Moms little comments

[zoe1983]

Overall i have a good relationship with my mom. I am 25 and have one sister who is older than me. The problem is that she loves to make little comments that really hurt my feelings. The few times i have called her out on them she says that we are family so she should be able to tell me the absolute truth about everything. In fact she thinks that not telling me these things make her a bad mother. She told me this when i brought up the fact that my aunt and her daughters have a great relationship, partly because she will often just keep her negative comments to herself when she doesn't agree with something one of her daughters does. My mom doesn't consider this "real love". To my mom's credit my grandmother is just like my mom. Always making little negative comments to everyone about everything. But my aunt is my mom's sister and she doesn't act that way.

 

Although I could go on and on about the little things she has said i will just write about the three things she said to me today when we were talking on the phone.

 

1 - my father co-signed with me on my car loan (his and my mom's idea) so that i could get a better interest rate. I make all the payments and never ask them for help with them. Anyways, because of this when i signed up for online banking i also somehow got access to a different account they have with the bank which is a line of credit for fifty thousand dollars. SO i mentioned this to my mom today and she says "make sure you never tell your boyfriend (who i live with) the password or anything, who knows he might try to steal money from us"

 

2. Then we were talking about how my boyfriend and i are going to move into a cheaper apartment when the lease is up in june so that we can save money. I mentioned how his family really doesn't want us to live in a crappy apartment but that i don't really care as long as its cheap. So then she says "Well don't live in too crappy of a place were they might sell drugs because your boyfriend might start doing drugs again". (my boyfriend did a lot of drugs when he was a teenager but stopped when he was 19 and has not touched anything since then and he is now almost 25 years old. He actually moved all the way across the country to get away from the drugs and bad influences and also his parents who were a major part of the problem. His dad beat the crap out of him and would verbally abuse his mother constantly. When he was just 4 years old he begged and cried to his mother to leave his father because he treated them so badly but she just ignored him.) So i tell her he hasn't done anything in like 5 years and that anyways his past drug of choice (meth) is not even available where we live now. Then she says well you know a druggie will take whatever drug he can get so you better watch out.

 

3. Then i tell her about my coworker who is dating a married man that keeps breaking up with her and she keeps going back to him. She says "wow i didn't think that there was anyone worse than you when it comes to not having self esteem and just being with any bum who will take you."

 

Although all three of these comments were mostly about my boyfriend she says plenty of negative things about other aspects of my life too. SHe is always talking about how immature i am and how spoiled i am and cant handle my money. I have a decent job and do not take ANY money from my parents whatsoever. I am completely self sufficient and always pay my own way.

 

She used to treat my sister the same way (she hates her husband even more than my boyfriend) but then my sister had kids and my mom keeps her mouth shut because she is afraid that if she pisses my sister or her husband off they wont let her see her grandkids. When i talked to her about this she just says that me and her have a closer relationship than she does with my sister, like i should feel special that she insults me but not my sister. She also talks crap about my sister to me which makes me think she talks crap about me to my sister.

 

I love my mom very much and she is a really good person but i just don't know how to react to the things she says. I have tried talking to her about it and that didn't work. Right now i just ignore the little comments she makes while i am talking to her but afterwards it really hurts my feelings. Also she gets furious if i tell my boyfriend any of the negative things she says but sometimes i just get so hurt that i have to talk to someone about it all you know?

 

Thanks to anyone that read this whole thing and please if you have any advise let me know. Good bad or ugly........

[whichwayisup]

Laugh it off. Your mom is a certain way and all you can do is set your own boundries and learn to control your reactions to what she says.

 

Though you can tell her it upsets you when she does X,Y or Z..And let her know that you DO love her and want her in your life but at age 25, she needs to loosen the "mom" strings on you since you have your own life..

[busy_married_student]

I don't know if this will help or not but here goes.

I had a similar problem with my parents for years. Destroyed my self esteem. Looking back on it, I realize they were just hurting badly and saying things without thinking. I told this to my mom and she agreed. She also said that they didn't know what to do and that as the first kid I was the trial run. that they now do things differently for the three other kids still at home. So maybe the stupid comments don't end.

mother in law used to do the same thing. make those random judgemental comments. One day I gave up and asked her if she realized that the reason I was distant is that I was tired of the hurtful comments. She said she never even realized she was being hurtful, just trying to help. Since then she has stopped making such comments. So maybe the stupid comments do end.

Good luck!

Also look at the balance. Does she compliment you as well? I know with some older people they feel it is weak to be very complimentary and will balance it out with somewhat hurtful comments. (dad's mom)

other option she is a bitter lady, who words you take with a grain of salt and don't think about(mom's mom).

[zoe1983]

my mom has very rarely complimented me. She did take me out to dinner to celebrate when i got my first "real" job but after that she just started harassing me about promotions and raises. She was at least happy about my grades up until 8th grade when i stopped getting straight A's. Seriously i got straight A's in everything from kindergarten until 8th grade. Then i got to high school and got A's and B's and she acted like i was lazy and spoiled. Even though I was playing soccer, field hockey, running track, on the swim team and participating in student government. Oh yeah and i also had a part time job. When it came time for college and i picked a college she considered "beneath me" well that was the beginning of the end.....

[OneTwo]

I went throught the exact same thing. My mother down-played all of my accomplishment. She told everyone how disappointed she was in me. I was an all honors student, started my own tutoring business in college, got an engineering degree, and started a successful career after graduating college. But, no matter what I did, she was always judgemental and made negative comments.

 

In my late 20's, I finally had it out with her and basically asked her what her problem was. She gave me the same excuses that your mom gives you: she is just concerned about me, wants to help, blah, blah, blah. But the reality of it is that she was trying to maintain some sort of control by keeping my self esteem low. I finally got to where I would turn her comments around back at her, such as when she said that the reason why I didn't have a nice girlfriend at the time was because I only attract psychos. I told her, "Well no wonder that's the case, look at the bitter mother I have!" She scoffed and said she had no idea what I was talking about. Then when I would leave her house after visiting, I would make sure to let her know, "As always mother, you have made my visit less than enjoyable with your nasty little comments..." When she would try to justify her behavior, I would just continue walking out the door and get in my car and drive away.

 

One time, I was so pissed off at her crappy attitude that I spun the tires while leaving her house and left 200 foot long black stipes right in front of their house. They live in a very upscale neighborhood and this type of thing is really frowned upon by their neighbors. The stipes stayed their about 2-3 weeks. Everytime I would drive by, I would see the thick black stripes of rubber in front of their house and it would make me smile. My next visit, my mother made a comment about how I embarassed her in front of the neighbors, and I made no appologizes or justifications whatsoever. I told her that the city should give me a tax break for paving the roads with my tires.

 

Then one day, I came to realize that my mother was not a happy person, that she was doing whatever she could to try to control others around her as her life was out of control. Once I realized how sad the situation was for her, I stopped getting angry at her comments. My self esteem improved, and I began to have more and more successes in my life. Now my mother is very nice to me. She still has a bitter edge, but I actually think it's kind of funny. She can put a negative twist on almost anything. It's actually entertaining at times. It took me untill my mid 30's to get to this point (I'm 42 now, married with kids of my own), but I now have a great relationship with my mother. She is a hardened old lady now, but we have a great relationship. She still throws out a zinger now and then (but nothing like before), and now I can just smile and tell her how I know in her way that she probably means well. She tells everyone how she looks forward to my visits.