Any moms of grown daughters with a strained relationship?

[Anonymous]

I would like to hear the mom's perspective on what went wrong, if anyone is in this situation.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry to hear this. My mom is my best friend and I hope you can get to a place to have a good relationship again.

[Anonymous]

Well, I have a sister, so I hear plenty of my moms perspective about what happened. Basically, she thinks my sisters husband and his family are all a bunch of manipulative liars, and they have sucked my sister in.
My perspective is that my sister has always had a pretty materialistic side to her personality, had to have certain clothes, certain boyfriends, the prettiest girls as her friends, the coolest sorority, but she is brilliant and funny and beautiful and we love her anyway.
Then she married a guy who is in big law (and also brilliant and funny), and that materialistic side just came out a little more. So, of course she gets all fussy about what we wear and how we act around her inlaws, and she picked out presents for my mom to give them. But my mom, who is a PhD and professor at a major Midwestern university, feels like my sister is treating her like she's some small town hick who doesn't know how to dress.
This has all led to a lot of explosive fights.

[Anonymous]

I'm the daughter, but I'll tell you as I understand it:

My mom thinks she met the love of her life and he's a wonderful guy and can't understand why my sister and I don't like him and why my dad isn't more amicable. We are all a big happy family, it's just that a few people (everyone except her and her boyfriend) are holding on to old resentments and need therapy. She thinks her affair "just happened" and wasn't really a choice that has consequences.

I think she cheated on my dad with a fucked-up loser and don't plan to ever treat her boyfriend as a family member.

She also thinks his siblings will fund his retirement, since he's an "artist". I think she will end up bankrolling him, but she's in denial about this as well.

This whole situation grates on me so much, it has made our whole relationship challenging. Not so much the affair as her continuing attempts to force us all into being the big happy family of her delusions.

[Anonymous]

OP, why do you ask?

Whatever is coming between you and your daughter, I hope you can resolve it. I would encourage you to consider that it may be something you really, really don't want to hear, and that's why you're having a hard time hearing it.

[Anonymous]

op: I'm 43. I've heard my mom's explanation of what has gone wrong with us. We speak on occasion, but there's a lot of tension. When she visits (1-3 times/year), my dcs take up all our time, so that helps with the tension. But maybe I can see things from her perspective better if I hear a story that's from one of her peers.

[Anonymous]

From a daughters point of view- I had an insanely bad childhood and got away as soon as I could. I've worked hard to get to where I am and I won't let someone who did me wrong, and who I don't respect, influence my life in the present.

[Anonymous]

If the mother has a lot of narcissistic traits, there's a good chance she'll insist to others that everything is fine, even though you're clearly distant with each other and she actually likes it that way because you're just not good enough, somehow. If you didn't turn out with the kind of looks, personality, lifestyle, career etc that she felt you were supposed to have, as an extension of her, then she's going to resent that. If you live your own life and she's controlling and doesn't see you as your own person, things will be strained.

[Anonymous]

I don't have a strained relationship with my mom. I live 3,000 miles away and I never call her, so we get along great!

[Anonymous]

When I was a kid, my mother ignored me. When I was a teenager she smothered me and made me feel like I was never good enough. I didn't actually have that terrible a relationship until around the time I was planning my wedding in my late 20's. I think there were a lot of unresolved feelings from my childhood, just never really feeling like she was capable of loving me unconditionally. I actually see some of these traits in my own parenting style and I work really hard to be a better parent. My mom and I get along now, but there are definitely times when our relationship is tense and I no longer even try to get emotional support from her.

[Anonymous]

I'm the same age as you, OP.

Our lives growing up were governed by a bipolar father with a major anger problem. There were almost daily blow ups, complete with name calling and being followed around to be yelled at more. Some property destruction, though only once or twice did he get physical. My mother spent all of her time trying to anticipate what would set my father off and avoid it, which included sniping at my brother and me to be perfectly behaved, loving, etc..

She was also depressed, and didn't much like interacting with us as tweens and teens. Nothing about that household felt "loving." I didn't even know what that meant until I saw other families interacting in my 20s.

But, from her perspective, she sacrificed everything she had to us, and we are just ungrateful. I do believe they both did their best, but their best was entirely destructive of a close relationship, which needed to be built when my brother and I were children.

As an adult, I feel sorry for her, but as her daughter, I just don't have those feelings of closeness, and we can't go back 4 decades and try again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the mother has a lot of narcissistic traits, there's a good chance she'll insist to others that everything is fine, even though you're clearly distant with each other and she actually likes it that way because you're just not good enough, somehow. If you didn't turn out with the kind of looks, personality, lifestyle, career etc that she felt you were supposed to have, as an extension of her, then she's going to resent that. If you live your own life and she's controlling and doesn't see you as your own person, things will be strained.

This.

My mother abuses pain meds & is a raging alcoholic, but she hides both from everyone. My step father enables her and wont discuss the situation. She sleeps on the weekends until 3 or 4pm then stays up drinking until 4am. She is a mean person but LOVES the people she works with and RAVES about them, but has ZERO interest in her own family.

As a child she never cared for me. Literally. My grandmother did. Never was involved in my school or in any activities, as in she did not sign me up for anything or put any effort into my childhood.

As a child I didn't KNOW how messed up she was, but as an adult I can put it all together and see what a terrible person she was/is. And how she has messed me up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the mother has a lot of narcissistic traits, there's a good chance she'll insist to others that everything is fine, even though you're clearly distant with each other and she actually likes it that way because you're just not good enough, somehow. If you didn't turn out with the kind of looks, personality, lifestyle, career etc that she felt you were supposed to have, as an extension of her, then she's going to resent that. If you live your own life and she's controlling and doesn't see you as your own person, things will be strained.

This.

My mother abuses pain meds & is a raging alcoholic, but she hides both from everyone. My step father enables her and wont discuss the situation. She sleeps on the weekends until 3 or 4pm then stays up drinking until 4am. She is a mean person but LOVES the people she works with and RAVES about them, but has ZERO interest in her own family.

As a child she never cared for me. Literally. My grandmother did. Never was involved in my school or in any activities, as in she did not sign me up for anything or put any effort into my childhood.

As a child I didn't KNOW how messed up she was, but as an adult I can put it all together and see what a terrible person she was/is. And how she has messed me up.

Do you think she did the best she could at the time, given the circumstances?

[Anonymous]

Grown daughter here with strained relationship with mom.

Growing up I didn't have any privacy. My mom would snoop in my stuff constantly, would stand outside my closed bedroom door listening when I was on the phone, and would also pick up the line and listen in on my conversations with my friends. Unfortunately, she wasn't that great at hiding all of this. When I would confront her about it she would deny everything and call me paranoid and act very hurt that I would accuse her of such things.

For a while, I did think I was maybe paranoid and would give her the benefit of the doubt. Then the cycle would continue. I pretty much shut her out and wouldn't open up to her since I felt I couldn't trust her. The more I shut her out, the more snooping and prying she would do. She would even call my friends to ask them things about me.

This dynamic has continued into adulthood. When she is at my house, she goes through my things and actually takes notes. I found a note with the name of a prescription I was taking inside her purse. I caught her writing something down when I came downstairs sooner than she had expected. I instantly had a sense that she had gone through my medication I had forgotten to put away before she arrived. I was right. She had written down the name of it to google when she got home. I felt so violated that I didn't even confront her. I feel like it's futile. She's going to keep doing what she does, and the only thing I can do is try to protect my privacy. I probably protect it too fiercely, but it's just an instinct by now.

She calls me and gets upset that I don't tell her about things going on in my life, and that I don't call her daily to chitchat like my friends do with their moms (she is friends with my friends' moms) and is jealous of their relationship. She thinks that I am just an uncaring daughter. If she finds out something from my friend's mom that my friend had told her mom, like if one of our other friends is pregnant or getting married or whatever, she throws it in my face that she had to find out from my friend's mom, not from me. She will say nasty, passive aggressive things to me when this happens. She doesn't understand that this perpetuates our strained relationship.

I was in therapy over this for a long time, and I had developed an anxiety disorder. My mom also suffers from undiagnosed (as far as I know) anxiety, and a lot of her behavior stems from that but she is unwilling to admit there is any problem with her behavior. I had to reframe a lot of my thoughts that were ingrained in me. I find that I am healthier when I keep my mom at arm's length.

I wish I had an open, easy relationship with my mom. But that ship has sailed. I feel sad about it, but try to be really careful not to repeat familiar patterns with my child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the mother has a lot of narcissistic traits, there's a good chance she'll insist to others that everything is fine, even though you're clearly distant with each other and she actually likes it that way because you're just not good enough, somehow. If you didn't turn out with the kind of looks, personality, lifestyle, career etc that she felt you were supposed to have, as an extension of her, then she's going to resent that. If you live your own life and she's controlling and doesn't see you as your own person, things will be strained.

This.

My mother abuses pain meds & is a raging alcoholic, but she hides both from everyone. My step father enables her and wont discuss the situation. She sleeps on the weekends until 3 or 4pm then stays up drinking until 4am. She is a mean person but LOVES the people she works with and RAVES about them, but has ZERO interest in her own family.

As a child she never cared for me. Literally. My grandmother did. Never was involved in my school or in any activities, as in she did not sign me up for anything or put any effort into my childhood.

As a child I didn't KNOW how messed up she was, but as an adult I can put it all together and see what a terrible person she was/is. And how she has messed me up.

Do you think she did the best she could at the time, given the circumstances?

Definitely not.