This isn’t the first thread in the last couple of days where you spewed some anti-woman garbage - you’re also responsible for thisquestionable quote -
You say you’re not a misogynist; you just play one on the internet?
“Snakes with tits, the lot of 'em.”
Nice. Missed that gem.
I’m late to the party, but I’m something of a dissenter here. Your mom was letting you know that she has problems with you not responding to her communications. She sent you the email on Wednesday, 4 days after she began sending you ignored messages, which you still had not answered. She used a very unfortunate example in her email, though, and while I can see what she was getting at, to her child it would come off as very guilt-inducing. But as she said, this is not a new issue with you and her, and parents tend to get things blown out of proportion when it comes to their kids (for example, the Alec Baldwin cell phone incident with his kid). If my kid ignored my messages for 4 days, if even just to say “leave me alone; I already said I’m not going,” I’d be pissed off, too.
So, I say that while your mom may be an overly manipulative person, [yiddish accent] would it kill you to pick up the phone and answer her messages once in a while?[/yiddish accent]
How many hours do we have to count down till Happy Poster starts a, “Why won’t women date me? Why don’t they appreciate my devil may care charm? Women are so high maaaaintenance!” thread.
I guess if Happy (?) Poster does carry on this way we should just all quote FloatyGimpy’s excellent post (one of these things is not like the others) over and over.
Or maybe just pretend he’s not here.
My mom does something similar with me as well. She emailed me a lot when I was in grad school and take it rather personally if I didn’t reply within a few days. I don’t know the OP’s mom so I can only speak for my own, but I don’t see her being manipulative. I do think she has a tendency to blow things out of proportion. I tell her, “I’m sorry, I really was busy/distracted/tired/whatever,” and then she says, “You couldn’t even send me ONE LINE OF EMAIL?!?!?!??!?!!?” I love her and we get along perfectly for the most part, but sometimes she gets overly sensitive about things. She tends to get that way when it comes to family relationships, I think.
Mine did it, and constantly. He would wait until I had my car keys in one hand and the other on the doorknob, and 15 minutes to get to work, and start in with “I’m so lonely, and you don’t love me.” :rolleyes:
Totally manipulative. I’m projecting a bit here, but just reading that email made my blood pressure rise. My mom has a history of sending me passive aggressive emails as well and it drives me absolutely bugfuck. My mom once sent me an email that included gems like “the day you were born used to be the best day in my life…I don’t know what to think anymore…” and all this crap about how I’m a bad daughter because I don’t call her often enough. She once left me a note on fucking Facebook so that everyone I know could see it about how I’m a terrible daughter because…I don’t call her enough. (The first email resulted in my being so angry at her that I didn’t call her for a month and a half. My dad eventually called me and told me my mom was all broken up about it and I had to call her.) And no, she can’t call me herself. That’s actually not how it works. Calling is not done because someone has information to communicate, it’s an obligation to prove one’s love.
Holy shit, way to make this all about me. Anyway. Definitely manipulative. I may have my own maternal issues.
“And I’m sure the fact that I was annoyed that she even made them acted on some level to push me to not put such a big priority on replying after the fact.”
So my take from this you were telling her something really, ie that you’re giving her a bit of the silent treatment. The issue here really in my view wasnt that you didnt call her back immediately as such but that you werent talking to her after you’d had a disagreement over something, ie that the fight dragged on as a result.
The problem with doing things indirectly like this is that the message can be taken differently or far more extremely than you intended, ie ‘you dont love me any more’ rather than ‘Mom I love you but Im an adult now and sometimes Im going to say no and stick to that’.
Obviously she dropped a nuke and overreacted, but I would suggest that when there’s disagreements over issues like this that sooner is better than later, and if it is going to be later, to try and be clear about it rather than doing it ‘accidentally’.
Of course you may have tried all these things already, so just my go at an internet question where myriads of other possiblities exist etc.
Otara
Yeah, just ignore common sense because you don’t like it. :rolleyes:
Which of my 4 propositions do you disagree with? I’ll repeat them again:
- Men and Women are different.
- Men and Women think differently.
- Men and Women, due to thinking differently, may have certain patterns, or characteristics, of thought assigned to them on a probabilistic basis.
- As a shorthand, those modes of thought or behaviour may be described as “Male” or “Female”.
Heck, have you not noticed that almost all the other dopers bringing up family members behaving like this in this thread are talking about women? Must be a coincidence. Anyway, I’m off to give birth :rolleyes:
I bolded the 1st part because, if that’s a phrasing that’s been used before, I’ve never heard it, and it totally made my morning! 
Must try to work that into conversation at the soonest opportunity.
I bolded the 2nd part because it’s the straight-up truth. People from nice, loving, non-dysfunctional families may not realize just what it’s like to deal with people like this. Thanks for phrasing it so cleanly and simply.
I’m going to visit my Mom this weekend and thank her for not being a … well, I can’t use bad words around my Mom but I’ll thank her for not being manipulative anyway.
Mom flew out to see my brother last month and I told her to call me when she got there. Two weeks later she calls:
Mom: “I haven’t heard from you since I went on my trip.”
Me: “You said you would call me. When I didn’t hear form you I just assumed your plane had gone down.”
Mom: “That makes sense. Anyway, I survived.”
Those of us who have it easy don’t realise how well off we are.
I agree but would have had to add this:
I’m sorry for Dad’s loud clomping and door rattling when he came home from work all those years ago. I was only four years old at the time and can no longer take responsibility for your divorce.
No, but I’ve noticed that the only one being difficult in this thread is you. You are male are you not? Therefore all men are difficult.
I ain’t racist— I just don’t think we should let the Jews and the mud people share the country God bequeathed to the Aryan race!
That’s a grade “A” guilt trip pulled by the mom in the OP. It ought to be framed as an example for other guilt trips to aspire to.
I’m clearly not getting anywhere here, so I’m going to ignore this thread from now on. If you wish to debate this, start a thread in Great Debates.
Lol! Dude, you’re the one who started a debate.
You know, thinking about it, I notice that her mom managed to work the kids into the guilt trip about why she had to divorce her husband, too.
Yes, but it’s hijacking this thread, so it’s proper to withdraw.
I’m quite happy to continue the debate in another thread 
I voted the third option, the reason being that I had a not too dissimilar conversation with my mom a few weeks ago. I don’t think she’s necessarily being manipulative because she only knows her perspective, throw in her past experiences, an unwillingness to completely let her child be a grown up (as I think many parents probably have), and a little confirmation bias, and it can easily look like your behavior meant something that it didn’t. She’s placing different meanings and importance on certain events without the context of your perspective.
When I had a similar conversation with my mom, she expressed a concern that I was perhaps upset with her when, I’m not actually upset at all and when I don’t return calls it’s usually because I’m busy or forget, and it’s not just her that that happens to, but everyone I know. Fortunately, she understood the perspective after the conversation, and all was well.
In your case, I don’t think it’s manipulative because she just has a skewed perspective. She felt unloved when your father did that, and so when she sees something that looks like a similar disregard for something that’s important to her, she associates them, even though they’re not related. She’s naturally going to feel some amount of abandonment simply because an adult child simply can’t have as much time for their parents as they used to, while the parent wants to maintain or strengthen that relationship.