More on Relationships

In previous posts I have scratched the surface of the subject of mothers hating their daughters.  The question on everyone’s mind is, “What do I do if I am a daughter dealing with this  type of mother.”  I want to give you that answer, to the best of my ability, but I feel by laying the groundwork, and gaining understanding of the “why’s”, will help us to figure out the “how’s”, later on.

I am not an “expert” on this subject.  There are no diplomas on my wall, or fancy resumes to be found.  The bulk of my knowledge, sadly, comes from first hand experience.  I am the daughter of a mother who has complex issues, and who has chosen a road most mothers would never  choose.   In the past, her behavior, and actions took me on an emotional roller coaster ride.  Loosening the emotional grip she had over my mind took many, many years, and the help of others.  My hope is that one day, you too, will be free from what you are going through with your mother.

I have spent a lot of time talking about mothers, but now I want to talk about you.

You have probably been through every range of negative emotion there is:

Sadness at the treatment you receive from your mother.

Jealousy at the relationship she appears to have with other people, including your siblings.

Anger that there is no way to retaliate, at the poor treatment, that others blame it on you.

Confusion as you try to understand WHY your mother is the way she is.

Self esteem issues.  Insecurity.  Questioning the love of everyone around you.  Making poor romantic decisions.  Having a hard time bonding with your own children.  The damage a hateful mother wreaks, reaches far and wide.  It affects you to your core.

For me, one of the things which really bothers me is when people give me their pitying look, followed by, “But she is your mother, and you only get one mother”.  The widespread belief, woven into the fabric of our society is that mother’s can do no evil so bad that a child would “abandon” them.  I could almost believe that, and surely understand why people hold so fast to that belief.  Who really wants to think a mother is capable of hating or abusing their child? If a mother cannot be trusted, who can? 

Although the rawness of the emotions are now fully gone, there are times when I still cannot help but to wonder what went wrong with the relationship my mother and I had.  I am not ashamed to tell people that I do not speak to my mother.  I also do not mind telling them what transpired.  However, when I am telling my story I usually feel like I have to justify my decision.  I find myself adding drama just to make it seem like I wasn’t being too sensitive or rash. 

Am I justified?  In short, my mother has a nasty habit of telling others my business, even when the business is usually not true, or only partially true.  One of the people she has a habit of confiding in is an ex who emotionally abused me for five years.  She has also been known to tell my children things which are not true.   There are lots of people who could overlook these things, and I did, for many years.  But eventually I came to the point where I realized the emotional roller coaster just was not normal.  It took a long time before I stopped justifying and overlooking her bad behavior.  When I finally let it go, I was relieved of so much guilt.

I know you are out there.  I know there are many of you who have been through much worse than I have.  The stories you could probably share would cause my jaw to drop.  They would make other experiences pale in comparison.  I am also sure there are some of you who choose to maintain a relationship with your mothers despite what has transpired.  Although there will always be people who will not understand, know that you have a right to feel the way you feel.  There is no one in the world who can tell you you are overreacting or that you are wrong.  It is your life.  You get to make the decisions.

That being said, as always, I personally feel that reconciliation is always admirable.  Taking the high road is exceptional, but not if it will leave you in the corner, shaking in the dark because your emotions have been through the ringer.   You have the right to change your mind.  Severing the relationship may be the right choice one day, restarting it at some point in the future may be a possibility.  Keep in mind, that because many of these mothers we speak of have control issues, trying to restart the relationship later on down the line may be difficult.  Do what feels right inside. 

In the future, I want to talk a little about how having a dysfunctional relationship with your mother might affect your other relationships, and possibly explore ways to deal with it (counseling anyone?).  Stay tuned…

The Betrayal of a Mother

If you are a mother you know what true love feels like.  Your children bring out an emotion in you like no one else can do.  You love the way they smell, the way they feel, and the cute way they smile at you.  With them you understand what unconditional love means, and your dreams for them have no limit.  You want them to have more than you had, and you pray they won't make the same dumb mistakes you made. 


If you are a mother, you are unselfish, and give of yourself freely, sometimes to your own hurt.  No, you are not perfect, but you do the best you can.  You would never dream of hurting your child, physically or emotionally, and you take care to ensure you are not the cause of their suffering or pain.  This is what mothers do. They love, and even when it does not feel reciprocated, you love some more.  Even if you do not have children, you are sure that if you ever do have a child you will give them your all.  Is giving your all not a part of what mothering is about?


Being a good mother should come naturally we think.  Most of us could never dream of a mother hurting their child, and yet we see it on the news all the time.  There are mothers who hurt their children physically, and those who hurt their children by negligence.  There are some mothers who hurt their children by leaving them in the care of men they are not very familiar with.  Yes, mothers hurt their children all the time, but many times we don't know it until it is plastered on the news, and we are too late.


Not all mothers hurt their children in ways that are obvious.  While it seems we are in the minority, children, and more specifically, daughters, who have been treated poorly by their mothers, are actually a larger group than many would care to admit.  But we are out there, and I know this because of the response I have received to the articles I wrote on this subject on Associated Content (When Mothers Hate Their Daughters).  Out of the woodworks came stories from other daughters revealing what thier mothers had done to them and how sad they were about their circumstance.


What exactly had their mothers done?  While no one provided in depth detail due to limited space, I got the sense that their pain was as real as mine, and that, like me there was a hole in thier hearts that would never be filled.  Our mothers had betrayed us.  They let us down.  The one who we should have been able to trust more than anyone else, and who should have loved us more than anyone else, did not meet our expectations.  But why?  I can only tell my story...


It's hard delving into the details.  I am at a place in my life where I have chosen the path of oblivion.  I've tried anger and sadness.  They got me nowhere.  I tried passive aggressiveness and I tried screaming.  It all got me nowhere.  You see, my mother will not understand, and I am convinced, she will never comprehend exactly what she has done to cause me pain.  No, talking won't help, and neither will letters.  In her mind, she is right and above doing wrong.  With a person who simply refuses to look at the reflection in the mirror, getting to the point of mutual understanding becomes impossible.


My story begins like any other.  I was born and my mother was happy.  Fast forward to Kindergarten, Halloween parade.  I was dressed in some costume and mom was dressed as a witch.  We stood outside in the sunshine at school watching the parade go by and admiring the costumes.  Then mom pushed me to the side, hissing at me to move over so she could be seen. 


When we got home she was livid, screaming at me and asking me why I kept standing in front her, as if I had deliberately chosen to stand in her limelight.  Her limelight.  Only the parade wasn't about her, it was about the children.  On that day, for whatever reason, I became her rival, someone she had to compete with.  At the age of five I remember feeling confused, not sure what her ranting was about, but knowing deep down inside that something about her attitude just was not normal.


Things floated along until I became a teenager.  I met a boy.  I ran away and started exerting my independence.  I put her through hell, and because of it she started disliking me tremendously.  She could not rebound from the fact that I had had sex.  I suppose in some way she saw it as a direct betrayal of herself, instead of understanding that I was just being a bratty teenager.  What I did in my teen years proved to be too much for her to handle.  I got pregnant and again it was about how I had hurt her, as opposed to how I had hurt myself.


As an adult she floated in and out of loving me.  Some days she was in a good mood, happy to go shopping with me.  Other days, totally unexpectedly she would greet me at the door with a scowl.  It came to the point where I was nervous every time I went to her house because I didn't know what type of mood she would be in.  On those days, when she was in a pissy mood, I would wrack my brain, trying to remember what I had done to offend her, and try to find ways to make it better between us.  But just like an abusive relationship, and dealing with an abusive husband there was no way to please her.


Things usually remained cordial until a new man would come into my life.  Instead of spending my days shopping or gossiping with her, I might spend a day with a new guy friend.  She felt affronted and neglected, and our relationship would cool until the guy was no longer an issue and I could spend my time with her. She was trying to exert her control of me and she did it by manipulating my emotions.


I had been in an abusive relationship for a few years and had dropped out of school.  Once I was out the relationship, I decided to go back to school.  When I was accepted to a well known college I was full of excitement and couldn't wait to tell her of my good fortune.  She had dropped out of school when she was young so I was sure she would be excited that I was bettering my life.  In my mind I could see the smile on her face when I told her, the congratulatory hug.  Instead, she never turned around from washing her dishes and simply mumbled, "That's nice." 


I could go on and on, detailing the many things she did to derail my success, how she never once, in all my years of schooling, asked how school was going.  I could tell of all the ways, after I had children, she tried to turn them against me, or how she constantly tried to control me.  I could tell you how she never acknowledged by accomplishments but was always the first to point out my failures.  Yes, I could go on and on, but I'm sure by now you get the drift. 


Of course I have only written the negative.  I would be wrong to paint my mother as a monster.  She was not.  We had our share of good times, and when we were growing up she single handedly raised us to the best of her ability.  When we were younger, she was a good mom, but somewhere along the way she made poor choices as it concerned me.  Let me also point out that I was no saint.  As I noted, as a teenager I put her through hell, but as an adult I tried my best to make it up to her.  She was unable to let go of the past and her insistence on controlling my life persisted until I got married, and even then, in her passive-agressive way she tried to retain some form of control.


I tell this story, and I will tell more in the future, to better help you, the reader, understand that you are not alone.  As you read, you may be saying to yourself, "Aha! That's what my mother has been doing all these years."  Many times we have a habit of rationalizing away her behavior because it simply seems impossible that our mothers could actually want to hurt us.  You might suddenly get a revelation that your mother is not the person you thought she was or hoped she would be.


Honestly, what my mother has done pales in comparison to what other mothers have done to their daughters.  I would say that for the most part, what my mother has done has remained relatively tame.  Not every daughter is so lucky.  There are daughters who have been humilated in front of friends and other family members, daughters who have been sued, and daughters who have been neglected, all because their mothers have psychological and/or emotional issues that have not been addressed.


Again, I would love to hear your stories.  While I am saddened to hear the stories of others, it also helps me to deal with my situation to know that I am not alone.  In the future I plan on getting more in depth on how to deal with the mother-daughter situation. Hopefully I can give you tools to help you cope with your mother issue and help you regain some control of the relationship.  It is important that you not allow the relationship with your mother take over your whole life.  It can be very easy to spend too much time feeling bad about what has happend instead of accepting what now is.  Until next time...blessings, Miss Angel

The Hateful Mother

What words would you use to describe your mother?

*controlling?
*manipulative?
*jealous?
*vindictive?
*jealous?
*disrespectful?
*overbearing?
*evil?

If you are like me, these are exactly the types of words you will use to describe your mother.  Mother-daughter relationships can be complicated.  I think all of these relationships go through periods of ups and downs.  A mature and loving relationship gets through the tough times, mostly unscathed.  Mature people are able to talk through or work through their issues. A dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship is unsteady to its' core.  These relationships either have a wide range of highs and lows, or a flatline of negativity. 

What we should know about mothers who dislike their daughters is that they are usually emotionally immature.  These mothers may have been abused when they were younger, or often had a very unstable and maybe even violent relationship with the father of their child(ren).  They may have been children of alcoholics or drug users, or they may be children of dysfunctional mothers themselves.  Whatever the cause for their emotional immaturity, the result is the same: they are unable or unwilling to have a normal, loving relationship with their child. 

The mother in these types of relationships will constantly sabotage the relationship.  Sometimes, in these relationships there will be periods of normalcy followed by periods or an instance of drama and fighting.  In this respect, the dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship is similar to an abusive romantic relationship.  As in abusive romantic relationships, the abuser (mother) will use manipulative tactics to keep the victim (daughter) in their lives.  An abusive episode will often be followed by attempts to fix the relationship.  The abuser may be very kind and romantic during this period and offer many apologies.  In the mother-daughter relationship the mother may be very nice, and might even apologize.  Sometimes the calm period lasts just a few days, other times it can last for months or even years.  Regardless of how long the calm lasts, one thing is for certain-drama will come again!

The ups and downs are not characteristic of all dysfunctional relationships.  In some mother-daughter relationships the issues are always present, and the drama and negativity persists year round.  Whereas the mother in the up and down relationship may use tactics such as covert manipulation and emotional games, the mother in a flatline negative relationship is overt with her tactics, using intimidation, outright verbal and physical abuse, and domination to subdue her child.  The up and down relationship is more common.

So we have all the psychology-jargon, but what does this mean for you?  Understanding the reasons why a mother would dislike her child is a small comfort for the daughter who is suffering under the weight of feeling unloved.  How does this daughter come to accept the reality of her situation?  It takes a long, long time.  As daughters we try to rationalize the behavior of our mothers, we make excuses for her behavior, and at times we blame ourselves.  We suck up to her, minimize the way we feel, and bury our feelings.  We look for mothers in our romantic relationships, often replaying the dysfunctional dynamic.  We cry, we suffer, and yet we never truly understand why our relationships are the way they are, or what we can do about it.

Perhaps you are not fully convinced that you are in a dysfunctional relationship with your mother.  In future discussions I want to talk a little about my relationship with my mother, and perhaps share the stories of other daughters who are dealing with this.  Maybe in our stories you will see a reflection of your own relationship, and maybe, just maybe you can learn and grow from what others have been through.  As always, I look forward to hearing from those of you who are dealing with these same issues.  I may seem like an expert, but I assure you I am still learning and still trying to find my own way in this sad world of being a child who is not loved.

What Type of Mother Hates Her Child?

If you have had a difficult relationship with your mother you have probably asked yourself on many occasions what you are doing wrong to make your mother hate you.  If you were anything like me, every time your mother did something mean to you, the first place you looked was in the mirror.  Much like victims of domestic abuse, daughters of hateful mothers often think that if they can just modify their behavior it will make the relationship in question better.  It is wholly unbelievable, both to the daughter and to most of the world, that a mother could despise a daughter so much that she would treat her terribly.  Thus, when a relationship between a mother and daughter goes awry, it is always the natural inclination to assume that the daughter has done something to deserve it. 

Daughters are not devoid of responsibility when a relationship with their mother goes astray, and in future posts we will investigate exactly what it is a daughter does (or doesn't do) to enable this type of relationship.  For now, let us stay focused on the mother.  What type of mother, exactly, despises her daughter.  The answer is a complex one, one that is hard to grasp by most.  Obviously, not all mothers who dislike their daughters can be lumped into one category.  Their are many reasons and many underlying issues involved when a mother makes a choice to have a dysfunctional relationship with her daughter.  Regardless of what the causes are, the results are usually the same.

The Unfulfilled Mother

The unfulfilled mother is usually the mother whose dreams never came to fruition, usually because she got married and had children.  Normally, this mother is a stay-at-home mother or one who is unhappily employed.  Although this mother may have been loving in the beginning, as time goes by and she fully realizes how her aspirations have been grounded, her love turns to resentment toward the child or children who stood in the way of her dreams.

The Competitive Mother
This one is self explanatory.  This mother sees her daughter as competition.  Usually, the daughter is seen as competition for the attention of the father or other male figure, but she might also be seen as competition for material resources, or the attention of others besides the father.  This mother usually tries to downplay the accomplishments of the daughter and might belittle her child in front of others in an attempt to break the child's self esteem and make the mother look better. 

The Controlling Mother

The name says it all.  This mother feels out of control in other areas of her life and so gets a sense of control by controlling others.  Feeling out of control in her own life may stem from issues in her own childhood, but in any event the only way she feels in control is if people do things her way.  Controlling people can stem to many areas of her life and it would not be unusual if she tries to control her husband, and friends.  Feeling out of control has little to do with her job and more with other situations that have affected her.

Jealous/Vengeful Mother

The jealous mother may also be the unfulfilled mother, but not necessarily so.  If the father shows his beautiful new baby girl loads of attention and ignores her mother, it is easy to see why the mother would become jealous of the daughter.  The daughter has beauty and youth and the ability to capture the attention of daddy and just about every one else.  Thus, her mother becomes jealous because the daughter does what she cannot do.

We must remember that these mothers can display traits that are interchangeable.  We also have to remember that why a mother dislikes her daughter is so complex that simply dumping her into one of four categories will never do the situation justice.  In any event, these meager categories are created to give a general overview to why mothers behave the way they do.