Thanks for people's contributions, I will provide a general overview of my thoughts and from my perspective.

My mother is a very difficult person to relate to. I've spoken to many therapists and friends over the years for their perspective. To give you an example the whole decade of the 2000s I was trying to reach my mother. During this period I tried many times to have an open and honest relationship. I tried to problem-solve our issues and spend time with her. Each time I felt she wasn't really listening to me, displayed no empathy and carried on afterwards with her usual negative behaviours/attitudes. I was open to and listened to any constructive criticism she had of me. But as said in my original post, my mother has a critical personality. She's a misandrist as mentioned, she never said anything positive about my father or men in general. This has tainted my masculinity.

I've never been abusive to her or sworn at her. Once I gave her constructive feedback about her attitude and she wrote me a long letter that included this, 'you were abusive and if you speak to me like that again, I will hang up the phone.' After that I kept my distance and kept conversations superficial.

Then in the mid 2010s I started having painful flashbacks of things she did to me in childhood. If I was to go to the police and believed, she could be charged with serious crimes. Then I discovered I have C-PTSD.

My last visit home at one point she glared at me with a contemptible look then later she was friendly and offered me fruit or coffee, etc. Then as my partner and I are leaving, packing the boot of the car, my partner happened to turn around and saw an ugly hateful expression on mum's face as she looked at me. When mother realised my partner saw this expression, she quickly changed her expression to neutral.

So this gives you a small snapshot of what my mother is like and for these reasons and many more, I choose to pass on this day.

PH