Suppose you have a 12/13/14 y/o daughter who has devastating cramps every month. Every. Month. Suppose we’re talking about always vomiting, sometimes fainting, feverish, pain so bad you can’t stand up, every month for three years. At some point, wouldn’t you stop saying “It’s just your body getting itself in shape” and take your daughter to some kind of medical professional? I mean, if you loved her?
I hear so many parents say they can’t bear to see their child in any kind of pain, not even a headache or a cut finger. Would you be able to stand there and watch your child dry-heaving in the school parking lot, knowing it’s for the third time that day, and that even her male teachers think this is not normal? If you did, would you say “You poor thing”? Or would you say “I’ll make an appointment for you; no one should have to live like this”? I mean, if you loved her?
I especially like the “Oh, get OVER it already, that was years ago, you hang onto a grudge like it was your last dollar. It was a long time ago, get over it!” Not so easy to just ‘get over it’. “It” has affected your whole life, has messed with your brain, has made you who you turned out to be. God knows, we spend our whole lives trying to ‘get over it’ and forgive and otherwise pretend atrocities never happened!
You bring up an excellent point, Thudlow. I think my mom is half-toxic/half-pragmatic and I am half-way-too-sensitive/half-awesome sauce. It makes for a poor mother/daughter combination. She’s made mention that she gets along better with my sister because my sister is much more pragmatic and no-nonsense than I.
Here’s some background: My mother arranged for my sister and her family and me and my family to visit her and my dad in Chicago a few weeks ago. Ostensibly, it was a family reunion because my dad has lung cancer – or maybe he doesn’t really, since he got the cancerous part removed – but either way, no one talked about it.
My mother did a bunch of stuff that I found not cool – she tried to feed my 7-month old baby a cookie and a piece of watermelon (with seeds, and she tried to feed it to her with a fork); she gave my baby a bath when she was self-admittedly drunk (“but I only used like 2 inches of water!”); she told me I was handling my finances horribly and listed a bunch of examples for which she did not have background information – she coulda just asked, you know?; she told me I was eating my way into a grave and that my daughter was going to be all messed up when it comes to a healthy diet (she extols the virtues of crash diets where she starves herself then binges; I, on the other hand, just lost 45 pounds of post-pregnancy weight thanks to diet and exercise, and I am STILL too fat for her). And when I tried to bring up these issues in an adult manner (saying things like “Mom, you just hurt my feelings when you said that”) I was blown off because I am “too sensitive.”
At my sister’s suggestion (kinda laughable, because I think my sister just wanted us to say mean things to each other), we had two phone calls – one, where I told her what she had done to make me upset and she couldn’t say anything and just had to listen to me; and a second call the next day, where she did the same for me. During my time, I really tried to tell her how and why she had hurt my feelings and explained what I hoped would change next time I visited; for her call, she railed off on me about my weight and finances.
I wish she could see that I have become a relatively happy, kind, caring person who loves my husband and child to no end. Hubby and I are happy - we don’t have a lot of money (it drives my mom crazy that we rent and haven’t bought a house yet) but we rarely fight. My parents are upper-middle class and struggling to stay there; throughout my childhood all they DID was fight about money; they’ve gone bankrupt twice because of my dad’s insane business ventures; and they hate each other with a passion – I know this because my mom is always calling me to tell me things like “I think you’re dad hired a whore to suck his dick, and I have the voicemail to prove it – here, listen!”.
Also sad is the fact that HER mom never liked her very much – my mom has told me as much, saying Grandma always preferred my mom’s 2 older brothers because they were handsome and athletic. And now my mom just bitches about HER mom, and I want to tell her “That’s EXACTLY what you’ve become, woman!”
My husband is disgusted by my family, who he finds unusually cruel (my dad kinda just sits there, but my sister can be brutal and vicious, both physically and emotionally – she was the popular one and is dangerously skinny). Lucky for me, my mother-in-law doles out all the hugs I could ever need. My husband’s family all live nearby, and so THEY are the ones baby Smaje will grow up with. Mean Grandma will be seen once a year or less.
I imagine a therapist could really help me figure out just how to say to my mom and sister: Stop it. Leave me alone. Be nice to me and my family, or we won’t play with you.
So… next stop, therapist. But thanks for letting me get this off my chest. I hate to say it’s hearkening to know there are others out there with similar problems, but somehow it is.
Aw, Rilchiam. I feel you, darling. I hope you’ve gotten treatment and that all is well now. But yeah, if my l’il monkey was in pain like that, I would take her to see a doctor. You poor thing!
My mom (a nurse, by the way) blew off my symptoms of appendicitis until my dad finally snuck out to take me to the hospital, where they promptly ripped out my appendix because it was about to burst. sigh
Let’s just all make a promise not to turn into our own mean moms…
Word.
I had hormonal migraines, so bad I’d be hallucinating in whatever class had the misfortune to come after PE. My mother accused me of making the pain up the second I saw blood. I toughed them (not knowing they were migraines) out for about 20 years, once I had them without the aura. They came back when I hit perimenopause. Took a doctor about an hour to diagnose the problem (and a couple of years to get the meds right).
Between that and dealing with cigarette smoke every time I visited, even for a brief time, I realized that if she loved me, it was a very odd sort of love.
Mothers is weird. I try to tell myself–and maybe this will help you–they don’t get practice beforehand and aren’t licensed.
I wonder if instead of complaining that she’s hurt your feelings, you could try another tactic instead? Since she doesn’t seem to care about how you feel when she says/does things, criticize what she’s doing. Tell her she’s wrong/misinformed/out of place? Because apparently using “I” language in saying what you perceive isn’t doing a bit of good!
Alternately, practice a lot of “thanks for sharing!”-type comments and learn to just soldier on in whatever you’re doing.
And never accept any sort of bad treatment from a family member that you’d reject from a stranger. My husband says he loves his family, but he doesn’t always like them!
My father never beat us and he put food on the table too, but he was a grade A jerk and a horrible father and husband.
Why? She doesn’t seem interested, or, frankly, capable. You can’t have a meaningful relationship with a brick wall. It’s a two-way street.
I’m saddened when people try to mentally shoehorn toxic family members into the roles they think they should play. We’d all love to have Ozzie Nelson for a father, but I never tried to pretend that I did, or try to force/cajole my father into being something that he was not. I simply avoided him for my own peace and mental well-being. And I was a happier person for it. And I’m not sad that he’s gone, and I have no regrets, except in the broader sense that it’s too bad he could not be a better person/husband/father to begin with, rather than wishing that I had done X or Y.
However, if you really feel you must continue to place yourself in this person’s presence, I agree with the advice to simply leave when her behavior is out of line. You most likely cannot get her to change, but you can remove yourself from the toxicity.
Same here – my mother’s mother was a psycho (most likely had borderline personality disorder) and should never have had children in the first place, but she had seven unwanted children (really, eight, but that baby was stillborn) and fucked each of them up in unique ways.
My mother’s not a robot, though, she’s the opposite – the poor victim who has suffered more than anybody in the room, regardless of the room. No lie – she has told concentration camp survivors that she understood their pain because she had an abusive mother. Extrapolate this to everyday situations and you can imagine what she was like. I was depressed when I was in high school and I had to hear over and over again how I had no reason to complain because I didn’t have her mother. I don’t remember if I ever said, “I didn’t have to – I had you!” out loud to her, but I certainly thought it.
I feel bad complaining about her now, because she has metastatic cancer and really is bearing it very well, but man, she was a trip to grow up with.
Honestly, I know she did the best she could and she was a good mother in many ways, but I learned from her that if I ever decide to have children, I need to fix my own shit before propagating. She has outright told me that she had me so that she wouldn’t be lonely anymore, and that is a frankly terrible reason to have children. By the time I was a teenager, I felt like I was her parent because she relied on me for emotional support instead of the other way around. It’s still like that; it’s never gotten better.
You know, smaje1, I am going to yell at you a little bit right now. What right do you have do subject your daughter to the same shit you went through? Isn’t it your job to protect her? To raise her better than you were raised?
Do it for her and not for you. Keep her out of that toxic environment.
If you had a so-called friend that, when told something they had said had hurt your feelings, laughed at you and called you sensitive, would you maintain that relationship? Would you let your daughter maintain such a relationship?
To me it is seriously fucked up that we are expected to maintain relationships with people I normally wouldn’t throw a quarter to, just because they are some nebulous term called “family”. I long decided “family” is who I make of it.
You are completely right. I will protect baby Smaje from such sadness.
I was just thinking of this last night. I know that right now I am hurt and angry, and so shall keep my distance from my mom for a good long while. But if and when we all see each other again (and I know we will, despite my complaints here), that woman will be forewarned: If you EVER hurt my child’s feelings, I will snatch her away in an instant. You DON’T get to do that to her.
Same goes for if she ever bad-mouths me or my husband in front of my baby.
And you’re right, it IS seriously fucked up that sometimes we have a desire to maintain familial relationships with not-nice people. I hate to just explain it away with “But it’s family…” but these people, despite their problems, have done good things for me. They’re not monsters. I think they just live in a different world than I do. I would never be friends with them in real life, nary a one of them. They wouldn’t be friends with me either. But I don’t want to prevent Baby Smaje and their grandparents from having a meaningful relationship (but I’ll keep my eyes on them at ALL times).
Lucky for me, they live across the country and we won’t have to see them often. All I have to do, really, is send my mom a bunch of baby videos every now and then, and she’ll get the impression that she’s watching my brilliant baby grow up.
Good girl. Take care of your baby. I’ve not had any desire to have a daughter but this: occasionally I think, maybe if I had one I could give her all the love I didn’t have.
My mom passed away when I was 25. She was my best friend in the world, but we were so close it was a matter of co-dependency. We played off each others anxieties and depression and binged together. Because I could tell her anything, I often bitched to her so much and she was so loyal to me we’d push others away. Sometimes her concern for my well-being was overwhelming. I’ve noticed I have to pull back my cloak of overprotectivity (yeah I made it up!) when it comes to my adult daughter too. Our relationship is much like me and my mom’s but I try really hard to strive for healthy distance, but I often FAIL, and we both find ourselves clinging.
I often wonder how our relationship would be now that I’m in my forties.
Rilchiam, even if I didn’t love my kid, and or it was someone else’s kid, I would pretty much demand medical attention for someone who was suffering that much misery. I am really sorry you went through three years of that crap.
My stepmonster once hid the Tylenol from me because she insisted I couldn’t possibly be having headaches every single day, so I must be “addicted.” Yes, this woman is truly that stunningly ignorant that she thinks one can become addicted to Tylenol. Rather than take me to the doctor to find out why I was having headaches (could’ve been a brain tumor or about a dozen other dreaded diseases), she just hid the Tylenol and made me suffer the headaches. I had a headache one day and went looking for it; when I asked her, she dropped this little nugget on me.
Until I took my babysitting money up to the Quick-E-Mart and bought my own goddamn Tylenol, which I kept half my stash in my locker at school and the other half in my purse. So when they searched my purse demanding to find contraband, at least I would still have a few in my locker.
Turns out, I have horrible allergies and those were sinus headaches. Would have been nice to have been evaluated by a doctor, who could have then treated the allergies and saved me years of nasal misery.
My mom is competitive, and has to win. Everything, always. I’ve lost weight. She’s decided to do that as well - and that’s great. But I’m not keen to play the what size are you now/how many pounds did you lose this week/what are you eating game, because she either gets upset if I’ve done ‘better’ (You’re doing it all wrong, it’s unhealthy and you’ll just gain it right back) or she gets smug and superior if she’s done better (Oh, I’m in a size X now, I can send you my old clothes, you’ll need them.) Three guesses where my food issues come from. This isn’t the only thing, though, it’s like this with anything I do.
Also, if she feels I’m unhappy with her, she tries to buy me. She’ll give me presents or money or something just to make me happy with her. That worked when I was a teenager. Now it just makes me go :rolleyes:. If we fight, I get a box in the mail now. It has stuff I may or may not want, but it’s there. This last time we had a tense discussion, it started with her asking me if I want shoes. I declined politely. Did I want a new wallet then? No, not really, thanks. A watch? No. My great great aunt’s watch? Well, yes I do want that but it can wait until I go back next year. Am I ok, do I need money? No, mom, I haven’t asked you for cash since I was in my early 20s and unemployed. You are retired. I make a good wage, and so does my husband. We’re fine, thanks.
The box arrived yesterday. Two watches, three tshirts (miles too big), a ring, some Poptarts (because I totally need to eat those), etc. And $100 cash. Ugh. I would send it back, but I’m not having the fight. Now I have to thank her politely.
I have disengaged with love, and this is easier because I live 7000+ miles away. I am always delighted to speak to her - if she calls me. I’m delighted to answer her e-mails. I enthusiatically “Like” her Facebook statuses. Meanwhile, I call on her birthday, Mother’s Day, my stepfather’s birthday, and Christmas. This works out to about quarterly. I just don’t talk about anything significant or important. I don’t share my weight or clothing size. This upsets her, but I just firmly repeat that I don’t want to share that information. I ignore her political jabs, her casual racism, he attempts to find out how much I earn or how much my house is worth.
I do love my mom but it’s easier this way.
Of course, I have a knot in my stomach every time I think about having to see her next year, but…
Maybe my crystal ball is suffering from thunderstorms, but I do think the “you’re a peer, so now I can be mean to you” is bollocks - because I do get the feeling that she was mean when you were a kid, too. She’s mean because she is, same as my mother is an insensitive, self-centered bitch because she is.
In my case, the setting of boundaries takes the form of refusing to accept it when she does things I have told her not to do. For example, the last time she was in my house, she managed to boil milk in the microwave, then was just bouncing up and down “oh oh ohmygod oh oh what’s it doing oh oh it’s boiling oh oh” while I shut it off, went to grab the oven mittens… “Mom, where are the mittens?” “oh?” “MY MITTENS. It’s MY kitchen! Where have you put MY mittens!” “oh, in there, but there is no reason for you to get so angry!” “Mom, this happens to be MY kitchen. If you wish, next time I am in yours, I shall rearrange it to my taste. Should I?” She sulked for hours, but so long as she’s not rearranging my house she can sulk to her heart’s content
In your case, I suggest telling her that you know she knows how to hurt you, after all it’s her who installed those buttons, and any time she pushes them you’ll leave. And then DO leave, because she won’t stop pushing the aforementioned buttons until it starts having negative consequences for her.
My mother is an angel. I feel bad for even thinking about posting to this thread because I can’t match any of the stories here.
The only BIG thing I’d have to say that I fault my mother for was not being emotionally connected to me or any of her other children as we were growing up. When she wasn’t physically present, which was often, she wasn’t “there” emotionally. It was almost like her world didn’t include her own children. I don’t remember her (or my father) ever talking to us kids like we had personalities, with valid opinions or insight. I don’t remember having normal conversations with her or my father until I got to graduate school.
She was playful, don’t get me wrong. As a kid, I’d get into bed with her as she watched TV, for instance, and she’d spontaneously yell “ROLLER DERBY!” and roll over me. That was fun. But I don’t ever remember her taking me, just me, out to lunch or shopping, or ever asking any questions about my life beyond the perfunctory “How was your day at school?” kind of thing. I was a quiet kid but there are ways to get a quiet kid to talk. She didn’t care to try.
If I had a problem or an ailment, she wouldn’t come to my rescue or ooze sympathy. She’d either mock me: “There’s nothing wrong with you, girl. Stop
‘clown-towning’!” or she’d belittle the problem, “What are you doing at school to make the kids call you ‘retarded’?” She was full of lectures and expositions about proper rules of conduct, but didn’t really teach from a gentle, motherly position. Instead of helping me to express my individuality in a way that was agreeable to the both of us, she’d force me to be as diametrically opposed to what I wanted to be as possible and then yell at me if I wasn’t overjoyed with the end product. It was like she had no interest in helping me grow up to be happy with who I was. She wanted me to be normal, just like she was when she was a kid. The person inside didn’t really matter but appearances do.
But she was never purposefully mean or abusive. I don’t think she’s quite aware of how her absence affected us, but I don’t think she intended to be as aloof and cool-hearted as she came across.
I know this isn’t what you are looking for, but next Tuesday, the 2nd, will be the one year anniversary of my mom passing away. I would give pretty much anything to sit and have a cup of coffee and knosh with my mom. Even it was for her to tell me every terrible rotten thing I have ever done or been. The only tears I would shed are tears of relief that she is there to have the conversation.
