At first, I (30) didn’t really want to believe it, but my mother (56) had more influence on my life than I thought. Our relationship was always somewhat difficult. As a child, I used to call her Bruja—witch in Spanish—because she was constantly yelling and even pulling me by the ears and hair.
When I started my first studies, her behavior suddenly changed. And the older I got, the more that terrible side of her disappeared toward me.
Until recently, when my wife (27) (7 year relationship) and I told my parents that we wanted to stay at a hotel during our vacation instead of at my grandmother’s, where it’s unhygienic and cold. My mother couldn’t understand that at all and kept trying to make us feel guilty. Especially me—saying that I was forgetting my roots and so on. She always said she accepted it, only to then start reproaching us again.
I was deeply hurt by this. I can’t really put it into words here, but I found it quite extreme for an adult person. Especially since we made this decision for our little daughter, who should have a clean room.
In the end, my mother ran out of the room crying, and I followed her. I told her that her behavior had hurt me. That didn’t get through to her. Instead, I found out what was really bothering her: our move. She wanted to spend as much time as possible with our daughter in Peru and thought that if we booked our own hotel, we were cutting ourselves off.
Two weeks later, my wife had another conversation with my parents about the argument back then. My wife stayed calm and factual, but my parents didn’t want to admit any of their own wrongdoing and instead blamed my wife for everything, throwing all sorts of accusations at her.
My wife is extremely disappointed in my parents. And I am really angry with them for not being able to talk to her in an adult way.
Now I’ve scheduled a family therapy session, since there are a lot of things we need to discuss and clarify. Especially my mother’s way of never admitting anything, seeing me as the perfect son, and always blaming others. I really hope this will help.
Td;lr
Mom blames wife for everything, refuses responsibility — OP set up family therapy