Any suggestions on how to 'manage' my mother

[fifitot]

Sorry if this is a bit long. Have posted before about her. Manipulative, a victim, emotional, nasty when things don't go her way, places herself at the centre of everything, glass half-empty, feels the world is against her, has had loads of bad luck in life, resents anyone else's sucess. Makes me feel I will never be the daughter she wants. Her rallying cry is 'But I'm so worried'. That is an excuse for every kind of bad behaviour. Never apologises. Puts the feelings of her friends before her family as likes to be thought well of, bites back when challenged, losing her temper, raising issues from the past in a nasty horrible way. Doesn't have the emotional maturity to talk through an issue without having a tantrum - literally. Over dramatic, projects problems miles into the future......Sorry if I am going on.

I live up North from them now, about 100 mls away and can just about cope with her visits at a weekend, monthly. However things appear to be coming to a head again. She is planning Xmas 2010 (!) - yes she likes to be ahead of the game, just in case me, DH and DD have made other plans! Her and my Dad have booked a luxury cottage - about 200mls away from me and DH. They didn't ask us but are now putting pressure on me to give them a decision. 'Well it's booked now, it was expensive, if we don't see grandchild at Xmas I might as well not bother celebrating, we hardly ever see you as it is......'

DH is furious - he wanted Xmas with his family as his dad is pretty much on his last legs and won't see another I think. Also we have spent every year with them since forever!

I know the mature response is to turn around and say 'sorry, we can't come, it would have been better to have asked first....'. However I know I will get the whole guilt trip. Me and DH will also feel the wrath of her later under some other guise - she likes to get back at me when things don't go her way.

What do I do? Dad isn't like her but colludes with it for an easy life.

She is driving me mad. I have so many resentments about how she behaves and have tried to address them with her sensibly but think she is too far gone with it. She won't change - she hates any kind of change.Any ideas?

Thanks for the link. Yes alot of that sounds very familiar but maybe not as extreme as some of the examples.

I will book mark it!

My Mother is exactly the same. Or at least was. We literally had a turning point (she's still bad on teh odd occasion but not nearly anything like she was) All I did was this....when she started on at me because I didn't want to stay in the pokey granny flat in her very luxurious villa abroad and finally managed to tell her that (after many miserable times staying there in the past but feeling I had no choice) I told her I simply wasn't doing it. Period. She then said she'd just had a knee operation and how could I be so selfish. So I literally stood up to her for the first time inages and told her she was being ridiculous and unless she could speak to me rationally I was not going to carry on the conversation. She literally stopped at that moment and has not tried to manipulate me too much any more. Each time she does now I simply tell her how it is and refuse to back down and sometimes hang up the phone with a 'if you can't be civil I'm off' She knows I mean business now and will exclude her from my and my children's life if need be. I don't mean disown her but not make us all available as much as she'd like.
My advice would be to simply stick up for yourself, don't put up with her crap and let her know that. You are lucky you live a distance away because she can only do this by phone and you can hang up every time. And when she wants to visit you can tell her not to. She'll soon learn!

Thanks Skinny - I need to do that. I am an assertive person in other relationships but find everything with my mother ends in a row. I need to keep a lid on things and just state my point, like you say.