Hi,

I have a mother who gets very distrought if I do not communicate with her on a daily basis. She likes to blame my current girlfriend as the reason I do not call her. As an example, I went away camping and was out of touch for three days. When I returned and gave her a call, she proceeded to lecture to me about it, eventually having to hang up because she was becoming excessively angry and upset during the conversation as well as refusing to let me relate my point of view to her. If I did manage to get a word in, she would make claims to the extent that it was my girlfriend who has blinded me to the right way of things. She constantly points out families where children are in constant contact with their parents, or that in other ethnic groups (ie italians, brazilians, etc) where this type of behavior would not be tolerated. Also, this notion that I should be calling my mother daily, if not more, has been getting worse over the years. In my opinion, I should not have to communicate with my mother on such a frequent basis.

I am a 37 year old only child. My parents are currently "separated" but not divorced (it's been that way for almost 10 years) and my mother currently lives a few thousand miles away from both me and my father. I have had a close relationship with my mother for my entire life but I am a very independent person. Also, my mother has had extensive difficulties with most of the women that I date and have close relationships with. Come to think of it she also has a lot of difficulty with most of my friends, considering them not worthy of my friendship most of the time. She has refused to speak or interact with my current girlfriend (though my current girlfriend has made some serious errors in her attempts to communicate with her, once emailing her a very offensive email during a rough time) and was significantly hostile to a previous girlfriend who eventually broke up our relationship because of the stress (though she too had her own problems, anorexia being one of them).

What advice is out there for dealing with this situation? What things can I do differently to help her cope?

Thanks,