I love my mum and I know she loves me, but I’ve realised our conversations are very shallow, any attempt from me to talk about actual feelings (mine or hers) or anything in detail gets either no response from her, she talks over me, doesn’t listen to what I’ve said and changes the subject. It’s like emotions make her extremely uncomfortable, either that or she doesn’t actually care to know how I feel (which makes me very sad if true).
She only seems to want to know very basic information and then very quickly loses interest, any attempt to have a deeper conversation and she zones out and does the above.
Just as an example, we went out for a meal recently and she asked me how the IVF was going. I said it’s going okay and we are starting medication soon (at this point I feel heard all she wanted to know and zoned out), but I’ve been given the news that if we tried to used my eggs in the future our chances of success would be very slim as I have much less follicles than my wife, and that means I probably won’t produce many eggs. She didn’t say anything in response other than oh, so I continued and said it’s a shock and I’m trying to get my head around not ever having a genetic child of my own and whether that matters…. She literally turned around from me as I was as mid sentence and responded to something my dad said to correct him and joined his conversation.
Then I was discussing the same topic with sister in law 5 minutes later and got a little bit emotional, my mum notices then interrupts and asks what we are talking about, I said how I’ve been told IVF won’t work with my eggs, she acts confused like this is new information and asks why. I said to her I just told you, because I have low follicles, then she starts asking me questions about what that means, I explain and get to the part where I say it’s hit me quite hard and I’m having a tough time processing it still and she said “oh bless” then joins my dad and brother’s conversation.
This is not a one off, she does this all the time. It makes me not want to open up to her about anything as every time I do I either get interrupted, cut off mid sentence or the topic of conversation immediately changes to a story about her or someone she knows. I feel like we have grown so far apart over the years because she doesn’t really know me as person, she just knows information about my life and vice versa.
I have mentioned it to her and she just laughed and said a lot of people have told her she doesn’t listen and talks over people, then she changed the subject. I spoke to my Dad about it (dont have that problem with him) and he said yeah that just your mum! You know she cares really.
There’s a whole lot more I could say about our relationship, but this post is too long already.
I wonder if anyone else is in a similar situation and how you deal with it?