Is this being overly manipulative?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Last Saturday afternoon, my mother mentioned a family thing on Sunday morning that I had not known about. I already had other plans, so I politely bowed out. Saturday night and Sunday morning, she left me two voicemails with further details and phrasing that strongly suggested that she expected me to be there. However, my phone was in my bag, and I didn’t see the missed calls until the whole thing was moot. By that time, I was running around getting ready for things this week, and I just forgot to drop her a line to let her know I’d gotten the messages late.

Last night, she sent me the following email (spoilered to avoid WALL OF TEXT critting your eyes):

[spoiler]Many years ago, as I think you know, your dad and I went to see Jay Lastname (he was marriage counselor #3). After a few months, your dad stopped going but I continued going by myself – I found Jay’s advice very helpful.

There were a couple of specific things that happened the year you turned four that made me realize I had to divorce your dad. One of them was this: Your dad used to make a great deal of noise when he came home from work in the middle of the night. I explained to your dad over and over again that I really needed my sleep at night – Jack nursed every two hours for his first several months, and you were waking up early, and being a mom of two was exhausting. I further explained to your dad (over and over again) that I always slept with one ear open, as it were, in case something should happen and you or your brother should need me. Because I was sleeping so lightly, therefore, your dad’s very loud clomping footsteps and rattling of the doorknob in our room invariably startled me awake and it took forever for me to settle down and go back to sleep. Every time I explained all this, I then asked your dad to please try to step more softly and open the door more slowly and carefully when he came in late at night, which was pretty much every night.

So during one session – this was after your dad stopped going to Jay, but I continued – I was telling Jay about how your dad continued to make so much noise when he came in at night, even though I’d repeatedly asked him not to and had explained why it was important to me that he let me sleep. And Jay looked at me and said, “Jon’s not stupid. He understands exactly what you’re saying. And yet he chooses not to do this thing that is so important to you. What does that tell you?”

Fast forward to now. Ever since you got your first cell phone – so that’s, what, 7-8-9 years ago? – I have been explaining to you that it is important to me that you return my calls/reply to my texts, and why it’s important to me. And there are still times when you still don’t return my calls/reply to my texts. And I can almost hear Jay saying to me, “Megan’s not stupid. She understands exactly what you’re saying. And yet she chooses not to do this thing that is so important to you. What does that tell you?”

So, Meg – what does this tell me?

Still love you, even though I’m sad.[/spoiler]

Epic chain of emails ensued. Note that I am going to be seeing her this weekend anyway and that between the time of the unreturned messages and this email, I *did *respond to a different message from her. I’d like to get some outside perspective. Is Mom just being manipulative here, or was I really that out of line to not reply?

2

I think she’s reading the wrong thing into this. If you ALWAYS neglected her calls and texts, she might have a point. Since you don’t always ignore her, she’s wrong.

Another thing I would tell her (as a mom of four twenty-somethings) is that adult kids have their own lives and can’t be expected to drop everything for something Mom wants to do.

If there is a function going on which requires attendance by my kids I let them know as soon as possible. That way there is plenty of time for them to make plans.

Your mom was out of line expecting you to show up Sunday morning when she waited until the previous afternoon to tell you about it. I would not do that to my daughter unless it was a dire emergency. Somebody better be in the hospital.

3

What NinetyWt said:

  • Mom, if you want me to attend a family function, I better have a whole lot of advance notice, and I will (probably/possibly/maybe) attend if I am able.
  • Mom, my not being constantly tethered to my phone, and skipping messages that are already moot, is not the same thing as dad ruining your sleep for (months/years/decades/whatever) even though you asked him not to.
4

Well is leaving your phone in your bag a regular thing?
Do you ignore only your mom’s messages or is this how you check out to take time for yourself?

I think this is decidedly different from her example with your dad, and you need to explain to her that your phone isn’t always welded to your side.

5

While I don’t see what I normally think of as manipulation, it’s getting close. But mainly, she’s wrong on so many levels.

  1. You’re not her life partner. Expectations of behavior (and evaluation of behavior) for parent-child relationships are not the same as for spousal relationships.

  2. You told you couldn’t go, so the calls with info about the event should never have been made. (Actually, I would say those calls were manipulative, but not the main point of this episode.)

  3. The noise thing happened consistently, almost every night. I presume the call return happens occasionally.

  4. There’s an apples & oranges aspect to comparing the noise thing with the call return thing. In returning a call, there are several factors that don’t apply to the noise issue. The message may not appear to require a response, you may be waiting for further information/time to think/right time to reply before responding, your mother may have (impatiently?) called again and talked to you before you responded, you may be planning to see her the next day and respond in person, etc. When the noise is made, it’s made, then and there. But exactly when is a message “not returned?”

  5. She has essentially accused you of deliberately not returning the calls, not having even considered that there could be reasons for this that don’t involve you making a decision about it. This is something I hate. It’s like “shoot first, ask questions later” without so much as considering that there might be questions, much less asking them later, much much less asking them first like one might expect from a friend or loving relative.

I don’t know what it tells her (she’ll make that up for herself), but the incident as related tells me that she ignores what you say if it doesn’t suit her, doesn’t think very hard about making apt comparisons, assumes the worst (no benefit of the doubt), and jumps to conclusions.

Okay, that was a harsh critique of your Mom and I’m sure she’s not that bad. I do think she was way out of line on this one, though.

6

Holy CRAP!! Your mom was being insanely ridiculously ABHORRENTLY manipulative!

She effectively THREATENED TO DIVORCE YOU over a missed phone call!?! :eek: She implied that she was DOING YOU A FAVOR BY STILL BEING WILLING TO LOVE YOU in spite of unbelievably minor transgression! :eek::eek:

I’m absolutely appalled.

The bringing up of the divorce stuff was completly out of line and utterly irrelevant anyway. It provides a textbook example of what divorced parents are NOT supposed to do with regard to telling their kids details of the divorce and badmouthing the other parent.

Yes, you made a very minor mistake in not keeping up in checking your phone and not replying when you did get them, and I think it would have been okay for your mom to grouse at you a little bit. But sheesh, if this is the worst thing you do, she should be thanking her lucky stars.

It also goes back to the old saying of “a failure of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” She really couldn’t have expected you to come to the function with such short notice. Sounds like you would have tried to make it if you could, especially since she clearly wanted you to be there, so you were willing to meet her more than halfway. Again, she should thank her lucky stars that you try to accommodate her.

Her behavior is totally unacceptable.

Frankly, she sounds a lot like my friend’s mom, who we recently figured out probably has borderline personality disorder. She would pull exactly the same kind of crap, especially the dwelling on being a “victim” in the marriage and divorce and threating to basically disown her.

Whether our armchair diagnosis is correct or not doesn’t really matter. My friend did some research on how to deal with someone with BPD, and followed the advice on setting boundaries and refusing to let her mom suck her into “epic chains of emails” and so forth. Her mom is still trying the same old crap, but it’s gotten a LOT easier for my friend to deal with.

She would have handled that situation by simply apologizing for not checking her phone and not replying soon enough. I think that would have been a good course of action for you too.And on the occasions that her mom still manages to suck her into something, once she realizes what has happened, she’s willing to just stop engaging in the whole mess.

If you don’t mind some advice–Do the same as my friend. If you don’t, your whole adult life will suffer. My friend’s husband has been a saint in terms of putting up with this crap for 15+ years, and is so relieved at the improvements. A lesser man wouldn’t have been able to handle it. Which would have served the mom’s agenda anyway.

Note that I’m absolutely not criticizing you in this. I totally understand where you’re coming from. I’ve had plenty of experience with manipulative people in my life and it’s really hard to get out from under their thumbs.

(Not that it’s really relevant to the question at hand, but why the holy heck didn’t they just use separate bedrooms temporarily? Wait, stupid question. That wouldn’t have allowed her to play the victim card.)

7

Your mom divorced your dad because he made too much noise when he got home?

I don’t think you’re the one w/ a problem here.

8

SFG, you should pay special attention to **Green Bean’s **post. I mean, when a bad mother thinks it’s bad … :eek: !

:stuck_out_tongue:

9

I’ll give your mom one thing: You shouldn’t have “forgotten” to return her voice mails when you did finally listen to them. (“Sorry I didn’t return your calls sooner, Mom, but I just now got the messages. And I still wouldn’t have been able to make it Sunday. Hope you had a nice time. Love you. Bye.”)

Other than that, it sounds like she’s being a huge Drama Queen over this. She’s playing the victim card way out of proportion to the situation, and yes, it’s manipulative. Does she have a habit of sending you on guilt trips like this, or is this something new?

I’m sorry I don’t have any real advice for you, but I do hope you two can get past this incident sooner rather than later. These kinds of things only get worse if you don’t work them out.

10

Parents are weird. I’ve found that I have to be very, very direct with my mother almost to the point of harshness before she understands me sometimes. If I don’t beat her over the head with it she just won’t allow herself to see it from my point of view.

For instance, this year I am getting married and going on my honeymoon. I live in New York, the wedding is in Vegas, and the honeymoon is in Finland. I have two flights to take this year and they are already using up most of my vacation time at work. About 3 months ago my mom called and mentioned something that she wanted us to do as a family when I came to Texas for Thanksgiving this year and I just had to lay it out for her that we were already using up all of our vacation time and would not be making a third trip, especially since we will see the whole family in August for the wedding. I had to make it clear in no uncertain terms that the decision had already been made and no amount of begging or complaining or buying tickets for us as a “surprise” would change our minds. I guaranteee if I had just said, “I don’t think we can make it this year Mom” I would have been sent a dozen emails of flight schedules and discounts and then she would have called to tell me she bought us tickets to “come home” for the holiday.

She wants things to be her way and, for most of my life, things did go her way because she was the adult and had final say on everything and she is still dealing with losing that control. If I don’t make myself crystal clear she lets herself slide back into Dominant Mom Mode and starts trying to make decisions for me. But, then again, my family seems to be made up of assholes and rednecks so YMMV.

11

I answered “e”. The “this is why I divorced your dad” thing is several light-years out of line, but I honestly can’t tell whether your mom is being manipulative or not – “being manipulative” implies deliberate agency, and your mom might just be painfully clueless. It does happen.

While my parents have never laid a trip like this one on me (they wouldn’t want to, and they know guilt never works on me anyway) they do give me this whole (lovingly) sarcastic song-and-dance whenever I answer my cell when they call every weekend. “Oh! You answered on the first ring! Amazing!” etc., playfully hinting that I usually avoid them, which I don’t. They have apparently completely forgotten what it was like before cell phones – I’m usually busy on weekends, for crying out loud, and they used to have to leave a message asking me to call back, and it was no big deal. They and I both have only had cells for three or four years now!

No one I know keeps their cell glued to their hip – why is it now considered such a crime, so terribly rude, not to answer every damn call every damn time? And in an ideal world we’d all remember to check for messages whenever we pick up the phone again, but it’s just weird to imply that forgetting is always deliberate.

12

I don’t think it’s really manipulative, since her intent is extremely clear. But I do think it is out of line. I think it was clearly designed to make you feel bad in a way that merely chewing you out would not.

13

A “family thing” means what, exactly? A funeral? A big group lunch at Olive Garden with Aunt So-and-so? If it’s the latter - and something about your OP makes it sound like it was closer to that - then, yeah, momma needs to get over herself.

Whether or not your absence was noted … was your presence necessary? Required? (Using my example: a big group lunch will still go on whether or not you show up.)

Has she always been like this, in one form or another?

14

Passive aggressive female nonsense. Ignore.

15

Good lord.

I didn’t think it was possible, but I’ve finally identified a mother who’s MORE manipulative than mine!! Sadly for you, it’s yours.

That your mom thinks it’s appropriate to compare the behaviour of her adult daughter to her ex-husband as described makes me gag a little.

Has she always been like this? Is this menopausal wackyness or something?

FWIW, my mom is pretty manipulative. Now I just shut her down. EG, if she pulls some obnoxious stunt and I call her on it, if she pouts and says 'Oh - you think everything is my fault!! You always blame me!! etc" I say “Yep, 'cus you’re pretty well always to blame mom.”

I imagine that if I said that to a normal person, the reaction would be bad. Oddly, with my mom, it snaps her out of her whatever.

16

I wouldn’t even give her this much. If someone leaves me a voice mail just to guilt trip me into doing something I’ve already said I won’t do, I don’t really understand why I should waste my time calling them back. What’s the purpose? So I can be further harassed about it on my own dime? Forget that.
Oh, and I voted that she’s being manipulative. The email about her divorce seems to be implying (without just saying!) that she’ll cut you out of her life if you don’t return her obnoxious phone calls instantly, which I would call manipulative behavior.

17

I agree with NinetyWt and everyone else in this thread who agrees with what she said.
(except for the hassle she gave Green Bean, I know nothing about that)

18

My custom user title is “Bad Mother,” so she was just teasing me. Hence the toungey-stickey-outey smiley.

FWIW, I don’t consider myself a bad mother. It’s just a joke based on something hilarious that Diosa said in another thread.

19

Couldn’t your mother have just gotten a fan in the bedroom?

20

Wow. If my mother did something like that, I’d get a new one.