Brief background: I moved in with my mom in my 20s to go back to school. We ended up developing an unhealthy attachment where we both fell into the parent/child role again, and only after many years did I see how unhealthy it was. Around 4 years ago, I met, dated and married my (wonderful) husband. I moved out of my mother's house, early in my dating, due to my mom's extreme anger and bitterness. I basically gave in to her demands over the course of the next 4 years, until last year. I grew tired of her constant demands, her clinging and whining about "feeling excluded" from my life, her belief that I was responsible for any and all housework/yardwork/errands that she saw fit to have me do, and the last straw - her elective knee surgery where she refused to listen to her doctors and hire outside nursing help for the weeks after her release from the hospital. I was drafted, against my will, to be her caretaker. She told me that I was a cold and heartless person who had no right to feel used, mistreated, etc... because she "needed" me. I finally had somthing snap inside me to realize that she does not think of me as an adult or even as a seperate indivudual...
During some of the arguments over how selfish I was, (for being resentful of having to drop everything in my life to take care of her) she told me that she had obviously put all of her eggs in the wrong basket - refering to the fact that she has always snubbed my sister for not being the kind of person she expected her to be... I was supposed to do whatever she wanted for the rest of my life, but now that I am balking over this treatment, I am the "bad" one and my sister is the "good" one.
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It is now been almost 5 weeks since I have spoken with her. She will not call me unless she HAS to; i.e. she needs me to do something or wants something I might have of hers.
I have heard that she is doing well as my sister is still checking on her long-distance, and she reports that our mother is doing well, losing weight (she was over200 lbs.) due to the physical therapy for her knee, and she is starting to do more things to take care of herself and her house.
I started out feeling extremely guilty, but as the weeks went by, and my sister told me that she was doing okay, I felt... free.
I honestly don't know if I even want her back in my life. A part of me does, the part that misses the good times and the closeness, (yes, there were times that my mother and myself were very close and had fun together) but a larger part of me feels like I just can't go back to the yelling, the nastiness, the feelings of guilt and responsibility I felt whenever she was around. She thinks she is the authority on everything, and she has to know everything.
Our relationship had been one of her being dependant on me to do her chores, her errands, her dirtywork and be her only and best friend. I was her shopping buddy, her restaurant companion, her vacation partner. I was her filter/lightbulb changer, her cat sitter, and her handyman.
I would have loved to have my mother be a part of my life, but it seems like it has to be on her terms, or not at all. Even with me telling her that what she was doing was hurting our relationship, she just pushed that much harder, trying to force me to see that she was in the right, and I was wrong - wrong for feeling the way I felt, wrong for trying to pull away, wrong for shutting her out of the intimate aspects of my life.
I truly don't see her ever understanding how messed up she is, even with her pop psycology background. She always told me what I was thinking why I did what I did and what my motives were for doing it. She was usually wrong, but she was so CERTAIN and sure of herself and her ability to analyze every situation, that there was no way to get through to her that she was wrong. She even said at one point that she knew more than the counselors and there wasn't any point in going. She is also one of those people who expect other to read their minds - and is constantly passive/agressive.
I've tried to work things out with her - by talking one-on-one, by counseling and by negative reinforcement - nothing worked.
Our last meeting over dinner that I didn't want to go on, I really had decided that I was finished. I was tired of all of the drama, and I wasn't going to play anymore. I stuck to small talk, and did tell her that I was uncomfortable with her paying for me, (as her "gifts" always came with strings attached.) She got really angry and kept pressing to start a fight, and at one point, pulled herself back and asked me just what my boundaries were, so she would know what she was and was not allowed to do. (this was said in a very snotty, offended voice, and I could tell that she was going to argue with me over anything that I said at that point) I kept telling her that I wasn't going to discuss this and continued superficial small talk until the meal was finished.
I have boundaries, but trying to organize them when she demanded them made them fly right out of my head. That, and the fact that anything I had said she would have either denied doing or told me I was wrong.
I figure that I will be pleasant, but reserved if I have to speak to her, but do I have to come up with boundaries? Isn't there a point where you can just say, "No, the time for fixing this is past. I don't want to try to work at this relationship anymore."
I figure that I will be pleasant, but withdrawn if I have to speak to her. I expect us to continue to talk after she gets over her angry-how-dare-she-act-like-that-to-ME attitude, but I don't want a close relationship anymore. What do I do if she tries to be confrontational? I can keep telling her that I am not discussing our relationship, but does that make me a bad person for not wanting to try and work it out?
