AIBU to think someone should have helped my mum a long time ago, and to feel hard done by that I don’t have a close, supportive mum in my life?

[motherlandtrouble]

Just wanting to vent, I think, sorry.

My mum has always been ‘difficult’. Our childhood was characterised by her volatile moods - she’d either be shouting at us or giving us the silent treatment from a very young age. My earliest memory is of sitting on the stairs crying for her ‘mummy mummy mummy’ until I felt physically sick, and her completely blanking me as though I didn’t exist. She had weird boundaries, would walk in on us changing and comment on our bodies, go through our possessions, etc. She would make strange comments about my dad’s ex-girlfriends (they married at 23 so there can’t have been many), or when the phone rang, she’d tell us it would be to say my dad had been in an accident.

When I got older, her behaviour got worse. I tried to confide in her e.g. re. going on the pill at 17, which made her go absolutely crazy at me screaming ‘don’t get pregnant’, or when I was having a hard time on a study abroad placement (she’d only let me call home if it was a ‘good’ phonecall). She wanted to put a tracker on my phone to see where I was at all times, wanted a copy of my uni timetable etc. She’d stop talking to me if I spent (my own) money on things she didn’t deem appropriate (e.g. she ‘didn’t believe I was that blind’ when I got contact lenses in my early 20s).

When I met DH and started spending time with his family, she really went off the rails. I suggested she got some counselling, and she emailed apparently on her counsellor’s advice to tell me that she might walk in front of a lorry tomorrow and then I’d be sorry I hadn’t seen her more often. When I was pregnant, she went crying to other family members that I hadn’t shared my scan dates with her (which wasn’t true) and told me she was going to ‘hijack’ my baby from nursery.

She’s always been like this, but every so often, I feel sad that I won’t ever have a supportive, kind mum who I actually want to spend time with and who I can go to for advice or comfort. She’s never been that mum and I don’t actually think that she can be. I have my own child now and it’s becoming even more apparent to me that I’m missing that key support in my life.

I don’t let her be alone with my DS but she manages to be weird even when accompanied. She’s very invested in being a kind of ‘grandma of the year’ in competition with my MIL (who probably pays her absolutely no mind whatsoever and doesn’t know they’re in this competition), bringing presents and being completely OTT affectionate with DS which turns my stomach, if I’m honest. But she also makes odd or hurtful comments constantly, repeatedly calling me ‘horrible mummy’ to DS when I wiped his nose, or shouting ‘complete failure!!’ at him when he was learning to crawl.

I actually don’t think she’s capable of getting better now because she’s been this way for 60 years and seems to show no awareness of her behaviour. I wish somebody had helped her a long time ago (my dad? Her parents?), but it doesn’t seem like anyone did. My dad is very invested in not noticing her behaviour, or pretending everything is OK. If I try to bring up my mum’s behaviour with him, I’m being too sensitive or she doesn’t mean it or ‘you know what she’s like’ etc etc.

Now that I’m a mum myself, I feel very lonely without a supportive mum of my own, and I feel as though I’m second guessing my own parenting of DS because I’m trying always to not be my mum and to be a loving, empathetic and caring mum to him (so the ‘horrible mummy’ comment was really hurtful, especially because I grew up terrified of her).

There’s also the profound damage that her behaviour did to us psychologically and emotionally. I have terrible self esteem, have had some damaging relationships, made a lot of life choices just to try and please her (which of course never did). I’m still feeling the repercussions of her behaviour now in my 30s, and I’m constantly terrified of turning into her. I’ve started to study child psychology to understand what was done to us but also to try and be the best mum I can to my DS, as well as having a lot of counselling on and off over the years. But I think the kind of core wound never goes away, or it gets reopened every time I have to see her, which is much more often than I’d like.

I’m not really sure what I’m looking for from this post, I think I just wanted to vent about it all, sorry. Thank you if you’ve got to the end of this!

I agree with this - my DM is quite frankly useless as a parent, she is not interested and wasn't when I was growing up.

You either repeat the behaviour, or you decide, I want better for my DC. Both of my DS say I am a great mum (and I try to believe them, but thats tough) , I am always there if they need me, but give them space to grow. I have supported them to uni and beyond. I try to be the parent I wanted.

Sure I dont always get it right, but I also admit my mistakes.

She’s not old, no. I’d say she has very kind of ‘flat’, one-dimensional, black/white thinking. Something’s either fine (she once described my cooking as ‘edible’, and that was meant to be a compliment) or it’s outrageous/hideous/hysterical.

She used to try to draw us in to comment on other women’s appearances/bodies with her. I think so much of her behaviour stems from rock-bottom self esteem, but she had the opportunity to work on herself and do better for her own daughters. Instead, she brought us down to her level. I don’t know what she would have been like with sons, she may not have been any better, but I think for a woman who thinks and behaves like her, having daughters was extremely harmful (to us).

You sound like an amazing mum 😊❤️

Thank you @tarmacpheasant. My mum also has a volunteer role with young children and (presumably) an enhanced DBS check to go with it. It’s actually crossed my mind before to contact the organisation anonymously to tell them what she’s really like, but either they’ll already have had glimpses and be keeping her at arm’s length, or she’s put up a great facade of being a pillar of the community.

The facade does slip, though, it’s not completely infallible. She seems to have bizarre outbursts where she really can’t help blurting out really offensive or nasty things, it’s just how her mind works and I don’t think she sees anything wrong with it. She was telling us ages ago about a fire drill at her work - her colleagues came out of the building after she did and so she shouted at them ‘YOU’VE ALL BURNED’. I don’t honestly know why she thinks any of this is an acceptable way to behave or speak to people.

Agree ❤️ this is what I want to be for my DS - to give him space and support to be himself and to be there when he needs me, so he knows however old he is or whatever he’s doing, he can always come home for love and empathy and support and safety. A child’s home should be their sanctuary, not a place where they’re terrorised.

Mine was horribly abusive. She actually hates me.

I do have difficulty feeling jealous of friends with normal (flawed) mums. I have recovered some ground by having some lovely female friends a generation above me. They give me the wisdom, support and handholding I have never had from my mother.

Being NC with her helps too.

That is interesting. My mum has bpd I am sure but rather than being prudish about sex or periods she was the other way - talked about sex ( inappropriately) a lot , and made me watch her insert a tampon so I’d know what to do ( that memory is burned onto my retinas I can tell you). Not religious but very misogynistic, told my teenage daughter that men are better at maths, at teaching etc etc .

My mum can go both ways on this, if it helps - it’s a really contradiction and very weird. She was deeply prudish, we never had any sort of talk whatsoever about periods, safe sex, anything like that. But she’d also do things like walk around with no top or bra on going ‘it’s OK, you can look’ (well we didn’t want to?!), walk into my bedroom unannounced when I was a teenager, make me have the bathroom door wedged open when I was in the bath, ask me as a teenager if I’d read 50 Shades of Grey, complain when I went to uni that she didn’t know what sort of underwear I wore any more.

I actually wonder quite often now if there was some kind of covert CSA there that I’m repressing memories of, but I have no idea really. It’s one of the many reasons she’ll never be alone with DS.

I’ve also wondered if she experienced CSA too. We know very very little about her childhood, but I think it would explain a great deal.

My mother had similar traits. So she would happily change her sanitary pads in front of me, happily be completely naked (not that this is a problem in itself) but no talking about my period, no buying tampons, my body, sex, anything like that.

She really ramped up the fake health problems when I got my first serious boyfriend at 17 and was turning into an adult, it's like she really struggled to 'lose' me as a child and not hers anymore.
Full of 'you would of never said that to me before'.
I wonder if the whole period thing is them realising we are growing up and no longer just theirs.

Yes some of my mums comments were really bizarre. Parents left me aged 11 in an apartment on my own at night on holiday whilst they were in the bar and a man broke in and sexually assaulted me . My initial thought as I woke up and saw him at the end of my bed and as he got into bed with me was that it was my mum, I assumed it was her until I realised it wasn’t if that makes sense, I hold a tremendous about of guilt/shame for thinking that but I only think it as she said such bloody inappropriate things and seemed to get a kick out of them.

I’m another one whose mum was deeply inappropriate about bodies and sex.
She gave no toss about the fact she was having extremely loud sex and I remember a few times banging on the wall and telling her to shut up, she’d ask me the next day “What do you hear, what are sounds like?”
She’d walk around naked (fine) but in a sort of peacock way as if to say… I’ve got a date tonight, I bet you’ll moan about the noises.
It actually makes me feel sick thinking about it. I’ve spoken about it in therapy and have been told it is classed as non physical sexual abuse, (there’s more to it than what I’ve posted) because children shouldn’t be exposed to sex in this way.
Another reason why I have nothing to do with her.

I have to echo what others have said. You really should consider going nc & keeping her well away from your precious son. I only found peace when i came to terms with the fact that she would never be the person i wanted her to be & i stopped seeing her. Strangely she never even contacted me, i just stopped messaging/visiting & that was that.

I had similar very mixed messages - totally weird about periods, but then after the marriage broke down and she started a new relationship with someone else, she made sure I was aware of all of her new slutty underwear and there were clips of porn films saved on the desktop of the family computer with no attempt to hide them. She was very keen for me to know that men were more interested in her than me. Sometimes I look back and I hate her. The rage I have now is enormous and that's at the moment the hardest thing for me to deal with, because she acts like none of the weird shit ever happened, but it did.

I don't think she's a safe person to be around my children for many reasons.