Hi all, I’m new, just desperately needing a place to vent right now and my best friends are all on holiday and I don’t want to spoil their trips with a 30-minute VoiceNote.
Also, I tried posting this on Reddit but it got taken down for being “about the current US political situation” (where? Screw off, Reddit).
Urgh. Ok. So, I have never been close with my mother. She is, I would say, basically not very nice. She’s superficially charming, outgoing, confident, friendly, can be funny, and if you met her, you’d think she was great. She has lots of friends and is widely liked. But behind closed doors, she can be completely different. Mean, cold, hyper critical, back-stabbing, dismissive of other people’s feelings, nasty.
When we were little (“we” includes my sister) she was extremely strict and authoritarian, disciplining us (me in particular) disproportionally in a way that felt at the time like bullying. She was always criticising me, always ready to tell me off over nothing, forever making comments about my weight or work ethic or my various other flaws and failings to my sister, who would then come and tell me. I’ve never heard her say a nice word about me.
She wasn’t like this all the time and she could be nice and friendly too, but it wasn’t the majority of the time and it’s not what stands out in my memory of her from my childhood, where I often felt incredibly lonely and unlikeable.
In adulthood, she oscillates jarringly between being nice (for which she is often told by my dad that she is “pandering” to me) and being overly harsh (which she seems to do most in my lowest, worst, most vulnerable moments). There is no consistency, no predictability.
As a result, we don’t have a great relationship. We’re friendly on the surface but there’s no deeper connection, no trust, and I don’t feel that I have a normal mother-daughter relationship with her. I also, to be honest, don’t really want one. I feel like I gave up on her a long, long time ago.
The underlying tension between us was never a huge problem until my daughter was born three years ago. Since then, it has become even more obvious. Most of the grandparents around us, including my mother’s friends, are heavily involved with their grandchildren and provide childcare and other types of support, but my parents don’t. They’ve never been left alone with my daughter. My mum finds this upsetting and, I suspect, embarrassing. I imagine that she has created an image of herself as a wonderful mother with doting adult children and my not involving her in my daughter’s life is quite revealing.
My husband, my daughter and I live only about a ten-minute drive from my parents’ house, where they live with my sister (not a child, she’s in her late 20s, like me, but still living at home because of gestures broadly the situation). Yet we only see them every 6-8 weeks, usually when it’s someone’s birthday or a public holiday. Part of this is that we’re just genuinely really busy. You know how it is when you’ve got a toddler and a house to take care of and a husband who works all week; the weekends become about family time and errands and the extended family just get pushed to the side. But also, none of us really enjoy seeing them. My daughter isn’t keen on any of them and hasn’t got much of a relationship with them. She finds their house boring and visiting often feels like pulling teeth.
After a particularly awkward visit to my parents’ house a couple of weeks ago, my mother sent me a letter, in which she wrote exhaustively about how she feels she is being mistreated by me, that I am “punishing” her for “not being the perfect parent”, downplaying the few situations I’ve raised or memories I’ve shared of her being cruel to me or my sister (not outright denying that it happened but denying that it should have any impact on our relationship), saying that she had a worse childhood than I did but is very close to her parents anyway, that I’ve listened to too much “weird music about people with sad lives” (she means Linkin Park) and have fantasised that my own life was sad to make myself seem more interesting, and that I’m being unfair and unkind by not including her in my life more or being nicer to her.
Rather than reply to the letter, I asked if we could speak about it face-to-face. She agreed and it turned into a family meeting involving my parents, my sister and me in very much a ‘Me vs Them’ situation.
As you can imagine, it was a shit show.
I explained that the relationship that my mother and I have now has been defined by her treatment of me when I was growing up, which was often deliberately cruel. I said that I don’t think it’s unkind or unfair to have boundaries around your life, your home or your child, and I don’t think having boundaries is a punishment. I don’t think that adult children owe their parents access on the parents’ terms. I don’t think you get to wipe the slate clean when your child turns 18 or moves out or has a baby of their own, and boom, all is forgiven, never mind, you haven’t been very nice to me up until now but I guess we’ll start from scratch. I don’t think that being held accountable for your actions is a personal attack (and, I didn’t say this bit, but I think people who feel that way are emotionally immature and probably narcissistic).
My mother cried and protested and said over and over that she was a great mother and that I was a difficult child and a horrible teenager (blaming me). She said that it’s not fair that I let “a couple of minor incidents” overshadow all the great things she did right (minimising). She said that she wants me to come to her for help (I don’t need it) and include her more in my life (no thank you) and that it’s mean that I won’t do this (victimising herself). She even went on about how hurtful it was that my husband and I eloped, rather than throw a wedding that we could invite them to (hypocritical, my parents also eloped, plus this was five years ago).
My sister (who was treated much more fairly when we were kids, being the younger golden child, and who has a close and fairly co-dependent relationship with our mother) said that I’m “choosing to remember the bad stuff” because I’m a very negative person. She also cried any time our mother cried.
My dad stuck up for me a bit by telling my mum that she’s too sensitive, but mostly wasn’t listening and fell asleep halfway through. He did make some vague threats about suing me for custody of my child, until my sister (paralegal) shut it down.
I was there for three hours, missed out on a Saturday afternoon with my family, and got told that I’m a horrible person who makes everyone unhappy by not seeing them enough. Nothing was achieved and I now feel even less inclined to include any of them in my life.
I didn’t cry though. Was very proud of myself for not crying. Cried with relief when I got home to my warm, loving family and hugged my happy little daughter.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.