I have seen women who were otherwise competent adults reduced to little girls when talking with their mothers.  Women who were strong in almost every other way, but get weak in the knees, or feel overwhelmed with sadness, or shake with rage, when they think about their childhoods.

How is this reign of terror by little old ladies possible?  Because when these adult daughters think of their mothers or interact with them, the daughters are once again scolded children, and the mothers are once again young mothers with the power to break a child's heart with a look.

But I think that the mother-daughter relationship can be resolved, so that the daughter can establish healthy boundaries between herself and her mother, and can then move on with life, no longer trapped by her past.  When an unhappy mother-daughter connection is resolved, a daughter may be able to truly understand her mother for the first time, and even feel empathy for her.  But she will need first to see her mother not as falling short of perfection, but as a flawed human who is a product of her own times and experiences.

If a woman's mother-daughter relationship remains unresolved, it has the potential of jeopardizing and even destroying all her other relationships - with friends, lovers, spouses, colleagues, children, grandchildren.  It can distort her perceptions, so that trust comes hard, or far too easily.

I have seen women become friends with people who it seems to me have their mother's most destructive characteristics.  A woman may say "I am always drawn to strong, forceful, controlling women, and I always end up by being intimidated by them.  They remind me of my mother,  so if I can get them to like me by taking their advice, or never disagreeing with them, it's like getting her to like me."

Some women impulsively and unfairly reject or hurt people who remind them of their mothers.  They see their mother where she doesn't exist.  If a friend corrects her grammar, she lashes out, because it feels like her friend is trying to humiliate her, like her mother always did.  Then she says to herself "Get a grip - this person *reminds* you of Mom, but she's *not* Mom.  Don't over-react.

A woman might marry someone who is very much like her mother.  For example, she might marry a man to wants her to "mother" him, and make all his decisions for him, like her mother always wanted to reverse the roles and be "mothered" by her daughter.

And yes, along those same lines, a woman might try to create in her children the loving mother she never had, rather than be a source of motherly strength and nurturing to those children.  A woman says "My daughter was my "pal".  I was going to have fun with her in a way that I never did with my mother.  I would tell her all my problems.  The upshot is that now she has no friends her own age, and is afraid to go to school.  She doesn't know how to get along with kids her own age."

Or a woman might be unable to draw the line with her mother and set limits, so that she and her family members are subjected to inappropriate behavior.  A woman's mother gets unbelievably nasty and ugly, but her duaghter can't help worrying about her all the time.  When her mother has a cold, she goes with her young son to visit her mother.  When the boy spills a glass of milk on her floor, her mother flies into a rage and becomes verbally abusive.  But still, the daughter continues to call her mother all the time.

How can daughters escape doing these things, often repeating and unhealthy pattern over and over?

The biggest challenge for daughters is to separate from their mothers, so that they can gain a healthy perspective, not just about their mothers, but also about themselves, their relationships, and the choices they make in life.  This separation doesn't mean you have to "fire" your mother, and remove her from your life.  Rather, it means that you will no longer have your self-esteem depend on her approval.  Instead, you will learn how to approve of and understand yourself.

I'm planning to post more about mothers and daughters, and how I think women can work on resolving their relationships with their mothers.  Please disregard the posts if they are not of interest.  It's just something I want to do.

Even as an adult, it's taken pain-staking discussions with my mother to even get to where we are today. I have finally come to the resolution that she is looking for a fight sometimes because she is miserable with her own life. I try to avoid it and don't let her get my goose (if you know what I mean). I love my mother dearly but even mothers are stubborn creatures.

Hugs,
Ciara

I find this an interesting post but in my experiences and observations thus far in life lead me to disagree with one point in particular. That being that this is a relationship problem exclusive to women (mothers and daughters) rather this is a problem that can be in any combination of parent and child be it mothers or fathers and sons or daughters.

Maybe it's because I'm in touch with my feminine side.

Thanks for the post.  Look forward to the rest.

relationships with their mothers.

I have posted before on the relationships between fathers and daughters, and plan to continue with that also.

I think with regard to women's realtionships with their parents, with their fathers it is often a matter of not enough emotional closeness, but with mothers it is often a matter of too much closeness.

Your insight about the reason your mother is looking for a fight is the key.  You sound like someone who has traveled at least part way down the path to healthy separation.  

Learning more about her personal history can help you to understand her.  The real prize is to come to a full realization that the reasons she behaved the way she did when you were a child had everything to do with her own childhood and personal history, and very little to do with you.

earn to accept each other and themselves as equals when the time is right and maturity is reached by the child

That can in many ways be true but one of the instances I was referring to was the relationship between my ex and his father which was very much like what you described for mother daughter. with regard to my relationship with my father it took a while for both of us to look at each other as individual adults and i hope that through that along with the relationship I had with my mother before she passed which was nothing like the one you described in that she much sooner accepted me as an individual adult and i her as a friend is what i have tried to pass on to my relationship with my son so to me the health of parent child relationships can vary greatly and can even vary between one parent and each of his or her different children in cases where there are more than one child in the family such as a parent may accept one child being adult easier than an other or one child can relate to one parent as an other adult and friend while not being able to with the other and the sexes of the kids involved and which parent can be either of.......
such for my 2 cents
georgia

Men marry  their mothers.  Women become their mothers.

More seriously, your relationships as adults with parents and children can be the most meaningful in your life.  My parents died years ago, and there is not a day that I do not miss them terribly.  As my children reach adulthood, I find ever deepening relationships with them.  Work out the problems, for this is something to cherish.

relationships.  You can do a "Find Message" (bottom left corner of screen), and look for posts by author "TruthSpeaker" from 200 days ago to 0 days ago.  It sounds like your relationship with your father has been more problematic than your relationship with your mother.

Parents often treat their children differently, and this can cause problems for both the unfavored child and the favored child.  But the underlying reasons for this different treatment usually lie with the parent's own personal history.  The unfavored child, because of a personality trait they have, may remind the parent of their own parent who they are angry at, who also has that same personality trait.  Or the unfavored child's trait may be one that the parent sees as a trait which they have themselves, and wish they didn't have, and so their anger at their child is really anger at that part of themself.  And so in these ways, the unfavored child unwittingly and innocently "triggers" a negative response from their parent.

The unfortunate thing is that the unfavored child does not realize that this is the real reason their parent acts negatively toward them, and instead assumes that it must be because they are a "bad" child.  The goal for the child (who is now an adult) is to realize that the reason your parent behaved negatively toward toward you was because of their own history, and not really because of you.  

There is often a special and gender-specific situation happening with father-daughter conflict.  When a girl leaves early childhood, she hopefully begins to see her father realistically as a person who has flaws as well as strengths.  This is a good part of healthy development.  But some fathers have a hard time handling this - they want to remain a perfect and heroic Daddy in their daughter's eyes. And so they react negatively to their developing daughter, who is begiining to see them as less than perfect.  The daughter doesn't understand what is happening in her father's mind and feelings, and thinks the reason for her father's sudden remoteness or disapproval must be her own fault. This can cause her problems later as an adult in her own relationships with men.

It's not so much how she had it, but how she feels about how she had it.  It is very likely that how she feels about how she had it has had a powerful effect on how she has treated you and reacted to you.

If you were the only daughter in a family of sons, then you had the added burden of being the only repository of her womanly hopes and dreams, and that is a  heavy load for any girl to carry.

My Pop is turning 70 next month and we've been dropping all kinds of baggage over the years.  With Mom too.  It's really pretty amazing to let it go and become such friends.  It should be quite a celebration.

No one knows you better than your parents!  And no one knows you less!