Feeling confused about my parents' relationship to me.

[Notwendy]

Strange title- right?

I haven't seen my BPD mother in a while. I don't feel bad about that but in a way, it doesn't seem OK either.

I don't think she wants to see me. She asked golden child to visit and that visit is scheduled but she has not asked me. Her home helpers say she's excited about the visit. But the last time I visited all she could say to me when I left was how much I upset her. The irony is that, I didn't try to do that, in fact, I had hosted a nice get together with her and her extended family, paid for everything- with the intention of doing something nice for her. When I left, I felt so demoralized. It was then that I realized the whole visit was my idea. She didn't invite me. So maybe she didn't even want it.

I think her main reason for contacting me is due to wanting contact with my children- mostly for appearance as they are adults. She calls them directly. Sometimes they answer but also sometimes they don't want to talk to her. I am not concerned about her triangulating with them. They know the situation.

How I see my relationship with my father is different now. I thought we had a relationship but I see now that his only focus was my mother. I remain grateful for all he did for us, providing for us, and I respect that he did the right thing. But was it that he was invested in us as a father or that he provided for us because he was a decent person in that respect. On the other hand, he enabled my mother while she mistreated us and put her first no matter what. We were expendable in that sense. Our purpose was to meet her emotional needs. Being that he was the more normal parent, I idolized him, loved him, but feel his approval was contingent on me complying with BPD mother.

I don't think either parent loved "me for me" because they don't even know me and now, even less so since going LC with BPD mother.

It's an odd situation as I am the contact person for my BPD mother's caretakers, even though GC is the preferred child. This is because the GC lives at a greater distance. Neither of us live very close to her, but I am closer.  This is by mutual agreement between us- fortunately I don't have sibling issues. It just makes more sense to do it this way. Lately she's become more medically frail and needs more assistance, yet she remains difficult. Sometimes it's impossible to communicate with her- the slightest comment sets her off. Now if she calls me- I just listen because saying anything results in her being angry. She only allows you to speak to her if she asks a direct question.

At the moment, she has good caregivers and her nurse coordinator gives me updates. I feel sad for her in her situation, but also don't feel like she has any motherly feelings towards me and I don't even know exactly how I feel about her. I don't wish her any harm. I wish her well. I find myself getting teary and sad when I hear from her care team. I know on some level that I do care about her. I don't think she cares about me, but my feelings aren't contingent on that. I guess I choose to care.

[zachira]

Notwendy,
The confusion you feel about your parents relationship with you makes it no less heartbreaking and no less of a lifelong loss. You are clearly capable of loving and caring for others, and would like to have had a loving healthy relationship with your parents because it is who you are: a daughter who wants to be the loving caring daughter with the love and caring reciprocated. It can help sometimes to think that the goal posts are always moving with disordered people, as their sense of self is extremely unstable. It can also not be helpful to look for explanations as there really are no justifications for the constant moving of the goal posts. Now is a time for extreme compassion for yourself, as your mother gets closer to the end of her life, and the hope dies that she will ever treat you right. Unfortunately with mothers with BPD, the abandonment and lack of control they feel as they get closer to death, can turn into them being the most cruel with the children who are the most differentiated from the mother with BPD: children like yourself being able to have loving relationships with their own children, having successful careers, being able to calmly set boundaries with the mother with BPD, etc., In the last few years before my mother with BPD passed away, I felt great sadness about not being to change anything, as it got worse and worse as my siblings felt freer to be deliberately cruel and mom lost more of her inhibitions about hiding her terrible behaviors. Let yourself grieve the losses as they come up. We are here for you.

[I Am Redeemed]

I can relate to not being loved or seen for who I was.

Sometimes I think the relationship with the less dysfunctional parent or caregiver is the hardest to understand or accept.

Severe codependency can really harm children who have a disordered parent. Children naturally look to bond with someone, look for love from someone. Realizing that there were limitations to the relationship with the parent who seemed to provide some love can be very painful. It contributes to the childhood trauma survivor's feelings of not being good enough, not feeling protected, not feeling safe, not feeling valuable.

Was your father invested in you? Maybe he wanted to be. Maybe he thought he was. Maybe he didn't know how to do that. Maybe he was really worn down by navigating your mother and couldn't gain the self awareness to see his part in the dysfunction.

Maybe he didn't understand the impact that the whole family system was having on his children. I think that's true for a lot of people, whether codependent, disordered, or otherwise not mentally and emotionally healthy.

Maybe he did see it but was in deep denial. Or maybe it was just too hard.

Whatever the reason, it's okay to recognize that your parents didn't give you what you needed, and it's okay to grieve that, as Z said.

It was their failing and not yours.

[Methuen]

Hi NW,

I don't think either parent loved "me for me" because they don't even know me and now, even less so since going LC with BPD mother.

I now suspect my mother never loved me either.  But not because we weren’t lovable, or weren’t worthy, but because they don’t feel love themselves.  If a person can’t feel love, how can they love someone else? By desiring their love, we as their children are wanting something they simply don’t have to give.  And yet every child needs love.  It’s an impossible situation.  

It’s anecdotal, but here’s my example.  As an only child, I now feel I was groomed to take care of my mother.  Which I did.  I took care of her at the age of 5 when she had migraines for 3 days.  She was my matron of honour at our wedding.  I made sure she came along on family trips with us when our children were growing up.  When my mom had a medical setback 6 weeks before a planned trip to Hawaii and said she couldn’t go (she could have), I cancelled our trip too and our 2 adult children were devastated.  Looking back, we could have still gone without her.  But I prioritized my mother’s feelings. When she became elderly and started falling and breaking things, I took care of her, at the expense to myself and my job.  All my daily and life decisions were made around making her feel good and included.  During all these years, I prioritized her and her needs.  During the last 15 years I started seeing counsellors who suggested she could have BPD.  They were short term random sessions.  The last 5 years has been steady biweekly or monthly sessions.  Since I went back to work (which set up a natural boundary for contact), my H has taken over her grocery shopping.  Remarkably, she now texts him the way she used to text me.  He shows me her textxs.  She simply grooms whomever she can to meet her needs.  Whomever meets her needs is who she communicates  with.  It’s as if I have ceased to exist. She was never actually attached to me.  It’s bizarre.  After being her carer for 57 years, I am still nothing to her.  I have accepted that it’s because she doesn’t know what love is.  It’s not personal.  Years ago, after my dad died and mom was introducing me to her new boyfriend, she said “now you two hug each other”.  It was bizarre.  What adult thinks that making two adults meeting each other and forcing them to hug will mean they will get along or care for one another?

It’s just my personal theory, but I’m thinking that someone who doesn’t believe they  are lovable can’t receive or give love.  

The situation with your dad would, I think feel worse than the situation with your mother.  For her, there’s a rational explanation of why she is like she is .  But for your dad, he was actually capable of love and attachment, so when he made that conditional on your relationship with your mom, things got confusing, and distressing.  The question becomes does he love me or doesn’t he?  Love isn’t conditional with healthy relationships. The hardest part would be questioning the relationship you believed you had with your dad.  The foundation was solid, until it wasn’t.  That’s a huge loss to grieve.

Trigger warning re hurricane:
Who knows what was really going on between them.  The speculation may  drive you crazy.  The energy that will take could zap you.  Your mom is dysfunctional.  My metaphor is a hurricane.  The eye of it sucks in everthing around it.  The destruction from the storm is to relationships. Our mom’s are like hurricanes and all of us get sucked in to some degree.  Your dad was no exception.  The really tragic part is that he never developed awareness of that before he died.  That’s your loss to bear.

I’m really sorry NW.  I don’t really know how to help.  But I believe from the stories you told that the time and times your dad spent with you, were genuine.  Hang onto those.  Let yourself trust them.  What happened with the relationship at the end of his life seems like material that was sucked into the BPD storm, and he was too weak and vulnerable at the end of his life to fight it.

I’m so sorry.

[livednlearned]

I don't think she wants to see me.

Thinking about this through the lens of BPD here ... (hang on, windy conditions) ... I wonder if it's so primitive what she wants that it isn't even about you, which is its own kind of exquisite pain, if only because the end result is the same: you are not seen as a separate, unique, special, lovable person. She is not capable of seeing you.

It's a subtlety. Maybe it's so subtle it doesn't make a difference? I don't know. It seems to help me locate where the injury is, and who helped injure me there. Versus feeling the injury, as though the injury is me, if that makes sense.

I know it feels exquisitely painful to not be seen or wanted by people who are supposed to see and want you. Those feelings take my breath away sometimes. I have this unanswerable (?) question about who I am independent of my abuse, and it seems to track back to this feeling of being wanted, or seen. Can feeling worthy heal the question: Do they even want me? I'm not sure it's the right question given where the dysfunction or trauma originated, but I have to hope that the failures of my FOO do not define who I am, entirely.

What I'm wondering with your situation is this: Is it that you learned boundaries with your mom, a form of rejecting certain behaviors, and now you are feeling that she is responding by rejecting you (versus rejecting behaviors of yours she doesn't like)? Meaning, you rejected x behaviors and you perceive that your mom is rejecting you?

I had hosted a nice get together with her and her extended family, paid for everything- with the intention of doing something nice for her. When I left, I felt so demoralized. It was then that I realized the whole visit was my idea. She didn't invite me. So maybe she didn't even want it.

If this is the visit I remember from something you shared with us earlier, wasn't she trying to manipulate something you didn't agree with? I can't recall the details... maybe it was that she was trying to get other family members to come over before you were ready, or ordering from an expensive restaurant? It was a boundary issue for you, I remember that. Thinking about it from that perspective, if that's indeed where she's coming from, it makes me wonder if it's the boundaries she doesn't want, not necessarily that she doesn't want you. Does that make sense? But her BPD makes it so she cannot distinguish the behaviors from the person, the object constancy piece.

I think her main reason for contacting me is due to wanting contact with my children- mostly for appearance as they are adults. She calls them directly.

She calls them directly, so calling you to have contact with them runs counter to that logic, no? I'm guessing she calls you because she does want contact, but not for the right reasons, simply because she isn't sure how to get her needs on her own, or in healthy ways. Someone else has to meet her needs since she can't do it. She hopes you can, but then she encounters your damn boundaries   and it's back to square one, feeling miserable how little she can control people, including you.

I don't think either parent loved "me for me" because they don't even know me and now, even less so since going LC with BPD mother.

I'm in this same place myself right now, and admire you for being so vulnerable, Notwendy. It takes courage to share what you're feeling, and for what it's worth, it's posts like yours that help so much with my own healing. I am afraid to go deep into this question and really feel what's there. I sometimes feel I am on a loop in my head trying to understand why my parents would enable violence in our home, when the only answer seems to be to feel the hurt and move on.

There are no answers, I don't think. Not to that question.

At the moment, she has good caregivers and her nurse coordinator gives me updates. I feel sad for her in her situation, but also don't feel like she has any motherly feelings towards me and I don't even know exactly how I feel about her. I don't wish her any harm. I wish her well. I find myself getting teary and sad when I hear from her care team. I know on some level that I do care about her. I don't think she cares about me, but my feelings aren't contingent on that. I guess I choose to care.

Is is that you choose to care, or that you hope she will one day say or do something redeeming?

[Couscous]

I've also been dealing with a lot of confusion with respect to my dad, and at one point it felt like our entire relationship had been a lie but after a recent conversation with him, I am no longer so sure that our entire relationship had been a lie. But what's been helping me the most is the idea that is slowly but surely sinking in for me that it's him, and not me. Like Menthuen wrote, my knee-jerk reaction was to assume that his behavior can only mean one thing: that I am unworthy of love. But this belief is beginning to shift for me, and it is making such a big difference in my life.

I think that my dad qualifies as a "half-safe" person and that he is essentially a "fair-weather" father. When he doesn't feel threatened I think we are able to genuinely connect, at least on some level, but as soon as there is even a whiff of something that triggers his relational traumas it's Game Over and he will willingly throw me to the lions if he thinks doing so will benefit him in some way. Even though I am doing better at not taking it personally, this habit of his means that he is not a person I am able to trust, so I am going to have radically adjust my expectations of the relationship and accept that he is not someone I can trust or rely on, and be willing to accept whatever it is he is capable of offering. And honestly, this is probably for the best. He's getting older and it really is in my own best interests to invest my energy into relationships with people who will still be around for the next 40-50 years.

[Notwendy]

Thanks for all the support. I do think my father was sincerely present but he got sucked into the hurricane. On a material level as well.

I have some memories as a kid that seem relevant. At an early age I somehow latched on to the idea of God as being my parent too- and somehow this felt comforting. Now this isn't an unusual idea for a young child- God as a parent but now I wonder about how this resonated with me.

The other was with money. My father made a good income, but by my teens I knew there were financial stresses and Dad would get angry if we asked for something. I felt like a burden to my parents and had a fantasy that when I grew up and had a job, I would pay them back for any money they spent on me so that I would not feel I owed them anything.

Dad left all he had to BPD mother, and she disowned me at the time. Although it felt sad emotionally, I already expected that.  It's more than not wanting their material things- it's an aversion to them. Even though I did manage to get some things of value that belonged to my father, they are packed and stored to give to my children. I won't consider them to be for me. Somehow, emotionally, I can't do that.

[Notwendy]

Lnl- you make some great points. The get together I planned for her was later. The party where she tried to manipulate the food was another time before this one. This time, I made the food arrangements myself. Everyone loved the food and even she did too. There was drama over some other things but mostly I tried to make the visit nice for her. I think I had higher expectations that it would go well.

Do I want some kind of affirmation from her? I am sure I don't. I did want that from my father, but didn't get it. I don't have any expectation of that from her. I don't think I have any expectations of positive affirmation from her. When she does say something, it doesn't sound sincere. It's usually a manipulation.

The calling me because she wants to connect with the kids is due to what she sees in her FOO. They all live very close together and the grandkids, kids and grandparents seem to be together a lot. I don't blame her for wanting that. I think she assumes it's the same for me, except she's being left out. The kids don't live very far away but not right close like her family. They do visit at times but they have their own lives. We are not enmeshed. I think though that since her FOO is a whole package deal, it's the same for me so she has to include me.

I don't think she's only rejecting me due to my having boundaries but it may play a part. I think my father was the "glue" between us. She's more likely to act out when there isn't anyone else around. In addition, I wanted his approval and this was contingent on me not having boundaries with her. I admit to tolerating her because of him. I think though it was mutual to some extent. Is she rejecting the boundaries or is she rejecting me? I  can't tell but if it is me, it's not personal but how she sees me.

The preference for the golden child has been obvious since we were kids. ( even to other people ) but so has my preference for my father.  I did try to make it work between her and me though.

[Riv3rW0lf]

The preference for the golden child has been obvious since we were kids. ( even to other people ) but so has my preference for my father.  I did try to make it work between her and me though.

Notwendy,

Are you the first or the second child ?

I will write a bit more later, but in the mean time, I wanted to ask this question... I do thing it can matter in the why you were rejected and not the other child.

Another point to consider is her pregnancy... How stressed was she? Did she have postpartum depression? Was she able to bound to you as a baby? Were you, from the start, more independant?

The second child sometimes is. More independant.

The first child is more stressful.

A friend of mine, who isn't completely disordered, has openly admitted to me that she doesn't like what of her sons. She would still protect him if a car came his way, but she just prefers the other one. I asked a lot of questions to her, to try and understand because this is so... Surreal ? In a way... She felt safe with me.. and it seems to root back to when the first one was a little baby. He was highly sensitive, but always warm. It was hard to cuddle him, he would always cry. She likely had undiagnosed postpartum and never bonded with her own baby... Sounds crazy, but happens more than we know, because no one talks about it...

If this can happen to a regular "mentally healthy" person, imagine what this could do to someone with BPD?

You might never know why, but I agree with everyone here : it has nothing to do with who you were or are.

Also, the first son my friend has is actually incredibly nice and sweet... I simply don't get it. I think it is some kind of trauma she didn't solve... From the birth, or the breastfeeding that didn't go well, or just having had a more demanding baby.

[Notwendy]

First born. It's interesting as I was a small baby. GC was big and she talks about the labor pains with GC.

This was during the times where mothers were very sedated during childbirth.

I think there were more stresses for her when she was pregnant with GC. But she also had a lot of help. Parents hired nannies, so I don't know if having an infant was a lot of stress for her.

She does describe me as being independent. GC was more of a lovable fat and content baby. Maybe easier to bond with.

[Riv3rW0lf]

The way I see it... As healthy mothers, we have our children and we understand our responsibility is toward them. No matter who they are, we know we are responsible for their safety. The babies are all wired to bond with us, and when mentaly healthy, so are we.

Looking at the differences between both my children, my experience as a mother is completely different. As a baby, my daughter was very anxious and highly alert, and only want me. My son,on the other hand, was easily content with dad too, and as a toddler now, will ask for his papa a lot! As a healthy mother : I genuinely love and welcome his love for his father. I find it cute to hear him call papa? And it fills my heart to see him give his father those big cuddles. My daughter never did that. She really had one preferred parent,while my son loves us both but does seem to prefer dad a little bit.and it is ok.

Where I am getting is that : from a biological standpoint, starting at birth, children are so very different and will bond using different set of tools ingrained in their DNA. As healthy parent : we understand this and do not take it personally, we welcome them and their needs, because we are aware of their vulnerability, and of our responsibility toward them. But I reckon this does not hold true for mothers with BPD.

Just thinking how my BPD mother almost threw my son on my with a face of disgust because he was asking for me at 7 months old. For her it was rejection. For anyone else it would have been the normal healthy need of a young baby safely attached to his mother.

For them, everything is personal. So... Maybe, just maybe, the scapegoating you suffered trace back all the way to those very early years. And so you are right : she never saw you. Never saw your needs. Everything was always about her and her own needs. If you were more independant and father oriented like my son, for her, it could have been felt like rejection, and so she reacted in kind and rejected you too. Then she has a second, easier child and she could simply reject you entirely.

My friend did it too. When her second son was born, it's like the first one never existed. And imagine...my friend is aware of how wrong this all is,and is trying to mitigate this in ways she can... Someone with BPD wouldn't mitigate it though... And so... I truly am sorry. This was a double jab for you. Not only is your mother BPD, but you also likely suffered a severe rejection from a very young age that goes beyond the borderline illness...

But from here,following your post and replies to everyone :it truly is not about you, because you offer such kindness and wisdom, and to strangers. I can tell you really try to be there for a mother that rejected you harshly. yet you were able to find your way to truly inspiring values...well speaking for me:you inspired me a lot, reading your posts here, and helped me by providing me with likely one of my first example of what a healthy inner parent must sound like.

So again...not about you. Sometimes it helps to understand though, and even if we can't know for sure, we have to find the stories that match best how we feel about things... Relating to the past as a story I understand, real or not, helps me move forward. I hope you find the story you need to explain to yourself your mother's actions. 

[Mommydoc]

I feel your confusion NW.

The ambiguity in your relationship with your father is particularly confusing. I like Methuen’s comparison to a hurricane he got swept up in. It does sound like he had genuine love and feelings for you and there are parts of that relationship you can and should hold onto as dear and always treasure. It may be that your father lived a tragic existence, experiencing his own confusion and ambiguity, getting pulled in by your mother and be forced to make choices that didn’t resonate with his own values and depriving him of the relationship he wanted with you and others, all in effort to calm and appease your mother.

In many ways, as we learn about BPD, we get an explanation for the behaviors and there is emerging clarity and recognizable patterns. I won’t say it makes easier, but it begins to make sense and frees us up from the guilt.

For me, reflecting on my FOO, particularly my father, taking him off the pedestal I put him on as a kid, recognizing his weaknesses, mistakes, internal struggles and vulnerabilities has helped me see him in a different way, and allowed me to see my own strength and the strength of my path.

I hope you can treasure the good you experienced with your father, while also recognizing the common humanity you share with him in your relationship with your mother. The difference is your have clarity, self awareness and the strength to be grant yourself  compassion, see your needs and protect your self. You are choosing a healthier path even though it takes strength and courage, and is painful.

[Turkish]

I long struggled with the thought, "did my mother really love me?" She adopted me as a single mother in the early 70s, an interracial child to boot.

I think that she did, as best that she could.

After I was an adult, I saw her cling to what I saw as "proxy kids" dysfunctional adults.  It made me wonder if I was only a project. She took value in that. Of course, none of those worked out. My mom couldn't see why. Such is the limited emotional wisdom given a PD.

When I was "last man standing" I resented it.  "Now me? When you talked about giving away my inheritance (and more importantly attention and love)  because I didn't play the game properly?"

[Couscous]

I wonder if keeping in mind that GCs are only loved on the condition that they continue to play their assigned role  (which is essentially to be a mirror) may help to alleviate some of the sting of this invitation to your sibling to visit your mother? GCs are not loved for who they are either and somewhere deep down inside they are usually aware of this.

As far as the inheritance, isn’t it fairly typical for the first spouse to leave everything to the surviving spouse and then the children inherit the remainder of the estate after the second spouse dies? At least that’s what happened after both my maternal and paternal grandfathers died. My mother was disowned by her parents but it was only after her mother died that her sister got anything.

[Notwendy]

Yes, it's typical for the inheritance to go to the surviving spouse. We assumed that. What concerned me was that he left it to her to manage. I know he wanted her to be taken care of financially- he expressed that, but he also knew how he mismanaged money to the point of him being in debt. So it was inconsistent to want her to be taken care of, but then allow her to jeopardize that. It make sense though if denial was at play here, and possibly she would have been angry at him if he did make arrangements.

I didn't understand BPD relationships/dynamics when I first stepped in to try to offer assistance when he was ill. We both knew the situation but somehow my saying anything about it was not allowed. We were all supposed to pretend BPD mother was normal while Dad managed everything and we were all concerned about her if she was on her own.

It also wasn't entirely altruistic. BPD mother spends a lot of money. She'd spend ours too if she could. We didn't know exactly how much my father had saved but we knew her spending ( and his not saying no to her) led to him being in debt at one point. I knew this because I was a teen at the time. If I even asked him for something small, like a new dress, he'd get stressed and angry. We could tell he was stressed over money so we knew to not ask for much.

We had our own expenses- kids planning on college, and we didn't want to be in the position where she'd require or demand large sums of money from us. It's not that we would not help a parent in need if we could, but with the dynamics, we'd feel resentful if she became in need due to mismanaging her own funds.

On an emotional level, leaving a large sum of money to her would be like leaving it to a child. She has no idea how to handle money. She's gotten better at it since she had to but also people have taken advantage of her. She controls people with money and is overly generous with some people. She's suspicious of her own children and not strangers. Her explanation of the home equity loan she took out without us knowing about it was "that nice man at the bank told me to do it" Of course he was nice. He probably got a nice commission from that.

I had no clue about the BPD dynamics when I brought this issue up with Dad and saying it resulted in anger from both of them. It didn't have to be us as managers- if they didn't trust me, then please find an accountant to help- set up a trust, some kind of check and balance on this, or an adviser, so that she has what she needs. But I know now how naive that was.

[Notwendy]

It's also interesting that our having nothing to do with BPD mother's affairs is a sticking point for her. She persistently holds things out to us like a carrot on a stick and asks us to tell her what we want. I recently had this conversation with her when I called to check on her.

First, she brings up how expensive home care is and how she wants to sell the house. We all know she's refused the option of assisted living and avoid it when she tries to bring it up but she persists on talking about it.

Then she says "you know I have some valuable things here and you need to tell me what you want before I move".

My replies have varied from " please just tell me what you want to give me" to "I don't want to discuss your things, I called because I wanted to see how you were doing" to "let's have this discussion when you are ready to move".

To which she replies "no, I need to know now!" and if I don't reply she keeps calling me to demand I tell her now.

When I visit, she will point to things in the house and ask me if I want them. If I say yes, then she won't give it to me. She says she will give it to me later. Then she will ask about it another time. She does have some valuables, may that have been stolen. She'd rather hold on to them instead of letting us take them home where they'd be safe.

I understand that there may be some fear of abandonment going on here, yet we continue to visit without asking or taking anything from her. I know we can't change how she thinks but it's obvious we aren't visiting to get her possessions.

The aversion to wanting anything from her goes back to my teen years where I didn't want to ask my parents for anything. It's also because she controlled the money so the only way to avoid that is to not accept it from her. She also knew I wanted some of my father's possessions for sentimental reasons. Maybe she wants me to want hers too as some sort of connection?

[Riv3rW0lf]

Another factor to consider here is generational culture. Which I truly only noticed for the first time with my H's family. They are "boomers", around 68 years old, and for some reason, this generation, more than any others, have a really strong tendency to look down on younger people. Not saying everyone this age is like that of course, but it seems more reccuring.

Not matter what we do in our careers, no matter the fact that we now have children of our own, a house we take care of ourselves, they keep treating us, and talking to us like they know best what we should do, and this in all aspects of life, from house decorating to how to deal and educate our own children (despite them clearly being well behaving).

They do see us though, I think. And it seems more like a generational culture than actual narcissism. They are the parents, and no matter who the children became overtime : they remain the children.

So maybe there is also a bit of that in your father's decision to let you mother manage money as well as inherit it... I am aware they were older than the "boomers", but they might also have held this belief. So nothing personal, more a general belief than "parents always know better".

As a parent, I now know this isn't true at all... I hope I will keep listening to my children as they get older. They might be wrong a lot of times because they lack experience, but they also might be right a lot of times too, because they see the world from another perspective, which is just as valid as mine.

[Riv3rW0lf]

she wants me to want hers too as some sort of connection?

Or to get the impression of leverage over you. If she knows what you like and want from her things, she can use that against you emotionnally to get you to do what she wants you to do. And yes, to stick around.

It is still some sort of connection, but I think it is more about control.

[Notwendy]

I think there could have been some of this with my father not wanting to listen to the kids but in our situation, I was parentified as a teen. It was a strange position to be the helper to my mother while she still gets to be the boss. We assume teen behavior is out of control, but imagine the parent being more out of control than the teen, expecting the teen to "obey her".

I think the financial issues with my parents involved these dynamics because I was aware of this as a teen and tried to help with it. This was beyond my capacity as a teen to do, and not really my responsibility as a teen. It was between my parents.  Dad would snap at me if I wanted a new dress while BPD mother spent money on anything she wanted. I started babysitting for families - and it's a good thing for teens to have jobs like that to learn how to earn some money, but it was more than that for me- I didn't think I could ask for anything because I didn't feel valued by them.

So perhaps it's a part "parents know best" but it's an odd situation.

And yes, control. She does use possessions as a control. She's also destroyed things we cared about to punish us.

[Riv3rW0lf]

I think there could have been some of this with my father not wanting to listen to the kids but in our situation, I was parentified as a teen. It was a strange position to be the helper to my mother while she still gets to be the boss. We assume teen behavior is out of control, but imagine the parent being more out of control than the teen, expecting the teen to "obey her".
 

I don't think those are mutually exclusive. You can be both parentified and treated like you know nothing because you are a child. My father was this way with me.

He'd lay all his problems on me, the ones he has with his girlfriend's. He expected me to comfort him, to help him, to support him emotionally. He also expected me to be mature and never truly disciplined me, and when I didn't live to the expectations, he was severely disappointed. When I was a teenager, he didn't see me as a teenager, I had to meet his needs and the needs of his girlfriend, whomever she was at the moment.

As an adult now, he talks to me like he always knows best. It never occured to him that I might be able to teach him a few things now...

I don't think your father ever saw you either... I thought my father did for a long time , until recently. It appeared quite clear he didn't. I was just another way to take the heat off him from my mother, and another way to get his emotional needs met. Children are a bit like things to use for him, not people of their own. When he plays with them, and offer good moments (and he did), it was always more about him than me too.

I saw him play with my son and I saw my son starting to not like it. It was getting a bit rough and I had a flash of my father playing with me and, and my foot hurt, but I knew better than to say it. What I don't know is why. My daughter always tells me when a game goes to far, my son too. Because I listened. Why didn't I feel ok telling him I didn't like the game? Because the game was for him, not for me.

Our fathers are likely different, but I think we both got used more than we were seen for who we are.

[Notwendy]

The financial control aspect is interesting. I attended a state college- one reason is that I knew we didn't have the money for a private college and that it was also possible that I could not rely on parents to assist with college expenses and I didn't want to set myself up to need that from them.

GC attended a "big name" private university which did involve relying on parents to help with expenses. GC is also more enmeshed. So yes, as Couscous said, GC fulfilled the role of being the child they are proud of at that time but GC rebelled later, probably as a way to differentiate.  

I used to be jealous of GC as a kid but now I am glad to not have had that kind of relationship with BPD mother. Fortunately GC and I don't have issues between us.

I don't care what she gives to GC and I remain wary of her offering me anything of hers. Perhaps she senses my emotional discomfort when she brings up the topic- emotional reactions are part of the drama dynamics.

[Notwendy]

I get your point about fathers. I think it was pride too. He was the provider and the strong parent. I think it's common for aging parents to still want to have that role. Nobody wants to not have control of their own situation. I think I naively stepped over that boundary with the intention of helping but I didn't know any better at the time.

[Riv3rW0lf]

The financial control aspect is interesting. I attended a state college- one reason is that I knew we didn't have the money for a private college and that it was also possible that I could not rely on parents to assist with college expenses and I didn't want to set myself up to need that from them.

GC attended a "big name" private university which did involve relying on parents to help with expenses. GC is also more enmeshed. So yes, as Couscous said, GC fulfilled the role of being the child they are proud of at that time but GC rebelled later, probably as a way to differentiate.  

I used to be jealous of GC as a kid but now I am glad to not have had that kind of relationship with BPD mother. Fortunately GC and I don't have issues between us.

I don't care what she gives to GC and I remain wary of her offering me anything of hers. Perhaps she senses my emotional discomfort when she brings up the topic- emotional reactions are part of the drama dynamics.

And your mother might resent that about you. You had the inner wisdom and strength to stand up for yourself. You intuitively knew how to keep yourself clear of debts, how to remain true to yourself. She couldn't manipulate you easily, and for someone with BPD, this is hard to accept.

My mother also resents me for being too independant. "Everything I do for you, you break it!" Is what she told me. She takes it personally when I don't want her help. Other parents would be proud, but not she, because for her, this is a loss of control over me. It makes her feel small. She told me that too... She feels small when I am there. I am one of her biggest triggers, because of my calm demeanor mostly, because I am steady, and she is volatile.

Maybe that's also why your presence upset your mother.

[madeline7]

Not Wendy,
Yes, a strange title/subject line, but I am finding everything about this journey as a child of a BPD parent (and enabling father) is indeed strange. I too, am perceiving my relationship to my father who enabled my mother in a different light. I wonder what you meant by him doing the right thing in your case? What I am struggling with is that I no longer feel my Dad did the right thing. I understand why he chose to enable, and why that made his life more tolerable, but my father did appear at times to know uBPDm was mentally ill and yet he went along with her outbursts to the detriment of his children. There was even raging while I was in active labor with my first child. You talk about feeling sad when you think of her as a frail elderly woman and feel sad when you hear from her care team. And you are the primary point of contact for the care team. This shows true empathy and compassion, and explains how your adult children understand the situation surrounding their grandma. In the face of all this strangeness, you have created a wonderful foundation for your children, and I would like to think I have too. I am choosing to remain LC with my own elderly uBPDm, but I am spreading out the visits and that does seem to lessen the trauma for me. Perhaps focusing on being the primary contact person and GC being the primary in person visitor will be a better way of helping your Mom (and you of course) at this time.

[Couscous]

So it was inconsistent to want her to be taken care of, but then allow her to jeopardize that.

I think he was being very consistent in terms of his drama triangle roles. His need to be her Rescuer played out till the very end, in spite of the negative consequences that could easily result for you and your sibling. He could have chosen to do the right thing and have secretly made a will to avoid facing any blowback from your mother, but once again he chose not to because his need to be a Rescuer (and possibly a covert Persecutor) was too great.

The theory about the hidden drama triangle roles would predict that he was also secretly trying to persecute your mother by allowing her to mismanage the money in the hopes that she will run out, and this way he may finally get his comeuppance — at you and your sibling’s expense. 

[Notwendy]

That's an interesting idea Couscous. Unfortunately it "punishes" us kids because we don't have the reassurance that her well being was provided for in a predictable manner. It's ironic that she seems irked that I don't want anything from her and yet, if we act concerned about her financial decisions, such as taking out a home equity loan, she refuses to allow us to know anything.

I think part of my feelings is that I am angry at my father for his denying her issues. t's his inability to say no to my mother that resulted in his going into debt, then he got angry at us for asking for something that any teen ager might ask for. He knew she was mentally ill and mismanaged money and yet, had no kind of plan for a trust or accountant to assist with this while he was saving for their retirement.

I also think there was expectation for me to step in and caretake her and initially I assumed I would help but her abusive behavior escalated and she would not cooperate with me with any plans to assist her. This is not a workable situation and I backed out and asked him to designate someone as POA and financial adviser. Their response was to become angry at me and act as if I had abandoned this. But I think what he was angry about was that I brought up the situation.

[Couscous]

Yes, the kids are the ones who are punished…

So it sounds like essentially what happened was just a continuation of the same pattern of exploitation from your childhood — your parents meeting their “needs” at your expense.  You, both as a child and an adult child, are just a “resource” that they both feel entitled to exploit. This is how narcissistic family systems operate, and a family system can be narcissistic even without a parent who qualifies for a diagnosis of PD.  

This is the definition from a book called The Narcissistic Family System:

Narcissistic families have a parental system that is, for whatever reason (job stress, alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness, physical disability, lack of parenting skills, self-centered immaturity), primarily involved in getting its own needs met.
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=108910.0

It’s really hard not to feel a whole lot of ambivalence about the non-parent because when push comes to shove, they will always prioritize their own comfort even when it is at our expense. While our non-parent may not have a full on PD they most certainly have a high degree of self-centered immaturity — at least my father sure does.  

[livednlearned]

This is the definition from a book called The Narcissistic Family System:

Narcissistic families have a parental system that is, for whatever reason (job stress, alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness, physical disability, lack of parenting skills, self-centered immaturity), primarily involved in getting its own needs met.
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=108910.0

Wow. I took a look at a sample of that book on Amazon and it helps me see how many of the experiences described here connect us, even though my parents don't have PDs. For me, it's my sibling who has the PD.

Excerpts from the book:

In the narcissistic family, children are recruited in the process of satisfying the parents' needs. Where the father is cocaine addicted, both the spouse and the children dance around the father so as to not induce conflict. Where the mother is "borderline," there is a similar dance performed by the spouse and the children. In the incestuous family, the children are unprotected from the victimizer, who is not confronted by the spouse. The spouse of the troubled parent puts energy into sustaining the status quo and mollifying his or her partner, to the detriment of the children.

In the narcissistic family, the child's behavior is evaluate not in terms of what it says about what he or she may be feeling or experiencing, but in terms of its impact on the parent system.

In the narcissistic family, [a] problem is examined on the basis of difficulty presented for the parent.

In the narcissistic family, the reactions of the parent(s) indicate to the child that his feelings are of limited or no import. The child does not have a problem, he is a problem.

The consequences of the child's actions on the parent(s) are of primary importance.

...dysfunctional behavior narcissistic families can range form patently obvious to confusingly subtle.

Because my abuse was sibling violence, it sort of stumped me why I ended up with someone who has BPD, and who had strong narcissistic traits. I can identify with so many of you who have BPD parents except for the details. The narcissism of a golden child (like my father) and an adult child (like my mother) help me connect with the dysfunctional patterns like the drama triangle and parents with high self-absorption.

I don't go too deep into sibling violence here because this doesn't feel like the forum for that (I'm not sure there is one...), since that type of violence rarely comes up. I can't think of any threads that I've seen on it over the years. But Notwendy, when you write about feeling confused about your parents' relationship with you, I am right there with you. Being the victim of sibling violence probably served my parents because the violence was an outlet for my brother, which was helpful to my parents. Expressing distress about the violence would violate the narcissistic code because it strained the capacity of two emotionally immature self-absorbed parents, especially my mother. In that dynamic, I can see myself struggling with many of the themes discussed here: did anyone want me?

I think yes, but only when my present provided relief. Having a challenging child with BPD traits, I think my parents liked having me as a garbage can in the family. And I was a perfect garbage can.

Maybe it oversimplifies things to say it this way, but for me, my purpose was to serve the needs of my parent(s) full stop. Anything I did or said that drew attention to my needs made me garbage. Doing things that bothered them (e.g. like not having a wedding, moving 3000 miles away, succeeding academically beyond my dad's success, going LC/NC) made me garbage.

Looking back, everything I did or said or asked for ran through a filter: Does it serve their needs? If no, then it was met with anger. If it served their needs, it was allowed to slip by or proceed.

Maybe your mom doesn't want to see you because you're so far beyond the pale. You're so far outside the acceptable narcissistic family system your behaviors and reactions aren't making sense, sort of like a reverse distrust.

I think it's safer, at least for me, to see my parents as a unit. They are the same unit performing different functions where the dynamic served the same end result: my dysfunction in life, including wondering what value I had to them, and to myself.

[Couscous]

LNL, have you ever watched this video on sibling abuse? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CSy2mC0_QI8

[Notwendy]

There is a narcissistic streak running through my BPD mother's family and she does have narcissistic tendencies in addition to her BPD behaviors.

It astounds me sometimes how she can be so entitled. She expects to be obeyed and served as if she were the Queen and we are all her serfs- unintelligent ones as she seems to have no problem assuming others are stupid. She expects others to be able to read her mind. If you pick up the wrong can of soup for her at the store, she calls you an idiot and you don't dare ask her to come to the store with you, that is being insolent. You are supposed to run her errands for her.

When we do visit, even if it's been a while, the first thing she says is "oh good, I have a lot for you to do".

I am glad in a way that we were driven to be independent yet it went far in the other sense that we didn't feel deserving of anything.

Lnl- I think that is a great suggestion- to be the contact person and let GC be the companion/visitor. GC can't visit often, due to distance but neither of us want to visit often due to her behavior with us. She both favors GC but is also abusive due to them being more enmeshed, but GC is also working on boundaries. I think there is more affection between them though and she is more comforted by the visits.

I think some of the confusion I feel is that I am concerned for her. Considering the nature of our relationship, one would assume I would not care as much but I find myself being concerned. It's sad that her mental illness doesn't allow her to be happy.