admitting I don't love her?

[XL]

I feel a need to "internet confessional this": I don't think I love my mother.

I went through a lot of stages of grief as a child. Why is this happening, what can I do to help, why won't she grow up/get therapy/leave/die, to just outright disgust and hatred cumulating with me going NC at 18 before she roped me back in with a faux suicide threat.

I was pretty much done with her by 18. Whatever traces of my "mommy" existed were dead and weren't coming back. I feel like the rest of these years I've been faking it. Tolerating her. Keeping on eye on her out of obligation or pity, and violently raging at myself each time I get fooled into letting her get too close.

There are a few unique things about her, but I can't tolerate a lot. Her "antiquing" is hoarding. Her "writing habit" is just as disjointed and abusive as her non-written thoughts. Her sense of humor is grossly inappropriate. Even when she's calm and in a good mood, she's only half there and I don't think she processes or remembers much substance about me or actually cares who I am. She's supportive, but of the person she wants me to be, and not the person I actually am. I don't know if she's just off the mark, or if she's passive aggressively trying to push my buttons. She can't censor her thoughts and cuts me down a lot. She's terrified of the world, of adventure, of life. She plants seeds of worry in all my adventures and hobbies. When I try to help her with self-care tasks she neglects, she rages at me. She gushes about how much she loves me, but I know she thought about killing me during a period of psychosis when I was a toddler. This weekend I realized I hated visiting her house a lot more after the CAT died; I was mostly going to see my cat. So I don't even think I like her much.

I love a lot of people who do love her. She's a good person to some people; I see how other people are delighted to have her around. I am not one of those people. I am immensely locked into pretending to love her so I don't alienate other people who do genuinely love me. I don't know how I feel about this. It's exhausting and I feel like fraud.

This evening I said "this reoccurring behavior this week is stressing me out" and sibling replied with "mom has problems, but we ignore them because we love her" and I realized I don't. I caught myself staring coldly when I should have replied. I don't feel that bad about it. I think I stopped loving her after a pretty horrific stretch in my mid teens when the rest of the family moved out & left me alone with her.

[Kwamina]

I think I stopped loving her after a pretty horrific stretch in my mid teens when the rest of the family moved out & left me alone with her.

I know what you mean, things also got a lot worse for me when my older sisters and brother moved out and I had to live alone with my mother for many years. I'm 31 now and I often look at my mother when she's in a mellow mood and wonder how this can be the same person that has been so mean to me on many occasions. I also often ask myself if I love her and I'm not always sure, what I do know is that after every extreme verbal attack by her, my love for her diminished more and more. I find it very hard to truly love her as a mother because she has never been a real mother to me, and still isn't.

[GeekyGirl]

It's very hard to not be incredibly angry at someone who has hurt you so badly. 

I feel a need to "internet confessional this": I don't think I love my mother.

I'm curious: when you say that, what feelings come up? Do you feel anxious, hurt, sad, empowered, or something else?

She's supportive, but of the person she wants me to be, and not the person I actually am. I don't know if she's just off the mark, or if she's passive aggressively trying to push my buttons. She can't censor her thoughts and cuts me down a lot. She's terrified of the world, of adventure, of life. She plants seeds of worry in all my adventures and hobbies.

From what you've said, your mother doesn't have a strong sense of self. That could cause her to seek out her identity through you (which is why she's so critical of your art) and might explain why she is terrified of so many things. Knowing that, how can you set limits with your mother to let her know that it's not ok for her to criticize you, but in a way that validates her feelings and fears?

[XL]

I think there's a real theme in western culture of "families don't always get along, but we love each other and we stick together".

For me it's the opposite. I act loving to smooth things over, but I don't love her. I feel bland saying that. Nothing. But I do feel angry that she's a gate keeper to other people who do actually love me. I have to keep her in contact or I'll be shamed and shunned by hundreds of people (huge family) who perhaps never realized how awful my childhood was.

And I feel weird that she claims to love ME so much. I'm an object of her worry, and she loves that, but I don't think I'm a proper complex person in her mind. It's almost like her main hobby is coming up with disaster scenarios in which I die. I feel like an object.

[XL]

I don't know, does anyone have advice on the obsessive worrying in particular? I broken record reassurances, but after the 80th time, I get so fed up i snap at her.

Example: as an adult, she'd scold and admonish me not to drive drunk. I don't drive drunk, find it deplorable, and explained our driver swap rotation. This would suffice for most of my aunts and uncles. She must have frantically yelled at me about drunk driving every weekend over 6 years to the point where I just screamed at her. She must have warned me of drunk driving 90 times or more. Yet in her mind I personally am guilty of drunk driving. It's a total failure to internalize my own morals and world view. She's not processing MY words.

Any time I go traveling, I'm going to get raped and die. All men are beating me. Anytime I go running, I'm going to get hit by car, or kidnapped, or attacked by animals. I literally just repeat the same thing over and over again. "No, it's mommy stroller day, other women are out jogging" "No the parking lot at the gym is lit".

But at a point it's like "I don't want to talk about rape and animal mauling and plane crashes. I'm not answering my phone, and we are not friends because your main hobby is ruminating on my death." If she cared about me she'd stop doing this. She needs the object of me to never expire, and that creeps me out.

[CBoo]

This is exactly how I feel about my father. He has cast me in the role of his little girl... .  Which I have been since I tumbled his activity in my late childhood.

I don't love him. The attachment has reversed = he makes me feel physically sick.

My brother has recently re established a relationship with him. I would advise against using sibling relationships to use as a measure. We had *very* different roles growing up, and it makes a big difference now.

[XL]

I would advise against using sibling relationships to use as a measure. We had *very* different roles growing up, and it makes a big difference now.

Yeah. I think I got a lot more psycho weirdness because I was the only other female in the family.

I think the fear mongering is a way of painting the world as dangerous so we don't run off into it and leave them. As a teen it had the opposite effect. I did a lot of crazy stuff out of spite. As an adult it feels like she's just crapping on all of my healthy hobbies and interesting experiences, and it's hard to love someone who tries to ruin every new hobby or friend you find.

[Kwamina]

I think the fear mongering is a way of painting the world as dangerous so we don't run off into it and leave them. As a teen it had the opposite effect. I did a lot of crazy stuff out of spite. As an adult it feels like she's just crapping on all of my healthy hobbies and interesting experiences, and it's hard to love someone who tries to ruin every new hobby or friend you find.

I absolutely agree! My mother also used to scare the hell out of me and looking back I realize it was because she didn’t want me to leave and used this to control me. Several times she’s said that friends who had given me something were trying to poison me, this really freaked me out. It seems like death and killing is always on her mind. In her mind these kind of remarks or normal but I really hated them because it’s very unpleasant to think about poisoning and death all the time.

[XL]

I absolutely agree! My mother also used to scare the hell out of me and looking back I realize it was because she didn’t want me to leave and used this to control me. Several times she’s said that friends who had given me something were trying to poison me, this really freaked me out. It seems like death and killing is always on her mind. In her mind these kind of remarks or normal but I really hated them because it’s very unpleasant to think about poisoning and death all the time.

You know, I just realized something. I think about death A LOT. Like every 20 seconds or so. I am actually fairly comfortable with that topic and do well in hospice situations. I'm not morbid, I'm just accepting of it as an eventual fact. I've been perplexed that I can't shut that off. I kind of figured it was low level OCD thing that didn't bother me too much, but... .  reading your response, I'm wondering if it stems from this?

It upsets me too that I am thus more accepting of my own mortality. I'm healthy, but if I found out I had a terminal sickness, I like to think I could handle it graciously. It upsets me that she feels I am never allowed to die, when I'm very capable of imagining my dwindling timeline. It's weird too because she gets very demanding and demeaning whenever I'm ACTUALLY sick or injured. The perfect example was when she needed to meet up, and my hand was injured and I couldn't drive. My ride couldn't go until later at night. So she freaked out about "night driving being dangerous" while berating me for not driving myself early (again... .  hand was in a sling, and she had no empathy). It's an insane lose-lose.

[Kwamina]

That's a true BPD mother for ya! Totally unable or unwilling to understand how her children feel and how her crazy behavior impacts the way they feel. This is very frustrating because as a child you always hope that she'll stop and be a 'real' mother one day. Growing up I always felt like I was the only one going through these kind of things and that nobody could understand me, but after learning about BPD it became clear that (unfortunately) there are many people who’ve had these painful childhood experiences.

I think the fact that our mothers were obsessed about death, indeed has desensitized us. My older uBPD sister has often threatened to kill herself, she’s never ever made an actual suicide attempt though, she just says this to manipulate others so she can get what she wants. This behavior of her has always bothered me, but a year ago I realized that it didn’t shock me. I just reacted like ‘there we go again’ but didn't get really upset. I realized that people who don’t grow up like this, would be shocked to hear a family member talk about suicide. I however have gotten so used to it, that for me this almost became ‘normal’ behavior. My mother never explicitly threatens to kill herself, but she’ll say things like ‘There is no sense in going on for me’.

[Kwamina]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't! Lose-lose indeed, no matter what you do, she'll always find fault in your behavior. My mother is like that too, now that i'm older I'm better able to handle this but growing up this fault-finding really confused me and made me doubt myself.