What is one to do with Mothers?

[Kansaseq]

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Ditto! Sad but true...

Yup! You don't know crazy until you've lived with it, and believe me, it's scary.

Vfem, it sounds like you know in your heart what you have to do, for yourself and your family. You are a good person and deserve much better than what you are currently being dealt. Be strong and true to yourself.

 

[vfem]

This is what I think, I do not want to cut her off... I am more likely to cut off my sister before my mother, and if I haven't done that my mom is safe for now. However, I have to cut things back to little or no involvement.

I can't take the way she makes me feel, its more about how crazy she makes me lately! I say and do horrible things! She hurts my feelings, but I'm tough, what I can't stand is that she pushes ME to say hurtful things. Its harder for me to forgive myself then it is for me to forgive others! And that is nearly impossible to live with.

 

[sianara]

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Been there, done that. I was partially disengaged from my family for 10 years. They live on the other side of the country so it wasn't that hard to just live my life and ignore obnoxious messages left on the answering. THEN we got rid of the answering machine

. Of course we all had cell phones by that time so they'd leave messages THERE!

Anyway, after so many years I realized they were what they were (namely crazy!) and were not going to change. I was not happy with how much anger I felt for them and how it was affecting my outlook on life which traditionally had been sunny. So I decided to very consciously go about changing my attitude for my sake and my children/husbands sake not the relatives sake.

Things are better now, I went for a visit a few months ago (after a 10 year absence - all the nieces/nephews/great nephews were growing up and I was missing it!) and had a wonderful time. That's not to say things are "normal" now cuz they aren't but I'm learning how to set boundaries as to what behavior I will accept, what I will engage in with them and what I will not. It's a long, hard haul but it's the only path I can follow.

I wish you the guidance to help you on your long, hard haul as well.

 

[cmjust0]

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My mom used to push me like that, too.. She'd push me to the point that I'd say something to put me just as deep in the wrong as she was, and then she's make it out like it was just BEYOND ALL COMPREHENSION that someone could talk to their own mother the way I had. She could say whatever she wanted to me, of course -- "I'm the parent; you're the child!" she'd say, to justify abuse -- but if I said much in retaliation, I was just a HORRIBLE PERSON..

That worked for a really long time, because being told you're just bad and/or stupid and/or whatever else they can think of tends to make one feel...a bit less than optimally confident, shall we say? We're trained to believe we're bad seeds, and when we do something that makes us feel awful, we're quick to come back with an apology -- mostly because we know what it feels like to be hurt, and hurt badly. We have so much experience with pain that we don't like to inflict it on ANYONE.

And, like good mothers do, as soon as we come back to apologize for saying something really nasty, they simply use that apology to justify their abuse.. Which means we're basically giving them permission to abuse us...

At some point, I'd had so much that I really just stopped feeling bad about returning fire. She could act hurt all she wanted, and I truly didn't care. The idea of her crying herself to sleep -- as if she ever TRULY did -- just didn't make me feel bad anymore...it just didn't bother me. Like, at all.

Looking back, that was the beginning of the end for me and her.. That was the point where the relationship began to develop cracks, if that tells you anything about what the relationship was ultimately based upon to begin with..

She also had this knack for something my dad (he divorced her when I was 2) called "hanging herself, just so somebody would come cut her down." See, if she realized that she was so deep in the wrong that she couldn't possibly drive the opposition to stoop so low, she'd break out the "I'm a terrible mother!" bit...or the "I just can't do anything right!" or -- if things were reeeeeeeally wicked bad -- the "Sometimes I just wanna blow my brains out!" bit..

And, of course, you'd have to come along and tell her it wasn't all bad...which, again, she took as some sort of an attempt at reconciliation...which, in her sick, twisted mind, meant she won. At the very least, it meant she didn't have to apologize.

That little trick stopped working too, eventually..

That's when things get really real.. For a while, she would just "hang herself" and I'd leave her hanging there, and that actually almost seemed to have had an impact on her. When she'd say stuff like "I guess I'm just a terrible mother" and I either wouldn't respond...or say "Sometimes"...it hit her hard. We *almost* had a few heart-to-hearts, but..

Well, suffice it to say hat only lasted so long. She eventually got tired of feeling like poop for the things she'd done to me, so she just decided that she wasn't going to be wrong anymore.

Ever.

About anything.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that pretty much did it for us. We're not longer compatible to be involved in one anothers' lives. So we're not.

So far, it's working out really well.

 

[justbugged]

First of all it is completely true that you can't reason with crazy.


That said I often contemplate what these women (mothers) must have been raised around in order to think that this reasoning, and behaviors is in anyway effective. Do they watch soap operas hoping to get clues about how real people talk to and treat one another? Did the women in their lives growing up talk to them, and behave like this? Or did they just do a few to many trips in the 60's,70's, and 80's? I know that sometimes all you can do is step back and let things go down the way that these adults allow them to.

It is our job as parents to model functional behavior for our children, the fact that most of the time you can do it, means that you don't have to be enabling self destructive behavior in the name of love. Enabling the behavior is not truly loving to the other person, it just keeps them acting crazy. When the fact is that crazy person is the enabler. Enablers often look like they are the sane ones, and yet they are responsible for continuing the truly crazy behavior. Without there being two people involved it is hard to be part of the crazy. It is okay to step back, and tell yourself that I'm done here. I can't fix it. It is humble to know that you can't fix it, and that you didn't break it.

 

[cmjust0]

It is our job as parents to model functional behavior for our children, the fact that most of the time you can do it, means that you don't have to be enabling self destructive behavior in the name of love. Enabling the behavior is not truly loving to the other person, it just keeps them acting crazy. When the fact is that crazy person is the enabler. Enablers often look like they are the sane ones, and yet they are responsible for continuing the truly crazy behavior.

Yeah...all that mess up there in the quote box? Offensive..

You've clearly never lived with crazy, or you wouldn't dare say that those around the crazies are the ones who "keep them acting crazy" or "are reponsible for continuing the truly crazy behavior." It's a bit like saying an abused spouse is really an instigator for not leaving, and that they're ultimately responsible for the abuse...or, at least in part.

THAT'S crazy..

Much like my own mom, the OP's mom was crazy before she ever came along and would/will be crazy long after the OP removes herself from the situation.. You seem to realize that yourself, and I sorta get what you're driving at...that it's OK to leave...but it's just not helpful at all to try and goad someone who's been abused into leaving by telling them that they're just as much at fault as the abuser simply because they're there.

Remember -- that's what the abuser says, too....and it usually leads to the abused making an apology the abuser doesn't deserve.

To the OP -- your mom was crazy before you came along, she's crazy now, and if you split, she'll keep right on being crazy. It's not you -- it's her. Trust me on this.

 

[vfem]

More or less, I know I have something to do with it. If I wasn't around she may be crazy in another manner toward someone else. (Namely my sister or my father)

She went as far as being SO mad at me last week that over the weekend, she finally took her truck back from my sister who took it for work several months ago and never gave it back (hence me driving her EVERYWHERE). She made my sister go out, and be responsible for buying her own car, on her own credit with her own money. Though my sister spent WAY too much, and see her having issues making payments on a car she can barely afford, it took me making my mother so mad and hateful toward me to do the right thing and stick up for herself to my sister?! Seriously?! I am being verbally abused for fighting with her for raising my sister's kids, letting my sister walk all over her financially, and then using me as a scape goat for her problems to get her to do the right thing?! OMG! She tells me to mind my own business because I tell her she needs to get her own control in her own household and stop complaining about the downfall because of her actions. She really knows how to make me feel worse. I could mind my own business, but then she seriously wouldn't get crap done in that house. I know she just wants to live in peace, but its a war zone over there... and they are shooting off guns in my direction as not to bomb themselves, but its all hot wired and bomb ready over there.

I'm going to scream!!!!! I can't believe I get abused for making suggestions... GOOD suggestions... and then after I have been SHAMED out of their house, they take my advice. WHERE IS THE SANITY IN THAT!

Ok... that was just a pointless vent. But it makes my case!

 

[cmjust0]

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No, no, no...you have NOTHING to do with it. This is her -- not you. You said so yourself -- if you weren't around, she'd just uncork the crazy on someone else.

That alone says everything that needs to be said about where the malfunction exists.

She went as far as being SO mad at me last week that over the weekend, she finally took her truck back from my sister who took it for work several months ago and never gave it back (hence me driving her EVERYWHERE). She made my sister go out, and be responsible for buying her own car, on her own credit with her own money. Though my sister spent WAY too much, and see her having issues making payments on a car she can barely afford, it took me making my mother so mad and hateful toward me to do the right thing and stick up for herself to my sister?! Seriously?! I am being verbally abused for fighting with her for raising my sister's kids, letting my sister walk all over her financially, and then using me as a scape goat for her problems to get her to do the right thing?! OMG! She tells me to mind my own business because I tell her she needs to get her own control in her own household and stop complaining about the downfall because of her actions. She really knows how to make me feel worse. I could mind my own business, but then she seriously wouldn't get crap done in that house. I know she just wants to live in peace, but its a war zone over there... and they are shooting off guns in my direction as not to bomb themselves, but its all hot wired and bomb ready over there.

I'm going to scream!!!!! I can't believe I get abused for making suggestions... GOOD suggestions... and then after I have been SHAMED out of their house, they take my advice. WHERE IS THE SANITY IN THAT!

Ok... that was just a pointless vent. But it makes my case!

If she wants to live in peace, it's up to HER to make that happen -- not you. Having said that, I say take your mom's advice and let her make all the bad decisions she wants to make.. She may not like her life the way it is, but people live their entire lives in that fashion every single day. It's not logical...it makes no sense...and to those of us who had to screw our heads on relatively straight at a young age in order to survive a lack of meaningful parentage -- and you know EXACTLY what I mean by that -- it's absolutely, positively MADDENING to watch people struggle their way through their lives when simple solutions are right under their noses.

You just gotta suck it up and say...whatever.

Let her live her life, no matter how ridiculous it may seem to you or how unhappy it makes her. She's just gonna have to figure it all out for herself.

And, yes, I know exactly what it's like to say that as a child in reference to a parent...should be the other way around, but it's not. You're trying to "raise" your mother, and she senses it, and she resents it.. Deep down, she knows you're smarter than her and she simply can't bear the thought of it.. She hates that you're smarter than her -- but you are. You had to be.

So....yes, you're smart, and yes, you could improve your mother's life if only she'd listen to you. Yes, it's frustrating to have her resist your suggestions..

But seriously...for your own good...you gotta stop trying to raise your mother. Clearly, it's not working for either of ya.

 

[Catstar68]

I think quite awhile back I informed cmjust0 she was my long lost sister. Now it appears our family is growing.
vfem - sick or not, it's a toxic situation. Your #1 priority is your family and yourself. She has a husband and a live-in daughter who should be a little grateful by doing something to help. It is unfair and unreasonable for you to take all this responsibility on yourself and only get grief and disrespect for it.
You must take care of yourself! I agree with your mother on one thing only - "Mind your own business!"

 

[Gold Griffin Chicken Mom]

When I got blessed out over the telephone for something I didn't do by my FIL, I turned to my mother (who was visiting for the holidays).

"Being a Good Wife is my number one job right now. I'm trying to be a Good Mother also. I think I'm doing a decent job of being a Good Daughter. If there isn't enough time in my day to be a Good Daughter-In-Law, well then TOO darn BAD!!!"

Vefm, I'd say you need to be busy with the jobs of Good Wife and Good Mother. When you got married, your number one priority became your husband. When you had a baby, the baby took the number one spot for a littlle while, but Husband should return to number one. (The best thing a mother can do for her children is love their father/her husband.) Good Daughter and Good Sister are NOT important at this point in your life.

Fwiw, later on my MIL said that FIL said something nasty about me. MIL defended me by saying "Well, she makes OUR son happy, so she's doing SOMEthing right!"

Sometimes they come around, but don't hold your breath. I watched the Mean MIL game with my mother and Granny. The best way to win this crazy game (in my opinion) is DON'T PLAY!