Hi Dawning –
OR spilling my guts to her once and for all by sending the long letter I finished writing last week… The danger in doing this is that she will take any response and run with it, using it as a way to get back inside my head.
I know it's terribly tempting to want to send that letter and believe that at some level your mother will grasp what you are feeling and how she has hurt you. I think you already know that it won’t happen.
What I wonder is how much can we, those of us who deal with Ns in our lives, influence our own outcome. For example, if you change the way you see your mother, you see her the way a stranger would. No emotional ties. Just as another human person. Would the outcome change for you? You mention that she acts in a horrible way, and then sometime later you do some action to make things better. A stranger wouldn't do the action to make things better. They'd take the situation for what it was. If they met a rude, selfish and careless person, they would distance themselves. No trying to fix. No making better. No getting involved. They wouldn't be terribly hurt or angry. It would be one more interaction with a rude person.
I want from her what I can't have from her. I must have realized that in childhood and coped by telling myself that I shouldn't want anything and so, yes, I have deprived myself in certain areas that were important to me...and now I want to want a more meaningful life and I am wondering if part of that change may involve standing up to her.
sending her a quick reply to today's email telling her there is nothing wrong with me and I won't have her continue to tell me so
Your and Guest Today’s posts above reminded me of a section in the book When You and Your Mother Can’t Be Friends, where the author talks about breaking the pattern of interaction you have with your mother by
setting limits on her behaviour and
controlling your own reaction rather than trying to change hers. I just loved these when I read them because they seemed so sane and right, but were things that I would never have thought of saying. Here are three (I’m paraphrasing some of this):
Georgia, a high school principal with three young children, decided for Christmas to give all the women in her family nightgowns by mail order. “My mother was offended because I didn’t take the time to go to a store and get something different…She called me at school and started screamiing at me. I did what I always do and got defensive and said ‘Mom, I have to buy forty Christmas gifts – don’t you know the one thing I don’t have is time to shop for presents?’ Suddenly I realized that I was talking to a child, and I was acting like one. I thought, Why am I defending myself? Why should I have to be saying this? Finally, I said, ‘This is unacceptable behaviour and I never want to have a conversation like this with you again,’ and I hung up. I looked up and the office staff, who knew all about my mother, were standing there cheering.”...
When my daughter graduated from college, I threw a huge party for her. When my mother arrived, she looked at me and said, “I hate your hairdo.” Then she walked into the dining room and said, “Where’d you get that ugly flower arrangement?” I calmly replied, “If you’re going to talk to me like that, I don’t want you here.” She was shocked. But she didn’t say another critical word....
If your mother says, “Your brother calls me every day, you only call every other day,” you can say, “Yup. That’s right.” Your mother may be so startled by your agreeing with her that she’ll change the subject. Repeating your line enough times may discourage her from every bringing up the subject again. Let us say, however, that she pursues it – she tells you you’re “selfish,” rebuking you as though you were a misbehaving child. You can reply, “If you’re going to speak to me that way, I’m not going to call you for a while. I feel you’re being rude. I don’t like your tone. I won’t allow anyone to speak to me that way.”
The big point for me in all of these is that you don’t respond to the content of the criticism or attack – no matter what it’s about – by arguing or defending. Instead, you label your mother’s behaviour for what it is (rude, insulting, etc.) and say you won’t tolerate it. In your post above about sending a quick reply, why say, "There's nothing wrong with me"? That only gives her the opportunity to say, "Yes, there is." Could you just say, "Your comments are rude and insulting and if you ever say anything like that again I won't reply" -- or something like that?
I don’t know how your mother would react to being treated like this – i.e. like a rude person whose behaviour you won’t tolerate. The point is that you don’t try to predict, control or change her reaction – you decide what your reaction will be and stick to it.
My personal experience is that every effort on my part to explain my feelings to my mother in the expectation that she will understand or sympathize have failed, and I no longer share anything with her that would make me vulnerable to her, but I have gotten some satisfaction from labelling her unacceptable behaviours.
Guest
