My mother is intent on leading a miserable life - what can I do?

[catchingflies]

I just don't know what to do to help my mother anymore, she just seems to want to live an unfulfilled and angry life but it is affecting people around her so much now. She is in her late 50s.

My mother has always been difficult. She has had a difficult life: one of 10 kids always felt different; treated brutally by her father; fell pregnant at 17; husband left her with kid at 19. Left again by another partner when second child was 7, he treated her terribly cruelly post separation. She has suffered depression on and off for years. She has been with 3rd husband for 15 years but never really happy with him, always wants more and blames him for not making her happy. She has been unable to find work for 15 years and feels the rejection of that acutely. She has been talking about divorce for years but won't do anything about it.

Her third husband has now retired and has worked hard to make sure they are financially secure. She will not do anything with him and just constantly moans and criticises him and basically makes his life hell. He won't leave her because he knows that the money they have will not provide for 2 acceptable separate standards of living. He is not perfect and can be trying himself but he is committed to improving the relationship and trying to make the next chapter of their lives fun and exciting.

He tells me what is going on and it sounds vile and miserable. She hates him. I have tried to talk to her in the past about it but she takes everything as criticism and is very vulnerable so that any discussion of the situation becomes so emotionally draining and damaging. I feel like its groundhog day as I'm having the same conversation with her about her life, relationships and happiness year in year out. Her current tactic is to pretend everything is fine but her hatred of him and vileness is pretty plain to see. I just think she is ruining their lives and really can't bear it. It affects my relationship with her and is starting to affect my sister's relationship with her. She only ever looks happy when she is with my children.

She will listen to me and my sister a bit. She agrees with me that she has huge anger going way back. I have offered to pay for counselling for her but she will not go. She agrees that she is haunted by her past and can't let it go. But she blames everyone else for her unhappiness and won't address it.

I'm getting to a stage where I am angry with her and can't bear to be with her. She says she would love us all to go on a big family holiday. It would be my idea of hell watching her behave angrily and full of venom towards my step father berating him for everything he does, every penny he spends...

I just feel this will go on till she dies, that she will never be truely happy and that fills me with immense sadness. I love her and would love to have a better relationship with her and spend more time with her but she is just so bloody difficult that I keep away and just go through the motions in telephone calls a few times a week.

Any suggestions?

you can't make someone else happy if they don't want to be.

currently she has her husband and you and your sister trying to make her happy and it won't work - she has to be able to put the bad things behind her herself.

my MIL is similarly an unhappy person and this is the same answer I give DH. doesn't make it easier to accept though.

To be honest, I don't think you can do any more than you are already doing.

You've offered to help, and your offer has been turned down.

You sound very aware of your mum's issues and what is causing her behaviour.

I think it might be time to put yourself first and step away a little. It sounds like you are already doing that, and I don't blame you.

Your mum's relationship with her husband is their business, and I don't know how helpful her husband is being by burdening you.

Do you know anything about TA? Because it sounds to me like you and your mum are on the drama triangle at the moment, and you seem to want to get off it.

TA? No I don't know about that.

Drama triangle sounds about right. I'm just sick of the dysfunctionality of it and really want things to be better. My kids adore her, she is so lively and upbeat with them and she loves them immensely but a wedge is being driven between us.

I'm no expert so please take these suggestions and consider them and reject/accpet as appropriate

I don't think people should be aiming for 'happy' but instead they should be aiming for 'content'. If you imagine a sliding scale happy would be on one side and sad on the other. Content is in the middle.

Some people expect others to make them happy - my gran did this and it always really annoyed me. You control your life not other people.

She may be unable to find joy in things normally - the only exception may be the natural, unrestricted emotions of your DC through which she experiences it second-hand...

She probably does need to find a purpose in her life. If she can't get paid work i'm sure she could volunteer. if she gets on well with kids could she help with reading at a local school? Or something like that? And getting the experience may lead to more and ultimately work? Maybe some sort of teaching assistant role.

She probably also feels cross with herself for being dependant on a man - any man, even a nice one. Doing more for herself will make her less psychologically dependant even if she is financially dependant.

HTH

Poor you, sounds awful. I agree you can't force someone to be happy or to take steps to address their anger - but it's hard when it has an impact on you and your family.

Your post is so articulate - how would she take it if you showed it to her?

Or even just explaining to her what you wrote about the family holiday; perhaps say it's her perogative to refuse counselling and help, but she has to understand people won't want to do things with her because she's so unpleasant to be around.

Very hard when someone can't accept any form of criticism though, I know.

TA is a branch of therapy that looks into relationships.

The drama triangle is made up of rescuer, victim, persecutor. If you are on the triangle, you can't play any of those roles without in turn playing the others.

So, to give an example...your mum is having a moan to you. You rescue her by offering to pay for therapy. She turns it down, making you feel like a victim because she won't help herself and is making your life a misery. Then you become her persecutor, because you start to resent her, moan about her, avoid her, etc.

It's a game we all play subconsciously at some time or another, and it sounds as though you are ready to exit it.

Good for you!

KnitterNotTwitter - she does have some stuff going on in her own life. She has gone through some very worrying periods of self isolation and reclusiveness but for the last couple of years has been better at getting out. She goes to the gym a lot and says she has friends there and she does do one afternoon a week of voluntary work. It is great that she does these things as they do provide some positive focus to her life. I try to get her to do more things like this to get her out and living her own life and hopefully to make her feel better. I suggest activities she could try and she just says 'maybe'. But it takes months of suggestion before she will try new things. She says she is happy and that I shouldn't worry but then is often on the phone in tears with me about everything in her life and her past.

Everything posted here is correct.

Should I just give up or keep trying to nudge her towards a nicer life?

The TA stuff made me laugh - so accurate!

There is no way I could show her what I have written here, she would be so hurt and angry and would not in any way recognise any truth in it. Plus she sometimes mentions suicide so I have to tread so carefully. She has a huge sense that she is right and persecuted and everyone else is the problem. She would just further blame my step father for turning me against her and ruining our relationship. But I remember similar problems being around when I was a teenager, in her relationship with my first step father. But back then she was working and had a small child to divert her and keep her busy and buoyant.

You can't nudge her towards a nicer life.

She is a grown up. She has to do that herself. And it sounds to me that she does have quite a nice life...

Next time she phones up in tears, try the "I'm sorry you are feeling bad, Mum" approach. Don't get drawn in. It'll get neither of you anywhere, it'll just perpetuate the misery.

Your mum's happiness is not your responsibility. It's her own.