My mother called the other night. She wanted to complain about my father again. She knows she shouldn’t, but she can’t help herself. I tried to be sympathetic/empathetic, but we’ve been doing this dance for forty years (ever since she made me her confidante when I was 11). This time, though, instead of dancing around it, she flat-out said that kids should be their parents’ confidantes as part of taking care of them. I was flabbergasted because she had never actually said it out loud before.
She mentioned her clients helping out their parents (taking them to appointments and such) and she slated being a ‘confidante’ fell under that. I’ll counter that in a moment, but just wanted to comment as I did to her that it was women doing this , which was sexist as hell. She got that sour tone in her voice that said she did not like what I said. She did admit she needed a therapist, but then said a million reasons why she couldn’t get one. And why she can’t leave for the one hour a week a woman comes to take care of my father. She says how upset he gets when she leaves, which irritates me every time.
Here’s the thing. Intellectually, I know that abuse warps the mind and enforces a learned helplessness. But at the end of the day, people still have to take some autonomy. And if not, don’t dump about it constantly on their children. My mom is never going to leave my father. I realized that when I was fairly young, and it only gets stronger the older I get (the feeling that she won’t leave him). Fine. Whatever. It’s her life. But I don’t want to hear about it. At this point, I’m just sick and tired of it after being a forced confidante for nearly a half-century.
Here’s the other thing. It may have been beneficial to her that I’ve been her confidante (which I think is dubious, anyway), but it most emphatically hasn’t been for me. Which my mom knows. She’ll apologize for dumping it all on me, but continue to do so. Once in a while she’ll say she won’t do it again. She said it more than once the last time she was here. I told her angrily to not say that because we both knew it wasn’t true. That actually made me angrier than the initial dumping.
Her trying to justifying making her confidante only underscored her own narcissism. Her comfort and need to vent superseded my comfort and need to not have her vent at me. In addition, and I didn’t realize this until much later, her constant venting about my father made me feel even more negatively towards him than I would have without it.
Let me be clear. I have plenty of reasons to dislike my father. I did not need more from my mother. But her hours of pouring negativity about him in my ear did not help. That’s why when she said that she was happy 90% of the time, I snorted. All she talked about were her issues with him, though she expressed surprise that I thought that about her. She does not have a good assessment about how she comes across.
Side Note: This is a family issue, by the way. We’re all stubborn as hell. We all think we’re right. I mean, everyone does, but we cannot shut the fuck up about it. My mom is the one least-likely to argue, but she doesn’t change her mind, either. Unless she asks about something, then she just believes whatever the last person told her. Actually, what the second person tells her. She never believes the first. Ian once commented that she listens to my brother more than to me, and I said it was probably because she believes the second person she talks to more than the first–and she usually talks to me first.
Here’s another thing. My mother widened the gulf between my father and me (and my brother) by jumping in between us whenever we were having a discussion/argument. We weren’t allowed just to work it out on our own–oh no. She had to put on her best psychologist voice and ‘mediate’. Did she make it better? No. Did she make it worse? Often, yes. Sometimes, it was neutral, but it exacerbated problems more often than not.
My father and I have communication problems. It doesn’t help that his English, never that great, has only gotten worse with age. It’s his fourth language and one he no longer uses on the regular. My mom has always had better spoken English than my father and felt like she needed to interpret for him. She has anxiety issues and tried to anticipate his every need. He wasn’t to feel a second of discomfort. That was her life mission–and still is. She’s been doing it for so long, it’s second nature to her.
She triangulated in other ways, too, such as telling my brother and me things we should keep from our father because it would make him mad. Or because he couldn’t deal with it. Or accept it. This lasted until I was well into my twenties. I wasn’t supposed to tell him when I got my tats. Or that I was bisexual. I didn’t tell him either, but that was more because I didn’t think it was any of his business. I’m sure he knows I have tats now because I don’t hide them any longer, but he probably has no clue as to my sexual identity. Then again, my mother was surprised I was “still” bisexual when I mentioned it a few years after I had come out to her. Which was a huge mistake, but that’s another post for another day.
Side Note II: It really irritates me when my mom excuses her terrible beliefs by saying she’s old-fashioned or traditional. Yes, she was born in 1842, but she’s lived every year since then. She wasn’t cryogenically-sealed and thawed out this year. She was in America by 1967, which meant she went through civil rights, marriage equality, and a whole host of new ideas. Also, after moving back to Taiwan, women got the right to request a divorce, it became the first Asian country to legalize marriage equality, and it elected a woman as president. In other words, the country has adapted to modern times; she can, too.
Anyway, consciously or not, my mother kept a wedge between my father and me (and my brother). Again, he did that on his own by never being home, but she didn’t help when he was home. There were ways she could have encouraged us to have a better relationship, but she never did. What’s worse, she actively impeded that from happening as I said. Not only did she give us a list of things we could not bring to our father because she just knew he couldn’t deal with it, she had to “interpret” for him during even a simple conversation.
I’m an empath, Mom. I do not need someone explaining someone else’s emotions to me (or lack thereof). I think I was in my twenties when I realized that she whether on purpose or not, she was making my relationship with my father worse.
How could I have any warm feelings towards him after hearing hours of how badly he treated her? Which, by the way, did not make me view her through a kind lens, either. Not only did I hate the fact that she just put up with his shit, but I loathed the fact that she had to dump it all on me. I knew even then that it wasn’t appropriate, but I didn’t feel I could do anything about it.
I still have a hard time putting a limit on her blathering, which is one reason I never reach out to her. I know if I do, she’ll bend the conversation to my father within minutes. I am willing to put up with it once every other week or so, but I’m not willing to inflict it on myself. Why should I? I’m not that kind of masochist.