mother daughter relationships

I'm in the camp of not having a great relationship with my mother. I just find her draining with all her negative opinions about and towards me. Everything is bad, miserable, and boring. She finds fault in everything and everyone and has nothing positive to contribute.

I went from a high to a low in warp speed yesterday when I went to run an errand for her after picking up my new car. Against my better judgement I told her I got a new car (new to me, it's 3 years old) and she had absolutely nothing nice to say about it. I know it shouldn't matter what she thinks, but this was a big deal for me to be getting this car (I researched a lot and settled on a Jetta diesel) and it really just put everything into a tailspin. Is it really a boring looking car? do I look like I'm driving a old person car? There's nothing I can do, it's all done and dusted, so why should she go and dash my enthusiasm like that?

And there's no sense in talking to her, I've never been able to. Stuck between two cultures and two languages, I can't seem to have any meaningful conversations with her because of these limitations.

I will admit that she's gotten a lot worse after my dad died. He seems to have tempered her somewhat, but now that he's gone all she does is just dwell on how much she hates Canada. I do wish she'll go back to Japan permanently; when she was gone for 3 months I felt so free.

Thanks for listening to my rant.

(((Badger))). I know all too well how hard it is to have a mother who isn't the mother you need, want or deserve. The best advice I can give you is to accept that her negativity is all about her and has nothing to do with you. Try not to internalize it.

Congrats on your car! My husband works for a diesel engine manufacturer and he gives you a thumbs up for choosing that Jetta!

Around here, a Jetta is considered a cool car.
You can't let another person's opinion affect your thoughts and feelings about yourself. Realize that she may be acting exactly the way she was culturally conditioned to be. It's pretty hard to change that, unless you make a conscious deliberate effort to. Set your boundaries so you only interact with her when *you* want to. She's probably not going to change... I know it sounds mean, but your own mental health is at stake. If it wasn't your mother, I'd say don't see her. Of course, that is an option, but most people don't want to do that.
This isn't just my professional advice. It's personal, too. I've cut ties with all my negative relatives. Not my parents, who are blessedly level headed, but the ones who live near me and expect me to be exactly like them.
That's never going to happen!

I couldn't read and not post. I find sometimes that I have to "tune out" of my mother's negativity, but it's a hard effort and can leave me exhausted. I try to deflect attention to more neutral topics such as knitting or gardening. The only time I saw her lost for words was when I took her to a bike shop with me. She is fantastic with my daughter though, and our relationship is a lot better than it was a few years back.

I can't help thinking that your mum might feel a bit lost without your dad, but it's such a shame that she's damaging a real live relationship with you.

Sorry not to be more help. Enjoy your new car!

Badger-

I've ranted plenty about my various family members here - I understand, really I do! There are times I reserve for me - and won't let my mother intrude. Happy occasions, when I want to savor something. Sometimes I have to be really defensive about not letting her intrude.

Congrats on the car - I have a 2011 Sportwagen and love it! I'm early-mid 30's, and don't think it's an old person's car *at all* (and so what if it is, I LOVE it). Great on fuel, comfortable, fun, hauls bikes well. What's not to love?

Badger, is there anything that you would like to have from your mother that she can give easily to you at times?

I know, because my mother is quite difficult with an explosive temper and our relationship with mother is compounded with considerable difficulty because she doesn't speak/know much English and we have lost 80% of our Chinese language fluency. So she is genuinely isolated from her own children..by language. Her own negativity will most likely be amplified whenever my father dies (he has cancer now), her only translator/mediator with her own children.

She does tend to be negative but that has now been tempered a touch by the death of one of my sisters.

It has been a long long journey to appreciate mother. Some of my sisters who are now mothers themselves, do draw upon her experience when they need it: on parenting --the practical stuff, not the style of childrearing.

The best type of interactions between mother and us (her children) when for our family when we have some huge linguistic gaps, are some of the things that she makes for us, that confirms things she enjoys doing for us while also "helping" out her children....certain food dishes we ourselves haven't bothered to learn (we know and prepare other family "heirloom" dishes), making baby food from scratch for grandchildren and sewing clothing.

If we didn't have this to want/appreciate from mother, then it would be harder for us to express that appreciation of her role as a parent to us.

I don't live in the same city as my parents anymore and distance does help but then whenever I visit, it can cause unrealistically high expectations for a wonderful visit jammed in a few hours to make up for not seeing one another for 1-2 yrs.

Maybe it's just better to focus on whatever you and your mother enjoy doing best together or can do with the least amount of tension. Or provide her an opportunity to share her "expertise" in an area where you want to learn more /need her help.

Muirenn, I need to bookmark your post to remind myself of some ways to deal with my FIL. Excellent post.

I wish such strategies would work with my own mother. It's not a question of managing her as much as having to both remember and accept that she's arguably mentally ill. I can expect very little from her and what I do get is very warped. Plus, it's wrapped up into a history of neglect and emotional abuse. I keep up a lot of walls with her.

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Originally Posted by indysteel

Muirenn, I need to bookmark your post to remind myself of some ways to deal with my FIL. Excellent post.

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OMG, likewise. LeeBob's dad recently moved a few miles from us, after having lived a long distance away, physically and otherwise. The adjustment has been difficult. This thread is really helpful for me -- Lee is pretty good at letting his dad's behavior roll off him, but I'm not very good at it. But, I'm learning. :cool:

Just think badger, at least you have a common language if you wish, to communicate in complex sentences with your mother.

We can't. (and language lessons isn't going to solve this since mother tongue language must be used several times per wk. We aren't speaking Chinese that often anymore. We're working in jobs and have friends which require English.)

In a way, then in our situation the mother-adult child relationship must exist intuitively at its most basic level and trust becomes even more critical with inabilty to express complicated issues/feelings.

We get along better with my father since he can speak English and has a milder temperment.

Badger, you have my sympathy. I am also the daughter of a difficult mother. This morning (my first morning getting out of bed and dressed alone after my accident) I woke up to an email from my mother berating me for not calling her more often, so she has to find out about my life from Facebook.

In the meantime, she hasn't called once since I got hurt. No one in my family has. My boyfriend's mother has called multiple times.

Also, a Jetta? Awesome car. I've got a 2008 Jetta, and I think I'm pretty cool. :) plus, the trunk is huge! I've been able to transport two road bikes in the back seat/trunk of my Jetta.

I was never close with my dad, either. But at least I was able to communicate with him if needed. I've always felt estranged with my parents; they were in Japan for 15 years and they suddenly came back here.

While I am thankful I had about 4 years before my dad died, it's been tough since he died. He did everything, so my mother had to learn to do things for herself. She called me ALL THE TIME - do this, do that, I can't do that for myself, you can speak english, I can't understand, etc etc.

I would say in the last 6 months she's gotten so insulated in her own misery that it's almost intolerable to be around her. I limit my time with her in person or on the phone, and thankfully she relies on my brother more now so I hardly hear from her unless she needs something (I remember one time when I was in university and I called her. She asked why I was calling - um, I can't call to say 'hi'?)

Anyways, I've been through therapy and all that, but I guess this one just caught me at a bad moment. I was having panicky moments thinking I've spent too much money (got a great deal, but it's still a lot of money!) and it really didn't help her saying not one nice thing about it. She'll likely move back to Japan permanently next year so I'll be free.

Oh, and chatnoir, a similar anecdote: for my birthday this year, my mother asked if I wanted anything, I said no. "how about money?" no thanks. Then she goes "you're right, why am I giving you money, YOU should be giving ME money." My boyfriend gave me an card from his mother, and in the card was a $50 bill; I had only met her twice before.

(((Badger))) this is a hard one to deal with, I've a difficult mother as well who is filled with anger and negativity - always has been. That negativity is draining which is one of the things that makes it so hard to deal with.

Congratulations on the new car, that is awesome! I really like the Jetta, it is a good car!

It was quite a change if your parents lived in Japan for 15 yrs. before returning to Canada.

As for some parents expecting some financial help later in life:

We have to, badger: my parents are low income. I don't begrudge small lumps of money for them: they spent alot of money raising 6 children. It has been genuinely from them, a personal and financial sacrifice for us. They were never parents who went off on expensive vacations for themselves, expensive clothes for themselves, etc.

Most likely we will have to sell their house, when end of life nursing care is required. They have no other substantive savings.

I give money to parents as a gift for their birthdays, Mother's and Father's Day. They need it. They spend it frugally.

My parents don't live with any of us (their children. Not yet.) So this is the least we can do for them and they can remain independent for longer on top of all this.
And they do give me (back) some money, which is ridiculous from my perspective since I am earning a reasonable salary. So I have told them only xxx amount of money or one of my favourite foods from mother ..it does feel like shunting some of the same money back and forth between myself and them. What the hey.

No point sweating the small stuff. Yup, my mother will be more like yours...asking to do certain things, etc. She can't drive (but she knows how to use local transit by herself.)

I'm completely estranged from my parents, for reasons I won't get into. (Their idea, not mine.) It's actually a huge relief not to have to deal with my mother any more. She seemed to feel she was in competition with me, for whatever reason and would make nasty little digs and needling remarks. I'd have as little contact with her as possible and have to steel myself for visits days beforehand.

You don't choose your relatives and it's usually impossible to change them, but you can certainly change your reaction to them. Pretend she's some crotchety elderly cousin several times removed, perhaps. Your family doesn't sound quite as extreme as mine, so there might be something there to salvage.

Oh, and we rented a diesel Golf in France and loved it.

Badger, sounds like a difficult situation. I will share a few ideas that helped me with similar issues.

If there is anything positive that you and your mother share, it helps to focus on that. I simply refused to take part in negative or silly conversations like the one your describe about your car. Abruptly changing the subject or calmly leaving the room eventually had some some effect.

Also -- an "old person car"? What on earth does that mean? I'd be tempted to giggle about that and ask for more details. Maybe grab a pencil and paper and start taking notes -- which is thoroughly obnoxious but I did it once and it was fun.

Enjoy your new car -- doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.

Badger -- I feel for you. Difficult parents are hard to deal with. Let me offer a different perspective. In doing so, I don't intend to excuse bad behavior, but just to offer a hypothesis to understand it and perhaps allow you to let it "roll off" without feeling battered from it. I think in some thread in this forum someone wrote that you cannot control how people act, only how you do (and feel).

From reading the thread, I understood your mother is Japanese and your father perhaps was not. If I was to make sense of her behavior, I would interpret it as being scared, afraid of the future. The Japanese culture is fairly closed and hierarchical. In particular, elders are held in very high respect, their opinion consulted frequently. Your mother did something unusual - to move abroad and perhaps marry a non Japanese (ever asked her about her life story, her family's reaction?). Her sense of loss right now might go deeper than the loss of your father. She might view you as the daughter she has kind of lost: you do not defer to her, do not seek her opinion. As she's considering moving back to Japan, she might feel terribly lonely and about to go back to an environment where she might be viewed as a failure. She simply sounds not emotionally equipped to process these developments in her life.

PS: "old person car"? My reaction would have been: yeah. I'm old enough for it!

thanks everyone. I LOVE my car, btw. took her for a spin yesterday and what a zippy little number; my '99 CR-V pales in comparison in every aspect. And yes, the trunk is MASSIVE! I can fit about 5 bodies :p And the numbers on the dashboard still say 700km til the next fill up, I started out at 750km - I've put in about 250km yesterday.

As for my mother, it's HER who needs therapy not me. Everyone but her seems to know that. She has plenty of issues she can address, but she's from a generation where therapy is for certifiable crazies (though some days that's debatable with her). I can go on til the cows come home. Outwardly she has/had a charmed life yet listening to her you'd think she was the Asian Annie. She never worked a day iin her life, bought whatever she wanted and my father adored her even though she was a b**ch to him most of the time.

Best case scenario for all involved is for her to move back to Japan. She's happy there, my brother and I are happy with her gone, so it's a win-win. It's the time before that is to happen that's a challenge. At least I have a brother in the same boat who understands.

VW's are the best, you are fine, and get her on some antidepressants if you have to slip them in her coffee.

I'd kill for a Jetta! My MIL and her (icky) boyfriend have his-n-hers Jetta wagons. REALLY nice cars. There is nothing old-ladyish about them, at all! Enjoy your car...it sounds to me like she's just jealous.

My folks are difficult...and horrible hoarders. I am dreading when they die. I live 10 hours away and that makes day-to-day interactions easy (since there are none), but when I visit I can't get over how awful their living conditions are--entirely by choice. Their stove is unusable, since it's covered in stuff. EVERY horizontal surface is covered...and dust everywhere. I am talking an opaque layer in corners, cracker boxes with dust (who has boxes of Cheeze-Its around long enough to collect dust?!). My siblings and I will need to rent a dumpster to deal with their mess, someday.

My mom is EXACTLY the person I don't ever want to become. Totally sedentary and injury-prone, because she is so out of shape. But she lets her injury ease and asthma keep her from doing things. Her asthma would be a helluvalot better if she didn't live in a dusty house, since that is one of her allergy triggers (as well as cats and mold--and their house is old and they have 3 cats). It's depressing being around her.

She lives to gossip, but because they have no internet she hears everything so late that it's no longer even gossip, then gets irritated when she's not the one delivering some juicy story first (it really makes her nuts that I know things about the locals before she does, ha!). :rolleyes:

Lots of Hugs. ((((Badger))))

Congratulations on the car. A truly independent intelligent woman made a decision on a fabulous car, and that is you!

You are not alone on the mom thing. When I read your posting it sounded exactly like my mother. I am coincidentially meeting tonight with my sisters to try to figure out a way to help care for our mom and not be punching bags.

Take care of yourself.

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Originally Posted by indysteel

(((Badger))). I know all too well how hard it is to have a mother who isn't the mother you need, want or deserve. The best advice I can give you is to accept that her negativity is all about her and has nothing to do with you. Try not to internalize it.

Congrats on your car! My husband works for a diesel engine manufacturer and he gives you a thumbs up for choosing that Jetta!

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I agree with Indy, it has to do with your mother's issues. It's so hard to be around people like that and, being your mother, its not like you can distance that relationship. Boundaries was a great book for me, really helped me develop healthy relationships with my own mother and others. May be worth checking out . . . He also wrote a few other books on the same topic: Safe People and Necessary Endings.

Badger, I hope things work out for the best for both of you. Sorry I can't really add anything more. Congrats on your car though.

I am minus my mother since I was 25 or so. So I miss all of the times that we could have been together to enjoy "girl" things. Not at my wedding...and other things that happen in your life. I have had my Dad for that. I have had to struggle with what I can tell him and what I can't because I'm a woman and he won't understand. I could talk to my mom about everything. For those of you who do have a mom, appreciate what she does for you, if you can handle (deal) with it.

Red Rock

I often feel like that, Red Rock. My mom died in 1996. Of course, she was cool, in the same way I hope my sons say I am cool. We had our moments, but nothing more than the usual. She missed my sons' graduations, marriages, our houses in Boxborough and Concord, and all of our cycling stuff. The best thing she told me was that to make sure DH and I had a hobby we could do together. This was about 2 years before DH started riding and about 4 years before I did. At the time, my kids were in middle school and quickly becoming independent. How true those words were.
On the other hand, if my mom was like her sister (the relative I have cut all ties with), I wouldn't have hesitated to keep those boundaries firm.

I'm in the camp with a difficult mother. She was physically, verbally, emotionally abusive toward me growing up. It wasn't until I met DH I learned what a mother is - I have the BEST mother in law possible. For all the cutting remarks I get from my mother, my MIL is my cheerleader and friend. I can confide in her, ask advice, spend a pleasant afternoon together. Were I to confide in my mother, it would be turned against me in the worst possible way, probably announced to family. If I were to ask her advice, I would be ridiculed or picked apart, or even snapped at for asking.

Right now, I am still recovering from a 5 day visit with the parents. Still picking myself back up, finding my self esteem and my drive, and let go of the barbs that were sunk in while they were here. Badger, I know how hard it is. Nothing is ever good enough. You will never make her happy - and something DH has tried and tried to teach me is, it doesn't matter. What matters is if you are happy, and feel you are successful. Not her.