My friend is beautiful, objectively speaking. She’s also smart, funny, respectful, educated, adventurous, and only occasionally petty. When I say she’s beautiful, I mean her interior as well as her exterior. But her mother has instilled in her an image of herself that bears no relationship to who she is.
Once, when she sprained her ankle, her mother told her it was because she was fat. She’s five feet, five inches and her weight is in the “normal” range, according to the CDC. She looks lovely, but she doesn’t see that.
At dinners, her mother will tell her, “don’t eat that; you should be on a diet.” Her mother told her sister, “I am ashamed to be seen with your sister because she’s so fat.”
In front of me once, her mother said, “I don’t know if we can trust her to take care of things. She’s not that smart.” Actually, she is. Quite smart.
It hurts me every time I hear things like that. I try to help my friend see herself as I see her, but her mother’s voice is so much louder than mine. All I can do, really, is go home and hug my mother, who loves me even when she thinks I’m wrong.
Yeah, I had a friend whose mom repeatedly said stuff like “We won’t waste money sending him to university, he just isn’t as smart as his sisters.”
And she said these things right in front of him.
Ouch.
:mad:
That’s horrible. What does she say when her mother says things like that? Does she try to defend herself or does she even care? Hopefully she doesn’t think her mother is speaking the truth.
On an intellectual level, she knows she’s great, and she knows her mother is crazy. But I think that, even with the most secure person, there’s always a private place where we are our own worst enemy, where we listen to the voices from our childhood and think that maybe they’re right.
We were going out to dinner, driving through a pretty pedestrian-congested area to get to a parking garage. We passed a woman who appeared to me to be about 250-300 pounds. (I noticed her because she was with her friends, and someone must have said something funny, because she threw her head back to laugh. She had beautiful long hair, and the sun was just going down, so the colors – the sky, the light, her hair – were amazing, and I remember thinking, "if I had hair like hers . . . ")
My friend said, “I hope I’m not that fat.” :eek:
I said, “I hope you know you’re not.”
She said, “Yeah . . . I guess so.”
She doesn’t defend herself; that apparently just makes it worse. I haven’t been friends with her very long; I’m only now being let into the family dynamic.
It breaks my heart because she is such a great person, and there’s nothing I can do.
One of my friends is like that. Her mom is always telling her how fat she is. This girl is a foot taller than I am, and she weighs less than would be considered normal for me. She knows she’s not fat, but she still worries about it a lot.
Yeah, my mom said that to me once when I was about 11 or 12. And some other things. We had a pretty rotten relationship when I was a teenager because I started being nasty right back to her. I can’t remember how many times I told her to go fuck herself. (which I’m ashamed of now)
Then I moved out. Things got better. She would occasionally overstep her bounds until I told her I’d have no contact with her unless she stopped being hateful. Now we have a pretty good relationship.
And by the way, I’ve always had a big weight problem. When I was a child, she was one of the many reasons why. Now I can’t blame it on her. But I still find comfort in my loyal friend, food.
Obviously it’s tricky and could easily backfire, but is there a possibility of reacting to the mother’s comments with the most shocked and stunned of expressions and a comment such as “What a terrible thing to say about your own daughter!”?
I just can’t imagine what could possibly motivate a parent to say something like that. Why would they want to? This would very possibly be my instinctual response to the situation.
Keep telling her what you think of her! From personal experience, this can leave trauma for years.
I once asked my mother, at 13, if I was pretty, while looking in the mirror. She came back with, “No, your nose is too big. You’ll never be pretty.”
At 17, 117 pounds, and slim as a whistle, she told me I was fat.
She constantly told me I didn’t know how to make myself look pretty, take care of personal hygiene, that I had no common sense, and wasn’t very bright anyway.
The sting of those words took a long time to leave. And I didn’t have any friends like you. Keep it up, please!
In reality, though, this is whole other can o’ worms. She wants to be with someone, wants to be married and have children. And she’s at an age where that’s appropriate, where she ought to be focusing some effort on that. But, oh, the family.
My parents have pretty much been happy with anyone their children have brought home (exceptions for (a) the man who supervised my mother cooking T-giving dinner and told her what she was doing wrong, and (b) the off-handed racist, who refused to retract his racist comment when called on it). But my friend’s parents are so negative that the list of qualities an acceptable man must have is as long as my arm. Or, to put it another way, there are maybe three men in the world who would be acceptable to the parentals.
Mangetout, unfortunately, for a host of reasons, I can’t call the mother out. To do so is disrespectful and rude, and I don’t want to create a burden on our friendship by having her mother hate me. What I’m supposed to do is agree with the mother, but do so in such a way that I’m actually disagreeing with her. It’s all very subtle, and I’m no good at it (yet), but I’m willing to make the effort.
Anaamika, you’re smart enough to know that your mother is full of it.
Oooo, I know where that is, too. The acceptable man is 2-5 years older than me, Punjabi, (born in Punjab), Hindu, can treat them with respect, has not lost his culture, makes a lot of money, and is ready to have lots of kids. :pukey smiley. Bleh! Except for the kids & the money bit, they want someone just like me! And I want to tell them: variety is the spice of life.
As for your second comment, thank you, but I wasn’t always smart enough.
My mother has said most of those things about me more times than I can remember.
I have challenged her about it and she insists it’s for my own good. “I’m only trying to help!”
It’s made me want to eat more, never use any make-up or wear the sort of clothes or hairstyles she thinks would look good on me. My Mum has said and done things to me that would send many people straight to a therapist.
You’d think she’s stop now that I’m in my forties, and it’s obvious I will never dress like a sloane ranger (preppie?) or be stick thin. When I point out that I think her approach has had the opposite effect she dismisses it completely, saying “it always has to be my fault, hasn’t it”.
The funny thing is that when I stayed at my mother-in-law’s, who tries to make you eat second and third helpings and no matter how much you’ve eaten she still says “but you’ve hardly eaten a thing!” it made me lose my appetite, and I lost quite a lot of weight. When it comes to her own daughters, though, she is not blameless.
You might want to show this person this thread. Take it from someone who had this put upon them enough as a young child that it has held on the rest of their life; knowing that others see you differently can make a big difference.
Your parents are down-right permissive compared to hers. Do they require that your prospective spouse’s parents still be married to each other? (NB: death is no excuse.)
My friend is fortunate; her sister understands, too, and they are good support for each other in dealing with the parentals. The only problem is that there’s two of them, so it’s very easy to fall into the “good sister, bad sister” thing: “thin sister, fat sister; smart sister, dumb sister,” etc. The sister married veerrrrry inappropriately (to a man who makes her laugh), which puts more pressure on my friend to marry the “right” man – only, she doesn’t want to marry the “right” man because she loves her sister and BIL and doesn’t want to make them “the bad children.”
This is all so complicated. I can be supportive, but ultimately, it’s up to her to reject the lies and see herself as she is.
I would get in Mom’s face and let her know just exactly how the cow ate the cabbage. Saying stuff like that about your kid is just sick and wrong, on so many different levels.
