Stop whinging about your mum. Clearly, she's a saint. If you were my child, I would have drowned you in a bucket.
Some mothers seem to keep a running list of offenses committed by their daughters, neatly cataloged according to subject, and when the daughter commits a new one, she hears about a lifetime of similar offenses. At those moments, the daughter’s ancient history is hauled out and used as evidence against her.
Other mothers feel disenfranchised once their daughters are grown, because they are no longer consulted on routine matters. These mothers attempt to keep control by undermining the daughter’s decisions and confidence, or in extreme cases by going head-to-head in competition with her.
Some mothers make it clear that they expect their daughters to place them first in their list of concerns. One way that expectation is met is when a daughter continues in adulthood to include her mother in most of her domestic decision-making, such as meal planning or housecleaning or child rearing.
The power of an unhealthy mother-daughter bond can be so great that in the most extreme cases, it can cause a daughter to suspend disbelief, just so that she can accommodate her mother’s never-satisfied ego. Unless the daughter realizes that her mother may have a serious problem – whether psychological, medical, or alcohol or drug related – she can be swept into a kind of Twilight Zone in which she thinks she is the one who is crazy.
Fear is another way for a mother to control her daughter. A mother worries constantly that her daughter will be killed in an automobile crash, or will get AIDS, or isn’t eating right. This kind of “concern” can be emotionally crippling. Worry is a long lead chain. The mother who worries a great deal about he daughter may seem to do it in a very loving way, but by constantly expressing her worries, she makes sure that her daughter stays very close.
I am so tired of this famial BS, go see a shrink will you.
I am sooooooooooooo over you honey. Get a shrink and bugger off.
Stop whinging about your mum. Clearly, she's a saint. If you were my child, I would have drowned you in a bucket.
Thank you Emma for your witty, and (thankfully) short response to Ole Windbag.
Who says we are supposed to or deserve to have a mom who loves us? Were we born with some sort of deserving account? When did you give up honoring your mother? When did you give up on yourself and everyone around you? It seems that everything being said by robs life.
Imagine for a second what it must be like to be a mother who has a kid like you? Imagine how it must be for her to have someone who blames every single thing on her. That you some how deserved to be love a certian way? Think how humiliating it would be to hear from your kid you did't love me the right way!
Listen it is pretty simple, Something happened and then you made it mean something, and then you let it effect the rest of your life. What kind of responsibility is that?
So what she says to you, "I dont think that is the right choice?" That is all she said.
You make it mean, "Some mothers make it clear that they expect their daughters to place them first in their list of concerns. One way that expectation is met is when a daughter continues in adulthood to include her mother in most of her domestic decision-making, such as meal planning or housecleaning or child rearing."
Remember they only said, "I dont think that is the right choice?"
You make the rest of the meaning up.
There is no possibility for greatness in blame.
I didnt say it was true, but I say try it on?
From an earlier post:
An unhappy mother-daughter bond that remains unresolved threatens all of the daughter’s attachments. When a daughter cannot separate from her mother, and when she will not or is unable to examine why, her unresolved feelings will turn up in all her other relationships – what she could not get from her mother surfaces as an unrealistic need and expectation. She becomes all want, little give; all disappointment, little optimism; all appetite, little confidence.
One of the most important steps we take on the road to true adulthood is to separate emotionally from our parents - to define ourselves as people and to stop trying to win parental approval.
Coming to terms with your mother begins with what may be the hardest step of all: recognizing that all may not be well between you, and realizing that it’s not only OK to reach that awareness, but that it may be imperative to your own mental health and to the potential health of your connection with your mother to do so.
But coming to terms also means acknowledging where your relationship is good and where your mother has honestly done her best. The potential is there for a loving relationship and deepening understanding. The special bond you have, through your shared biology and your experiences together, can nourish your ability to love and respect and support and learn from each other, cherishing your similarities and your differences. You can enlarge and enrich each other’s worlds.
And since you are natural enemies as well as natural allies, the potential for enmity - sometimes harrowing – is there as well.
Resolving the relationship by treasuring what is good, changing what can be changed, and accepting what cannot, can spell the difference between fulfilling your hopes for yourself and having none, between having a rich future or simply repeating the past, between believing that you are worthy and lovable and loving and believing that you are not and cannot be.
The difficult mother-daughter relationship is a time bomb, set to go off in the next generation. It is inherited as surely as are blue eyes or brown. Curing it is painful – it means shedding light on the dark places of your history to discover where you can look for love and where you must give up looking for it.
But it is not nearly so deadly as pretending that there is no problem.
-- Modified on 12/12/2004 10:42:22 AM
From an earlier post:
A good mother does not inflict onto her child her own needs, at the expense of the child’s needs. She is not upset by her child’s occasional aggressiveness. She is not threatened by her child’s individuality and independence. She does not require that her child try constantly to please her.
A good mother can understand that her child may harbor both good *and* bad feelings about her. At the same time, a good mother can tolerate her *own* good and bad feelings toward her child. She forgives herself for the occasional mother’s glitch – such as a dark, unforgiving mood or loss of temper – and is able to control those lapses by acknowledging them and figuring out what she has done to contribute to her own frustration.
Her less-than-perfect responses demonstrate to the child that she can possess her mother’s love without having to be a perfect, all-good extension of her mother. By not giving up the space that rightfully belongs to herself, the mother lets her child go and eases her into the space that rightfully belongs to her.
A good mother feels both sad and happy during her daughter’s growing-up years – sad that she is losing something by her daughter leaving more and more, but happy that she *is able* to leave. And that is always her endeavor, to help her daughter leave, even though it is not always easy for her. Her goal is to prepare her children to go out into the world.
The good mother is one who loves you unconditionally and can let you go. She allows you to be yourself, different from her, and celebrates and learns from that difference. She can, if asked, lovingly tell you the truth but knows when what you really need is a hug. She allows you to make reasonable mistakes and learn from their consequences. She can allow you appropriate responsibility and decision-making. She can admit when she’s wrong. She can encourage your risk-taking and be there at the finish line of your efforts, cheering you on no matter where you place. She allows you occasionally to go home again without swallowing you whole. She can nurture your autonomy by helping you to find choices.
She gives you this kind of loving freedom.
Again, what I say does not have to be the truth, but then again it may be.
In both earlier postings you talk highly of what should be. I have yet found how living with should has made me any happier. In fact it usually creates more anxiety.
I believe you are correct that things will happen in life, but I don't see how you are taking into account that we are the ones responsible for how we make what happens mean.
Your daughter tells you she is moving out or your wife tells you that she is leaving and getting re-married. It would be reasonable to interpret what they are saying as meaning that they no longer love you, but Im asking you to ponder that it is a story that you make up in your head.
Try on, they just said what they said and any interpretation beyond that is what you made of it. Even if they said the words that they don't love you means nothing more than they dont love you. Not that you are a good or bad person.
Beyond that I am only suggesting that when the term good versus bad is used it is a judgement that has no truth. Truth only exist in language and that language is determined by the community that it is created in. In many places in Europe circumsision is considered child abuse, but despite that every day thousands of little boys are having their penises mutilated and it is considered normal. Every day thousands of little girls will have thier genitals mutilated too, but to that society it is correct and normal and good. So I am suggesting that there may be not truth as you say only interpretation.
I appreciate your stand for better relations between mothers and daughters. It is admirable.
Just you and three providers should do the trick.
Just make sure they don't have any stretchmarks!
Never ever once gave it a thought...
some things are better left unthought of(click on link)
Cheers!
TruthSpeaker,
When I first read one of your "Mother/Daughter" posts, I had the distinct feeling I was missing something. It seemed to be a post missing both its begining and end. It seemed to be the middle of something, posted without context. It was if I had arrived in the middle of a lecture for a some sort of class on "Female Familial Relationships", without knowing why the lecturer was making the statements, what the premiss for the statements was, or what conclusion the lecurer would arrive at, if there were in fact a conclusion to be met.
Is this by any chance a work in progress? A thesis perhaps? or maybe a chapter for a book on famial relationships? where the premiss was set in a different chapter or a prologue of sorts?
Could it simply be a statement of your personal issues with your own mother that you are trying to come to terms with by turning it into a blanket statement about "some" mothers to make yourself feel better about it? Kind of like how Freud claimed all fathers wanted to have sex with their daughters in a effort to justify the fact he was a freak that wanted a incestuous relationship with his own daighter? or his "Oedipus Complex" crap because he wanted to cum from whence he came?
I can only assume you make these posts to be informative, but by the lack of context they don't actually come off that way. They instead come off as someone testing their theories by hoping for comfirmation via message replies, or as someone that really needs to work on their own issues without waving them about for public consumption.
Either way, best of luck on whatever you hoping to achieve, but this might not be the best forum to try and achieve it. Perhaps a classroom or psychiatrist's office would be better?
And, I'm a bit put off by some of the rudeness on this thread. Just NOT necessary.
Typically I've not seen TER people do this to truthspeakers posts. They usually have said, If you don't like the posts, don't read them. Some people even encouraged him to keep posting. On a SexSeekers board, personally I dunno how Truthseekers posts add to overall, but the moderator allows them, and some people enjoy them. That's enough for me. Whatever, still I don't see the point in blasting the man.
Interesting variation of attitudes on the thread above.
-- Modified on 12/12/2004 1:59:08 PM
Uhmmmm...I'm confused (as usual). Is TruthSpeaker a son or a daughter (i.e., a provider or hobbiest)? Interpretation of his/her comments are a bit difficult wothout benefit of context.
to be unnecessary rude comments. Truthspeaker has been making these posts for some time now for whatever reason. At least the gent before me got his point across without being rude.
The reason I post on this subject is that I have seen far too many women whose lives would have better if they had been willing to examine their relationships with their mother and father, and to do the work necessary to resolve those relationships.
Lots of other off-topic threads on TER, of course.
Wow, I'm new here but by the way quite a few people flamed this post this must be a regular type of post from this person. Damn, cut the poster a little slack. Overbearing or dependent parent's of either gender toward's either sex of child is wrong and plain fucked, to put it bluntly. If your unfortunate enough to be stuck in such a situation it can, and will, suck the life out of you!