bully her into it and if I would just stop, we could all go back to living as a happy family. I totally lost control of myself. I can remember screaming 'it's not me, it's you. You've done this.'

I don't regret saying it. It needed to be said. I needed to say it. He never spoke to me again. He never said he was sorry or took any responsibility for his actions. I suppose what I'm trying to say is, tell your mother what you want to tell her if you think it will help you moving forward, but don't say it if what you need is an apology or recognition of wrong doing, because you may not get it, and even if you do, you may feel it's not genuine or that it hasn't helped.

The problem with these people is that they often find it very difficult to accept that they've done anything wrong, and will turn any sort of criticism into fodder for victimhood so there is a possibility that trying to make her understand what she's done will actually make you feel worse.

I do not expect any behaviour change from her, I understand that she is who she is. The crappy behaviour she showed me as a child and the personality traits she has now, are ones that she displays to everyone. I’m not targeted by her, this is just how she is. I have no romantic ideals about her becoming the “mother I always wanted” because I have no idea what it means to have a good mother. I don’t know any different, and the thought of having a relationship with her that is similar to the one I have with my own children is laughable. She is 100% incapable of having a normal relationship with anyone. I haven’t spoken to her for about a month now, which is the longest I have ever gone without speaking to her, and I don’t miss her. I don’t feel anything about it.

I don’t want anything from her, I don’t want her apologies, I don’t want her to try and fix things, I don’t want us to strive towards having a normal mother/daughter relationship, I don’t want any of that.

But I do want her to know that I remember how she treated me as a child even though it’s never spoken about, and I want her to know that treating me the way she does, at 42 years old, is not acceptable. Nobody ever holds her to account, everyone is too scared to call her our on her behaviour which is why she gets away with it. I just want her to know that she isn’t infallible.

My GC sister called today. She's getting married in a few months so I'm finding it OK to keep things surface level and talk semi regularly.

She said My mother is flying over with my uncle to support my scapegoat aunt's son / help with arrangements. She also told me my mum said "it might be for the best that she died, she had an awful life." This is straight from my mum's playbook, sweep in and play the hero, stamp all over everyone's boundaries while misrepresenting someone who just died to make herself feel superior. It's triggered me to hell.

My aunt did not have an awful life. She had a big circle of friends that loved her, she loved her food, and cooking, and music, she had a beautiful relationship with her son. She traveled loads, she took risks my mother could only dream of. She had horrible cancer at the end, like the cancer that her own family was to her, the one she had no choice to become estranged from.

I get triggered by the MO that my mother can have, painting herself as The World's Greatest Mother, while inflicting emotional pain on anyone she likes, including her own daughter.

Why? What would it change for you, to call her out and attempt to hold her accountable? Is it worth the risk of her becoming emotionally difficult and volatile? Genuine questions. If it is - I'd say knock yourself right out. That's the best reason to have thr conversation- to honour yourself in spite of how it might create more difficulty.

I also don't know what it feels like to have a good mother. My mother makes me flinch, i react viscerally to her presence. What I learned about in therapy is that that has affected me greatly. I might not know it, but I sure as hell needed it. I suffered and continue to suffer for having to raise myself. That can lay unconscious for decades until you're ready to feel through the deep pain and grief that your inner child felt for never being able to rely on a loving mother.

I'd suggest writing a letter to your mother. Write it all out, the injustice and the anger and the unfairness and the crossed boundaries and decades of mistreatment. You don't need to post it. In fact I suggest you don't. But it might give you a lot of relief and clarity about what you need to do now.

@MotherIssues2025 But I do want her to know that I remember how she treated me as a child even though it’s never spoken about, and I want her to know that treating me the way she does, at 42 years old, is not acceptable. Nobody ever holds her to account, everyone is too scared to call her our on her behaviour which is why she gets away with it. I just want her to know that she isn’t infallible.

Here's the thing - this will hurt you more than it will hurt her, because if you talk about your childhood, all she has to do is call you a liar. If you call her out on her behaviour, all she has to do is call you a bully. There's a reason why no-one calls these people out on their behaviour, and that's because it doesn't work. There is nothing you can say that will do anything other than reinforce their self-image as a victim.

The greatest gift you can give yourself is to find a way to come to terms with that. I know the desire to have them, just once, see and acknowledge the pain they've caused, for them to know that you see them as they really are. But it's an impossible wish. It's not in our control. The calm withdrawal of our services is really the most powerful tool we have in our toolbox.

Your GC sister is a flying monkey, you're aware of that, right? Does she have any understanding of what's happening in the relationship between you and your mother? She has passed on second hand comments, things you didn't need to know, that have upset you. Why did she tell you these things? What was she trying to achieve? (IME weddings turn families batshit, BTW).

Your mother's story about your aunt and their relationship and place in the world will always be different to yours. That's OK. Your mother is allowed to decide what her version of the story is. If she looks at your aunt's life and thinks it was a poor life, let her. She's allowed to believe that. She's also allowed (and I know this is painful) to believe that she's the world's greatest mother. Her thoughts and feelings are not your responsibility any more. It's not your job to correct them. Just cross that item off your to do list. You never have to do that work, put precious energy into it, devote any of your time to it. Put that load down and step away from it.

Trust that your cousin can do the work of dealing with your mother. He sounds like a good bloke. Trust that he can cope with her and that he doesn't need you to do the work of making sure he can see her for what she is. Whatever he thinks of her doesn't invalidate your feelings.

It's obvious that this is going to be a difficult time - you're grieving, you're being pulled into closer contact with family than you'd like, and whether you're super close to someone or not, a death is a major life event, it shakes everything up. Is there anything you can do to be kind to yourself and help calm the angry feelings? (a walk in a place you really like, a visit to a place you find soothing, a massage, any relaxation techniques you find helpful)

Motherissues because you're a rational person operating from a normal psyche. Your mother isn't.

If you try to get revenge it won't work, she'll flip it around to play victim and you'll be cast as the aggressor. She's already gotten away with her behaviour because literally she's already done it and it can't be undone. There's nothing you can do now to apply consequences for that behaviour except go NC.

Going NC isn't about punishing them it's about saving yourself. Anything that is about punishing them won't work because they'll never accept they did anything wrong so it won't feel like punishment to them it'll feel like an unprovoked attack.

I understand about you wanting to give a reason for NC, any rational person prefers to know why someone is exiting their life, for closure. The irrational person won't understand though, no matter how many times you try to explain your reasoning, they'll never get it. Because to understand it they'd have to accept they did something wrong and they won't ever accept that.

She already knows the reason, she was there, doing those things during your childhood. The information on the reason is within her. She could go to therapy with her question of why and her feelings about it, she could explore your relationship and what may have gone wrong, coming to the conclusion she was a bad mother and that's why. But she'll never do this because it wouldn't cross her mind to self reclect in this way, to consider that she might be the problem. All she'll do is blame you and think you're unreasonable for going NC.

You want to tell her a few home truths as a parting shot, I get that, but what makes you think she'll believe you?

Any reasons you tell her just gives her an opportunity to pick them apart and tell you why she thinks you're wrong. That will inevitably cause you further pain. And it won't give her closure because she'll never accept your reasons. She'll go around telling people you've dropped her and she doesn't know why even if you've literally told her why, because she can't accept that reason as the truth. All you'll have achieved by confronting her is to have put yourself in a situation where you experienced further pain.

What she thinks or feels about the NC is none of your business, it's her business. You don't need to try to control that, be involved in that or take responsibility for that.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do though. 🍀

Dogaredabomb I used to work with a bitter woman. I don't know what happened to her but someone down the line must have hurt her. It coloured her entire life in a negative mindset. One time a brand rep left us all gifts after a meeting. They were identical. She was last to come on shift and I was first to greet her. I told her about the gifts and said hers had been left in the office. I was expecting her to say "fantastic! I'll go put it in my locker now" or similar. Nope. She pulled a face, said grumpily "I suppose I've been left the shittiest one". I imagine in a lot of people that could provoke a negative response in return, especially if it's the 100th time they'd experienced her negativity and they were thoroughly fed up of her. Going through life with this type of attitude would have turned most people against her, caused them to avoid her and reinforced her idea that people were all awful. She had no friends at work and I could see why! I doubt she ever realised it was a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Cheekysnake you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but in taking responsibility for their feelings you're hurting yourself. It's not cruel to protect yourself from harm. I set an alarm for 20mins with people like this before the call starts and I end the call when it goes off, interrupting them mid-sentence if I have to. I don't take their calls when I'm busy, or winding down for bedtime, or if I've had a stressful day myself and need to decompress. It's ok to have boundaries around calls. Phone ownership is for your convenience, not so others can access you 24/7 for their own convenience.

That's shocking wondering. What a thing to say! I hope aunt's son sees through her and tells her to get lost. He doesn't need that hassle while he's grieving.

The problem I have is that as hurtful as my childhood memories are, during this adult phase of my life she is 90% good. She is so kind to me and the children in so many ways and on balance, the things that irritate me aren’t enough to justify going no contact. Yes she gets stroppy at times and can be rude and gives me the silent treatment and can’t apologise for any of her wrongs, but that’s 3-4 times a year, and for the rest of the time she’s kind and goes out of her way to be helpful to me and my children. It’s so, so confusing. I just don’t know what to do or how to feel. I hate this.

I realised today, with all the talk of those who don't care about the NC, that neither of my parents or difficult family members has ever phoned me just to see how I am. Only ever if they want me to be somewhere or do something for them. Always on their terms, not like "let's meet up, when suits you?".

When I first moved out I phoned regularly, because as a child I remembered my own mother doing this weekly to her parents. So it became my default. When I changed jobs to a 9-5 and ended up in an abusive relationship, I no longer had time for these calls, so they stopped. When I left that relationship I changed and stopped tolerating that nasty behaviour from anyone, so again I didn't call because our relationship wasn't good from my perspective. I've just realised, in all the intervening decades since I first stopped the weekly phone calls, none of them has ever called me up just for a chat or to see how I am, not once. It's only ever been if they want something from me. I feel a bit daft for never having noticed that before!

I'm grieving the loss of narc2 who I'd always hoped to be friends with. I've put up with so much unacceptable shit over the years because I didn't want to lose them. I'm accepting now though that they don't like me. Which I think may be jealousy because I'm the scapegoat so I rejected expectations and rebelled to live my own life fairly early on (although so did they in their own way 🤷) and because I'm now no longer appeasing main narc at all I think that's pissiing narc2 off. I don't expect to see again other than at elderly relatives funerals perhaps. It's not the relationship I'd hoped to have, but I'm NC now and letting go of that dream.

@SamAndAnnie yep you're right about the phone rules. TBH I hardly ever answer it. Most of the time it's not even on. I know we have to have them now, but I hate the bloody thing. Prior to that call it had been literally weeks since we'd spoken, but before she moved back to the UK, we never spoke on the phone at all and I'd forgotten how exhausting I find it. I know in hindsight why she rang this week - she wanted to emotionally vomit on someone about the bleeping council elections and presumably couldn't find anyone else. I don't think she wanted to talk to me personally. I need to get better at dealing with the odd call and making it short. I could have just put the phone down and come back to it an hour later 😆

One of the most overlooked characteristics of abusive relationships is that the abuse is woven in amongst undeniable kindness. Everyone focusses just on the bad stuff. But in reality, it's a very manipulative, devious use of kindness which keeps the victim trapped in the relationship. IMO it has two effects - victims can't see the abuse clearly, and they also blame themselves when it happens because they feel that the kindness is who the abuser actually is, so the abuse can only have happened if the abuser was driven to act out of character. And then victims cling to the idea that if they can just behave right enough, the abuser will be kind to them all the time.

It's a recognised thing.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/cycle-of-abuse-5210940

If they treated us like shit 100% of the time, ending the relationship would be the easiest thing in the world.

But in an actual healthy relationship, those moments of acute viciousness just don't happen. Yes, people get tired and cross and frustrated sometimes, but there isn't cruelty. There aren't those moments of visceral fear. You never have to beg for forgiveness. You're never left crying and confused. It's just easy and calm. There's no drama.

This was a really kind response. Thank you. It's made me realise I'm not often in receipt of emotional soothing and grounding, unless I'm sat in my therapist's office. And also how easy the dysregulation comes when it comes to my mother.

Yes my sister is 100% flying monkey. She's GC and enmeshed with my mother. She lives down the road and is there every day, mother minds her dog, does her laundry, etc. She's 37 years old and has been like this all her life. I've had my issues with her too, sudden cut offs, volatility etc. We're going through a phase of things being OK. Unlike my mother, I've seen her grow and change in ways. She's done some therapy, she was taking anti depressants for a time. But her understanding of my mother is that she's a selfless woman who does and has done absolutely everything for her. It's been the most hurtful part of my relationship with my mother, the blatant favouritism and then denial of such. That one confuses me blind if I let myself think about it for too long.

I'm also in an airport right now about to fly abroad for our next round of IVF. So a lot of feelings right now. I might download a fee happy podcasts before boarding.