Hi orangyred,

I think it's good that you have decided to open up and talk about this challenge.

It would help to know how old you are, but I will do my best to help without knowing that part.

I am sorry that there were times in your life where your mother was not there for you the way you wanted her to be. It's hard to be a mom, and there really is no such thing as a "perfect" mom.

My guess is that your mother did love you, but she also wanted very badly to have a man in her life that would love her. This is something that is often considered very important and in past generations it was considered a must. Unfortunately, a lot of women got married and stayed in relationships where they were unhappy. Also, there is another thing that women have that sends a message of wanting a partner, "hormones". This can push a woman to be in love with love too.

It sounds like your mother lost her first husband in some way, your father, and that experience probably left her with a sizable void, it ususally does. And sometimes the desire to fill that void takes presedent, and sadly that can leave the child in the picture feeling like you have described feeling. How much depends on how old the child is when this challenge begins too.

I like to talk about an individual that is well known and how he reacted. This individual is Stephen Speilburg who ended up providing some amazing movies. His parents divorced and he always blamed it on his father. In fact many of his movies like ET have a young child with a single mother, the mother is often a bit childlike too. Speilburg's mother was like that, and Speilburg blamed the divorce on his father most of his life, until he found out that it was "not" his father's fault, but instead it was the mother who cheated and left the father. I saw Speilburg in an interview where he talked about being so thankful that when he realized the "truth" his father was still alive so he could appologize for blaming his father for all those years.

Well, when we are growing up we think our parents are supposed to know a lot more then they actually know. We tend to think grownups are just that "grown up". Truth is that is simply not the case, often our parents are still growing and learning and they "don't" have all the answers and they often don't know how to be a perfect parent either. What a parent lacks depends on how they were raised along with whatever their generational messages were too.

It's understandable that you can struggle with whatever you felt your mother did not provide for you. We always know what we wanted and needed and feel cheated out on. It's ok to be angry, to even mourn whatever you feel you lost when it comes to your mother. It's also ok to sit and think about the big picture which can reveal to you that your mother never purposely tried to hurt you, that she did "love" you as you have stated. What is also important is to think about the void your mother felt and that she tried very hard to fill that void, can you be happy that she finally found someone to love her? That she had a child and loved her child, but was also lonely? That she did not give up on filling her own void? You know, she could have given up and been a lonely depressed woman for the rest of her life too. She could have been a mother that was distant from you because of her own hurt in a different way.

I am a mother myself and when I was raising my daughter I sure had to face some marital challenges. I never stopped loving my daughter, but I know she saw me stressed and I am sure that affected her, in fact I know it did. I was just trying to figure out how to survive and get through my challenges, and while I was a grownup, I surely did not have all the answers. Was my daughter angry with me? Yes, but, not so much now because unfortunately she had faced similar challenges and it was not easy, but at least she did not have a child to worry about at the same time.

It's a lot to think about, good to see you are taking the time to think about it, talk and get some feedback. If your mother loves you, you are very lucky and perhaps it's time to see your way to love her back in spite of whatever she did that was not perfectly filling your needs.