Mother obsessed with ‘her truth’

[BirraMoretti]

For a number of reasons my childhood wasn’t overly happy and even now in my 50s I struggle with my mother. She hasn’t had a particularly easy time either but her poor decisions have affected me a lot over the years.

She’s getting older so I do my best to leave the past in the past but she insists on bringing things up as though she needs me to understand and see her side and forgive her - but she’d never say that as she doesn’t see there’s anything to forgive.

Last year she decided to tell me she was abused as a child (which I suspected) but at a time when I was going through something quite difficult and had let my guard down - I really needed the support myself but she chose that moment to share.

There are numerous other examples of her overstepping and selfishness but today she’s told me how abandoned she felt when I got married and how much it upset her - I already knew this because she rang to give me grief on my honeymoon. I’m now divorced and I also know that if she’d been less wrapped up in her abusive husband (one of several) and more interested in her children, I might never have married the wrong person in the first place.

I feel like I’ll never be free of it until she’s no longer here but women in our family live into their 90s and I know she’s going to expect care and support that I don’t feel like giving - she has already reminded me that she did it for her mother but I work full time in a very stressful role whereas she’d already given up work at my age.

How the hell do I deal with this? It’s affecting my life so much never knowing what she will do or say or expect next. I’m under a lot of other stress and I just don’t need it. Previously I told her she needed to see a counsellor so she had 6 sessions and is now apparently fine 😩🤦🏻

So your mother was abused as a child and then made mistakes in adulthood because of this and that’s her fault. But then you didn’t have a good childhood, and you say the mistakes you then made were because of this, are also your mothers fault? that doesn’t make sense.

im reading a different thread to everyone else I think!

i think we DO owe our mothers something. Everything in fact.

also I think if someone tells you they were sexually abused as a child and your response is that they were selfish to tell you, then that’s shocking.

We don't 'owe' our mothers anything. No-one should be obliged to provide hands-on care to an elderly parent in old age, even if they had a great childhood and certainly not if they didn't. Many people do choose to do this, but there should be no obligation.

I could have written your post myself OP...except my mother would nether consider seeing a counsellor...even though she desperately needs to.

Much the same - poor decisions from both parents during childhood (some of which still affect me today), and a reveal of SA during one of the very rare times I looked to her for support/comfort as an adult - which actually makes what myself and my two brothers went through as children worse, as the person in her family she said perpetrated it was the uncle she let us spend the most time with completely alone as children...so she is either lying, or willingly threw us in the path of a pedophile. She has past history of lying, so I think the first is most likely.

However my mother is different is that she has never willingly tried to discuss anything that has happened - whenever I've tried, she immediately gets very defensive, then blames it all on my father, and then gets very nasty.

As the only daughter I was also expected to be her confidant from a very young age, from when I reached double figures. She then wondered why I suffered badly from anxiety...my mother was one of 9 children, she has also fallen out with all of them..she is now the oldest of the two still alive and isn't on speaking terms with her younger brother. She's also alienated most of her friends over the last 20 years.

I made it clear to my mother 30 years ago that I would not be her carer in old age. 3 of my uncles sacrificed their whole adult lives to stay at home and be carers for my grandmother...it still ranks as the most selfish thing I've ever witnessed in a family. My mother, like my grandmother, is a narc. I moved to the other side of the world from her 25 years ago and am now very low contact. A very drastic solution, but the only way I could protect my mental health.

There are some pretty horrible, extreme opinions on this thread.
If your mum is getting therapy, it sounds like she is trying to reflect on her life.
Perhaps just tell her that she needs to take those issues to her therapist, not to you.

It’s complicated and I’m aware I might sound selfish especially in relation to her revealing the SA but I find it hard to be sympathetic when she let her own kids be subjected to abuse (not sexual) by one of her husbands.

I think the difference is that I’ve spent my whole life trying to break the cycle and put the past behind me whereas she constantly wants to revisit it and I’m tired of it hence suggesting a counsellor - I made that suggestion on the day I’d just visited my dad and been told he had months to live but she still managed to pull me aside and start complaining about something going on with her.

I have a daughter of my own and my deepest wish in life is that I never do anything to make her feel about me as I do my mother.

OP, I can relate to this. I’m an only child, my father is dead, and my mother - who I am sadly no longer in contact with - is very difficult. Her behaviour was a bit different to your mum’s, but highly problematic. She suffered from addiction issues and mental health problems- and I spent years throughout my teens and twenties trying (and failing) to ‘help’ her.

Eventually when I was in 30s, trying to raise my young family and deal with her craziness too (she’d do things like call me 40 times in two hours if she couldn’t reach me on the phone/refuse to attend doctors’ appointments/lie about taking medication), I had enough. I contacted social services, told her siblings I was stepping back, and focused on trying to raise my kids and preserve my own mental health, which was becoming pretty battered by stress and anxiety due to the situation.

I faced a fair bit of judgement from other family members, which was hurtful, but now I simply don’t care what they think - I did what I had to do and prioritised my own children, not my mother. I realise now how screwed up various elements of my childhood were. Painful as this has all been, I am ok and my life is 10000s of times more peaceful and healthy without her in it.

She is very elderly now, and to be blunt, she will probably die soon. Friends have asked if I will have regrets not to have any semblance of a relationship once she goes, but I know that, awful as it sounds, it will just feel like a relief!

Take some space, OP. Create boundaries and see where you are as you take things step by step. Good luck xx

I’ve just woken up from a painful dream about her, where people were ‘being mean’ and she was the victim but she just couldn’t see why 😔

But what about you?
I suspect you have been 'parentified' and your DM expects what to most other people would be an unreasonable amount of your time and support.
Can I kindly suggest you need to look closely at yourself - these feelings of discomfort are valid and you need to listen to them.
You don't want to be your Mum's carer and that's fine. She keeps reminding you to keep those obligations fresh in your mind, you are already feeling guilty and obliged - these are classic tools of manipulation.
You don't need some big showdown, but start finding your boundaries and beginning to enforce them.
Your DM knows exactly what buttons to press.
Have a look at the Stately Homes thread. There's many of us with parents like this.

She does still need a counsellor and carers going in . You can kind of disguise them as a cleaner for her 3 days a week to keep on top of the cleaning. But ask them to have a chat with her pay a couple of extra hours or something . Dont tie yourself too much to her . Keep a certain routine and dont waver or she'll drag you under. I do feel sorry for her if she is a victim of abuse herself but you need to look after yourself as well . Its a fine balance . Good luck with that !

I disagree. OP needed support at that specific time from her mother. She rarely/never asks her mother for emotional support. Mother chose THAT conversation to reveal SA and so the focus and attention once again had to flow from OP to mother instead of this ONE time OP being supported.
I cynically find the timing of that reveal .... Interesting

That’s exactly it @Ohisitjustme it’s not the revelation but when she chose to make it. I’d just experienced a very painful bereavement - of someone she didn’t really know but had nothing good to say about, but she then proceeded to come to the funeral and make the whole event about her and how caring she was. It’s classic her.

I can relate too, right down to regularly being reminded that she cared for her own DM. I remind her that she and DF were both retired and I work and have a DC living at home with SN. I might occasionally reminisce about how bloody lovely DGM was too without actually saying out loud how unlike DM she was…

I'm sorry your DM suffered abuse, and sorry that she passed it on to you (because parentifying a child is abusive). She's displaying classic narc behaviour - something nice happen to you? She wants to spoil it. Something bad? Much worse has happened to her. And your feelings must always be secondary to hers.

She has a therapist, she should stop using you as her narc supply. And I bet she has a strange relationship with your DD - over-intense love and ownership, or meanness and jealousy, am I right? And might turn on a dime from one to the other when your DD hits a triggering age for her.

So I'm glad you're seeing the patterns and starting the process of changing them. It's horrible when you first realise what's wrong, but it's the start of a journey to freedom, good luck!

And I bet she has a strange relationship with your DD - over-intense love and ownership

This is so perceptive, it’s exactly what she’s like - as though DD is ‘hers’ as much as mine and not in a healthy grandparent way.

It's exactly the same as what my mother did to me. I was 21, had been married only a few months (and had only got married to get away from my parents) and was having serious problems with work. Even though he was extremely well paid, my then husband wouldn't 'allow' me to leave the job (I ended up being made redundant anyway a couple of months later).

One Sunday when my then husband was at work, my mother turned up uninvited. I was already upset, dreading the next day. I mentioned to my mother why I was so upset....and without even acknowledging what I had just said, she announced out of nowhere about the alleged SA. I remember being so shocked I didn't really say anything...

I've never asked my mother for emotional support since. She's incapable of it, because it draws focus away from her. I had already been parentified by her since I was 10, but that was the final straw. People who have 'normal' mothers won't understand this dynamic.