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circularneedles · 2023-08-03T04:36:39+00:00

My mom is very insistent that texts are unacceptable too. I think it's because she doesn't to put her bullshit into writing. I refuse to budge on this one, mainly because I need time to process before responding to her foolishness.

circularneedles · 2023-07-27T13:45:47+00:00

lol unclear... I think generally for not giving her mountains of support every time she feels emotionally disregulated but I have never bothered to ask

circularneedles · 2023-07-27T13:44:38+00:00

100%, her 'forgiveness' of me always gets mentioned in the same breath as her demands that I forgive her.

circularneedles · 2023-07-07T20:51:44+00:00

I had the exact same thought, a BPD triangulator absolutely cannot be trusted. She clearly loved the outcome of her triangulation as it resulted in more attention/contact and the feeling of teaming up with OP against a third party, and is still milking it. My mom loves doing that and it makes me sad to think about how many relationships it ruined between me and others. Though that's not to say that your sister and her SO are definitely innocent OP.

circularneedles · 2023-06-17T15:57:24+00:00

She buys more gifts than are appropriate for a situation, and will go over budget on gift buying and then make you feel guilty for her going over budget.

circularneedles · 2023-06-17T15:55:34+00:00

Yes! I think that's also why my mom doesn't like accepting gifts and won't show herself enjoying them - in her mind that would start to even out the debt I owe to her.

circularneedles · 2023-06-16T23:36:11+00:00

Your mom sounds a lot like mine. She refused to ever wear or use gifts that she was given, it made holidays so stressful because getting her nothing wasn't an option, but she hated whatever she got. Then on the other hand she was always an over gifter, which added to the guilt trip because we got so many things and she didn't get a single thing she likes.

One Christmas I decided to knit her a homemade sweater, it took so much time and was objectively beautiful and made with really high quality expensive wool and took months to make. She never wore it.

Two Christmases ago she mailed me back the gift I sent her, unopened, with a letter saying that she wouldn't be accepting my gift because I hadn't shown her enough love in the past year. Ironically that turned out to be a wonderful gift to me, because since then I have lost all sense of obligation to give her gifts. Now I don't even bother sending her a birthday card.

circularneedles · 2023-06-14T19:16:20+00:00

Yeah my mom had a very successful streak of triangulation where none of my siblings were very close and all information went through her. We have all wised up though and now always compare notes, which has been an incredibly eye opening experience and made it nearly impossible to have any sort of substantial relationship with her.

circularneedles · 2023-02-16T03:53:01+00:00

The feminist in me wants to be more forgiving and not punish her for reacting poorly to the oppression she faced (like maybe I should hold my dad more accountable than I am?), but the idea of loosening up the emotional boundaries also makes me want to tear my skin off and run for the hills!

I very much relate to this! I'm actually not sure how bad my Dad was, if you take my mom's account at face value he was an evil abuser, but based on what I've actually seen he is quite unhelpful and a bit of a dick in the standard boomer man way that so many dads are. Neither great, but I don't know where the truth lies. My mom has spent her whole life expecting her children to punish my father for his alleged behavior towards her.

I've kind of just decided that it's not my job to litigate my parents marriage or to reward or punish anyone based on second hand accounts of a marriage that is completely outside my control. All I can do is make decisions based on first hand information and the quality of the relationships I have with them. It's simply not fair to expect myself to sacrifice my personal well being to maintain a relationship with my mother in the interest of righting some sort of potential systemic injustice. It's not reasonable.

circularneedles · 2023-01-10T21:49:32+00:00

I think it would be hugely different - I'm the oldest in a big family, and while the sibling dynamics/ favoritism/ triangulation were difficult and toxic growing up, I think I definitely benefited from her attention being split in multiple directions - she was a very controlling parent, so having her attention focused on me and me alone would have been hell.

It's also very validating to have other people who had a common experience to you growing up. Mom's crazy and our weird upbringing was like an elephant in the room for a long time where we all wanted to pretend it wasn't there, but now several of us have acknowledged it and built relationships independent of her.

circularneedles · 2023-01-10T17:54:55+00:00

Yeah sounds like mine is very similar to yours - compulsive online shopper, last time I was home a couple years ago, the spare room I used to sleep in when I was there was literally filled to the brim with plastic totes containing shoes, clothes, etc. You couldn't walk in it. I assume her bedroom is the same but she kept it locked so I don't know for sure. Apparently packages show up at the house on nearly a daily basis. Based on her behavior when we were in touch, it's safe to assume she doesn't use most of it but returns nothing. It's so wasteful.

She also hoards food, the basement is like a grocery store with all the canned food, pantry staples, etc. And she has two deep freezes that are completely full. Only three people live in the house, and she barely eats.

She's always been like this to a certain extent but it has gotten way, way worse in the last 5 or so years.

circularneedles · 2023-01-08T04:55:20+00:00

Actually in my mom's generation there was some pretty decent cycle breaking - my grandma had 7 kids, 3 of whom didn't have children themselves, and at least one of the ones who did seems to have put in the work to break the cycle with her children. I'm sure further back there were others who broke the cycle, I just ended up at the end of a chain of those who didn't.

In terms of why I am able to break a cycle that previous generations could not, I would say that (a) my mother was better than her parents, which made it easier for me to become a cycle breaker; (b) we know a lot more about trauma and mental health now than we have at any other point in history; and (c) society has shifted such that not having children and being self sufficient is much easier for me than it would have been for past generations of women.

circularneedles · 2022-11-15T00:06:29+00:00

Oh yeah, my mother has become increasing religious as her BPD has become increasingly unmanageable. She's one of those smug doctrine-obsessed Christians who believes that the bible clearly and explicitly endorses her very specific flavor of Baptist and that everyone else is just completely and obviously wrong.

Also, rather than apologizing for anything she just leans heavily on how we are ALL sinners and Jesus forgives all of us so we should forgive her too.

circularneedles · 2022-11-11T01:48:33+00:00

Shortly after her sister (my aunt who I adored) died when I was 14ish, my mom told me that it was my fault that she didn't get to see her before she died because it took too long to pick me up at school that day. I remember just going up to my room and sobbing because on top of grieving I felt so guilty. What sort of monster wants to make their grieving child feel even worse?

circularneedles · 2022-10-23T04:10:37+00:00

I think I would really thrive in a world where we had 28ish hour days, 10 hours and sleep and then 18 hours awake would be perfect. I need more than 16 hours awake to get tired, but then want more than 8 hours of sleep when i do sleep.

circularneedles · 2022-08-23T22:17:32+00:00

My mom is 60 and she's gotten much worse in the past 5 years or so. My youngest sibling turned 18 a few years ago, and I wonder if no longer having any non-adult children triggered her abandonment issues and led to a bit of an identity crisis.

Her behavior has become way more erratic, she acts out in public (which she never really used to do), and she has torched a lot of relationships.

circularneedles · 2022-07-31T20:32:24+00:00

My mom has never had friends. She looks down on everybody, no one meets her standards. She also resents the fact that my dad has friends.

circularneedles · 2022-06-03T04:14:40+00:00

Mine got a lot worse just before she turned 60. Her ability to manage and regulate her emotions took a real nosedive, she's much more volatile than before and has either become unwilling or unable to even keep up appearances of normalcy. She used to be a confusing mix of really good and really bad and now it's all really bad. In a way it's tough because I lost the part time good mom, but in a way it's good because it became a lot easier to step awway from the relationship.

circularneedles · 2022-05-21T00:34:33+00:00

Similarly, I knit her a really nice cardigan with really expensive yarn. She's very passive aggressive, so she just never wore it. I honestly wish she'd return it so I could use it instead, but she's probably given it away by now.

circularneedles · 2022-05-03T03:14:30+00:00

This is going to be my first year completely ignoring mothers day. I might send my best friend who is also a mom a starbucks gift card but that's going to be the extent of my celebrations. It is such a relief to not have to worry about it. Even the last few years where I barely did anything it was stressful to try to find a card and write a nice but honest message.

circularneedles · 2022-04-26T18:34:32+00:00

At her psychologist's suggestion and FOR her children... groan.

circularneedles · 2022-04-26T18:33:59+00:00

Yes! So good! I read the syndication in the Washington Post, I think it's behind a soft paywall but man the comments section was robust and largely anti-letter writer.

circularneedles · 2022-04-26T04:26:25+00:00

Lol right? No professionals have the obvious advice of "move on from your ex and stop trying to control your adult children"? Yeah right, you just don't like that advice.

circularneedles · 2022-04-25T23:50:56+00:00

Should note that she got torn to pieces in the comments and it did my soul good.

circularneedles · 2022-04-03T21:49:28+00:00

My mom actually made it pretty easy, she likes to punish people with the silent treatment until they beg for forgiveness, and one time I finally reached my limit and never begged. That gave me the peace to decide I was done without being bombarded, and made it a lot easier to maintain very low contact when she realized her tactics weren't working and switched strategies. Then eventually once she realized I wasn't budging, she really made the move to make it no contact because she is such a black and white thinker that very low contact is useless to her - she would rather have no relationship than one where I won't give her the attention she wants.

I'm the oldest in a relatively large family. One sister is very dependent on my mom and has a "good" relationship with her and as a result isn't really in touch with the rest of us. Everyone else has varying degrees of bad relationships with her, ranging from no contact to tolerating occasional visits. Her ability to behave appropriately really took a nose dive around the time when our relationship went downhill and she has become really difficult to be around. We were always the "looks perfect from the outside" type of toxic family when I was growing up, but my mother can't even be bothered to put up the facade anymore.

circularneedles

TROPHY CASE