This would have been my short and to the point response:
Dear Mom;
No means no.
Love,
Megan.
I wouldn’t have responded at all. My mom shovels crazy shit at me all the time. I just pretend I don’t see it. If she wants to talk to me like a normal person, then I’ll respond to her, but when it comes to her manipulative or passive-aggressive little fits, it’s like I can’t even hear her. I mean, you ignore children when they throw tantrums, right? You don’t want to teach them that if they just cry and bitch enough they’ll get what they want, after all.
emphasis mine
Whew!!! This sounds like someone I know. Unreasonable expectations, but the only way to bring about peace is for you to apologize, even if you didn’t do anything wrong. This is very classic borderline personality disorder traits. Good luck. I doubt she will ever change. You will have to continue to figure out how to keep a relationship with her…if that’s what you want.
your mom is just trying to express a concern as honestly as she can. Obviously, the issue goes well beyond this one incident and she feels like you’ve been blowing her off habitually for years. It’s not “manipulative” for her to say that straight out.
Expressing frustration that her daughter didn’t return her calls is not manipulative.
Equating the daughter’s behavior to the reason she divorced her husband, is manipulative. It’s sole purpose is to make the daughter to feel like shit.
Another way is to stop participating in their drama. 
It looks to me like her mom’s “concern” is that she isn’t getting her way, and her daughter is not doing exactly what her mom thinks she should do.
Agreed that the issue is years old. I also agree that it would not have been manipulative for her to say that straight out, but she didn’t - she sent Shot From Guns an emotionally loaded email.
I agree with you…however with many BPD’s it’s their way or the highway. If you don’t acquiesce to their conditions, they will cut off contact with you…they’re just waiting on their apology, and they are very principled, typically live in very black and white worlds…no shades of grey. They will tell you that “you” created the drama by your behavior.
Seems manipulative. I don’t know–I can’t imagine my mom typing out a whole email. She’d just ask me in a few words. The idea of making a huge email out of it…what’s the point?
That sounds like an awful lot of trouble to try to keep a difficult person happy. I guess there may be a reason to make that kind of effort, but I’m more likely to go on living my life while they’re waiting on my apology.
I agree, which is why I said this in my first post:
Exactly, an inside joke. It’s funny because, to me, Green Bean is light-years away from being a bad mother.
“What does that tell you?”
I’m not sure the answer to Jay’s question is as self-evident as he seems to think. I think he means that the object person just doesn’t care about the subject person’s feelings. But you know that’s not true–you care about your mom’s feelings and you don’t mean to ignore her–in fact, within the routine of your life, you’re not ignoring her.
I wonder if she ever asked your dad why he was noisy coming home late after work, or why he didn’t seem to mind waking her up. Maybe he wasn’t as unreasonable as he seemed in her account.
Therapist Jay doesn’t sound like much of a therapist. Mom already indicated she was a light sleeper, and slept with one ear open. Hell any noise would have woken her up. Dad was set up to fail from the beginning…just like daughter will be when she doesn’t respond to the next phone message/text/e-mail.
A better question to the OP is:
Does your mom have a history of broken friendships or relationships with other family members?
I had to come back in here to say one thing: this thread has been making me re-visit (again) just how manipulative my own ma is.
If most of you - Dio and a few other dissenters notwithstanding - found the OP’s scenario to be so terribly manipulative and out of line, then … um … wow. This would have been Kiddie Lite for my own mother, so if this is bad, then what mine did is … oh … <lies down for a moment>
Thanks for the perspective, everyone.
And Dio?
One person’s “habitually blowing off” is another person’s “refusal to obey unreasonable demands.”
Well, I don’t want to say that what the OP’s mom did is TERRIBLE. It just seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill. She seems to be a bit drama infused.
Since people have been telling Mom for years that her manipulative behavior is not appreciated and is counterproductive to maintaining healthy relationships, and she keeps on doing it anyway, well…what does that tell you?
I answered the poll earlier today and then had to go run some errands. I missed a lot of the backstory. On first reading it did not seem very manipulative to me. It came across as someone who was hurt that they didn’t get a call back and was letting you know how the feelings were similar to a hurt she had earlier in life. I didn’t see it as that big a deal. The actual phone calls seemed worse to me, then the letter itself.
I came back to the thread to see what others thought. I see that I am in a minority opinion. Which is fine, I don’t mind disagreeing. That doesn’t change my mind. What does make me waver is the history that the OP has brought up. It seems like this is not the first time this lady has tried to use her emotions to manipulate situations. With that context it does seem to make this email a little heavier and less about her letting you know how she feels and more about trying to make you do things that you do not want to do. As a one off, I still don’t see the big deal. But, as a patten of behavior I can see it more clearly.
The man also had hearing damage. TherapistJay does not sound like a helpful dude. Asking “Why do you think he had so much trouble not waking you up?” would have been a much more productive, solution-finding question.
But OP’s mom is also co-opting therapy session bits out of context. That also really isn’t fair. TherapistJay never actually said anything about the OP. The OP’s mom just said, basically: “I can imagine his voice saying…” :rolleyes:
Your mom is a psycho bitch who needs a counselor to tell her what she thinks. She also may be menopausal, adding to her craziness.