Seeking input on future of relationship with mother

[Depression = 72% of members]

I'm in a real conundrum and feeling extremely unsure of how to proceed with my relationship with my BPD/NPD mother. She's not the overtly abusive type; she's too clever for that and gets her kids to do her dirty work for her by being two-faced. Abuse by proxy I believe this is called, and there is evidence that she knows exactly what she's doing. (Is there such a thing as a covert Witch?)

It would be entirely doable for us to have a tea party relationship, but I feel like under these circumstances, by doing this I am in some way rewarding her bad behavior. I know that my siblings will assume that I am essentially enjoying a relationship with her at their expense and gossiping about them with her, (since gossip is the only subject that interests her) and they would hold that against me. I also feel like as the eldest sibling it is my responsibility to set a good example to them on this, especially since I have spoken out against the gossip in the past. I welcome any words of wisdom.

   

[Couscous]

I'm in a real conundrum and feeling extremely unsure of how to proceed with my relationship with my BPD/NPD mother. She's not the overtly abusive type; she's too clever for that and gets her kids to do her dirty work for her by being two-faced. Abuse by proxy I believe this is called, and there is evidence that she knows exactly what she's doing. (Is there such a thing as a covert Witch?)

It would be entirely doable for us to have a tea party relationship, but I feel like under these circumstances, by doing this I am in some way rewarding her bad behavior. I know that my siblings will assume that I am essentially enjoying a relationship with her at their expense and gossiping about them with her, (since gossip is the only subject that interests her) and they would hold that against me. I also feel like as the eldest sibling it is my responsibility to set a good example to them on this, especially since I have spoken out against the gossip in the past. I welcome any words of wisdom.

   

[Notwendy]

I have made it clear to BPD mom that I won't discuss gossip over other family members and also made it clear to them.

General news is OK. News like "so and so got a new job" or "niece is engaged" is fine. You know what I mean about triangulation and derogatory gossip.

I've replied " I don't want to discuss this" and now, BPD mother knows I won't.

It would be nice if your sister believed you, but she'll think what she thinks. However, it's your boundary and you will know.

[Methuen]

When my mom starts “gossiping “, I remind her I don’t talk about other people when they  aren’t present.  That’s gossip, and I don’t believe in gossip.  Then I quickly change the subject and distract her.

Would a tea party relationship be rewarding bad behavior, if it was on your  terms?

I think the important thing is to determine what your values are, and follow those.  I feel duty to my mother since I am the only family she has left.  But I have had to carefully and gently put a lot of boundaries in place just to protect myself.  She’s 85 and her needs are completely overwhelming.

[zachira]

I hear your frustration about having to listen to your mother gossip about others, likely saying things that are not even true. My mother with BPD is deceased. It was only until the end of her life that I got up the courage to just walk away when she started trashing other people. I wished I had done that sooner.
As far as your siblings go, you can tell your mother in front of them, you will not be participating in gossip with her. I did this once with my brother. Mom never wanted her children to get married, especially her sons. The last time my brother had a girlfriend I told my mother in front of my brother, I did not want to hear one unkind word about the girlfriend. They both looked uncomfortable and mom never gossiped about this woman again, at least not with me.

[beatricex]

Hi Couscous,
I hear what you are describing, it's frustrating.

For years I thought I was holding it together, that my family was "not that bad" and that since abuse by proxy and tea party relationships were pretty much all we had, hey it was better than nothing!  At least I had a family. 

Slowly, very slowly, I had to get clear on my values, as Methuen suggests (and you are aware too - you said you want to set an example as the oldest). 

In the darkest moments I have utilized my awareness that "at least I'm aware of who I am and what I value here" unlike my siblings (I have 5) who at a minimum listen to and at worst participate in the gossip.  Later, when you are looking back and are maybe struggling (for me perimenopause and now menipause have been Huge, I am struggling like when I was a teenager and the hormones were raging) you can fall back on your values.  I have been able to pull myself up a few times this way.  It's important. For me to be able to say "I didn't participate - not in a tea party way or Any way" has sometimes been the only discriminator between me and them.  I don't know what it's like to be them (do they have guilt?) but I know how it feels to be me, and I'm glad I'm me.

b

[Couscous]

Thanks for everyone’s comments!

I think what I am struggling with the most is the thought of all of us siblings maintaining a relationship with my mother after she has successfully destroyed our relationships with each other. That’s what I mean by rewarding bad behavior. And she continues her campaign to undermine our sibling relationships at every chance she gets to this day which, IMO, will prevent us from ever being able to repair our relationships with each other.

It’s also hard for me to imagine how I will be able to pull off the compartmentalization which will be needed in order to have even a tea party relationship with someone who is still actively trying to harm me and my siblings. In a way it feels like it would be a betrayal of my siblings, and also, myself.

Now, I don’t think I would need to go completely NC with her, and I would be OK with sending her birthday and Christmas cards. And I think she would actually be perfectly happy with that, since it will mean that I haven’t completely cut her off the way her mother did with her.

[Riv3rW0lf]

I looked for your post...I can relate, my relationship with one of my brothers is very complicated because my mother always gets in the middle of it. She says mean things about my oldest brother too, and at some point, I told her I wasn't angry with my brothers, that I loved them dearly and when she engages in bad mouthing them, I tell her I think they are great and she usually changes how she talks or stops talking about it.

My oldest brother (I am the youngest and only girl) doesn't engage, he doesn't care, he is too busy, honestly, although she still tries and uses him to get to me, he won't truly engage.  The truth is, he took care of me when I was young and a teenager more than she ever did, so I think part of him feels more compelled to support me than to support her. He might not agree with me, but he doesn't meddle and doesn't shame me. He would try to bridge, but that's about it.

My other brother on the other end developped a bipolar disorder, possibly BPD and he is in a co dependent relationship with her. So if I cut her off or reduce contact, it means he will start limiting contact with me. Everything I do to her, he will do to me or blame me at some point for hurting her or for abandoning them. He once got mad at me for taking out my mother's last name and keeping only my father's name on Facebook. I was a bit baffled by his reaction...

I think whatever road we take, we have to be prepared for maybe having to mourn some of our siblings too, until they, maybe, start seeing things more clearly down the road...

[Notwendy]

I think any boundary with my BPD mother has to include those in her circle. She sees people as being "on her side" or "not on her side" and if I am "not on her side" then the people in her circle also have to "side with her".

So I basically have a cordial but emotionally distant relationship with her and her family and friends. What this means is that anything I say to them will be shared with her, so I don't share personal information with them.

I do have a closer relationship with a sibling, but I also am careful about what to share as this sibling is more enmeshed and likely to share personal information under her pressure.

Sadly, I think having boundaries with a family member with BPD results in this kind of thing but because I don't trust my mother, and I can't trust what she says to others about me, I feel I need to keep an emotional distance from the people she's in contact with.

[Couscous]

I’ve been doing some thinking (or maybe some ruminating) about why I am so paranoid about maintaining contact with my mother, and why I fear that she will recruit my children to join her alliance. And I can’t help but wonder if I may have aligned myself with my paternal grandmother against my mother when I was a child. My mother told me that I pulled away from her at age 5.

There was an incident in which I visited my grandparents who lived in a foreign country, alone at age 7, and they sent back a credit card for my father, (probably the whole purpose of this trip) and they asked me to keep this a secret from my mother, which was exactly what I did. I now question how normal it is for 7 year olds to keep secrets from their mothers.

[beatricex]

Hi Couscous,
We had lots of secrets from my Mom.  We being my siblings and I.  It was sort of like the Peanuts cartoon, there were adults (wa wa wah) and then there were kids in our neighborhood (me and my siblings were the ring leaders, as the largest family, and all close in age).

I'm pretty sure I didn't tell my mom the truth about anything starting about age 7 on.  That was unspoken code since she believed in group punishment.  I guess the difference was we were kids keeping secrets, and yours was with an adult (your grandmother).

I wonder if in a dysfunctional family system, this isn't quite normal?  We didn't want our mother to rage at us, hence secrets were kept.  I started telling my mom some of them before I went no contact.  I said "remember that time you thought someone stole [my brother's] bike?  Well, I rode it to the store, forgot I rode it there, no I didn't lock the bike up...I bought some candy, walked home, forgetting I rode my brother's bike there and three days later when you called the police and they found the bike at the store [where I left it LOL] you exclaimed Glad the Police found that bike!" 

This might not seem like a big deal until I point out this was a bike we needed to do our paperroute (my brothers and I).   My mom had to drive us around (get up at 6 am to do so) because "the bike got stolen!"
  Oh hell no, I was not ever going to admit to her I left it at the store, and didn't lock it up.

My brothers knew I did this, I told them immediately.  No one told Mom.

b

[Riv3rW0lf]

Hi Couscous,

Why are you wondering about it now? At this moment?

What I mean is... Even if you aligned with you paternal grandmother "against your mother"...What does it change to the current dynamic? She is your mother, you should not even have to wonder if you somehow aligned against her or not, leading to the current dynamic. I mean ... If my daughter ever keep a secret from me, I will not hold it against her, I would wonder why. If it's just regular identity affirmation and healthy detachment, then that's good and I would welcome her in her lie... Although I'd rather she tells me the truth ! If it's fear then I'd wonder what the heck I did wrong to lose her trust like that.

Maybe I am misreading you, though, for a second it felt like you were searching a fault in yourself? A rational reason as to why she is the way she is? But I might be projecting so please disregard what I wrote if I am.

I rarely lied to my parents, never actually. In my case, the backlash and fear of my lies being discovered was just too intense so I would say everything upfront in an effort of showing " look look, I am good and I regret it, please don't punish me!" Even for really small things. But we did have one pattern : what happened at mom couldn't make it into dad's house, and my dad always told us not to tell what happened in his house to our mother (who was always trying to know). This was made in an effort to keep the peace as much as possible, because he knew how she could get when she felt crossed or betrayed. He was protecting himself and us, by extension.

[Couscous]

Riverwolf, what concerns me is that my grandmother may have turned me against my mother, and that this might mean that my mother could turn my kids against me.

When I see how loyal so many daughters are to their BPD mothers I feel like a bit of an anomaly, as I have no feelings of loyalty towards her, and I’m trying to understand why this might be. I was a daddy’s girl, but so were many others here too, so that can’t be the explanation.

I am actually considering broaching the topic of the relationship with my grandmother with my mother, and tell her about the credit card.

I also think that my loyalty towards my father has always been a real sore spot for my mother, especially since I am now beginning to suspect that he was verbally abusive to her based on my own memories, and I remember her saying when I was a child that he was like Dr Jekyl and Mr Hide.

[Riv3rW0lf]

Ok I see your point.

I was a daddy's girl too, and my mother never liked that I left her house to go live with him.

Interestingly enough, after that point, she only showed love to me if I hated my father and behold, I spent about 8 years giving him grief and blaming him, even went as far as telling him I hated him. I only clearly realised the dynamic when I had my daughter, and I had clear dreams, lucid dreams showing me that I loved my father, that he did the best he could and that the danger has actually always been my mother, who would be disguised as an angry black wolf in my dreams that wanted to kill me.

All this to say, my own mother did succeed in turning me against my father... For a while. And she did succeed in turning my brother against our father, for even longer... And she does succeed in keeping my brother against my other brother.

She has try, on many occasions, to turn my nephew against his own mother... I know only because of what she told me herself. That she tries to be there for him, and she plants doubts in his mind about his mother. I just realized that she was not above lying, so she might be telling him even worst things than what she tells me.

But... She is his grandmother, not his mother. Now his mother... I have no idea how she is actually. But I am not sure it is possible for a grandmother to turn a child against their mother unless they are very very close with the child. She would need the trust of the child, and a lot of time. That's just my feeling anyway, that it takes a lot of proximity to actually turn a child against his parent, especially if that parent is loving and not abusive toward them.

My three years old told me she thought her grandmother was mean when we were in her house.. I think, because she didn't like to see me struggle. She knows me, and she knows I wasn't myself and she saw her grandmother screams at me. Kids are smarter than we think ... I turned against my father because I was longing for my mother's love... But our children are not longing for love, we validate their feelings.. sometimes maybe even too much honestly...  

I have no idea what your own grandmother told you... But if your parents are separated and if you were a daddy's girl... Chances are that just this was enough to set your mother off. It was in my case anyway.

But I would never trust my mother to be in my children's life unsupervised, that is now quite clear.

Do you have a reason to believe your grandmother was BPD herself?

[Methuen]

I am actually considering broaching the topic of the relationship with my grandmother with my mother, and tell her about the credit card.

Hey Couscous,  when I read this, I went back and read your opening post to this thread, and then I wondered : "what are you hoping to achieve by doing this?"  After everything that has evolved and happened with her all the years since, and into adulthood, would it really matter?  Or, should it?  

My mother still blames me for eating a christmas tree ornament hanging on the bottom branch of the tree when I was 8 months old and only crawling.  A shiny bobble?  What baby isn't going to crawl to that and put it in their mouth?  "Mouthing" is how babies learn.  But every year at Christmas time she would tell the same story publicly, always to shame and humiliate me as if I was so stupid that I tried to eat a glass ornament as a baby.  My point to this story, is that even if you shared the truth, your mother could still blame you for what you did at age 7, as mine did me at 8 months.  pwBPD just always need to blame someone else.  I guess it's possible that she could blame your grandmother (if she's still alive), but what are the chances that anything would change your relationship with her because of this?  Even if it did, that is sounding like it could be the familiar old Karpman triangle dynamic.  When I go back and read your first post, it sounds like your mom is disordered, has caused you a ton of pain, meddles with the siblings, causes chaos in your relationships between each other, and telling her this one piece of info probably isn't going to change all that, if she's disordered. Thoughts?

I am not sure it is possible for a grandmother to turn a child against their mother unless they are very very close with the child. She would need the trust of the child, and a lot of time. That's just my feeling anyway, that it takes a lot of proximity to actually turn a child against his parent, especially if that parent is loving and not abusive toward them.

I second Riv3rW0lf's thoughts here.  You wouldn't have turned against your mother (by conspiring with the credit card) if you totally trusted her.  It is more likely you would have "ratted" on grandma, or just not been able to successfully keep the secret.  A 7 year old keeping that secret is notable.  Kids often slip up unintentionally.  Trust is developed in the earliest months and years of a child's life.  When a baby is hungry, wet, tired, or lonely they cry.  If their needs are met, they learn to trust, and bond to the adult who meets those physical and emotional needs.  It starts there, and evolves as the child progresses through different stages of development.  If their developmental needs aren't met, they don't learn to trust, or don't feel confident in who to trust.  I definitely have trust issues to this day.

I'm trying to understand what could be gained from sharing the credit card story with your mother now.  

Is it possible that you could be feeling the guilt of 5 (or 7?) year old Couscous? That you somehow think this thing that happened with the credit card and your grandma holds some responsibility for bad things that followed with your mom in the years to come?  My goodness friend, you were 5 then, but could it be that you are still somehow carrying this burden of having done something wrong that caused problems in your relationship for years to come?  As a 5 year old, you are not at fault for anything.  The problems are with the adults.  Sadly, there were two women in your life (mom and grandmother) whom you relied on to take care of you, but who sound like they used you as a pawn with each other perhaps.  

I can't remember if you see a T Couscous (many of us here do), but if you are seriously considering sharing this credit card story with your mom (hoping to repair, or get closer to her...or be forgiven, or are worried that you child could do this to you...?) , I would discuss it with a T first...someone who knows you and your story very well.

Sometimes it is difficult to predict in advance if disclosing something like this could make the relationship with your mom better or worse.  But with the brief snippets I have grasped from your story, I just want to say that 5 year old Couscous is not responsible for anything that happened because of that credit card event.  Kids are not responsible.  Adults are.  Personally, I wouldn't "rock the boat" with this disclosure to your mom, but that is just based on my life experience.  However, you know your mom and your grandma and your whole story best, so the decision on what is best to do lies with you.  I just have a backround in child development, and appreciate that young children commonly blame themselves for adult problems, and they can carry that self-blame forever.  I'm hoping that's not what is going on here for you.

what concerns me is that my grandmother may have turned me against my mother, and that this might mean that my mother could turn my kids against me.

Ah, I can totally see where you are coming from here, based on your credit card story.  I'm going to go out on a limb here Couscous, and suggest that you have been a healthier parent to your kids than your mom was to you.  I'm also going to suggest that you have probably earned your kids' trust in a way that maybe your mother didn't earn yours.  

[Couscous]

Thanks Menthuen, that was a good catch and I think you are right. I think that the feeling of extreme urgency that I had to call my mother RIGHT NOW to talk about this was a big clue that I was not operating from my Healthy Adult-self. She is about as emotionally phobic as they come, so there is no way this conversation could possibly have ended well. The best case scenario is that we would have a fleeting moment of cheap intimacy at my father's expense which would put me right back on the drama triangle.

And I can see how the idea that talking about this will magically turn our relationship around is just another healing fantasy, and upon closer examination it does appear to be a clever attempt by my Child-self to take responsibility for what went wrong in our relationship, or at the very least, to absolve my mother of responsibility. If I had a healthy attachment to my mother no doubt I would not have kept the secret, nor would I have pulled away from her at age 5.   

[Methuen]

Glad I could help Couscous. Take care.

[Notwendy]

I will second what Methuen says- our mothers "see" us through their disordered thinking. My mother also talks about me as a child doing things "on purpose" and tells a story about how one time I threw up on her floor as a toddler on purpose ( probably had a stomach ache) and another one about how I refused to share my cookie with a sibling ( as if little kids would give up a cookie).

"Confessing" any acts fuels the disorder, confirms her thinking to her, but it doesn't resolve the relationship because she still perceives things I do through her own thinking.

In the 12 step programs there is a point to making an apology and amends but the wording is careful. It says "be willing" to make amends and do so if it won't cause harm to you or others. In the context of what happened when you were 7, this involved your grandmother and the relationship between them. In addition, you were only 7 and doing what you were told to do. I don't think you are responsible for that. Another interpretation that I thought when I read this was that your grandmother knew your mother was disordered and was trying to help your father. While it's not appropriate to tell a 7 year old to "not tell her mother"- she may not have had a bad intent for doing that. The "be willing" part is that, we may be  willing to make amends, but we need to consider if it bringing up the topic causes harm or emotional harm to those involved. In some situations we don't have a way to contact the person, so the be willing part is for our own resolution.

IMHO, I think you are being critical of your 7 year old self for not knowing better- but no 7 year old does. But I get how you feel as being raised where there doesn't seem to be much acceptance or forgiveness for even small mistakes, we can feel overly critical. You can love and forgive that 7 year old self.

I get the fear of your mother "turning your children against you". I was afraid of that as well once I saw her influence on my father and her family. But Methuen is right in that we don't parent our children in the same way and so they don't feel the same way around us. Still, I had boundaries on her contact with them because she does triangulate with people.

[beatricex]

There are some really great points being made here.

In my case Couscous, I think I told my mom about one or two lies because I wanted to let her know (and maybe let myself know) that it's OK that I screwed up, and others accepted me even though I screwed up (my brothers) and I survived it.  Perhaps I was even trying in a small way to take back my power.  As if to let her know "I lied to you about major stuff lady...the world didn't end...you didn't have power over me then, and you still don't."  (just sounds like a boundary if you don't apply sarcasm)

I did not say, but maybe thought:  "I did it to avoid more pain from you, because as you know, you liked to rage, and you're Not understanding.  DUH"  (that would be sarcastic and not helpful) 

I do pick and choose my battles with this lady as others are gently suggesting you do with your Mom.  That was in a rare moment where she was being motherly, before I went NC.  I felt somewhat close to her at that moment.  somewhat safe.  If this makes sense.

 
b