How do you grieve the relationship of someone really important who is still alive?

[99problems9]

I’ve come to the conclusion sadly and the acceptance that I will never ever have the relationship I need with my mum.

What do you do with a relationship once you’ve come to this?

I’m not sure if the toxicity is because she is my mum. My kids have me to meet their emotional needs so would she be as toxic to them? I mean she wants the attention, she wants them to think she is amazing.

What age are your dc? My narc dm was ok with them when they were young, then horrible to them as they got older.

Primary school age. From what I’ve read they are just mirrors to a narc and I hate this for them.

My dc would tell me when she was horrible to them. She’s sly about it. We visit twice a year for 48 hours. She still manages to get dd particularly on her own and say something nasty to her. She is worse if the dc have had something nice happen, like done well in their exams. She has to put them down. As she gets older the things she says get more ridiculous. Usually along the lines that they’re going to die imminently of a terrible illness, she can see they have it. They just think she’s a horrible woman but it makes me really upset that she can’t be nice to them.

Oh gosh she is bad. Ive not seen her behave like this to the kids yet. But she has done some of those put downs to me. She ruins my birthdays. If you tell her something she will follow with something bigger, she will always outdo. It’s unnecessary, she ruins the relationship. She’s supposed to say something nice but she just can’t. I have to admit I have gone fishing and gone to her with a story to try and get something out of her but it backfires. When the kids were small and I would break down with tiredness I always got a story about how she wasn’t etc. it’s not what you want, you want some support. I don’t ask her for anything anymore.

Ruining birthdays sounds familiar. Yes and making up lies about the past to paint herself in a good light. There’s no point asking for anything. It’s sad because you see people with nice mums and their lives are so different. I try to focus on DH and the dc and be as happy as we can.

no
contact and time

My mother is a very strange person. She was vile towards me for most of my young life.

I hate shopping for the plain Mother's Day card. That passive aggressive statement that says to her, I know your my mother but you aren't 'the best' 'the loveliest' 'the Mum in a million' that most are. You're the one that gets the Happy Mother's Day greeting and nothing more.

I was thinking the other day about how it will feel when she dies. Will I care? Will I cry? I feel the same thinking about her dying as I do when thinking about her still being alive - not much, not fussed. God that sounds awful 😥

I've reached a stage in life where I accept that some things are just too broken to be fixed. Sometimes too much has happened that shouldn't have. I largely feel uncomfortable in her company. Sometimes we get dealt a shit hand and you just have to work with it.

I've missed out on so much that I'll never have.

New people don't have a history of years and years of poor quality relationships with her. She can reinvent herself and rewrite her story with a fresh start. They probably think she's great as she's presenting herself as such. It's an instagram filter in real life.

My mother used to morph into something unrecognisable on holiday. A fun, gregarious, likable person who drew in a crowd of holiday friends within a couple of days of arriving. She only existed in that micro world of a couple of weeks each year. Those people never knew who she was before we met them or after the holiday ended.

From what I can gather my mum had a poor to non existent relationship with her own mother which explains my own mother. But I also had a poor relationship with my mum so why aren’t I like them. I’ve looked into emotional intelligence, why do they have none but I do? I know I can never have a relationship with her because she has no emotional intelligence and I do and I need this reciprocal to have any relationship.

I would do anything to remain in my childrens lives. I can’t think of anything they could do to make me want to cut them out. And if I did anything to upset them I would remedy it asap. My mum hated her mum and her brothers/sisters. She cut them all off too. I just have to accept that she doesn’t love/like me either and that is it. It’s awful to be treated like this but I can’t change how she thinks/feel unfortunately.