When I was younger, I thought I was close with my mom. She was at some point fun, personal, warm. For a long time, I gave her massive benefit of the doubt because my dad/her husband was extremely emotionally, mentally, psychologically abusive. I try not to discount what she went through, but when he left as a late teen, things didn’t get better in the household. She showed massive narcissistic personality disorder, nothing was ever good enough, co-dependency on me and my sibling, always relying on me to be her emotional guidance counselor.
All of this continues now as an adult in my 30s. She’s remarried, technically retired, and honestly, any little contact I have with her sets me on edge. This is a woman that you really cannot say anything to because she only thinks about how it impacts her, makes you walk on eggshells, will be nice to neighbors/rude about them behind their back, she masks helping people out of kindness and then gets pissed when all they say is thank you or pay her back in some small way. Extremely passive aggressive martyr syndrome.
I want to reach out to her more, but then I get flashbacks or reminded of what she’s like to be around, and I can’t put myself through it. When I think that I can’t reach out to her or have a normal relationship, it makes me feel a huge heartfelt ache.
I’m sorry for the novel sized post – TLDR – if you had a broken relationship with your mom, how did you try to heal from it?
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My mother was a violently abusive monster. We’ve never had a good relationship and I eventually had to cut her out of my life and get extensive therapy. She never changed and doubled down with confronted. Life is so much better without her toxic and abusive bullshit.
I think your mom is pretty traumatized by her relationship with your father. Maybe she doesn’t feel safe around other people. Though obviously, nobody likes a person who is passive aggressive or hostile towards others for no reason.
I think what you need is to have firm boundaries with her and know what behaviour you will tolerate and what is not tolerable. However, I do encourage you to do her favourite activities together. For example, my mom loves walking in the park in the evening, and I join her. Take her out 1-2 times for dinner/lunch. It’s really difficult to change people when they are a certain age. I think therapy can help, but I don’t know. Maybe she won’t go to therapy.
Minimal contact, and therapy. Coming to terms with the fact that she will never be the parent I needed was difficult, but it gets better with time. If someone is hurting you, they don’t deserve to be in your life.