I had a passive-aggressive mom growing up. Here are a few of my “favorite” offenses of hers that I am somewhat humored by now at a distance!
Me with my family going to eat out at a restaurant, maybe when I was an early teen. Not really thinking about how the way that I walked into a restaurant would affect others, I went straight for the door. My mom, wanting to teach me some manners, pushed her body between me and the door so she would be first, muttering as she did so, “Age before beauty!”
Me at a family wedding at maybe 35 years old. I went shopping before and had on a new outfit. My mom, trying to help with my taste in clothes, put her hand in front of her mouth and whispered into my ear, “Karen, you know, only a really thin person would look good in that outfit.” Please note, I was a size 8!
And the ever ubiquitous offer of support, “People will think…” when she really meant SHE would think.
I’m sure there are some other good ones I can’t think of a.t.m.
Really one of the primary reasons I don’t talk with my Mom much anymore. Passive-aggressive tendencies, manipulative, reverts to anger/shouting VERY quickly and for just about anything, and has a real knack for the ol’ guilt trip. I have major guilt issues to this day because of it.
She was/is a good mother otherwise, and unfortunately I don’t even think she’s aware that she has these behaviors. But she has also demonstrated a lack of willingness or an inability to (I’m not sure which) examine her own behaviors.
I’ve actively worked to shed a lot of the behaviors that I learned growing up in her home, and it’s a daily effort to maintain. I’m not totally clear of it, although much better than say 6 or 7 years ago. Sad to say, I did notice it became much easier to avoid those habits when I intentionally chose to significantly limit my interactions with her. I haven’t seen her since September, and this past Saturday was the first time I’ve spoken to her at all since…January? And really, I feel much more at peace this way.
It’s difficult and bothersome, because I do want a relationship with her. But I also can’t have her behaviors rubbing off on me, or that negative “vibe” (god I hate that word and what it’s become) influencing me. I feel a way around her that I feel around nobody else. Just a distinct, intense feeling to get the fuck away ASAP.
She called my Dad recently, which has unfortunately disrupted things. I actually thought that was a pretty underhanded way of her to go about it. I’m an adult, this is between she and I, and to put my Dad in the middle of it wasn’t very fair of her. They’ve been divorced 30 years. Now I feel pressure to try and start to reconcile before I move out of state in July. Tough one, because frankly I don’t feel ready to do that, nor do I particularly want to right now. I have felt noticeably better when not interacting with her. Really hurts to say that, but I cannot deny it.
Put it this way. I called her on Saturday because of all that. 5, 6 minute phone call. I was stressed out for like 2 days after.
Well, my Mom definitely can push my buttons…especially around body image…that’s her stuff she passed on to all of us. But no, she isn’t a passive aggressive person. Especially as she has aged, she has become much more direct and with less filter. She is 85 now. She is so hard on herself, it is sad to see …especially as it pertains to her guilt in how she raised us all those decades ago. She did a great job IMHO for a 25 year old with 3 kids under 3 and a husband who was busy working to feed us all. She carries all that motherly guilt tho for any and all of our foibles. It has been a good learning vehicle for me to let that shit go.
And lord knows my 41 year old daughter has a laundry list of issues with me…rightly so. Ah…the full circle!
How about the 5 second version of a reconciliation: “Mom, I am moving out of state but would really like us to stay in touch.” Done.
I definitely have to keep boundaries in place with my mom. It isn’t easy.
I never learned to trust people, or myself that I would make good decisions about things. And if things were going well, it was because I just hadn’t been “found out” yet. It really, really affected my self-confidence. I’ve had to work a lot on these issues as an adult in thereapy.
That is such typically thinking for women! Appearance isn’t the only quality that should give us a sense of self-worth. As a mom, I catch myself so often starting to want to comment on my kids’ appearances in a critical way. About 35% of the time I will catch myself and say something positive instead because I know of the scars that can leave.
My son has super greasy hair if he doesn’t wash it every day and sometimes I will comment on it. He is sensitive to criticism. So I try to gentle-things-down a bit. Like, “You should take a bath this evening.” Then look into his eyes and say, “But you look great! Just remember this evening to do that, okay?”
Oh I hear you! I am so glad that people are more aware of these issues now… I am sure I passed on the body image issues to my daughter, as I didn’t make peace with my own body til recently. It is definitely a tangled web in my family. Lots of EDs.
You are lucky you are so cognizant of this issue with your son and able to offer support vs criticism. I was oblivious as a mother. And coming from a family with fine greasy stringy hair…I understand completely! I will say that having aged out of midlife, I am much more gentle with my body and respectful of all it does. Once gravity, crepey skin, menopausal changes etc arrived, somehow it brought a respect and kindness to my self. Of course sobriety helped all that as well. I have the aging stuff of course, but not all that physically draining pain that drinking wreaks on our bodies.
It sounds like you hit the right tone with your son. He is a lucky kid!
I’m not nearly as far on with setting boundaries and reducing contact but have made massive progress over the last year! To put it this way: I didn’t know it was a thing. I thouroughly believed it was my absolute duty to visit them every week, often two days, and take care of their shaming and guilting and loneliness and pain they have because I moved away from the village 15years ago to study.
Just a few gems:
Saleswoman in a riders’ gear shop when I was ten: you already got saddlebags. (I wasn’t a skinny kid but not massively fat either)
My mother: …
Last year I wore a strappy bodysuit and full lenght jeans and boots on a boiling hot summer day to my sister’s New house reveal party. I had agonised about the outfit for hours and thought about it for days. I feel intense shame as my entire family is fat and unhappy with their bodies and my body reminds them of that. I am always chronically too hot. Everyone else was wearing floaty summer dresses + sandals.
Me: hi!
My mother: you look too naked.
My grandma: you can’t wear that here. People will think things.
I think I must have broken my mom’s heart when I didn’t join a sorority. Engineering and sororities – do they even mix? She is very traditional in that sense. She met my dad on a blind date set up by their sorority / fraternity friends. And THEN my brother and sister-in-law met on a blind date through their sorority and fraternity friends and went to the SAME SORORITY AND FRATERNITY as my parents. Some will say cute, I sorta gag!
My poor BIL has chosen his (very nice and very decent) wife from the specific girls’ school his narcissist dad always preached to them had all the hot girls. 🤦 He started working in the dad’s best friends firm in a career he didn’t want but the dad insisted on and is moving into a look-alike house in a parallel street to the dad he hated all his young adult life today.
WE ARE THE LUCKY ONES!
Oh man, while I’m sorry you have to go trough all this, I’m glad to know I’m not alone in this.
I have a mother like that. While Bodyshaming was never a big of a deal with us and I find it hard to describe what is, I would say she’s making me feel inadequate.
When I was in elementary school, my mother would always tell me how she is my slave, because she has to work so much because of my brother and me. When I didn’t clean my room or do my homework, she would kneel down in front of me and proceed to beg me on her knees to do as she said. I was just a child and didn’t understand she was overwhelmed with two kids and a job. To this day she is proud of her anti-authorianism when raising us (she somehow forgot that she massively guilt-tripped me all the time).
There are so many stories like that I think of today … for the longest time I thought I was a horrible person and didn’t have any self esteem. I still struggle to pull myself out of that mindset.
Now I moved back home after living abroad for a decade and she thinks it’s to be with her and my dad. It’s not - I just wasn’t happy in the city I lived in and needed a fresh start. Even though I love Vienna and have a lot of friends here, I contemplated moving somewhere else, so I wouldn’t have to deal with her. She now regularely calls me crying and screaming because I don’t come visit more than once a week 🤷
I never thought of passive aggression, and the resulting gas lighting, as abuse, but now I believe it was.
It has done so much damage for me, especially the gas lighting. When I was made to doubt myself about what happened.
Story of my life.
