The final straw - relationship with Mum

[Allbymyshelf]

For those that have gone NC or very LC what was the final straw for you?
I have assumed that there would be some kind of big blow out, one huge argument that we never recover from. There have been events like this in the past but we’ve always managed to somehow bury it and carry on albeit with less enthusiasm on my part. I thought that one day there would be one final attack by her that I can label truly unforgivable.
However following a recent drama free visit, taking her grandchildren a reasonably long way to visit her, and her complete disinterest in any of us I think I’m done. I feel empty.
She says she wants us to visit and provides a spread of food and drink etc but makes no effort to really know her grand children, no games, no questions about their lives, friends or school. The penny has dropped that she’s not actually interested in any of us beyond how we meet her needs or her image as a grandmother. Is this the Mum equivalent of the dirty tea cup triggering a divorce?

Nothing major with my mum. Just lots of things that just added up to the point I just gave up. I don't miss her, it was instant relief honestly.

With the MIL she was an alcoholic and we realised we didn't want her behaviour around our children. Again, instant relief not having to speak to her.

I went NC with the woman who gave birth to me in September 2014.

9 months before (Christmas time) I had seriously thought about suicide. Thankfully my GP acted quickly and contacted local mental health team.

To cut a long story short in the September after many sessions with a wonderful psychiatrist, I met 'mother' in our village shop, she (I thought) looked concerned about me. She asked "How are you feeling?" I was so touched by her apparent concern BUT before I had chance to answer she opened her diary to show me all the events and outings she had planned. I walked home thinking "that woman really doesn't give a toss about me"

She kept messaging asking what was wrong. I didn't reply.

Unfortunately I had to be in her company twice in 2022, when my daughter got married.

This week she has posted the most hateful things on my Facebook page (false account) . I've just ignored her and yet again blocked her.
She's 88 and I'm looking forward to the day she dies. I have a bottle of Moet ready

Being told "If they don't like you, they won't like your children." Any family member who doesn't like my innocent children is as good as dead to me.

You'll question yourself and doubt yourself, but you need to know that no one in the world has the right to make you feel like this.

For me, it was when I found out she was spreading lies about Dh and I saying we cut her off and stopped her from seeing her grandchildren because we stole money from her (several £100k). The real reason is that she facilitated a convicted paedophile having contact with my children, knowing he had abused his own and other children. We’ve never taken any of her money.

I thought if we could possibly get her out of this unhealthy relationship she might come to her senses with some therapy and support.

Hearing that she had been willing to make up lies about us to create a fiction that absolved her of any wrongdoing was the final straw. Zero accountability for her behaviour. But even worse, I had people contacting me to say what a terrible person I was for taking her money and taking her grandchildren away from her. She was happy for people to question my integrity and believe lies about me to keep up appearances. I knew there was no going back after that.

To add to the above, that was the final straw, yes.

But it came after a lifetime of questionable behaviour and poor boundaries and dysfunction. None of it individually was as bad as putting my children at risk. But looking back, there is certainly a pattern. It wasn’t like she was an healthy, happy, functional parent. But this is when I knew it would never get better.

Final straw was me asking her for space and getting stalked instead. She is the most despicably behaved adult I have ever known.

Five years NC and no regrets.

Mine her interest stopped when I started secondary in 40 years she has never once asked me how I am , if I tell her anything about me I am either put down or ignored. She started me the same with my children when they were no longer compliant little children who did what she wanted she no longer speaks to us , nobody minds

Gosh some of you have been through some awful things, I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with all of this.
Reading these replies has reminded me that she had also spread lies about me to deflect attention from herself. And she has not once asked me how I am following a significant trauma a year ago.
I need to make a decision

Mine was 30 years ago - I was 25 and had just been through a divorce, and used all my financial settlement to take myself, my younger brother and my mother back to our home country from the UK. I even paid for my mother's furniture to be shipped back....

We arrived back and less than a week later I knew I'd made a massive mistake. The shippers got in touch to say they (in reality a friend of my mother's) had underestimated how much personal effects there was and wanted another £1K...money I no longer had. The only way around it was to dump some of the stuff...and the stuff that got dumped was all mine. I lost EVERYTHING, all I had was the stuff I'd bought out in my one suitcase.

But the final final straw was after I'd had a massive nervous breakdown and had attempted suicide ... I started seeing a psychiatrist, and all my mother had to say after my first appointment was "I suppose you spent the whole hour slagging me off"

I came back to the UK on my own six months later, with £50 to my name, I was homeless for a month. I've been low contact with my mother ever since and haven't seen her in 16 years.

Sounds like emotional neglect or avoidance, which is hard to get your head round because it’s an absence of something rather than abuse coming your way.

What happens if you stop making any effort/putting energy in?

I am sort of NC with my mother at the moment. I don't know how long it's going to last for (it's been a couple of months so far). I'm not ready to decide that it's permanent because forever is a long time, but I'm not doing anything to end it.
It has been a death by a thousand cuts. Horrible childhood (my father was an absolute monster, a controlling, violent bully. She left him for someone else when I was in my late teens. I have really struggled with this. Not that she left, I wanted her to, but that she only left because she had a better offer. There were so many things that I witnessed or that happened to me in childhood where I look back and can't understand why none of those incidents were enough for her to say this is harming my children, I need to leave.) Post divorce, I realised that she's not a very nice person and she's not very nice to me. She's got no interest in my children and has been repeatedly horrible to the youngest. I find contact with her incredibly stressful and come away from it miserable, anxious and upset. I know it sounds callous, but it feels like there's nothing in it for me, so why should I bother. Fortunately she lives far away so I can't bump into her unexpectedly.

@crazysnakessss You are doing what she didn't do for you - you are protecting/keeping your child away from a nasty person. If it was another adult, not your mother, you wouldn't question your decision for a moment, would you? I feel that is the best way to re-frame it in your mind, you mother is an adult that is being horrible to your child, and your first loyalty is to your child.

I can understand being pissed off about how your mother left. My father left my narc mother 6 months after my younger brother turned 18. He had made a feeble attempt to leave a decade previously (actually tried to abandon us on the other side of the world, but that's another long story). It was obvious he'd been waiting until myself and my two brothers were all over the age of 18...he didn't care that we'd had to endure 10 years of my mother's anger and bitterness (he worked abroad for most of that time). Like your mother, he left because he had a better offer. To make it even worse, he did it while I was on honeymoon...so I've been no contact with him for 35 years. I don't even know if he's still alive (and care even less).

Pushing me to cover up my brother’s abuse growing up. Then realising it didn’t matter how bad it was she would have pushed for the same when she found out another family member had been seriously abused by him. I tried a few times but it was not going to work. My feelings for her will never recover.

Nothing massive. No row, just one final straw and that was that.

Stuff like that usually accumulates over years until your brain just thinks "no more"

It's been blissful since.

I'm so close to it. I don't think there's been a final straw as such. Like you OP there is no real interest in my family.

She has really ramped up her attempts to contact me lately and I have an eye on the future and who will be caring for her (not me, and if I told you why you'd understand).

The more she texts me (and I leave them unread) and leaves answerphone messages, the more I want to do something to make a clean break, but I don't know how to do it with no fucking drama.

This is timely as I’ve recently told my parents I will be having a break from them. It’s really difficult to explain my mum and I need some space. I’ve explained my reasons but, rather than one big thing, it’s years and years of little things - criticism, the need to create drama when none exists, nothing being good enough, not taking any interest in us at all, asking for advice then getting upset when we give it, never acknowledging she ever plays a part in our difficult and strained relationship etc etc.
Its all very fresh but I feel good right now about taking some control.

Thank you again to those that have commented. The emotional neglect comment hit home as I recently looked up the definition of emotional neglect and my childhood ticked so many boxes. I wasn’t a happy child and I struggle to think of ways they supported my emotional development. I was pushed very hard to succeed academically and punished for not achieving what she thought I should. I never received the equivalent level of pride/reward when I was successful, only the punishment for the part that was sub par. As an adult the more I achieve and thrive in my career and as a mum the less interested she is in me. I actually think she now resents it as it means I’m less available to her.

I have now been no contact with my mother for almost 4 years - it was a lot of little things but she made a very simple remark and it made me realise i was trying to flog a dead horse.

she'stried to get in touch since but i have done enough therapy now that it doesnt cause such hearbreak as it did at the beginning

Didn’t come to my wedding.

@Allbymyshelf When it came to education my parents were the same. I was expected to be a high achiever, but wasn't given any help/guidance/encouragement, and selfish choices they made when I was between ages 9 - 15 seriously disrupted my schooling...we missed 3 whole years of schooling during that period. I didn't get to degree level until I was in my late 20s - and I'm the only one of the 3 of us to go to uni - and my younger brother left school with no qualifications at all.

She seemed (still seems) to think that it would happen naturally, with no input from her or my father at all.

My mother still goes on about how the children of her friends have all done so well in their careers - she has never made/seems incapable of making the connection that the reason for their successes is their parents put them and their education first, all their childhoods. The cognitive dissonance she maintains is astounding.

I gave birth just before Covid, so couldn’t show off my dd to friends or family til she was nearly 5 months old. Finally go down for a week, expecting, for once, to be the centre of attention, only for my mother to let my sister, once again, take over. I was barely allowed out to see friends as my sister wanted to see dd. I cried that week, many times. I finally decided in a conversation with Mumthat I’d message sister to ask not to come on the last day so dd could sleep before we left (and thus make the start of a very long journey better) and that I could look forward to some time with mum rather than just looking forward to leaving. I said this in tears, due to the conversation we'd just been having. She said "You can't do that, it might upset her." Me being in tears didn't matter, only the possibility that my sister's nose might be put out of joint.

I realised then that neither me, my feelings nor my daughter were ever going to be important to my mother. I've had very little to do with her since and she wonders why.

Brexit. It highlighted that she couldn't give a shit about me and my children. I'd always known that but this was the first time it was a clear and active choice rather than passively not caring.

Yes, same. No regard for how it was going to impact my kids' opportunities. She looks down on 'foreigners' so has barely been abroad, never considered working abroad (like I did when I was young) and when I thought about it, she'd voted a lot in the past in ways that would disadvantage me, as well. Never a single acknowledgement that she'd even thought about any of us.

Thank you for saying that. It's really hard to tell people how I feel about my mother because my father was violent and abusive to her, and when I say she had some responsibility to protect us from him and failed, I get told I'm victim blaming. For a long time, I put myself and my needs second, centered her, supported her, believed that I didn't matter because she was the real victim, not me. And then I had children of my own and saw just how vulnerable they are, how easy is it for an adult to use and abuse and manipulate a child, to take advantage of the child's natural desire to please their parents, and I just look back now and think WTF. I also thought I was okay, that I wasn't that damaged by it, and I was wrong. She's also been pretty awful to me in my adult life and uses me as a bit of an emotional punching bag when the need strikes.

The funny thing is that I remember her saying to me years ago (after I went NC with my father, and later a grandparent over some f*cking awful behaviour) 'you can't just cut people off' and thinking to myself er, actually, you can, you don't have to let people treat you like shit just b/c you've got the misfortune to be related to them. You can refuse to have that in your life.

Sometimes I wonder what she thought I would do when I became an adult, if she thought I would just carry on sharing my life with the pair of them, and then I have to remind myself that she didn't think about me at all.

I think this is a real challenge in these situations. My FIL was physically abusive to my MIL and she was his victim but she was needy and manipulative with her own children and she never protected them or as you say even considered that she had a responsibility to protect them. My FIL is a truly awful man and ironically has really no other person in his life as a direct result of his behaviour but my MIL was absolutely protected from the consequences of her behaviour and right until the end of her life she inflicted these consequences on her children. The narrative that mothers who are abused have no responsibility towards their children is very harmful I’ve experienced.