I have been thinking a lot about my mother lately because her calls of desperation have come more frequently–almost once a week. Every phone call follows the same pattern. She asks me how I’m doing, then brushes over any response other than ‘fine’. This is not unusual for her. She doesn’t really care how I am; she just knows she has to ask. In the past, if I mentioned I had a cold or something like that, she would have to counter with why she had it worse. It would frustrate me, and then I would quietly seethe for the rest of the conversation.
Now, if I even so much as cough, she jumps on it because of my recent medical crisis. I have to declare that I’m fine, it’s just allergies, or whatever so she won’t go off the rails. She either overreacts to my ailments or underreacts. There is no just right in this case, and I’m pretty sure it’s because she’s a narcissist. She’s learned that she SHOULD care about other people, but she doesn’t know how to do it.
She’s mentioned a couple of times recently that she thinks she might be autistic because she’s an introvert. I told her she wasn’t, at least not for that reason (because autistic does not equal introvert), but the lack of emotions part, maybe.
However, I would diagnose her as a narcissist rather than autistic, which I have done in my own head. It has really helped me deal with her to recognize that she’s just as narcissistic as my father, but in a completely different way. My father is the classic narcissist–he doesn’t care about others and only sees them as useful to him or an extension of himself (family). He has no core, and I would posit that he doesn’t even love himself. That’s part of the reason he’s been so unhappy all his life–he needs constant reassurance that he is great and the second the accolades do not come flowing his way, he’s upset.
He cannot stand being alone. It’s as if he does not exist without others around to affirm him. My parents are currently 83 (my father) and 80 (my mother). My mother has been dancing attendance to my father since they were married 55 years ago. It’s only gotten worse since they’ve aged and my father has gotten
dementia.
There was a letter at Ask A Manager today from a 21-year-old who was attending uni in the UK while her parents were in another country. The letter writer outlined how her mother had a business with her father (a mill). The father was in charge, apparently, but the mother did the day-to-day work (so she says to her daughter). The mother was afraid she would lose everything in a divorce (!), so she suggested that she and her daughter start another business in which the daughter would just be a director in name only and the mother will do everything.
The letter writer, by the way, is a film student. That’s her passion and she has no interest in business of any kind. She agreed to let her mother name her as director, but that was it. That sounds sketchy enough because the mom has no idea what she actually wants the business to be, but add to it that the mother has actually filed the business with the letter writer as a co-owner. When the letter writer protested to her mother, her mother said that she wanted it to be woman-owned. Which, even though she’s not in the US, is a red flag. It’s woman-owned if she owns 51% and I would surmise if she had 100% ownership, it would definitely be woman-owned.
The letter writer commented in the post under bizwmom and filled in more details. Such as the older sister (doctor) she mentioned in her letter had been approached by their mother to start a business as well. The sister had, but then became suspicious when mother pushed her to cosign for a loan.
Basically, the letter writer couldn’t trust anything her mother had told her. None of it. I could see that before Alison even gave her answer. It was not a business problem; it was a family dysfunction problem. Alison was firm that the LW should not go into business with her mother and should not feel guilty for saying, “No, Mom. I spoke too hastily and have to withdraw.”
It’s so familiar to me. Mom pressuring daughter and making the latter feel as if she’s responsible for the former’s emotions. The added info from the sister that she had to sever ties with their mother when the latter accused Daughter #1 of ‘preying’ on her.
It was, in a phrase, a hot fucking mess. It was interesting that I immediately identified with the letter writer and wanted to protect her from a lifetime of hurt. It broke my heart that she thought it was about her mother not believing in her dreams about making films and the manipulative guilt her mother was laying on her.
It’s interesting because there was a letter to Dear Prudence at Slate from a daughter who has a rocky relationship with her mother because the mother was verbally abusive to her and her siblings. In addition, the mother ran away with random men throughout their childhood. And the letter writer’s brother outed her as gay, which caused her mother to say that she had a demon in her. Her mother also accused her of causing the cancer that the mother was currently dying from. The letter writer did not want to go home to help out with her mother, but was feeling guilty. She asked how to stop hating herself and not let her sibs make her feel guilty. It broke my heart, too. She had done nothing wrong, but she felt like shit because FAAAAAMILY.
I read the former comment section, but not the latter. Why? Because the Slate comment section is trash. I did see one comment that was very supportive to the letter writer before shutting it down. The people in the comment section seem to want to show off their smarts/sassiness/toughness rather than actually answer the questions. Plus, many of them were…ah…limited in their viewpoint. I know that I am too expansive sometimes, but at least I looked at things from different angles. I know not everyone can, but it’s disheartening when people don’t even realize that they’re limited in their thinking. I get that this is normal because you only know what you know, but it’s frustrating as fuck from the outside.
The AAM commentariat is one of the few in which I think people are smarter than average and progressive. Even there, though, there are limits. I was pleasantly surprised to see that everyone wholeheartedly supported the LW in leaving the business and emphasized that she was not crazy.
Jellyfish Catcher started out their comment thusly:
Your mom’s obligation to you as a parent, is to figure out her own life choices AND to let your figure out your life. You are NOT being a poor daughter or not supporting her, when (not if! ) you decline.
That made me choke up a bit. No, it was not directed to me, but I felt it, nonetheless. It helped to hear people say that the mother was out of line and things were topsy-turvy. The daughter should be able to rely on the mother for support, not the other way around. As I deal with my mother and her insistence on dumping all her problems with my father on me, it’s nice to know that it’s not just me.