Another parents thread...

[motion]

Ok, this is mostly about my mother but it's spilled over to my Dad now too.

 

I'm 34, successful, bright, had a nice home growing up etc. But my relationship with my mother is just crap. It basically always has been, but I never had the guts to do anything about it. Always just tried to go along with whatever she asked/needed to keep the peace, figuring it's a small enough chunk of my time and whenever the visit/phone call/lecture whatever is done I can go back to my "normal life".

 

Trouble is, I don't really have a "normal life". I'm always so apprehensive when I have to talk to them or visit, not knowing what to expect. I find my mother very unpredictable - like she's always creating new expectations/demands that I was just supposed to know about, so I'm always falling short of her expectations. So, while not every contact with them is bad, probably 1 out of 3 is, and then it really brings me down.

 

I don't feel respected or valued by them at all. Virtually everyone else in my life likes me, thinks I am kind, fun, intelligent and generally all good things. But the feeling I get from my mother is that she wishes I was different - I've come to see her constant complaints and trying to correct my behaviour as more a desire to change who I am, not just how I behave. That sucks, and is immense pressure. Many of the things that I feel like she wants me to change I feel are intrinsic personality traits that I either cannot change or just take so much effort it wears me out (and when I get stressed, tired busy etc. I revert back to my nature).

 

The family dynamic is such that my mother and brother are very similar, and my father and I are very similar. My mother and brother seem to have a natural affinity that I don't have, my father and I used to have that but he's supporting her now virtually without question - fair enough I guess since he has to live with her. But it now leaves me the odd one out - and makes me wonder sometimes if the problem really *is* with me...

 

Anyway, the basic issue as I see it is she harbours some strange anger towards me. Either as a result of her failure to resolve similar issues with her own parents and/or a by-product of me being a "mini-me" of my Dad (things have not always been very smooth there), or something else, but she gets angry so fast, and so severely it doesn't add up. This in turn puts me on the defensive, and as I said, makes me apprehensive about any time I have to be around her. It becomes a vicious cycle. Last summer things got particularly bad and I tried to talk to her about this but it all went wrong - I admitted that I am always defensive around her, and asked that she look at why she gets so angry with me, but she just refused. All she heard out of it was me complaining that she was a bad mother...

 

An interesting point - my parents have told me on several occasions that I was a very "independent" child. At the age of 6 months old I started pushing my mother away and rejecting her affection. Now, they tell the story as an example of me and my stubbornness/independence but to me, that sounds like something was pretty fundamentally wrong from an early age. It doesn't sound normal to me, and to now be held responsible as an adult for a dynamic that started between my mother and I at 6 months old, as if it's all "my problem" and I am the badly behaved person - well it doesn't add up to me.

 

So, last Christmas I visited there, and it was awful. In a particular moment she displayed such rage and hatred that I decided I was not going to subject myself to that anymore. Since then I have called much less frequently (I'm supposed to call once a week, I've called maybe 6 or 7 times all year), and decided I will not visit them this Christmas. Basically, I said to myself I would stick to a fundamental rule of not calling/visiting unless I *want* to - not going on obligation. Obviously, I haven't wanted to much... But they are going through a rough time at the moment - my mother injured her leg (not serious, but enough to impact her lifestyle and cause a fair amount of pain) and my dad has some work issues (potentially about to get laid off). Part of me cares and wants to support them, but that is kinda outweighed by my desire to put myself first finally.

 

I don't really want to have a broken/no relationship with my parents - I really would like to figure it out before they are gone. But, I am in my 30s, still single, have had some reasonably ok relationships but know I have some issues that I feel stem from issues with my parents. I don't want to give up my happiness in life because of them, so it feels paramount to me to do what I need to for me to have a happy, fulfilled life. At the moment, that means largely cutting them out of it - they only bring negative things to my life, and I don't need that. I moved 2 years ago to London and split up with my then girlfriend, that has been a hard transition and I feel like all my energy should go in to settling here, finding friends, finding someone to love and settle down with. Then I might have more energy to focus on them and my relationship with them, but I just don't feel like I have it now.

 

But, even now having reduced the contact with them, I just feel like an *******. Am I just a horrible, selfish person? Am I not entitled to put myself and my happiness first? Rationally I feel like I am doing the right thing, but the guilt is still there (and growing). It's like they have planted that control and guilt so deep, I don't know how to get rid of it. But I can't just fall back to the old ways, and I can't really face trying to "work it out" just now.

 

Any thoughts/comments?

[Angelina Nisse]

Stop feeling guilty. You survived an unhealthy childhood, where you weren't valued and really loved.

Your Mother wants all of the responsibility for the relationship on your shoulders, of course.

I think you are feeling the way anyone would feel - you feel a certain bond but yet, you realize your "relationship" really isn't good.

 

Quite frankly, I wouldn't do anything towards them, that I didn't *want* to do.

Given the circumstances, and your Mother's reactions to you, I would probably send a Christmas card and do what I wanted.

JMHO