To resent my daughter?

[BeckyBloom]

My elder daughter who is 30 got married a couple of years ago and at the hen she completely embarrassed me. I could have bitten back but I didn’t want to spoil the mood as everyone was lovely and other than that we had a great time. It was a question about have you ever heard your parents having sex in one of the games. She said yes when she was 8, on a certain night and asked why I was doing it when I was in middle of a divorce. It wasn’t the middle, it was at the start of the text book bad behaviour, staying out etc. She then said she had found a dildo in my safe when she was 8 as she knew the password. This was said infront of her group of lovely friends, a couple of my friends and two family members.

It’s 2 years ago and I still can’t get over it as I would never embarrass someone like that. I’ve asked her for an apology and she just laughs and says it was banter and not embarrassing.

It’s really starting to affect how I feel about her as she obviously has no respect for me. Am I being precious and over the top?

YADNBU
She very publicly showed you up and humiliated you.

Okay maybe she was drunk and having fun (obviously she should have been), but the fact is, despite knowing how much she upset you, she is refusing point blank to not accept or acknowledge your feelings.

I wouldn’t be impressed by that attitude either. I think it’s shallow and spiteful.

Is there some sort of background power play going on with her do you think, or is she just oblivious to other people’s feelings?

What reaction ? OP didn’t even know that DD had heard them having sex until she brought it up at the hen party. If DD was embarrassed by hearing her parents having sex then she had plenty of time as an adult to address that with OP. Why did she wait until her hen party and choose to address it publicly and with no thought for the embarrassment that would cause her mother ?

Airing your dirty laundry in public rarely ends well, and from her reaction to OP’s expression of the hurt the comments caused her, there was no real trauma - she passed it off as banter and didn’t see the need to apologise. MN is absolutely batshit sometimes. OP was humiliated in public by her DD who brought up a very private and personal matter in public, as the result of a party game. The number of posters who don’t see anything wrong with that, much less see OP as the injured party, is quite concerning.

You give yourself closure

Your daughter won't give you closure because she won't apologise because she sees nothing wrong with what she said

Maybe she is secretly annoyed that you were indiscreet .....and she heard you having sex? Maybe she wishes you could have kept the password/code to the safe more secret so that she didn't find your dildo? Maybe her telling everyone at her hen night was her way of getting back at you for her perception that you didn't protect her?

Who knows?

But for you, you give yourself closure. You don't want for someone else to provide it. You're an adult. You have agency.

Wow - exactly what I was planning. I binge watched the first series via Sky and am now well into series 2. I wasn’t aware that it was that popular until I saw an advert when passing a bus stop - Noah Wyle’s face plastered all over it ? I’m old enough to remember him as a youngster in ER.

The reaction after she told her at the party, what reaction do you think?

she should have apologised,

Well not that embarrassed as she raised it years later in front of people 😂

But OP didn’t react at the party - she clearly said she left things until later as she didn’t want to ruin the evening. She told DD later on that she was hurt by the comments and DD completely dismissed her concerns saying it was just banter. So I’m unclear as to why you think DD should have been hurt by her mothers’ entirely reasonable reaction to DD’s disrespectful airing of her private and personal sex life in public. Why would you think an apology was necessary when OP is the injured party ?

I agree that this incident would have been embarassing for you, but you obviously can't go on feeling like this so you'll have to find a resolution that will heal your feelings and your relationship with your daughter.

If you say that she's normally a sensitive person and this incident was out of character, i'm wondering if she's actually embarrased by it too. People often try to minimise the affects of their behaviour if they are actually ashamed of it. If there was alcohol involved and people were getting a bit excitable and rowdy, she may have got carried away in the moment, and now she regrets it but she can't change it so she's getting defensive and trying to pretend it doesn't matter. It's not very mature of her if that is the case, and she'd assuage her guilt much better if she just said sorry. And i'm willing to bet that she does feel guilt about it, you're her mother after all and she doesn't want to see you hurting (which is also why she's hoping you'll move on).

I think this is a sensible take on the situation.

If only she had a Time Machine eh

Then again, as the OP is insistent the divorce is all firmly in the past and irrelevant, I doubt there is any time for the dd to bring it up, other than when the OP is in a public situation where she feels unable to defend herself and dismiss what her dd has said.

I think this is because you’re struggling to see it from the daughters perspective, you are onky able to see it from thr mothers.

I think resent is strong, however I’d never embarrass my mum like this. Every child parent relationship is different, some can tolerate banter like this and it’s part of family culture. My mum would be so embarrassed. And I think it would be disrespectful to say that in front of friends. However , I do think it was said in bad taste and the context is key, I think you could process this and move on so it doesn’t ruin the relationship unless there’s a big backstory I’ve missed amongst all these comments.

Don't all kids hear their parents having sex sometimes? Or did every other mumsnetter grow up in a castle or something, with bedrooms in separate wings?

Can't imagine mentioning it to them, though. Can't think of anything more mortifying.

Nope, never heard them and no, definitely not a castle. Stop trying to normalise children hearing adults having sex 🤢

The DD has said it was just banter. The only person upset is the OP. the only person on this thread who knows the OP and who knows the DD is… the OP. The OP is the only person with the problem so is the only person to reflect on it. She could of course decide to explicitly make it her daughter’s problem… but for now, the OP is 2 years on portraying her daughter as someone who decided to deliberately persecute the OP in front of lots of “lovely friends”. It is 100% for the OP to be reflecting on WHY her daughter would do what the OP is asserting she has done.

No. It’s basic manners to not go rustling through other people’s /parents private bedroom drawers

even my 9yr knows not to do it

I'd be outraged!

Well, it was fairly normal for me as a kid. I didn't like it, but I don't really see how it could have been avoided with the thin walls we had.

What do you perceive as the daughters’ perspective, because I’m taking this at face value, based on what OP has actually said, and not on the assumption that there is some deeply buried trauma on DD’s part. OP said it came up as the result of a party game - ‘who has heard their parents having sex’ was the question. If DD had answered in the affirmative and left it at that, then OK. But she didn’t. She went on to describe snooping around and finding a dildo - and not content with that revelation, then asked OP in front of a room full of people, why she continued to have sex with her DH when they were getting divorced. In what world does anyone outside of the batshittery on MN think that’s acceptable behaviour towards a parent in any situation ?

Posters are assuming there is trauma because DD mentioned the divorce - despite the fact that OP clarified DD had got the time line wrong. OP also indicated that the divorce came about because of an unfaithful and abusive DH, so who knows what she has been through, or has had to protect her children from. Sometimes things simply are what they are, but this being MN, posters go digging for stuff that simply isn’t there, because they want drama. The OP ends up getting a hard time for something entirely different than what they actually posted about, with the inevitable result that they leave the thread because it’s turned into a bun fight. Which is what’s happened here. Again.

Similar experience here. I was too young at the time to know what it actually was, but figured it out as l got older. A few of my friends had the same experience. But you become an adult, realise that your parents are sexual beings too, and you move on. It’s not ideal but l probably see it differently because I’m from an older generation. I don’t see every childhood experience as a source for trauma and therapy, and some of the comments here make me fear for the resilience of future generations.

Having sex and buying dildos. Shocking and debauched behaviour from anyone but from a mother….well, the mind boggles

And what else happened in the 8yo life that is missing from all this?

Depends on what level of drama you’re looking for doesn’t it ? Sometimes things just are what they are - in this case thoughtless and crass alcohol fuelled ‘banter’ and a refusal to consider the hurt it caused. And the biggest issue is not that the person who heard the parents having sex said something, it’s the circumstance in which it was said.

Don’t be so silly. Just because you didn’t hear your own parents doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. No-one is trying to ‘normalise’ it, whatever that means, just pointing out that however careful you are, sometimes it does happen. It’s just that on MN it’s treated as the crime of the century - heaven forbid that parents should continue to be sexual beings after having kids.

😂