Our 5th visit to the Stately Home

[Nabster]

Here we go again.

Hi AtM, thanks for your post. Middle sister could well be NPD. In the book I'm reading it decribes behaviours that are often caused by childhood emotional abuse/deprivation and one of them was eating 'non-food' items. (whilst still a child). Well middle sister as a child used to rip the borders from inside paperback books (ie the bit at the edge without any print) and eat them! Or at least chew them and spit them out (I'd have thought they were impossible to actually swallow). We had no idea when she would do this, must have always been in secret, but i remember one day we found loads and loads of books where nearly all the page borders had been ripped off and chewed.

I am absolutely sure she has quite major issues due to our parents, but i guess only she knows what those are. Well, she would know if she chose to look at her issues and gain some self awareness/insight. At the moment she is completely unaware of the fact that she has issues and of course therefore has no idea what they are. Whether her current pregnancy and subsequent birth 'trigger' things for her as they did for me remains to be seen. Even if things are triggered for her there is no guarantee that she will have the courage, determination and ability to sort herself out. My mother didn't do this and i think it is very likely middle sister will follow exactly in my mother's footsteps. They are very similar in personality and character traits; I feel my middle sister is as spineless and cowardly as my mother and will not have the courage to face the pain of her own childhood.

Hi roseability

There does not appear to be a link to the article in the Mail magazine on Mothers (drat and blast). Will keep looking though and it may appear tomorrow on their website.

i found it so will try and get a link.

On Mumsnet, the online parenting site, users spend as much time dissecting their relationship with their own mothers as they do discussing their own children. (?My mum has cut me out of her life,? writes one. ?How do you get over never having had a normal, loving mother-daughter relationship?? asks another.) On discussion threads with titles such as ?But We Took You to Stately Homes?, members exchange unhappy memories

AtM, I am sure middle sister has low self esteem, so like you said, jealousy is part and parcel of this. I am just gobsmacked at the (criminal) lengths she is willing to go to, to get what she wants.

It reminds me of the lengths my mother was willing to go to, by manipulating us, in order to get what she wanted. (Too long a story to go into now).

I think that how far she is willing to go may perhaps be an indication of the depth of the issues she has. I actually find it quite scary. And i had an evil thought just now. If i was feeling really nasty i could 'tip off' the insurance company and get middle sister into loads of trouble. I would never do that of course but it is a tempting thought!

Is that DM article anywhere on the net? I couldn't find it.

OnePlusOne, it seems quite obvious to an outsider that the reason you feel bitter about your sisters giving birth privately is that, like in childhood, they are doing things the same, while you did something different. Your MS wants to copy your YS more than she wants to copy you. You feel left out the same as you did as a child, when you maybe thought that now you are all adults this leaving one person out thing would stop.

I can imagine it making you feel "What is wrong with ME?" But - maybe there is MUCH less wrong with you than with MS if she feels so inadequate that she MUST copy YS even if it causes her financial problems and makes her contemplate fraud! I wonder why she thinks money and status is so important? Doesn't she have personal qualities that she feels are good enough for her to have enough self esteem? Maybe your parents DID parent your sisters inadequately as well as you! Maybe they didn't teach them how to value themselves just for being themselves but only if they had public status/image and money.

If your sisters can't see what is good about a person beyond money and image then they are not people whose opinions you should respect too much. Maybe this thought could help you not to worry so much about why MS would want to copy YS more than she would want to copy you.

Do you maybe, subconsciously, look up to your sisters as a leftover habit from childhood when you so wanted to fit in with them and feel 'in the cool gang' and the majority group seems like the 'cool gang' when you are a child. This subconscious 'idolisation' could still be making you feel not good enough, because you still don't fit in with them as much as you would want to, but if you realised that actually they don't deserve your idolisation because in reality they are quite 'sad' really, would this feeling of not being good enough fade a bit?

here

Cheers Nabster

Am in your debt. Normally I look in Femail; of course it was in the You mag!.

Goodness alone knows what others have made of it, I certainly never thought all that much of this article which is why I wanted to point it out.

With best wishes

Attila x

My pleasure

Haven't yet read article but bloody livid - my mom reads that all the time. Great. Thought this was a private (although public if you see what I mean) place to post. Thanks a lot MN!!!!

But isn't it the DM not MN?

Oh I'm not sure. I was assuming that MN had given into to DM.

If not, DAMN YOU DAILY MAIL!!!

I don't know. Just didn't want MN slated if it wasn't them. You could always ask?

Anyway, in for a penny in for a pound...

Agonised over card thing all week. Finally decided on a plain card with just me writing 'Happy Mother's Day' inside.

My DP dropped it off earlier (with my DD) and gave it to my mom. She was a bit cold with him apparently and said 'Did you write this?'

No, I have no understanding of a. why on earth my DP would write her that card and b. why she can't recognise my handwriting after 33 years????

So back to square one - they're taking up my head space and I'm agonising over what they said, what they meant, what I should or shouldnt have done etc etc.

Think I need to make this no contact thing actually mean no contact! Problem is DP is stuck in the middle!

Argh.

Just read the article (quickly). There is really only a tiny mention of us, and I'm sure the Stately Homes title won't really give anyone a clue as to what the content of this thread is about.

I am annoyed too though. I felt safe posting on here, not so sure now. What did you say in your mail to the rag paper, Nabster?

HDIA I let things drift away wrt my mother and it was best for me tbh. Would do it again and will never let my kids anywhere near her.

oneplusone I can't remember exactly what I said but I made my displeasure known and for some reason they haven't posted my comment.

MN says they have copyright over all content within this website. Therefore if anybody wants to publish anything from the site they need MN's permission first. However the very small reference in the article to this thread may not even count as publishing content from this site so it may have been done without needing permission from MN.

I guess a copyright/publishing lawyer would know the ins and outs.

But seeing as HDIA is not letting it get in the way of her continuing to post, nor am I! I don't really care if any of my family read what i have been saying about them. It's not libel/slander, it's the truth and nothing but.

As long as my mother doesn't find me, I will carry on too.

HDIA, i think you're right, you do need to completely break off any sort of contact, any sort of halfway house doesn't really work.

Ideally i would have no contact with any of my family including sisters. As somehow being in touch with them makes me feel i am somehow in an indirect way still in touch with my parents. It's kind of similar to your situation with your DH and DD, they 'bring' your parents back to you even if you are not seeing them yourself.

With me and my sisters we have agreed not to talk about our parents at all, although, both my sisters completely broke this agreement the minute my mother fell ill.

Aside from the privacy issue they have no right to mention a sensitive thread about abuse and family problems, in relation to an article that essentially suggests we shouldn't expect too much from our mothers.

We aren't just talking about mother/daughter tiffs, the normal highs and lows of a mother/daughter relationship. We are talking about serious emotional and mental issues caused by abuse.

The DM is very traditional in its views and seems to adhere to our traditional, cultural norm that parents should always be respected and loved.

It is about time we stood up as a society and recognised emotional abuse and the damage it causes. Not just amongst professionals/therapists but generally. When someone cuts off their mother the response should be 'poor you, you must have a good reason' not 'how could anyone cut off their own mother?'.

Re mother's day. I have found it a bit stressful. We had planned to go out for lunch but DS was not well. I couldn't bear the thought of staying in all day so me and DD went off shopping in the afternoon and i bought her a lovely dress for an outing we have coming up so that made me feel good.

But as usual, my neighbour made me feel upset. As we walked past her house on the way to the shops it was obvious they had gone out for the day. I assumed they had gone to her mother's and that perhaps her whole family was there. She has a big family, about 5 sisters I think and they all have kids. They all seem to get on well (from what i have observed) and i always feel upset at the thought of them all having a lovely time at her mother's house, the sisters all chatting and laughing and the kids all playing together.

Of course they could be a dysfunctional family with undercurrents and tensions and cr*p like us, but on the other hand they could be a genuinely caring close bunch. I always seem to imagine the latter and make myself feel sad and lonely as a result.

roseability, i agree. A part of me thinks, (as a result of the article today) that perhaps it would be a good thing if this whole thread, all 4.5 parts of it was published in the national newspapers.

I feel many people would recognise themselves within these pages and it would bring this whole issue out into the open, into the public arena and would hopefully go some way to breaking down the myth that all mothers automatically love and selflessly care for their children.

It is only when the problem is publicly acknowledged and recognised that something can be done about it at a societal level as opposed to the individual level as we are doing now.

I don't think we as a society are ready yet to face up to the truth about human nature. We want to believe in fairy tales and mother love etc etc. Facing the cold hard brutal ugly truth is too painful, as a society, we'd rather bury our collective heads in the sand and continue the cycle of abuse.

You're right about the DM, it is very traditional in it's 'always honour your mother' approach, no matter what she has done to you and whether or not she has honoured you.

AN, thank you for your post. It make sense. I know my feelings now are leftovers from childhood when my sisters would do the same things together. I have always also felt they look similar to each other whereas i look completely different. (Although DH thinks we all look completely different and not like sisters at all). I suppose DH must be right as he is an objective outsider. But the feeling i can't seem to shake off is that MS and YS look alike and are similar in many ways whereas i am different.

I am beginning to realise that this has a lot to do with how our parents treated us. Our parents treated my sisters almost as a couple, almost as if they were one person, and me as another seperate person. I was never included with anything they did, and if i was on the odd rare occasion, i always felt like i was intruding upon their private little group. A bit like a gooseberry on a date with a couple or something.

I know i should stop thinking about them but i can't stop and also the more i think and puzzle over it the closer i get to finding out what is at the core of my upset/anxiety about the situation. And always, once i figure out why i feel the way i do, it seems to magically eradicate the unpleasant feelings. So rather than trying to forget, for me i feel it's worth persevering and getting to the bottom of why my recent conversation with MS so upset me.

Well I survived. Mainly by sticking to my aunts and uncles, who are lovely. Went as soon as they did. Can see it very plainly now, even after only a bit of therapy. My mother is controlling, manipulative. Everything seems to be done for show. She tired a few of her moves on me but I kept a polite distance.

Oneplusone, I was thinking about your post. My old family are obsessed with status, money etc. Mother likes to say things like 'well that's ok for you, but people expect us to have such and such, because of our status.

My sis and brother are fine going everywhere 1st class, but I buy myself a nice book and I get told that I 'deny myself nothing '.

My mum and my sis always have to buy themselves something if they go shopping, say for a present for someone else. If my sis bought me some jewellery or something, she would have to buy two things for herself,my mum the same.

Not to be pious, but I noticed this the other day when out with her (mum). I bought myself a top,and then bought something for my DH and my DC's. My mum had to buy a small present for someone,and then had to treat herself afterwards- do you see what I mean, it's the reverse?

My mum was always horrid to me when clothes shopping as a child. She used to make me feel so horrible about getting anything new that I felt awful in it. I rarely got anything new. She would have a little phase of buying me a few things then I would wear them until they were completely worn out and far too small. Given how wealty my parents were this is quite strange.

My siblings always had nice clothes. By the time I was at high school, I was buying my own shoes with my pocket money- so I would buy those pumps you could get for a pound in woolies. I was fed all th9is tuff about how I neede to learn that there was more to life than nioce clothes and money etc.But this was clearly not how the rest of my family felt.