Maybe your mother is not very good at having relationships with others. That could be part of your own challenge when it comes to relationships.

It would be good if you did write a letter as if you were going to hand it to her. It may even be a good idea to start a thread "letter to my mother". Perhaps do a review on what it was like to grow up with her as your mother and to write about the things you experienced with her that left you feeling lonely or not somehow valued or loved or respected.

Often an individual will struggle because of how they were raised and what they experienced from a parent. Unfortunately what can happen if the parent is not a good parent is the child will feel it's because they were not loved enough. A lot of the inner challenges when it comes to "caring" about others and having a desire to engage in a relationship is developed from the things a child experienced that made them feel "good" about themselves and "loved and appreciated".

I find it troubling when a person says that they should be grateful and happy because at least they have a roof over their head and food on the table. A person in prison gets that, even when they have committed a bad crime. I have even seen people get a dog and lock it up in their garage with food and water and NEVER take the time to actually train and love the dog. Often the dog is considered a bad dog and it's not the dog at all, it's because the owner did not spend time training it.

I have noticed that you have been spending time evaluating yourself and you are doing a good job articulating the things that you struggle with. I think that is a good start and as you are doing that it's important to consider how that is something you failed to get yourself. That is what the letter you write to your mother will be about the most. It will be more important to "you" then it could ever be important to her or even appreciated by her. And if you pay attention to your mother's relationship with her mother you will begin to slowly see the things she did not get from her mother either, therefore, she never had it in her to hand some more "positives" down to you. Your mother calls on you to side with her if her mother is challenging her?

If you ask someone to sit and read to you and they don't because they simply don't know how to read, does that mean they don't love you or that you are not worth it? Is that person going to show you how to read and enjoy books? How can you sit and read to someone else if no one showed you how? I would think that would be something you would "avoid" as well, why?, because you just don't know how to do it. But, you had food on the table and a roof over your head so that means it's ok that you never got to experience what it's like to have someone sit next to you and read you a story and spend time enjoying the story "with" you.

Why don't you like conflict? Well, that is something a lot of individuals don't like and that's because "conflict" tends to be triggering. Actually, if one takes the time to examine a lot of the labels that challenge people, these challenges tend to stem from some lack of understanding of how to deal with "conflict".

This forum, the relationship forum is by far the most active forum on this entire site, and this boils down to how so many struggle with "conflict" and "resolve". That is because this is the one thing a lot of people struggle with.

Writing a letter to your mother is most definitely a good place to start for "you". That is because what ever you put into that letter is so important to YOU because it will outline the things you needed that you did not get from her. Also, these things you did not get tend to stew in you to the point where you experience a lot of anger and you have urges to lash out, this is something you most definitely need to get to the bottom of so you can slowly "calm" them as you slowly learn what they are connected to.

The thing about life and growing up is that we do store a lot more than we realize. We just don't have enough understanding when we are young. Eventually, we get to the age where we want "more" than and often we are not quite sure how to get there and that is when, if we are lucky, we begin to ask questions. That is why I made it a point to focus on the YET. Just because you don't quite know how to do something, doesn't mean you can't learn.