I’ve been struggling lately with the relationship I have with my mum. At a point of considering cutting her out of my life. I’ll post a bit more about it later when I have more time. I know there are others here that have difficult relationships with close family so for now I just wanted to open this up as a place to chat or vent. I would love to hear others experiences with navigating this.
I am looking forward to this thread. I have posted on my diff fam relationships before. always very keen to hear how other navigate theirs w/o fully foreclosing the chance to have meaningful contact still.
Imma make use of the venting option rn tbh: 
I had recently asked my mother specifically to not do sth, which was to abstain coming to my house where I am currently hunkering down working on a big, hard project trying to finish it, because she wanted to bring me sth I did not need and had not asked for, just to satisfy her own nostalgia. I even gave a reason: because it made me feel small when I need to be strong rn.
that was the first time I clearly set a boundary with her I think. to my surprise and disbelief, she came by anyway to drop the unwanted items off. it felt bad for like a whole day. 
looking forward to talk here with you all.
7 Likes
yes, I think she needed to reaffirm her own value as mother. she brought me sweets (I don’t need sweets, I don’t eat them per usual as I have trouble not eating an entire pack of whatever, so I don’t buy them and that’s fine) for the traditional german celebration of st. nikolaus day for which parents put sweets in the children’s(!) shoes.
I thought for a while on what to say when she asked to come by for that and was pretty proud when I came up with, I don’t want that right now, I appreciate the thought but I cannot be the child rn cos I need to be strong and hussle with my project. (which is hanging over from a time in my life when I did not individuate from my parents enough and got stuck in life. so, its kind of a very big deal I am doing it now, symbolically and really)
so, the deposit was her feeling like a good mom at my expense, me feeling small and weak. at least I didn’t say thank you. when I asked didn’t you get my text she just said yeah but anyway. I can see she does it for herself. it was not against me. she just “can’t imagine” how it makes me feel anything other that what she assumes it does. it’s just a lack of being able to take another’s perspective.
already feel like I’m taking up too much space on Jess’s thread despite the explicite invite. 
not gonna apologise.
11 Likes
Take 
up all the space !! 
I am glad you are doing so. Whenever you post about your mum I entirely relate and I appreciate you sharing them.
8 Likes
Interesting topic to which I can relate. In short I’m taking distance from my brother who is linked to a big part of my underlying PTSD. I hear nothing from him and I didn’t inform him formerly. He checked with my parents if I am still in contact with them. I mentioned to him some months ago that I was back at some trauma I tugged away again. He knows that’s linked to him and that time also my parents. When I told him I was like to whom am I telling this… his physical reaction was there and I wanted to leave right away. That was really related to “the body never lies”. It was the “center” of my first treatments in 2012 and 2016. But it seems if you try to get acknowledgement from abusers you don’t get it. So I tugged it away again. My parents were inadequate in protecting me against my brother I can accept that somehow. So I have contact with them in which I now set my boundaries and take my place I should have had. This without getting to dependent on them. So getting a more mature relationship with them. When I’m now there with my son (he has a good bound with them), it feels more natural and relaxed then if my brother would be there is well. Can write more but leave it for now, writing about it makes it real and triggers some emotions I can let be but I have to be cautious with them, they go deep 
6 Likes
I don’t even know where to start…. I have so much I could vent about with my mum. She is very manipulative in the way she tries to interact with people. I didn’t see it as clearly before getting sober and I would give in and try so hard to please her and win her love.
Early October she sent an email to my sister and me. One of the lines in it that really stuck with me was I love you both more than you know or even care to. She always says things like this and I know she is trying to express a love that is so big it is unknowable…but the way I experience it is that her love is unknowable because it is conditional and she will not fully show it to us. There are a lot of repressed memories from my childhood that have been coming up from my childhood since receiving the email and I haven’t spoken with her since she sent it.
The whole thing that sparked the email was my sister and I trying to set boundaries with her that she constantly steps all over. After my break up I didn’t have the energy to be around people or to talk about how I was feeling. She thought it was her right to know about every little detail of it. She would ask how I was doing and I would respond with a meme so she made it all about her as if I hated her and was being disrespectful. It came to a point where I told her if she wants to see me or talk to me she needs to just say so. I told her to call me and ask actual questions if she wants to know something. I got called all sorts of nasty names for this and she started complaining about me to my sister. She does this a lot and likes to try and divide us.
She keeps mailing things to me now. Overly religious cards…which is v weird. We were never a religious family, she knows I have trauma from separating from our local church, yet suddenly she is pushing god on me. Bonds from our grandfather that my father was supposed to be holding onto anyways but she stole during their divorce. Now today I received a birthday gift from her…junk I don’t need, that are not me at all but more the kind of gift she would want, and with a card saying she wishes she could spend my birthday with me. Again, if she wants to spend it with me she should just ask! She doesn’t try to make plans with me she just gets sad and mean about it afterwards and guilts me about it once it has past. And she has the audacity to sign cards and gifts as being also from my stepdad. I can guarantee he doesn’t even know she is sending these things and he has had no say in them. Gifts from him are at least thoughtful and show that he does know me.
End rant for now. I’m getting a bit angry shaky.
9 Likes
Telling her I do not want that is easy but it becomes another tool for her to manipulate. She does and says things to get a reaction - to get attention.
I have stopped reacting and so she does the things she knows I have asked her not to. She pushes back against the boundaries I have set. Because I have been protecting my own well-being and not engaging with her she tries to get an angry response out of me to break the silence. She doesn’t hear about how I am doing so she constantly invites my ex to help them with projects in hoping she’ll hear something from him. She cannot respect my decision to end the relationship so she keeps him around and calls him her son.
It’s to a point where the more boundaries I set, the more she tests them. The more I enforce them I am a btch and “as cold as my sister” who she wrote a hate letter to a few Christmases ago. For every small good experience I have with her, there are 15 more bad ones. Keeping her in my life I am actively putting myself in a situation that I have been trying to heal from. I have been considered the “good child” for always trying and maintaining this terrible abusive relationship…for so long I was very careful how I responded to her in order to keep the peace and keep her from getting mad. The more I speak my truth and hold my ground the more the illusion of the mother daughter relationship disappears.
I have tried and tried and other than “she’s my mother” I see no reasons left to keep trying. I’ve been holding onto hopes of maintaining something that never really existed.
5 Likes
Yes I understood you lol 
just sort of sent me off thinking and ranting again.
Definitely have been taking this time as a pause. My brain spirals. My therapist has me reassess regularly. My heart hurts and I cry a lot but for now there is no other way forward. Time will tell.
2 Likes
Mom relationships are hard. I have a hard time interacting with mine. What helps me is not responding to guilt. If my Mom tries to guilt me or tries to make me feel bad I see it as her own insecurity. She taught me that bullies only win if they see that they got to you. I take this to heart. Sending you hugs.
7 Likes
Hi everyone,
This is such an interesting conversation and I appreciate everyone’s shares here. This resource may not apply for some of you, but this book changed my life. It’s the first thing I’ve come across that not only explained exactly why my parent is the way she is, but why I respond and feel the way I do. Even better, this book and others by the same author offer strategies for dealing with parents. This book brought much needed sanity to my relationship with my parents.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, Or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay Gibson
You can buy the book anywhere, borrow it from a library, or click the link above for free pdf. The title made me feel very disloyal at first, but I am so grateful I read it (along with two others she wrote).
Thanks for starting this thread and for those sharing your stories.
8 Likes
I have read what you’ve written and have felt so much. This. This is the lowest blow. This is the worst kind of manipulation. I am sorry but I could not abide this.
2 Likes
Wow, thank you for this. I just read the intro in the PDF and bought a copy to keep and pass on. I also enjoyed The Emotionally Absent Mother by Jasmin Cori.
4 Likes
Jess, I am so grateful you started this thread. I think these rifts can be felt generationally. I was raised by parents who had serious conflicts with their parents, so I wasn’t in the cross hairs necessarily, but I did grow up with a lot of conflict in the larger family and things being hidden from me and had to learn about the whys as a young adult. It fucking sucks. My dad became estranged from his family (his siblings, really) and my Mami had to deal with her father who expected her as the oldest daughter in a Mexican household to care for her parents as they aged but on HIS terms, promising to move to our house but then never moving, putting the blame wherever he could. Causing strife in our home. I just saw the problems people created in their relationships and as a kid I was so confused. I don’t probably belong on this thread because I had a mostly loving home with my parents and two brothers, but as the oldest sibling I was witness to a lot of crap. It really can be a generational problem. Kudos to those here and elsewhere who have to deal with this crap but then don’t inherit the madness and pass it along.
I bring this up because I’m about to reconnect with a cousin on my dad’s side, the estranged side. I have fond memories of her and we have been friends on social media for years. I’m just wondering if people here have experiences to share about reconnecting. We, as cousins, we’re on the sidelines of the big conflict. But we are still on sides. I’m nervous. I haven’t seen her since I was in my late teens (15 years?), she’s 15 years older than me so we aren’t exactly cohorts. It will be interesting.
10 Likes
About the last thing my mom did and said before our family doctor helped her to end her life was to - figuratively- clutch me, and -literally- ask me if I knew how much she loved me. In her own dramatic way. It didn’t move me much, while my sis was furious afterwards. Just like my sis still is furious at my mother about lots of things, nine years after she died. And I’m still more or less indifferent about her. So high and thick is the wall I built between me and my parents, and in effect between me and the world.
Of course it is not true I was and am not moved by what happened. In my mind I see the image my mom at her deathbed blended together with my image of her on her sick bed about 40 years before, gasping for air, bloated red face caused by the huge dose of prednisone, me thinking she was dying right there. Me, somewhere around ten years old, going to the pharmacist and picking up two bags of pills and ventilators.
I’m sure my mother’s illness, asthmatic bronchitis as it was called back then, was caused for a substantial part by psychological factors. And I know also played a substantial part in my mother being emotionally unavailable for my sister and me. Maybe.
I still feel it’s a bit unfair to blame my mother so much for not being there for us, as the one who truly never was there for us was our dad and by blaming my mother he gets of lightly. I feel. That’s something I don’t understand in my sister either, as she is so much more angry at our mother. have to find a way to talk to her about that. My sister and me never were close, another thing that is to blame on our upbringing. We were never together. We always felt we had to fend for ourselves.
I relied only on myself from a very young age. I think my sister felt in a way more betrayed by our mother when she became an adolescent while I never trusted mom to be relied upon anyway. So it was easier for me to have a relatively easy relationship to my mother later in life, doing some holidays together, and eating, drinking and smoking together and talking about general stuff. Just not let her get very close. For me it was some older woman. Not really a mom.
My dad was all in for his career always. My mum was the one that wanted a family too, a loving husband, children, to develop herself, to have a career, to be a free independent woman. Which was all falling apart even before I was born but to which she clung and tried to have it all for decades while all around her it fell apart. While dad did his own thing (having affairs too).
I don’t know where I’m going with this. I have to talk to my sister. And I’ve just started a new group therapy aimed at (early) childhood trauma and I’m not even sure what that is going to be about. My early childhood lack of parenting? Or the later in my childhood sexual abuse my my teacher? or both? I feel sorry for my mom but all in all she was a terrible mom. As my dad was a terrible dad. There’s a difference in how daughters relate to their mom as to how sons do. But I don’t understand what that difference is. More stuff to talk to my sis about I guess. If we ever get there. I still feel lots of resentment towards my sister too. Sorry, I’m ranting. Thanks for the topic Jesse. X
10 Likes
Thanks for sharing, can relate to a lot. Maybe you don’t need to worry about wwhere it is going. It’s big so taking it as it goes might be a good way to approach it. Look who’s talking 
2 Likes
yes, thank you, I agree with you fully. because this was beginning to dawn in me in real-time I managed to bounce back from the boundary-breach kinda quickly and easier than before. I did not apologise or go out of my way to make her understand why I needed what I did, I did not plead for her understanding and say sorry for not giving her what she wanted, as I would have in the past. so in this sense this situation was kindof a novelty. but then she went on to breach that boundary. so this is now also new. I am thinking should I say sth about that when I see her on xmas or just fuck it. I really have other shit on my mind these days. I am thankfully a bit more removed from the fight or flight reaction I lived in for years around her. feeling more peaceful.
word. this is what it is. we, now as grownups but already back then as little chidren, sensing their fears and their neediness, and doing what we can to provide and shelter them. prevent them from feeling what they are already feeling. just like they probably did for their parents respectively. (at least mine did, I know as much) so it is hard to break that cycle of misplaced and burdensome emotional “care-taking” and outsourcing of feelings.
this is intensely over the line. I feel so much hostility in your mother’s behaviour (mine too has a lot of aggression and especially towards me when I was growing up). what do you think is up with that?
it also reminds me of a situation on one of the last times my bf and I visited them: I came into the kitchen where my mother was sitting in a bathrobe and curlers in her hair, visibly pissed off and eager to let me have that mood. where she hardly looks up to greet me, doesn’t answer me and when I ask how it’s going just snaps back how do I imagine its going. when she saw the bf crossing the yard (he was not expected that day) she immediately straightened up, the tone of voice completely changed to softness, the entire aggro demeanor fell off her and she was sweet to him. it was astounding tho not out of character for her, just a very clear example of whatever that is.
@OolongJones thanks for the reminder of the book, had that one on my list a long time. glad it helped you!
3 Likes
I struggle with this everyday, with both parents. My father is addicted to one thing I was using and my mother is addicted to the other. They both have problems… I do have to distance myself and focus on building my mental stability, without them. Theyre grown, have grown kids, not to say theyll never change but they are stubborn in their ways and wont be helpful to me and my sobriety. They do not understand. I do hope they will get there one day, and decide to be sober.
6 Likes
Hi Lauren, glad you’re here. Glad you’re putting your sobriety first!
Have you seen this thread: Are you affected by a loved one who is an addict? I think you might like it.
4 Likes
I have a difficult relationship with my mum too so this resonated with me. I’ve had to step away from her a lot at times over the years to protect my own sanity as she can be unpredictable/abusive. She’s also always left me out of things despite me wanting to be close to her and rest of family. I don’t think she likes having another ‘woman’ around, which she has said to me in the past, as she likes to be in control. She doesn’t behave in this way with my brother and sister, but they’re both a lot younger than me. However, when she falls out with my sister she then dotes on me, and I get a sense of hope, as I do still love her dearly, but as soon as they make up I’m discarded again. It hurts a lot… but I’m trying to accept that this is her issue not mine, and focus on the people and things that are good for me.
7 Likes
I relate with this so much. My mother has decided shes done being a mom and is my sister and I’s friend now since were boyh over 18. So when shes in a falling out with my younger sis shell talk crap about her to me, and well be best friends. But then theyll make up and shell leave me alone for weeks without saying anything because shes busy hanging with my lil sis… no invite either… so weird to me!!
5 Likes