Why is my mother being like this with me? At the end of my tether?

[mummytowillow]

Someone please tell me WTF is going on with my mother?

We have always had a very fiery relationship, in fact we have said some horrible things to each other over the years as I always think I don't meet up to her standards/aspirations?

I have been separated from my husband for 8 months now, cutting a long story short, I had PND had treatment and I had changed, he found himself another woman 'who undertood him' and decided to leave me and our daughter. I did everything I could to save our marriage, took the tablets, had counselling and made appointments with relate, we went to one session and he decided it wasn't what he wanted, so here I am a single parent. My parents were desperate for me to move nearer to them (300 miles) so I did, materially they have helped me out loads but emotionally I get nothing?

On Wednesday, during a heated discussion my mother told me the reason my marriage broke down was because I expected too much from him with childcare and helping with OUR daughter and 'men should be men' WTF!! We both did exactly the same for our daughter and it was his choice to do that, I didn't force him, he enjoyed it! She also told me I didn't fight for my marriage and gave up to easily, how she can say that I will never know? Apart from beg the idiot I tried everything I could?

She constantly digs at me about the way I bring my daughter up, I think I'm a good mum and she comes first in everything I do. My mother has never got over the fact that I married a divorcee with two kids and now I've brought shame on her by being a divorcee to? She once told me that the best thing my ex could do was forget about our daughter so I didn't have to have anything to do with him, how cruel is that? She makes no comment on the fact my brother does absolutely nothing for or with his daughter, yet digs at me? She constantly tells me how to live my life even though I'm 40 years old!!

So any suggestions on how to deal with her awful behaviour?

err distance yourself and limit contact I'm afraid. It will save your sanity.

i have a theory, whenever i go to visits parents, without dh. somehow the dynamic changes & i get treated the same as when i was a teenager. when dh is there. there just seems to be a little more respect.

i think my mum just reverts to the teenage years & acts like that. so, you being a single mum is prob akin to being a stroppy teenager, who's just been caught behind the bike sheds!

you need to keep you distance & keep your cool.

your mum sounds quite 'traditional' on family (mine is, too), and prob has some strange victorian idea that 'disgraced' women shouldn't be allowed out in public, or should in fact be locked in the mental asylum.

christ. this is why I live across the sea from my parents.

As an adult, if you let your parents help you out they will interfere most horribly in your life. The sort of cool parents who do not stick their beaks in and criticise are often the type who won't help you out in a jam.

Just keep her out, don't tell her your problems, don't ask for much help. Then you can tell her to wind her neck in.

Ok, so your mums is old fashioned.
But she has helped, if only materially (which is not to be sneezed at), that suggests she does care, but has outdated ideas and outdated methods of expression.

She is quite far away - you can present a "side" to her of the woman who is coping through hardships alone.
IME women of that generation and outlook respond to women coping alone, albeit because they are married to hopeless sacks and are doing it despite them. I think she will come round - at the moment she is trying to help- clumsily- as though you were a teenager in scrape rather than a woman in your own life.