I feel silly writing it but it’s getting to me enough to post about it at this time of night.
I don’t think I fully appreciated how disinterested my mother is in me as a person until I had my son. She has always been a bit emotionally unavailable at times, but it has struck me the constrast in how loving she is with my son. She wants to see him as much as possible, she showers him in gifts, says how much she misses him. She is really affectionate with him.
The thing is, I need my mum sometimes and she is the polar opposite of the above with me.
It makes me feel strange because of course I want a loving grandmother for my son, but the more it goes on, the more it shows up her relationship with me for what it is.
I don’t even know where I’m going with this. I suppose I wondered if it’s a common thing.
examples are.. she doesn’t reply to my messages, or if she does, it’s one word answers. She wouldn’t be able to tell you the first thing about what I do for a living or what I enjoy. She isn’t unkind to me, but she is absolutely apathetic. I find myself constantly reaching out for some kind of connection, trying to arrange time together, only to find she is busy. I told her I was depressed post partum, she made sympathetic noises in the moment, and never asked me about it again.
And yet, her love language is to gift, so I can never quite pull her up on things, in the face of huge generosity.
I feel stuck, resentful, sad. I’m forever waiting for a reply it seems. Am I expecting too much of a mother/daughter relationship in adulthood?
Be nice to hear others’ experiences.