Philippa, I can only talk from my personal experience and the best thing I did was stop trying. I wasn't going to get approval no matter what I did, I would more often than not end up feeling bad, enough was never enough and I tried and tried and tried.
Thankyou nicolette. The details are different but I think we have similar situations in that the bottom line is that it just doesn't work between us and our mothers, and it's ok to acknowledge that. I don't want to live a phony life where I pretend to get along with her when I don't. She is happy with that, but it's not that way for me. I want honest relationships with people, even if that hurts at times to hear things I don't want to hear. I can't say anything honest to my mother because she prefers to live a lie...as I see it.
I would drive for 6 hours to see my mum and after an hour would make any excuse I could to turn around and drive all the way back home. I missed her but it just didn't work when I saw her.
Yes, this sounds very similar. It's just such a shame. I always wanted us to be good friends, but the reality is we probably never will be. It's just sad.
She told me that unless I had an hour to talk to her on the phone each time we spoke to not bother calling. I told her I would just prefer to ring her discuss the news and keep it happy and light conversation. I couldn't take the lectures anymore. She chose not to compromise; I chose not to call as, after talking to people on the phone all day, I couldn't stand another hour at night with an included lecture.
Making ultimatums like that is just unacceptable to me, and if my mother ever said that to me that would be it! I can fully understand why you would choose not to call. People who lecture don't realize how much they make people run the other way. I lived with a man who did this, and it was just so off putting...people who think they know it all.
I got to the point where I realized that the only way to release myself from the pain was to accept my mum for who she is. I had to respect she does not have the capacity to be who I want her be (it is not fair of me to make her change) and accept having contact with her always involved a cost - the price being my happiness.
Yes, I came to the same conclusion a while ago, but sometimes I forget and fall back into this emotional place of just needing her so much. I've done it all on my own without any help from her and no attempts to see me or be with me during my illness. She supported her friends through their hardships and just abandoned me through mine and even blamed ME for not supporting HER enough when her mother died, when I did all I could do. I was clinically depressed, and SHE'S MY mother, I'm not HER mother.
I found peace in letting go. If my mum really wants to contact me and come to a compromise she knows where I am and how to contact me. She doesn't, I accept that and I do it with love as being in a relationship with her, in the way it was, was destroying me.
My choice was to continue or to set it free. I chose to miss my mum as that is less painful than continuing the negative relationship.
I just wish she wouldn't say things like "can I have your number" when she never calls anyway? Why ask for my number when she never calls? Is it just to have it in her phone so she can let me knwo that even though she has my number she isn't going to call me. More and more I vacillate between wanting her to and getting pissed when she doesn't after months and months and then being happy that she isn't calling, so I can have some peace and only have people who actually support me in my sphere.
I can see where you are coming from. I miss her a lot, and some days I just cry out for her inside...and need her so much, but she's proven she isn't capable of being there for me when I need her, and if truth be told she isn't very good at getting her own needs met, so it's unrealistic for me to even expect her to meet my needs. I need to meet my own needs and parent myself, and I do the best I can, but sometimes I just want her to show me she gives a damn about me, instead of the silent treatment I grew up with, She has no idea how much it hurts me, and if I tried to tell her she would just say I was being ridiculous or get defensive.
I know its up to me to communicate with her in a way that she won't react defensively, so not to attack her...and I do my best, but it's so hard, it just seems better to just let her go. I know my brothers don't understand, and they judge me quite harshly for not calling her, or going to see her (my brother is spoiling her rotten right now and flew up to see her, but she treats them differently to how she treats me, and they've never understood that. It's just frustrating because I end up looking like the bad daughter, and copping lectures from my YOUNGER brothers when they are the biggest assholes who at times treated us all terribly, but project their bad behavior onto me.
I feel hurt. I want to call her, but I don't want to call her.
it's just nutty.
But thanks, it helped to hear from you and to vent a little.
