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For those who have kids: what would you do?

Discussion in 'LGBT Later in Life' started by Tightrope, Sep 23, 2013.

  1. Tightrope

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    What would you do?

    I had a problem with my mom. I still do, actually. When I left college, some friends got married, had kids, and it was obvious that our friendship had skidded - by their doing. I went to see a college friend once when traveling, after first visiting her mom, and then she and her husband spoke to me on their front lawn, not even inviting me in to sit down or have a cup of coffee or a soft drink, after pulling the rental car up to the house. She's not a messy house type. I decided to cease communications with past friends like this, mainly by stopping sending holiday cards and not contacting them.

    My mom, who had met some of them while I was in school and/or shortly thereafter, continued to do the Christmas letter exchange with them. Their letters were the typical form letter of what their kids were up to. There was nothing personalized for my mom in them. I asked my mom to cut off communication with them based on how aloof they had gotten with me. Her response was that they were nice and sent her a card. This pissed me off because I'm more important than someone who is a stranger to her. A couple of Christmases later, I picked up her mail, saw a few of these incoming cards, and tore them up. So she stopped sending them Christmas cards. I then confessed I had torn them up before she could get them. She just looked blank, but did not resume sending them.

    My dad would take my side when I had friction with some of my friends, if you could call some of them friends. You couldn't fool him. He was nicer to friends who were not as educated or not affluent, but were better friends. He became frosty to friends who were educated, uppity, and then not be above board in their dealings with me. He would even comment they were turds.

    A cousin said that sending cards was my mom's choice. It is. Another friend who knew her, and saw similar dynamics in her own parents, couldn't stand my mom and said it's just "If you say green, she says red." If someone had a falling out with my kid and my kid told me about it, I would no longer be sending these people a Christmas card, especially 10 years after college and across so many miles.

    WWYD if this was YOUR kid and this is what they experienced? In one way or another, this behavior plays itself out to this day, where she ignores what some people we both know say and do that has a negative impact on me to keep the peace.
     
  2. Choirboy

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    Honestly, I don't think I would have any desire to send Christmas cards to people who weren't my friends in the first place. My daughters have a ton of friends who we know and see fairly regularly at assorted functions. They're nice kids, but I only know them as my daughter' friends, and I wouldn't feel compelled to send cards to them under pretty much any circumstances. If they made a point to send ME cards after my kids had moved out, I think I'd perceive it as rather Eddie Haskell-ish, and even if I DID send them cards, I can't imagine sending one to them if their friendship with my kids had waned. I wouldn't feel that I had any relationship with them.

    Some people do feel compelled to keep replying in that whole vicious eye-for-an-eye cycle where we keep in touch with people long after there is any need to. Every year until recently, we sent a card to a family whose twins we babysat for in, like, 1992, and who left the state in about 1994. It was ridiculous and I finally quietly erased their name from the computerized labels we print out a couple years ago. So far it has gone unnoticed. But some people get positively psychotic about that sort of thing. Your mom may just get off on that contact with long-forgotten people, which has to be as annoying as hell. But is it really the hill you want to die on?
     
  3. Tightrope

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    CB:

    It permeates everything she does. Keeping up appearances for her is everything. So if it isn't the cards, it's about something else in the same ball park - essentially selling me down the river when someone else is involved in the dynamics. To me, it's about betrayal and a lack of empathy for me. Therapists I've had convey they don't like her. She comes from a really dysfunctional background and feels rapport needs to be kept, even if people step on you. We were once discussing our parents, and the kids were in agreement that the dysfunction runs 75 : 25 maternal side/paternal side. My dad sort of indicated he "settled" because he married a little late for his generation, in his mid 30s. However, they got along fairly well and didn't fight much. My fights with my dad were epic and then blew over. My fights with my mom are always on simmer mode.
     
  4. Choirboy

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    I get it--in fact, I'm expecting a similar dynamic over the coming years between my girls and their mother, They see her behavior as Mom being selfish and mean, and using them more as a topic of conversation, or a way to justify her behavior by throwing them under the bus. "We had to stop with 2 kids because they were so wild"--this, about 2 girls who could be taken to any store, any restaurant, and they would be have perfectly, and were often mortified at the bad behavior of other kids. She, too, comes from an extremely dysfunctional family, and the presence of our kids gives her a reason to stay in touch with them, even though they're not really nice people, and there really isn't any reason to STAY in touch with them. My dad, unfortunately, was rather similar and I've often noticed that I seem to have married him.

    I can't give you any good suggestions for changing her behavior--because you can't. What I remind my girls every chance I get is that Mom doesn't hate them and doesn't want to hurt them, but she has no real ability to understand how anyone else feels. She only remotely understands how SHE feels. She loves them in the only way she can, which is definitely not the kind of relationship that they want, but it's the only one they are ever going to have with her. And once they are adults they will have the option to either accept her, or run as far as they can go.

    My mom died when we were in our late teens and early twenties, and my sisters migrated to either end of the country, and my brother moved to a different town; none of them kept in contact with Dad more than they had to. Because I was stuck being the caretaker as his health deteriorated over the space of 20 or so years, I was pretty much forced into getting along with him. It was a valuable lesson in accepting a person who is incapable of change. Which didn't mean validating his behavior by any means, just recognizing that my own feelings were not only inconsequential to him, they were completely impossible for him to recognize or deal with. It was a huge help to me when I finally gave up trying to get Dad to accept me or care what I thought. He could actually be a decent guy at times, but it took me years to see that, because I kept wanting him to care about what I thought and felt, and he just couldn't do it. Not "wouldn't"--COULDN'T. If your mother came from a dysfunctional family, that may well be the case with her as well.

    It's not a very satisfactory situation. My girls will never have a very healthy relationship with their mother, just as I never did with my father, and you probably never will with your mother. But you CAN train yourself out of reacting and caring about the annoying and frustrating things she does, by realizing that they're very likely not efforts to hurt you or anger you--your feelings are really just collateral damage in her efforts to make HERSELF feel better. If you really want a relationship with her, you have to ignore the baggage, like the Christmas cards and the rest, and focus on the aspects of her that are worth having a realtionship with. Dad and I were never friends and he never really gave a damn what I thought, but once I accepted that, I was able to enjoy his company (in a guarded sort of way), and ignore some of his worst qualities without getting AS annoyed, and to stop taking his behavior as a personal insult, because although it sure as hell felt like it, it was really the only way he could relate. It was who he was. You can't change a skunk into a cat by painting out his stripe. But if you're careful, and avoid the business end, you can avoid getting sprayed and coexist reasonably well.
     
  5. TorreyGlory

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    Well, my mom is Facebook friends with a girl who bullied me for years when we were kids. She probably sends her Christmas cards, too. I don't know - at the end of the day, you can't control whom other people associate with, only your response to it. And for me, it's not worth getting angry about anymore. I just block her updates (the other girl's, not my mom's), and life goes on.

    For you, the Christmas cards sound like the tip of a much larger problem in your relationship with your mom. Again, you can't change her, so you have to focus on changing how you deal with her. For your own sanity if nothing else. Good luck.
     
  6. Tightrope

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    Right, they are indeed. Yes, I've been told that, too. I'm used to dealing with people in a more direct manner. A sibling even said she's selfish and passive-aggressive. Passive-aggressive people are often harder to deal with than direct, more mercurial types.
     
  7. first off, i think the lesson here is that you are a grown man and you're not in 3rd grade. naturally your relationships (friendships or otherwise) should be strong between you and the friend. sure it is ok to introduce them to your parents but it is a bit unhealthy for your parents to develop strong relationships with your friends for this very reason. so going forward you need to manage the separation.

    as far as the cards, i think it was immature for you to tear up the holiday cards they sent your mom back. they were not addressed to you so you should have left them alone. you did tell your mom you did that, so that was a good thing.

    personally if my child told me to back off and respect the relationship i had or did not have any longer with a friend, i would do that because ultimately they are not my best friend, they are my child's. however, if my child knows that i tend to overextend myself, then my child should keep me separated from his/her friends in a way where i woudl be acquainted with them but not feel like i was an intimate friend.

    bottom line. these are your friends, so you need to set your own relatinships and boundaries and not include your parents in all the ins and outs of your friendships.
     
  8. Tightrope

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    Thanks for the thorough analysis. I tore up the cards so it would stop but, yes, I did tell her. These things mostly stemmed from college days. She met them that way. I've taken flights with her, sometimes, and in one case, a woman she had nothing in common with but had the same routing and connections as us, talked to us for quite a bit and she was going to give her one of the little calling cards she carries. I quietly kept telling her "no," as in don't push it. She has an obsession with collecting people, even if the exchanges and friendships are paper thin.