The Vine: July 1, 2009
Hi Sars,
The story is this: I am a 21-year-old high-school graduate who has spent about four years on a two-year degree because of lack of focus, lack of money, and lack of “motivation.”
Oh, also home-schooled a lot 4th-12th grades. My personality is generally extroverted, to the point where I only seem to get attention I don’t want from even more socially crippled weeaboos than myself.
Never dated, never been dumped, nothing. Outside of some unfortunate (and illegal, according to Chris Hansen) middle/high school “online boyfriend” stuff. Which was not smart, but my bottom line is, given my naïveté, should I venture into online dating?
Never Been Dissed
Dear Never,
I’m going to say no, but not because of the “online” part.I don’t think the “dating” part is a great idea until you get to a place where you can talk about yourself without creating a ground fog of self-loathing.
Read this letter again.Look at how you talk about yourself.”I’m unfocused and lazy.””I’m socially crippled.”Why do you want to get into a relationship with anyone else when your relationship with yourself is so abusive?Even if you were just joking around, or thought you were, jokes always have a grain of truth.
It’s not going to hurt to go on dating sites and see what they’re about, but I feel like you only want to do it because you think you’re supposed to, and you think you’re supposed to because what you want to do is obviously lame and incorrect.And whatever else works or doesn’t work in an online dating profile, I gotta tell you, obvious low self-esteem isn’t going to get it done.
If you want to date, date; if you don’t, don’t.But making the entire enterprise about the qualities or experience you lack is starting from the wrong place.Wanting companionship is one thing; trying to correct perceived deficiencies is another.
Dear Sars:
I love reading your advice column, and always wonder how people can have such complex (read: long) problems. Then, the below happened.
My mom and I are in big trouble. Seriously. I’m 35 years old, and she raised me as a single parent from the time I was 9. She paid (in full!) for my college, bought me a used car when I turned 16, made sure I had whatever clothes I needed, allowed me to turn vegetarian when I was 14 with barely a whimper, on and on.
We’ve always been close — not as close as she would have liked perhaps, but closer than most, I think. We talked almost every day, for years, and even though I live 2,000 miles away I always visited twice a year, as did she.
But over the last several years, we just keep getting further and further apart. Everything I do, everything she does: it just drives the rift between us further. Yesterday, I hung up on her (she’s hung up on me before, but never the reverse) and she didn’t call me back. I don’t know when we’ll talk again.
It isn’t an easy story — oh, she doesn’t listen, or oh, I don’t love her. Just — endless variations on you don’t GET me. On both sides. I have a long (endless) list of petty complaints:
My husband and I got married with just our parents in attendance. When I asked her if she would come, she said she’d think about it, then called back and said, “No, I’ve got a Stampin’ Up party that I am hosting planned that weekend that I don’t want to cancel.” I said fine, calmly, and then later she changed her mind and did come. But the bitterness stays with me.
I asked her to my new husband’s family’s big traditional Thanksgiving, not wanting her to be alone (her husband of 15 years had just passed away). She asks if she can invite her new boyfriend (“The man I’m going to marry!”,”Thanksgiving Charms“), to the condo that my husband’s family arranged, and then gets mad when I say no. One week after Thanksgiving, they break up.
She is very (very) emotional. When she tells me (after I ask) that she is engaged to another man she met online, I focus in (with perhaps jerk-ish intensity) on how he’s rich. I don’t feel like talking about how their souls touch (my mom is in town to take care of my not-quite-one-year-old son while my husband and I are both at 16-hour-day conferences for work. I’m tired, sad, missing my son, and overworked), so I ask her what kind of car he’ll buy her, where they can vacation together, etc. I really don’t mean it as she takes it, but she takes it as: I’m a real jerk.
So she stays up all night, and as I leave at 5:30 AM for another day at the conference (did I mention I’m 8 weeks pregnant at this point?) she hands me a typed letter she worked on all night, accusing me of being cruel and not caring for her at all.
I come home early from the conference that day, and explode. Scream “I hate you,” over and over again like the 13-year-old me self never did, ask her to leave. She stays, after I beg her to, and then says, “Oh, it’s natural for a daughter to hate her mother, you are just separating from me.” Which feels like a dismissal of all I actually was feeling — the rage that she would choose such a wildly inappropriate time to call me out on being so rude.
My husband, son and I have planned a trip home for three weeks from now. She calls and says we may need to postpone it a week or two — it has become her wedding weekend. I mention it will be odd to meet her husband the weekend they get married, and she said, “I asked if he could come with me the week I babysat Oliver, and you said no.”
I, once again, feel overwhelming sadness and anger. I asked her to come up for four days to care for my son, not to meet her intended (who she had not even met when we first made the arrangements for the trip — she met him five days later) or to listen to her soul. I. Just. Wanted. Help. And she seems incapable of giving it.
There’s so much more. Comparing my son to my sister’s new company (“her company is her Oliver”) or my mom’s new dog (“Coco is just my Oliver.”). I get that businesses and new dogs are hard, but new children they are not. Talking about how I don’t know how she feels because “You’ve never lived alone.” (I lived alone for 10 out of the last 15 years.) Generously arranging to pay for a cross-country bicycle trip for me a few years ago, but then expressly ignoring my wishes for her not to visit the weekend before I leave. She visits, and said “emotional talk” (read: crying jag) ensues, as it always does.
We cannot see each other or talk to each other without both or one of us ending in tears. Help! I am pregnant! I don’t want my children to treat me like I am treating her, and I don’t want to treat my children like she treats me. How can I forgive and let go? Why do I get and stay so angry at her for such relatively small things?
I’m sure her list of my flaws is just as long as mine of hers; I just can’t figure out how to get past this.
Any advice will be very welcome advice.
My Husband And I Just Got Turned Down For A House Refinancing And I Couldn’t Even Call My Mom To Cry About It
Dear Cry,
I’m going to point you to two bits from your letter that, frankly, rubbed me the wrong way.Ready?
I asked her to come up for four days to care for my son, not to meet her intended (who she had not even met when we first made the arrangements for the trip — she met him five days later) or to listen to her soul. I. Just. Wanted. Help. And she seems incapable of giving it.
Generously arranging to pay for a cross-country bicycle trip for me a few years ago, but then expressly ignoring my wishes for her not to visit the weekend before I leave.
Not that I didn’t spike a brow at some of your mother’s choices too, but I can’t imagine your sense of entitlement is helping the relationship.”I want my mother to provide child-care and emotional support for me, but when I’m asked the same in return, it’s a hurtful irritant.””I want my mother to shower me with generosity, but when I’m forced to accept that every gift has its price, I act like it’s a gross imposition.”Yeah…no.Not how adults behave, towards their parents or otherwise.Relationships are a give-and-take; your switch is set to take-only, and you want to control the terms.
Your mother’s behavior surrounding your wedding was horseshit, and she should have been told in no uncertain terms at the time that you considered that manipulative and hurtful in the extreme — but you might also consider the possibility that she pulls this kind of thing to get your attention, to get you to focus on her, instead of taking her for granted and expecting her unconditional love while not reciprocating.
Yes, actually…you do.Again, no, I don’t think this online rich fiancé whatever guy sounds like the greatest decision ever made, but if you’re not going to include him, or even care about him except to shit all over him, and he matters to her, well, how else might she prompt you to pay her some mind?I mean, whether she does it on purpose or not, it’s working; you’re not really thinking about anything besides how it affects you, but you are in fact thinking about it.
The fact that she has a life, in which she doesn’t do everything you want her to do when you want her to do it, doesn’t mean she doesn’t support you, or care about you, or want to help you.You’re confusing unconditional love with “giving you her constant, undivided attention and never asking for anything in return”; they aren’t the same things, and it is not realistic for an adult to expect this.You don’t have to agree with her decisions — I wouldn’t either, probably — but you do have to stop acting like every one of them is a pain in your ass and your ass alone.
If you want to “get past” these issues with your mother, you will have to revise your understanding of what her role means, and it no longer means what it meant when you were a helpless infant.You have a job, and children of your own; you are a competent person who votes.It’s fine to want someone to pick you up and dandle you on her knee when you’re stressed out, and I don’t think you’re a selfish asshole across the board or anything like that, or that your mother isn’t to blame for letting things progress to this point.It does take two.
But you both need to stop acting like the relationship is the same as when you were a child; you both need to stop conflating “love” and “getting your way.”The next time you go down this road with her, think about how she might feel when her daughter treats her like a disappointing employee, and see if you can’t break the cycle.
Dear Sars,
I have quite a weird situation. Six years ago, I broke up with a long-term boyfriend. I’m happily over that break-up now, and I’m guessing the ex is too — but our mutual friends, not so much.
We were the first serious couple in our group of friends, back when we were both 18. The breakup was pretty unpleasant; Ex had some big problems he’d kept concealed from me (compulsive lying and piles of debt racked up in my name). Yeah, not someone I want back. Eventually he grew up and got some therapy, though, and now he’s much less of a dick. We’re never going to be friends (something he’s now finally accepted), but we can make polite small talk at parties fine.
These days, I have a great job in a great city and a boyfriend I love to pieces. Life is sweet. I’m still in touch with most of those old university friends, and we try to meet up any time we’re in each other’s part of the country. Most of them are Ex’s friends, too, which is cool with me; they don’t know why we broke up, but they know we did.
Or so you’d think. A few months ago, when I was catching up with “Mary” and mentioned something aboutmoving closer to my boyfriend, she blinked and said “Is this a new boyfriend since [Ex]?” I laughed it off and pointed out that there’ve been a few boyfriends since Ex, it having been several years now, but, um, weird.
If it was just Mary I’d let it go — I hardly ever see her and we were never that close anyway. But, it’s not just Mary. Last year, I stopped to say hi to Ex at a friend’s birthday party, and half an hour later one friend drunkenly tapped me on the shoulder to say he’d seen us talking and he was so happy about it he’d phoned another friend to share the good news. Um…okay?
Usually the mutual friends don’t mention Ex around me at all, but any time he comes up in conversation, they tend to act as though the relationship ended last week: “So [Ex] came up to visit and — oh my God, sorry, I didn’t think!”, that sort of thing. When Ex and his girlfriend decided to get married, two friends broke it to me like it was a bombshell: “I have something really difficult to tell you, but I didn’t want you to find out accidentally!” Sars, they were literally cringing as they told me — and then I had to tell them about four times that I wasn’t upset before they believed me.
Recently, I missed a chance to meet up with half a dozen friends who were visiting my city for a few days; it turns out that they had a discussion about it and decided to not tell me they were here, since part of the reason they were visiting was to go to Ex’s stag night, and it would have been really awkward if we met for coffee and they had to tell me that. It wouldn’t have been, actually, and I don’t have any problem with Ex’s friends wanting to celebrate with him before his wedding — but I’m a bit put out that I missed them because they didn’t think I could handle an Ex-related reason for their visit.
I’ve told them multiple times that there’s no need to walk on eggshells round me. I wish Ex well and hope he’s got his life together, but I’m long over the breakup. I’ve never flipped out at a mention of Ex; I’ve never even got upset. But here I am six years later, still surrounded by eggshells.
Sars, what’s going on here? And how do I get through to my friends that while I really do appreciate the thought, all this tiptoeing around me has gone beyond “unnecessary” and into “frankly kind of insulting”?
Who’s Carrying A Torch Here Anyway?
Dear Torch,
I had this happen with a few friends after a long-ago breakup…I mean, the split is close to ten years ago now, and some of them just stopped making the sympathetic “yeesh” face at the mention of his name, like, last year.Guys: he’s married with a kid, and we’re friendly, and it was an ice age ago.Enough.
Why they do that, I don’t know, honestly.I think it’s a kind of conversational…security blanket, I guess, for lack of a better term — that this is what they know how to talk about with you, and they have trouble letting go of it.Habit, in other words.I suspect that in some cases it’s also related to the obsession some married couples have with setting up their friends, just some vicarious…something there, which is totally well-meaning but unfortunately assumes that single = unhappy.
Getting them to stop is a variation on one of our favorite Vine ditties, “Okay Then, Dude (Let’s Change The Subject).”Repeated protests that you don’t give a shit may read as you protesting too much; what they remember isn’t that you rolled your eyes at the beginning, it’s that the conversation about Ex went on for ten minutes, if you see what I’m saying.So, don’t let it.”Glad to hear Ex is doing well.Hey, that reminds me of this other topic.”Accept the information gracefully, and depart the subject ASAP.People don’t tend to continue behaviors that don’t get a response; pointing out that I really didn’t care that much didn’t work, so I just quit pointing anything out at all.
As far as the stag party, stuff like that isn’t cool, and you should let them know that — leave Ex out of it, even if he’s cited by them as the reason, and say that you can make your own decisions and you’re pissed that they didn’t call you.
But if you stop caring that they care, they will stop caring, after a while.And even if they don’t, you…don’t care that they care, so it’s fine either way.
Tags: boys (and girls) friendships the fam
Dear Cry,
Please hear this clearly: Your mother is not your unpaid child care provider. You honestly expect her to travel 2,000 mile to take care you your son?! Really? Have you ever thought of a nanny? Really. I am ashamed for you. And, you are having yet another child despite being able to care for the one you have now? Get real lady.
ps Your problem is not all that complex, you are just acting like a pouting toddler. it’s not a good look on a grown woman.
@Cry: From what you have mentioned in your letter, your problem is not figuring out how to forgive your mother. Your problem is figuring out how to get your mother to forgive you.
To choose just one sequence from the letter, reread the part where you don’t “feel like” hearing about your mother’s new relationship, so you mock her mercilessly, to the point where she stays up and writes you a letter explaining how much you have hurt her. Instead of thinking, “Wow, I really hurt my mother,” you scream at her about how much you hate her. (You seem to think this will make sense, but to me, it makes none. You were clearly in the wrong in the first place, and then you piled on with additional haranguing when she dared to object.) You demand that she leave. Then you change your mind and tell her to stay, and she does, and she forgives you, telling you that your screaming at her about how much you hate her is natural and she understands, at which point you decide she’s being dismissive and she’s STILL wrong? In spite of having done absolutely nothing even remotely objectionable in this entire story?
This is your mother. You only have one. She has loved you, supported you, given you gifts, tried to help you…but she’s a human being. She has her own feelings. You’re clearly causing her a lot of pain. My advice? Apologize unconditionally. Not “I’m sorry that we are both wrong.” Just “Mom, I am sorry for all the things I’ve done that have hurt your feelings.” Start over. She obviously adores you; she will forgive you.
One more thing: Please put down the huffing about how nothing is as important as your baby. A company is not a baby, but a baby is not a company either. Your mother is not being literal. Being a parent is not something other people are obligated to recognize as vastly more important than whatever is going on in their own lives, and the small number of parents who behave as if it is make themselves no friends.
@bex:
This sounded to me like Cry had a specific situation (i.e. 16-hour/day, multi-day conference that she and her husband had to attend), and turned to her mother for help with child care, which her mother agreed to provide.
Nothing in her letter led me to believe that she can’t generally take care of her child, or that her situation demands a nanny–a person who is an actual domestic employee, not just someone you call when you are facing down a crazy week of work.
A close friend of mine went through a similar situation to Torch – for years after we graduated high school, everyone either told her how much they wished she and hs boyfriend would have stayed together (“You were so cute!”) or else when his name came up everyone would act like my friend was going to start crying or something.
The breakup was a good thing – both the two of them and all in the close circle of friends agreed, not to mention that a few years later the guy ended up coming out, so had they stayed together it would have been really quite painful later on.
But people from our hometown Could. Not. Let. It. Go. for YEARS. Especially once word got out that the guy was gay – my friend got calls from all over the country on that one, asking if she was OK. It was at least three years later and she was deliriously happy with new/still current bf, but no one wanted to talk about how happy she was with the current bf, everyone wanted to rehash a relationship that’s been over for … nine years now? It’s funny what people hang on to and what they won’t let go of sometimes.
Agree with everything Sars said – but had to add that this was the part of your letter that made my mouth drop open:
I don’t feel like talking about how their souls touch…so I ask her what kind of car he’ll buy her, where they can vacation together, etc. I really don’t mean it as she takes it…
Seriously? You all but call your mother a golddigger and you “don’t mean it as she takes it?” Gee…passive/agressive much?
With regard to the online dating question…
I never dated in HS or anything and was basically sort of sheltered (for lack of a better word) and sort of never was able to be myself around my family. Then, when I moved out of my parent’s house (at 20) I decided I was going to be myself for once in my life. And, I started looking at online dating sites and it was like, I was finally able to be myself and not care what others thought so much. Because, I didn’t know these people and they didn’t know me and I could tell them the honest truth, and if they didn’t like, I’d never hear from them again, but who cared? But if they did like what they heard… well, we’ve been together for 10 years now. And I’m still myself around him… though I do still have a problem being myself around my family.
@Never: well, Sars is completely right. Stop drinking the Haterade and stop worrying about your love life- you will never enjoy whatever love life you will someday have as much as you could if you start working toward some self-love right now. Or at least some self-respect, and non hatred. You aren’t faulty for taking extra time on a degree, you aren’t faulty for not having dated, and you aren’t faulty for being a weeaboo. Just try to find a balance in all the things in your life that makes you happy, and try pushing one comfort zone at a time and see where it gets you in a year.
@Cry: Baaawww some more, seriously. You owe your mom an apology for your crappy behavior and attitude, regardless of her own poor choices in your relationship. You need to let the other people in your life have some screen time, too, and in the meantime worry less about the talking part of your relationship with your mom and more about the doing part.
@Torch: yeah… sometimes people get too worked up. The more you play it down out loud, rather than actually playing it down through subject changes/doing other things/finding a new focal point for the conversation, the more people are going to talk, not talk, or pussyfoot. I’ve gone through a semi-similar thing lately with my breakup (which is current, not old, but isn’t really an Event, either) and I’ve found that the less I focus on it in passing, the less other people tend to.
@Dissed:
Your letter doesn’t make it especially clear *why* you want to start dating. Are you lonely, are you ready to get in the game, do you see hot, dateable singles everywhere you go, or are you simply surrounded by people who treat you like a freak for having no relationship experience?
If it’s the last one, I feel your pain–I’ve been on the receiving end of that kind of peer pressure, and that was at a much younger age. It’s deceptively powerful, and I can imagine the effect magnified by several more years of (their) inappropriate expectations.
But, all that said? You are ready to start dating when YOU genuinely want to start dating. If you don’t reach that stage until you’re 25, then just be single until you’re 25, and don’t apologize to anyone.
Also, ditto Sars’s advice about low self-esteem. I’m doing online dating now, and if I see a user who puts himself down in his profile, I pretty much say to myself, “Well, if you say so, then I’ll just move along,” and find someone who can describe himself more positively.
Finally, what does home-schooling have to do with it?
I agree with Linda. I also hope your tone in the letter is due to hormonal changes, because the sense of entitlement is so huge I am frankly surprised it took your mother that long to decide to be done talking to you.
She’s incapable of giving you help? You have some nerve.
This woman flew 2000 miles just to take care of your son, endured your dumping on her at the end of the day because (I quote) “I’m tired, sad, missing my son, and overworked”, she made one feeble attempt at standing up for herself so you don’t treat her like a doormat (or a punching bag, actually), and she got yelled at for it.
How can you forgive and let go? From where I stand you have no right to be mad at your mother and forgive anything to her. If there is someone who needs to work to be forgiven, it is you. Nothing you described your mom as doing is (from where I stand) more than just mildly annoying, whereas your behavior? I would find it appalling to witness.
It would be worth your while to stop acting like a surly teenager if you want to patch your relationship up with your mother.
Yeah, gotta second the call for Cry to stop acting like the baby should be everyone’s first priority. I suspect your mom was trying to get you to see that other people in your life have big events and priorities in which they would like you to show an interest. My daughter’s importance in my life doesn’t trump my best friend’s love of and success in her job or my sister’s new creative project, and it’s to you to make a point of respecting and taking an interest in the people in your life without bringing it back around to Your Special Snowflake.
@Cry: I’ve spent plenty a way-too-long day at conferences (neither pregnant nor with small children, however) and I totally get the not-wanting-to-hear-it (applied to everything, typically), but you were needlessly cruel to your mom and then you felt wronged and told her so with “I hate you”s when she pointed that out? You owe her a massive apology just for that.
I also think that you have done both her and yourself a disservice by reacting this way to the new boyfriend, because now they’re getting married and you haven’t met him, seen how he treats her, seen if he is what he says he is and when you do, not only will it be too late in the marriage sense, it’ll be much too late because there’s no way now she’d listen to your opinion about him after you behaved that way.
Additionally, I think you’re out-of-line being offended by her comparison of your sister’s business to your son. (I hope) you wouldn’t be offended if she called the business your sister’s baby. She’s just trying to make it personal. I’d imagine that your sister is both financially and emotionally invested in her business, which is certainly where the analogy comes from in the first place. Your mom isn’t trying to belittle your motherhood and you shouldn’t assume that your child (or children in general) should be more important to other people than whatever they have going on.
@Linda: what you said about a baby not being a company either is well put. The fact is, we all have our own lives; even people who do similar things with those lives have differing expectations regarding whatever we define as accomplishments. Even two people with two kids doing similar things at the same time will focus on different aspects of what otherwise might seem like identical experiences.
Cry’s mom saying that “such-and-such is so-and-so’s Oliver” is her way of pointing out that standards, expectations, enthusiasms and accomplishments vary between us all; where Oliver is the focus and pinnacle for Cry right now, her mom’s “overly emotional” life is her priority; the sister’s company is hers. They can’t all make Oliver their personal center – and Cry would probably chafe if they did.
The point is, it has less to do with Oliver than depicting things in terms which obviously dominate Cry’s attention (and that’s NOT a judgment on those terms, nor a cheapening of them). CryMom knows what matters to Cry, and is using that acknowledged priority to draw a parallel to what might matter to others, outside it. She’s trying to create a bridge. Cry: consider crossing it.
This may be my favorite line ever:
“Being a parent is not something other people are obligated to recognize as vastly more important than whatever is going on in their own lives, and the small number of parents who behave as if it is make themselves no friends.”
Thank you, so very much for saying it!
Cry, I have a similar relationship with my mom. She wasn’t a single mom, but she always did things for me, gave me a lot of things – albeit with lots of strings attached – and we were always pretty close. But. She was also an incredibly emotionally volatile, somewhat controlling person).
Actually, she isn’t talking to me at all right now (beyond a couple of grunts on the phone to appease my dad when I call home), and hasn’t for two years due to… a situation that could be a Vine story in and of itself. Suffice to say that I understand to some degree where you’re coming from. I know what it’s like to be in a relationship with a mom who knows how to press every single one of your buttons, just as you know how to trigger all of hers, and neither of you can stop doing that (or allowing each other to do that) no matter how you try.
Still, I have to say that Sars’ advice is good. While the two of you are still talking, it’s best if you can try and bridge that gap. Be supportive of your mom on her wedding day, despite the fact that you haven’t met the groom yet. It obviously means a lot to her, so the least you can do is grit your teeth and be as supportive as you can. No, she may not always make the best choices, but some women are Just That Way. Ridiculing her only makes her feel worse about herself. Meanwhile, apologize for blowing up at her the last time she was over. Maybe open up a dialogue with “when you… I feel…” statements to see if there’s a way to morph your relationship into something that’s more suited to what your roles are now.
I can tell you right now that having a mother that’s cut out of your life and who has cut out of you out of hers completely is a really, really sucky place to be. It’s two years later, and while I don’t miss all the fighting and the constant pressure and attempted emotional manipulation from her to do everything her way, I do miss having my mom around. Don’t let it get to that point.
Hugs!
Cry,
I think people are being too hard on you. It seems as though you do understand that you are treating your mother badly even if you do not understand why.
I also have to say that this whole situation has Unresolved Childhood Issues written all over it. You are obviously angry at your mother, and it does not appear as though your anger is justified based upon her current behavior. I can’t help but wonder if it might be more justified based upon past behavior. You describe your mother’s care for you as a child in positive terms, but she seems a little chaotic and prone to exercise poor judgment based upon your description of her behavior now. I have to question whether or not some of that chaos was also present when you were growing up.
Maybe a little therapy would help clarify the issues.
Cry,
To quote from your letter, “I come home early from the conference that day, and explode. Scream ‘I hate you,’ over and over again like the 13-year-old me self never did, ask her to leave.” Long before I got to that point, I was thinking to myself, “This is a thirty-five-year-old who is still relating to her mother as if she were an adolescent.” Deep down, we usually know the ugly truths about ourselves, and I think that sentence shows that you do, too. For whatever reason, you’re reenacting your adolescence. This is your chance to grow up in your relationship with your mother, and start allowing her to share all of herself with you, instead of only the money-giving and free-childcare-giving parts. The number of times you pointed out in the letter that you’re an adult looks like another indication that you know full well that you are acting like a child.
You do not bear all of the blame, because your mother has been letting you get away with this behavior for more than two decades beyond its shelf date, but you’re an adult, for chrissakes. Your mother has been asking, in an inept way, for a change in your relationship, and it’s in your power to grow up and make the change.
Family is all about including, not excluding, the way you seem to want to exclude any part of your mother’s life that isn’t about gratifying your immediate needs. The way I see it, you have a few years to fix this, before you are the mother whose children become more and more remote, because you have systematically excluded any part of their lives that don’t meet up to your exacting needs.
Alyson: I think the home-schooling reference was a nod to the fact that Dissed considers him/herself socially awkward or inept – as in, “Not only am I ‘socially crippled’ because of these personality traits, but I also missed out on the usual middle/high school social interaction learning curve, so I don’t even have that much experience or exposure to the concept.”
I just wanted to say I think Benji hit the nail on the head regarding Cry. I have a terribly fraught relationship with my mother (although I do *most* of my bitching and moaning about her out of her earshot…I do my best) and I, too, revert to an angry sixteen year old around her, and usually it has very, very little to do with the actual situation at hand and far more to do with a lifetime of smothering emotional dependency that I am just DONE with. My irritation level is permanently set on 99% at this point, so it takes very little to send me over the edge into HAAAAAAAAAAAATE. Although that usually manifests as nothing more than low-level bitchiness until I’m safely out of earshot, because I recognize that it’s largely unfair.
I don’t have much good advice, having obvious need of some myself, but I think it really would help to try to figure out/recognize what the actual underlying issue is, and try to deal with that as a first step. Because everyone is right–none of the surface complaints listed here are nearly enough to justify your reactions. This is deep-seated, as family problems usually are. Good luck!
I dunno. It’s really hard for me to take that first letter seriously. I mean…homeschooling? Chris Hansen? Weeaboo? And then the actual question is “online dating, yes or no”? Sars, are you sure this wasn’t just some weird attempt at trolling?
@Linda’s ‘Your mother is not being literal. Being a parent is not something other people are obligated to recognize as vastly more important than whatever is going on in their own lives, and the small number of parents who behave as if it is make themselves no friends.’
Very nicely put. And I’m guessing since her mother *was* a mother, she likely knows that it’s not the exact same thing, but may very well be trying to *kindly* explain that other people’s stuff is just as important to them as Cry’s kid is to her.
Quote: As far as the stag party, stuff like that isn’t cool, and you should let them know that — leave Ex out of it, even if he’s cited by them as the reason, and say that you can make your own decisions and you’re pissed that they didn’t call you.
I’m going to have to disagree, or at least qualify. That one is tough, and if most of their time in her city will be taken up with the revelry, then, yeah, I can see them coming together and saying “well, do we call and tell her we’re here but can’t hang, or do we leave it?” She’s assuming that they had time and intentionally didn’t call, and is mad about the missed time, when that time may not have been there in the first place.
@bex, I’m going to chime in – there was plenty wrong with that letter, but “mom comes to help with baby” is not one of those.
When I was first with my partner 20 years ago, I noticed that his mother and her mother interacted like they were still a teenager with an overly controlling mother. His grandma would push his mother’s buttons, and his mother would react as if she were a rebellious adolescent.
At first, it was sort of amusing in a really warped way, but then I realized something tragic. My partner’s mother had never fully made the separation from child to adult. She hadn’t figured out how to navigate that with her own mother, and as a result she had no idea how to navigate it with her child.
Please, for the sake of Oliver and your next child, get some help. You need to learn how to finish the process of learning to relate to your mother as an adult. You are stuck in the adolescent “trying to separate stage”. You have tried to get past it, and you feel stuck. A little outside help may be what you need to finish that business.
I should say, this is not just about you. Both you and your mother are stuck in this place. However, the only person whose actions you can control is you. After 20 years of trying to resolve it, I really do think it’s time to find a compassionate therapist who can help you finish the process. It can be extremely difficult to do this sort of thing when you have such old patterns established in your relationship with your mother. A good therapist can help you navigate this bit of emotional turbulence and see you safe to the other side.
It won’t change who your mother is, but it will allow you to relate to her as an adult relating to another adult. Until you can do that, even when you feel horribly stressed, you will still find yourself blowing up with the “I hate yous” you never said when you were 13.
Do it for your kids, do it for your mother (whom you obviously love in spite of everything), and do it for youself. You don’t need to be in this kind of pain.
@Cry: Wow. You need to get over whatever happened in the past (seconding the therapy rec). Because seriously? You sound like a snotty teenager who needs a time-out until that attitude improves.
Get things straight with you and your mom before history starts repeating in nasty little ways with your own kids.
@Alyson:
“Finally, what does home-schooling have to do with it?”
I’m in a somewhat similar situation to LW, and…a lot. From grades 8-12, I went to cyberschool (like homeschooling, except you have standard teachers who you just communicate with via computer).
While it was going on, I was in seventh heaven – finally, I could just concentrate on getting my assignments done instead of spending countless hours feeling like the class weirdo and trying to socialize despite it.
Then I graduated, and belatedly realized that the real world hadn’t gone away; it was still out there, and seven years later I really have no better idea of how to relate to people than I did when I was fifteen.
Dissed, I see nothing wrong with online dating, but just be mindful you’re not using it as a crutch. Do other things. Pick an interest and join a club, or take a class – anything that gets you out of the house and gives you a chance to interact with people in a relatively low-pressure environment.
(And no, I’m not taking my own advice, as I’m trapped deep in the suburbs with no access to a working car. But I wish I could.)
Cry–
It sounds like you are in a bad place with your mom. I’d feel pretty peeved if my mom couldn’t bother to rearrange her social plans for your wedding. And forced “emotional talks” that regularly end in crying jags would not make me feel eager to talk. Then again, screaming in rage at her and being, as you put it, “a real jerk” about her boyfriend aren’t useful either. I agree with the general feeling that your relationship with her is stuck in adolescence, but it sounds as if both of you are contributing to the situation.
Unfortunately, the geographic distance between you makes it difficult to have small-scale casual visits where you might be able to reconnect on a less intense level. You sound very unhappy, and say that you want to avoid the knee-jerk anger that you keep feeling and avoid repeating all of this with your own children. Have you considered talking to a pastor, therapist, etc.? You may find it helpful to talk to a trained listener with no personal stake in the situation. That kind of person might be able to help you find the patterns in her behavior and your reactions (and vice versa). You don’t say how your mother gets on with your sister or what happened to your father, but it may be that the problem is not just you and your mom but a larger, more complicated, family drama.
@ Benji: I don’t entirely disagree with you. I also think that maybe Cry’s behavior is tied in to things that happened in the past, I just didn’t find it that healthy that she is focusing on how *she* can forgive her mother, without necessarily seeming to acknowledge that she also needs to seek forgiveness for how *she* has been treating said mother.
It sounds very egocentric, and that’s a bad place to be with one small child and another on the way (most children are egocentric, so effectively I can see her exploding in similar ways with her own children when neither wants the other to get their way… Not a good recipe for parenthood). Maybe therapy can actually open her up to the idea that people’s feelings are as important to them as hers are to her, and that other people’s feelings and choices should matter to her (as opposed to the “how is this affecting ME?” attitude that her letter suggests). So yeah, seeing a therapist is not at all a bad idea.
@Linda: thanks for this great sentiment: “Please put down the huffing about how nothing is as important as your baby. A company is not a baby, but a baby is not a company either. Your mother is not being literal. Being a parent is not something other people are obligated to recognize as vastly more important than whatever is going on in their own lives, and the small number of parents who behave as if it is make themselves no friends.”
And THANK YOU for the recognition that only a small number of parents think this way. I completely know my kids and job as a parent aren’t the most important thing to anyone but me and my husband, but I feel I get tarred with the same brush as someone like Cry just for being a parent at all, like there is a presumption of annoying just because I spawned. Thanks for recognizing that we’re not ALL like that.
For Never Been Dissed:
Have you been assessed for something like adult ADHD and so on? The other issues you mention are stuff that should be addressed, because there’s something going wrong that shouldn’t be, based on what you say.
To Torch:
Shall we call this the “Jen&Brad” syndrome or something? Apparently to your mutual friends, your relationship with your ex had been mythologized as some epic, storybook coupling among them. It’s almost like they’re the ones who haven’t gotten over it. “Why?!? If they can’t make it, what chance do the rest of us have?”
Also contributing to this must be that your ex may have taken more time to get over you than you seem to have gotten over him. (E.g., he “finally accepted” that you guys couldn’t be friends.) So he perhaps may have spent some time crying on the shoulders of your mutual friends, leading them to dwell on the post-mortem, while you moved on and got yourself a life.
I guess they’re well-meaning. But I think some of what they’re doing is bordering on being overly theatrical, just for drama’s sake. I mean, geez, you chat with Ex at a party, and they phone a friend because they’re so happy about the good news? That would get really annoying for me.
So no neat solutions here, except: tune them out. If it makes them uncomfortable to go to his stag party and visit you during the same trip, then … I don’t know. *shrug* I say let them maintain the illusion of some big dramatic turmoil – clearly, they enjoy it – while you enjoy your happy love and life.
Cry,
I had a tortously fraught relationship with my mother for pretty much my entire life. I could probably write a novel about it, but essentially she was not there for me at all when I was a child (mostly because she was mentally incapable of it for a time) which forced me to be the adult in the relationship, both for my own sake and because my little sister needed the stability. When she was able to be involved in my life again, she expected to pick up that mantle of motherhood again, which to her meant imposing her will upon me so that I would avoid the mistakes she had made, and therefore, be happy. I, however, was not having it, and dug right in and resisted her olive branches with every weapon in my arsenal.
It took ten years of sniping and emotional manipulation for us to move past that time. I was in therapy off and on for years. She disowned me twice. I was at the point where I believed I would never be able to have any kind of functional relationship with her, and the only thing that kept me from excising her from my life completely was my sister, because I knew it would put her in the middle of an untenable situation. I finally realized that the only way our relationship would change was if I just let go of it all; if I just released the hurt, the anger, the profound disappointment … all of it. And when I finally disciplined myself to be able to do that, I realized that I wasn’t angry about her not being there for me when I was barely old enough to take care of myself; it wasn’t her fault, not really. What I was angry about was that she wouldn’t acknowledge how bad things had been, and how much she had just checked out on us. And once I got to that point, I realized that I didn’t even need an apology for that, because probably deep down she did know, and she was sorry, but for her to admit it out loud would be to give a voice to her weakness and her own pain.
It’s been almost 3 years since I made this decision, and I finally have a great relationship with my mother. It has been work, but when I let go of the resentment, suddenly it was a lot easier for her to meet me halfway. And when she finally apologized to me last year, and admitted she finally had realized how hard her breakdown was for me, it was all the sweeter because I didn’t need to hear it to feel vindication.
Whatever has happened between you and your mother will continue to go on until one of you changed the dynamic of the relationship. I am recalcitrant and competitive, and backing down without “winning” was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but the gift I got has been infinitely worth it. Look into yourself and see if there is any way you can do that with your mother. Sometimes wiping the slate clean seems impossible, but it’s the only way you can move forward.
I wholeheartedly wish you the best.
@Cry: Everyone has said pretty much everything, so I will just add this: I kept on waiting for something horrible in your letter. Like, “she told me all aboutt the new guy she was dating and it turned out it was my high school boyfriend.” Or “she showed up with new boyfriend to watch my kid after I said I didn’t want him there, and then left in a huff, leaving me without my carefully-planned for childcare.” Or, “she used to beat the crap out of me.”
I’m not saying this to belittle what you’ve got going on with your mom–god knows we’ve all been there. All I’m saying is, nothing you’ve listed is something unable to forgive or come back from. Despite the shadiness, she did come to your wedding (…I can’t help feeling there’s more to that story. And WTF is Stampin’ Up?). Everything else is the kind of stuff moms and daughters fight about, just usually during the teenage years. Talk to her, seek therapy if you want to, but please don’t feel like it’s all so terrible that you’ll never recover.
I was so ready to pile on Cry because I felt she is so wrong in the way she has treated her Mother. Then I read Kate’s compassionate reply and thought better of it. Kate, people like you make me (an atheist) believe that angels walk among us.
Cry, I wish you the best, too.
Never-
-short answer-
Online chat is marginal human contact: you only get to know what other people want you to, so “online dating” can be total fiction for the other person. Network on line if it helps, but meet boys in real life before you date them.
-long answer-
I was seriously socially stunted without the excuse of homeschooling, and only extroverted around people who I already knew. Also didn’t date in high school at all, which means I was astoundingly bad at it in college–dropout bad. But I got a job, found things to do that I liked, joined clubs, & eventually figured out who I was. After that the whole dating and graduating thing got a lot easier.
Practice talking to people. And I do mean practice ahead in private, then having conversations in person. They need to have a beginning and end, include topics you won’t have to teach, and not overshare private details. These can be nerdy conversations with another nerd from school or short, weather/tabloid conversations in the grocery line. The point is to detach your self-worth from social interactions and to get more comfortable doing the social thing that looks so easy for everyone else.
In general, you have to meet people to talk to them, and it’s easier to talk to people who are interested in the same stuff as you. Think about the stuff you are interested in, find out what like-minded people do near you, and go do it. Then talk to people once you’re there. It’s a good way to make friends, and some might be boys (maybe even cute ones).
No matter what you do, stay in control of yourself and your surroundings for safety’s sake.
@Cry – I was kind of surprised at how harsh some of the responses were. In reading your letter, I got the impression that you and your mother both have a hard time recognizing boundaries. Your mom gets into inappopriate relationships and wants to giggle and dish over them with you, you want her to be your mom, not a silly teenaged sister. But, they your reactions are inappropriate too – you get angry with her, without really getting down to the reasons that you’re angry (maybe she behaved like a teenager when you were a child and teenager and you needed her to behave like a mom?).
I was actually impressed that you wouldn’t let her bring a strange man (who she had known for how long, like 3 weeks?) with her when she came to take care of your baby. Assuming you did it to protect your child, that’s a good instinct.
For the sake of your children, please, please get some help. Your mom didn’t teach you how adults behave and if you don’t learn you’re going to have inappropriate boundaries with your own kids.
@Torch – I almost wonder if your ex made up a bunch of lies about your breakup. Like maybe he told everyone that you fell apart at losing him, or got stalky, or something. After all, he is/was a compulsive liar. I dated a guy in college and later found out that he told people that I threw furniture at him (hello – I didn’t). If your mutual friends didn’t know he was a compulsive liar then they wouldn’t have any reason to not believe whatever he might have said in the aftermath of the breakup – especially if he didn’t want the breakup and was angry with you.
In re Cry: I think SorchaRei nails the issue. Cry, I know it felt hurtful and dismissive when your mother said that your hurt and anger were due the separation process. Given your description of your mother, it even seems possible that she said this in a dismissive way. But, she isn’t wrong.
Your story reminds me of my best friend’s relationship with her mom. Single mom with an intensely emotional kid, kid has severe enough emotional difficulties in high school that mom devotes all her time and energy to looking after daughter’s well-being. When it came time to grow up and begin separating, my friend’s mom handled it very poorly. (“My boyfriend says it’s time for us to separate. I’m moving to Hawaii. Talk to you in six months. Don’t call me with any of your emotional problems. Bye!!) Ten years later, they are still struggling because all they have is hurt feelings layered on top of 2 decades of intense emotional interdependence (possibly co-dependence).
I agree with the poster who suggested Cry has some recognition that her own behavior is out of control. At the same time, I think she isn’t quite sure what *exactly* is wrong, or what she should be doing differently. That’s where all the other posters come in. Getting her sense of entitlement under control is a good first step. So is therapy or some form of external support.
Asking for help is a great first step. Good luck, Cry!
I am totally with all the ‘tough love’ responses to Cry. And Linda’s comment was perfect.
Cry, you can’t have it all ways. If you want a proper, adult relationship with your mother then you have to behave like a proper adult. It may have just been a one-off thing, but your mother does not have an obligation to travel to you and mind your kid because you’re working late. To behave so horribly to her when she was helping you out was seriously ungrateful.
You’ve said yourself that she has bent over backwards to provide for you and look after you as you were growing up. It’s time for you to be an adult now and provide her with the same degree of emotional support that you expect from her.
And please stop using ‘I’m pregnant!’ and ‘I was missing my child!’ as an excuse. If the stress of having kids causes you to behave in this manner I would suggest that you stop after baby no. 2.
Wow. Thanks. Lots of slaps on the head (most necessary … actually, all except @Bex necessary) and a lot of tender compassion — thank you. I knew I was the one in the wrong, but long-term friends/my husband side with me, or see it my way, and just agree she’s a pain. Seeing it through your eyes, I do see I’m the pain — and that I need help. Obviously my relationship with her has been passable up to a year ago … when I had my first child … and the fear of being like her/recreating our relationship with my children has sent me clear over the edge into full-on insanity. Therapy is something I had considered, and something I clearly need. Thanks so much for those of you that took the time to be kind — and for any of you taking the time to pay attention to my self-absorption. Even before this was published I had reached out to my mom in casual ways (I remember you got me Thriller, I loved it … How was your wedding, how is the sale of the house going? … When will you be quitting your job? Sounds great! … etc.) and I will continue to do so. I agree that I need to get past whatever it is, and I agree that the problem is with me.
And, re: children. Sigh. Another well-placed ouch. I just wanted children for so long, and am so happy with Oliver + almost baby 2. And the last dog my mom got she gave away when she couldn’t potty train it, so the comparison smarted. But about my sister’s company — yeah, she has wanted it just as long, and probably worked harder at it, and that’s just me again being an ass, saying “my baby is more important than your ANYTHING.” Which, again: Not true.
they are still struggling because all they have is hurt feelings layered on top of 2 decades of intense emotional interdependence
This is the hardest part of moving into an adult relationship with your mom, is letting all the resentments from childhood go, as someone upthread said — it is so key, but it is SO hard. My mother loves us fiercely, always has, and was there for us in so many ways large and small, but she made mistakes, as all parents do, and I dragged around a little red wagon piled high with petty shit from the eighties for YEARS, and I mean it was SO PETTY, all of it, but eventually, I left it in the road, because…we can’t do the eighties over. Like, there won’t be a hearing, or whatever. Nobody’s going to “rule” that Ma was unnecessarily dismissive of that one boyfriend, or should have let me wear X outfit that one time; maybe they would, if there were a trial, but there won’t be, and I’m old enough to put myself in her shoes for five minutes now and then and try to see things from there.
Again: it’s tough, and going to therapy and just vomiting up all the crap your mother has ever pulled, no matter how silly-seeming, in front of a third party who can help you untangle why it still makes you so mad, while occasionally making sympathetic comments like “that must have really hurt your feelings; it’s okay to be sad about it” — it will really help. You can feel heard on the point, and then you can drop it, for your own sake. The wagon of angry takes up room and is never going to be used for anything good. Find a way to get rid of it.
I understand the responses to Cry seem harsh to some of you. My concern, and my personal reason for coming down pretty hard on her, was that if her mother did something in her childhood that justifies all this behavior on her part, she didn’t describe it. It doesn’t say anywhere that her mother wanted to giggle like a schoolgirl over her new relationship. It doesn’t say that her mother wanted her boyfriend to stay in Cry’s home when she came to visit, nor does it say that Cry’s reason for saying no was the protection of her child. It specifically says that her reason for saying no, essentially, was, “I didn’t care about what was going on with her; I wanted her visit to be about absolutely nothing except my needs.”
Yes, there are lots of ways that this treatment of her mom could be easier to understand, but they’re not in the letter. When you manage to make two different references to how much you don’t give a shit about hearing about your mother’s “soul,” I think you’ve obviously stopped hearing yourself and the way you talk about your mom.
I’m sure she doesn’t realize that she talks about her mother like that and probably doesn’t mean to. I don’t think she’s a bad person. I think she loves her mom. I think she wants to fix the situation with her mom. But if she doesn’t realize how she sounds when she talks about her mom to other people, she probably doesn’t realize how she’s treating her mom, and I personally believe that’s the first step. You can’t fix a relationship in which you need to make amends if your entire approach is that you need to be more forgiving of the other person’s shortcomings.
@e and Emma:
I figured that was what Dissed meant when she brought up home-schooling, but I didn’t like how she left us to assume. The letter is so long on self-dismissal and so short on information, it would be way too easy to read something in there that she didn’t intend.
Just as a bystander with nothing to add, I would like to say that I am impressed with everyone’s advice. Compassionate and practical.
It’s well worth observing, as a couple others have, that the *love* Cry and CryMom have for one another is definitely evident in her letter. She seems to admire and be very grateful for their relationship, even if it’s hard to cope with. As pretty much everyone has observed, seeing clearly and knowing how to cope are so tricky with our parental relationships (as parents or as the kids, both ways).
I must say that this discussion has made me extremely grateful for my impossible, troublesome, loving, maddening, and incredibly smart, selfish, generous, beautiful mom. I’m like dying to go home, call her, and get out for a fun day antiquing or laughing at ugly current clothing designs. Cry, if you read this and feel piled-on, remember we are ALL viewing you through our own lenses, and we all have issues.
(Also – to echo Jennifer – what *is* Stampin Up?)
@Pandy, I think you may be on to something with the Brad&Jen comment. People see those around them in their own conception, and change can be harder sometimes for an observer, with (over?)invested expectations, than for a participant, whose experience just can’t be known outside a given relationship.
@ CRY
1) Therapy for you, so this does not effect your child
2) I agree with so much of what Jennifer said.
The thing is, my mother has said those sort of non sequiturs to me. That thing about thinking over whether to come to my wedding? Yep. Gold digger? Yep. Over the years, I came to think I was crazy. Until someone else sees and hears the interaction in person, they don’t know how strange it is.
But you grew up in that environment, and wanted to scream ” I HATE YOU” over and over at 13. Head to the therapist. Now. You have a history and a ton of stuff to work through. And don’t expect to change your mother; work on changing to a healthier, less reactive person.
@ Cry –
I don’t think I’ve met a daughter yet who doesn’t have a complex relationship with her mother. I know mine was for years. My mother went through early menopause starting when I was 6, although back then not too many doctors knew what early menopause was, and my mother thought she was losing her mind. There were many times I would have agreed with her.
Fast forwarding many years later, we had a blow-out argument over something (I don’t remember what). The end result was that after thinking about it, I realized that while she WAS making me a bit crazy, she was right – I wasn’t really listening to her. I was expecting her to drop everything for me, without really listening to her when she needed me.
Moms are (under the right circumstances, I guess – not everyone has this, I know) basically your rock. They’re there for you many times, they will always care for you (mine still wants me to call when I get home late LOL), they are in many ways very supportive. But I think we forget, when we’re adults, that they have their lives and that didn’t end with our births.
It sounds like you’re also worn out from work, having a little one, being pregnant with another little one, etc. Maybe what you and your mom need is some time with just the two of you, taking the time to just sit and talk and LISTEN to each other. Start by listening to her first.
I wish you all the best!
@AngieFM: any person so stresses that a few long days at a conference stress them out to the point of a hissy fit (bc that is what it was) needs some help getting everything done. the outburst cry describes is not the result of a few bad days but a lot of stress that comes to a head when pushed a bit too far. a nanny/babysitter/something sounds like an excellent solution compared to making your mother fly 2,000 miles! this is an issue of independence (emotional and physical). cry is reliant on her mother at this late stage and it puts her in a tizzy tail spin when her mother has to say no. or chooses to say no. which puts a ton of strain on thier relationship. both cry and her mom exhibit no emotional resiliancy (ie the ability to not worry about what will or has happened, be in the presnt, and then get over things quickly after they have happened). this is the place to start.
@ Deanna: You are totally spot on… and this:
“without bringing it back around to Your Special Snowflake.”
made me LOL @ work, and I am stealing it. :)
Re: Cry
My first time commenting here, and it is because the situation echoes so closely the relationship I have with my mother. I cannot second/third/fifth enough how helpful therapy can be. I used to think going to therapy mean you were weak; after finally going, I realized it can actually take a great deal of strength to recognize there are some things you cannot resolve yourself, and ask for help on them.
I had to talk about lots of things, things that sounded very silly at times, but the end result was I was able to have some of my feelings validated. Additionally, I had someone wiser and more objective tell me that sometimes we just have to let things go. Sounds so simple, but when it finally hits you, it is a profound feeling. My mom and I had basically quit speaking. It became a contest almost, which one of us was going to give in first. In retrospect, an incredibly immature contest. She’s my only mom. She’s a guilt-tripper, she’s nosy, she won’t ever admit she’s made a mistake…but I love her to pieces. She has been there for me through all the hard times, in whatever way I needed her.
I’ve gone all wordy here, just to say – consider therapy. It can feel really good, although it will also feel exactly the opposite at times. And take the first step at repairing the relationship. You might want her to initiate, and I know that feeling, but just put that away and do it yourself. It might be a little awkward at first, as it has been for me, but it will work out. Good luck!
“I come home early from the conference that day, and explode. Scream “I hate you,” over and over again like the 13-year-old me self never did, ask her to leave. She stays, after I beg her to, and then says, “Oh, it’s natural for a daughter to hate her mother, you are just separating from me.” Which feels like a dismissal of all I actually was feeling — the rage that she would choose such a wildly inappropriate time to call me out on being so rude.”
You scream “I hate you” at your mama, after she’s been watching a kid she just met for the last 17 hours or so…after being up all night trying to write something that helps you understand her, and she sees a way to forgive you for that, and you shit all over it?
Be glad you’re not my kid, Cry. Be very glad. I pictured myself slapping your face. Hard.
(I’ve said before that TN is a lot nicer than I am.)
You are an adult, like it or not, and you have 1.5 kids, and you need to realize it’s not all about you any more, it NEVER will be all about you any more. Learn to deal with that. Really and truly, it never WAS all about you! Your mama had more in her life than just raising you, ya know. She had 16-hr conferences & other stuff to deal with too, yet “She paid (in full!) for my college, bought me a used car when I turned 16, made sure I had whatever clothes I needed, allowed me to turn vegetarian when I was 14 with barely a whimper, on and on” all while living a life of her own the best she could. We must be missing part of the story, the part where you have something to resent.
You have a notebook in your head, like Rainman’s Serious Injury List, all “Number 18, Charlie Babbit grabbed and hurt my neck.” Try to imagine your lovely little Oliver screaming that at you – “I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU” -would you find a way to forgive him like your mother did for you, or would you open another Serious Injury List notebook & write it all down so you can sulk & whine about him too?
Try to listen to your mom AS A PERSON, AS A FRIEND, not as the mother who was so awesome (as you describe) yet somehow failed you (or you wouldn’t be so resentful.) Listen without judging her every move…she is not you, she will make different choices than you would, and that’s okay. I’m sure that as a mother you’ve made mistakes. Maybe she did the best she could & it wasn’t good enough…but it was still the best she could do. Instead of judging her for falling short of your expectations, be grateful for all the effort she made in raising you. I’m sure it wasn’t easy.
Maybe you could start a “Wonderful Things” notebook in your head & keep track of the loving things she does instead of tallying up every tiny annoyance. I agree that a counsellor will help. Talk therapy is powerful as hell. Best of luck to the two of you.
Just one more note @Linda may have come across as a wee bit harsh, but she said so many helpful things, from the “wake up about the importance of your child” to (especially) who owes whom an apology. Spot on advice. And I have printed out all of the comments, and read them again and again, and will continue to do so … as I search for a good therapist in DC. So, no worries about piling on — someone had to stop me — thanks. And you are all right — my mom loves me like crazy, and I her, and … we’ll find our way back, somehow.
And about Torch, the Brad&Jen thing seemed exactly right — all these years later, Ms. Aniston can’t BREATHE without them looking to see how she’ll react about Mr. Pitt — but I think the advice of just changing the subject when your friends act odd/weird about the relationship will eventually get things on the right track again.
“all except @Bex necessary”
Ooh, you’re REALLY not gonna like me, then. Obviously you were overwhelmed – that still does not give you license to be abusive. Glad you’re reaching out to your mom in more gentle ways. It’s a great start. Good for you!
(Damn, now I have “Thriller” stuck in my head. Again. Guess I’d better get used to that for the next oh, year or so, huh?)