Dear Mum: I pit you

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Dear Mum

When we were growing up, we thought that Dad was Wrong. Apparently he got drunk every Friday (!) night and he was A Bad Person. Apparently I was bullied and my brother an outcast. Apparently there was no one else in the family that could save us.

All we can remember is you screaming. And thinking because you were screaming at Dad you were in pain. Because he did something wrong to you. He never did a thing. And we took your side, because as a child that’s instinctively what you do.

And he is still so in love with you, for over 37 years.

But:

Only now, I’m 31. And my beloved brother is 28. And guess what? We see things differently. If I tried to manipulate people at work, in my life, the way that you have manipulated us I would be out of a job.

Thank you for trying to Buy Us Off. All of the time. Yes I know we made decisions in our life that you don’t agree with but we never stopped being loving or happy. Apparently you think that money can control us. But guess what?

It can’t.

But also:

I love you. And I want you to continue to be a part of my life. We are not ungrateful at all to the education and wonderful house we lived in (that you seem to feel is the most important thing). But I can see your resenting looks everytime we are with Dad. And also, thank you, as I have the biggest news I’ve ever had in my life and the continuing “I’m sorry you’re unhappy.” Or “I don’t want you to do this – it will fail” OR “What if you don’t do this, but Dad and I will pay for $$$”

My dad is the most wonderful person I know. My brother is the smartest person I know. And I am ok. But please please please stop making everything about you.

You make me feel that it’s all or nothing, with you. Apparently the odds are thus: I’m either with you or I’m against you. And I can’t do this any more. It defeats me. And more than that it makes me resent the time I have with you.

I love you, I do. But please let me be grown up. Let me find my own way and be my own person. And please, stop withdrawing in silent hurt when I disagree with you. Because a disagreement is a part of life.

Thank you for listening.
Threnody.

2

Your situation sounds like that of a friend I’ve known since early grade school. Her father drank a lot, and for the longest time her mother tried to shield her from that; it was those two versus him, and wasn’t he awful. Then by her teen years or early 20s, it came out how maybe her dad wasn’t the awful monster - oh sure, he still drank, but her mother’s manipulativeness was revealed over time. She had been playing her daughter as a pawn against her husband to feed her own tendency to create drama, to be a “victim.” Turns out her dad was a pretty mellow drunk unless his wife stirred things up (and frankly, I half-suspect he drank as a combination of dealing with fighting in a war plus dealing with his wife!). My friend ended up taking care of her mother until she died early, results of diabetes and kidney failure. She felt a lot of relief when her mother was gone, both because of the stress of dealing with the care involved and the end of her poisonous behavior.

I’m sorry you’re dealing with that situation. My friend didn’t do much of anything regarding her mother’s behavior other than trying to keep the peace at home, but I’m not entirely sure what she could have done. I wish you better luck in dealing with your mother.

3

All families have ‘stories’ that are used to explain and justify the individual members’ behaviours. Mostly these stories have some basis in ‘truth’ but over the years, and despite the ageing and growth of the family members, the stories themselves stay static in time…or not static perhaps, but attain the status of wondrous mythology. It works to keep the families sane and united against the common foe you might say.

This is particularly true in the case of children who are witnesses to marital breakups. The ‘story’ that the custodial parent tells the kids about the reasons for the split might well have been true at the time, but 10 or 20 yrs down the track people do change, and the destructive dynamics that caused the breakdown in the firstplace might well have dissipated.

You see things differently now because you are grown up, and not dependent upon your mother to interpret the world for you. That is a Good Thing.

I would suggest that the reason your mum gets snarky when you challenge her mythology is that it means she has to reinvent her story, and that is a bloody hard thing for anybody to do, especially when she has lived by it for all these years. By all means rewrite your own, but I think it’s unrealistic and doomed to create trouble if you try to get her to re-evaluate her experiences in the light of your recent epiphanies.

IOW, love your dad, love your brother and love your mum, but try to let them have their own behaviours and ‘stories’ apart from yours.

  • I had this very same situation I must say. My mum and dad separated when I was just 12 months old, and I had no real contact with him (apart from two visits) until I was 18. In the meantime, I just heard all the ‘stories’ and built it into my own experience of What My Father Was Like. He was a horrid person who drank and beat up women and children, smashed houses to toothpicks and lived the life of a common criminal. When I did initiate contact after all those years, the awful ogre I had built up in my ‘story’ turned out to be a quite pathetic creature who went to work every day and came home to drink himself into oblivion every night, depressed about what a fuck-up his life had been, and how he missed seeing us grow up and become the wonderful adults we did.
4

Moving thread to MPSIMS.

5

Are you familiar with BPD?

Understanding where such a person is coming from can help you deal with them without going nuts. My wife’s mother is a sufferer, although we no longer have contact with her - at her request. (The tricks quit working and she felt she had lost the control she needed in the relationship. Though that is not exactly how she put it.)

6

Thank you all for your wonderful answers. It was cathartic to get it out. I really do love her, she just frustrates me so much. For a long long time, I thought it was me and that I was a bad person. But recent events have shown me that fault lies with us both.

She’s a wonderful lady, she just needs to let go a little.

7

Wow…looks like there is a trend, with the “supposedly Drunk and Abusive Father and the Manipulative Mother” dynamic…I say that because I, too, had a similar situation growing up. Fortunately, my Dad was strong enough to be able to go dry and essentially sacrifice himself for the sake of his family, and over the years, through much counseling and just the passage of time, most wounds have healed. Looking back, I saw in my Dad a lot of strength and I, too, think he may have been drinking to deal with my bipolar Mother.

My mother can still be manipulative, however; she will use guilt to try and make my brother forego plans to be with his wife’s family for a holiday, for example, or turn on the waterworks if she thinks that she isn’t #1 in my life or the lives of my siblings. But she’s not evil of course, any more than my Dad is a saint. Both are flawed yet beautiful, and so I can echo your sentiments, “I love you, but you need to let go and let us live our own lives.”