[Purple Heart]

I think I will pass on this one ...

Quality of parenting: 0/10
Relationship today: toxic, undermining
Personality: Covert narcissist, overbearing, critical, misandrist

PH

[Aviza]

Sorry. My mom isn't the best but still celebrating. She's always been there for me.

[TishaBuv]

I have apprehension from the other side, as the mother. I thought I had a wonderful relationship with my sons. One son recently got married. The whole thing was them being as offensive and combative toward us as they could be and driving us away. I was told we were bad parents (as though to justify their behavior), and the examples given were not us being bad parents at all, so we tried to defend ourselves.

There has been at least some minimal contact with my son, and none at all with his wife who is always ‘in the shower’.

I am dreading that tomorrow I will not even hear from him. At most I think I may get a text. I’m sure I’ll be crying.

I have to hold myself together and not ruin everyone else’s day. I’m grateful to have two of my sons here with me, who I think like me and think I’m a good mother.

[will19]

I had forgotten that tomorrow is Mother's Day. This year it's easy to forget because of this crisis situation. Other than this year, I recall that I would know that Mother's Day is coming because of so much advertising and it's on news websites. This year, it's different.

[divine1966]

I don’t care that much about holidays. I’d rather people had nice relationships all year around. Many families make big production out of holidays but their relationships are dysfunctional and quite miserable or downright abusive. My grandma had a friend who had lavish wedding anniversaries with big to
do every year and turned out her husband had several long term affairs. So big celebrations mean little to me.

Most people are quite miserable during holidays because they have expectations that aren’t being met. It’s better to have less expectations

[TishaBuv]

When someone cares, they don’t forget you. The media, the stores, everywhere mentions holidays, so it’s nearly impossible to have no clue. While too high expectations are unrealistic and bound for disappointment, minimal expectations would normally be met. For those who had abusive mothers, doing nothing is understandable.

I was always very kind to show my mother love on holidays. In recent years, I had to reflect that there had been some abuse and some unhealthy family dynamics I tried to work through. I went back to being kind and giving to her again. I decided the good outweighed the bad. Although I am more cautious now.

I don’t judge anyone else here who feels any way they do for their moms.

I know this may be faulty thinking but— I feel that because I went through anger at really bad treatment from my mother and reacted to it, that my own son turned on me and I lost him, and I was not an abusive mother, I was a great, loving one.

I’ll try my best to not expect anything from him tomorrow. But, if he doesn’t even text me, I can’t help but be very upset.

[hobbypoet]

I've been sitting here torn. I don't have a relationship...a good relationship with my mom, and it's a painful holiday for me because of that. But at the same time. I don't know if it would be wrong of me not to acknowledge it. Maybe get her a card or something. It's not like we can do much this year, so I'm off the hook a bit. I would like to say, motherhood is beautiful and wonderful and a day for moms does deserve to exist and be celebrated.

I'm sorry to hear I'm not the only one who doesn't have a good relationship with their mother here. However the day is spent tomorrow, I hope it's a good one for everyone.

[downandlonely]

Mom and I get along better now that we're over 1000 miles apart and our contact is only through phone. I will call her. She wasn't abusive when I was a kid, but went through a bad time during menopause where the hormones affected her psych issues and she became difficult to deal with. It's better now.

[Purple Heart]

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

[lady411]

I am so sorry to all that have a damaged relationship with their mothers and to all the moms with distant relationships with their children. This makes me so sad because I have the best relationship I’ve ever had with my mother. She wasn’t always the perfect mother and I’ve been able to openly express to her where I feel that she failed me but all that is in the past. And I truly believe she tried her best with the cards that she was dealt with as a child. There is no perfect mother. Us who are moms understand all the challenges that we are faced with. All we can do is our best.
I truly feel for those struggling with their motherly relationships. I hope they improve over time