TL;DR: manipulative mom of enmeshed family interfering in a happy relationship/ marriage, trying to control all of my free time, invalidating everything I have concerns about, gaslighting. Left religion and it’s gotten worse.
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Sorry about the length, there’s a lot that I’ve been trying to unpack here. Would love advice about how to approach a situation like this/manage my mom, as someone who’s always been afraid to stir the pot or stand up for myself.
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I’ve (24F) been married to my husband (25M) for a few years now. I think looking back, my family was relatively enmeshed. I was discouraged from moving out in college and therefore lived at home, and I stayed living at home until the day I got married to my husband. I wanted to move into the dorms to have a bit of the college experience, but when I brought it up with my parents they viewed it as a betrayal, and not only did they refuse to help me become more independent, they started charging me rent to stay in my room that I’d been in since a child. This is important because I think it’s contributing to this dynamic.
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My decision to get married and leave changed the family dynamic since I went straight from living at home and even choosing to spend time with family over friends every day to living away and wanting to be with my husband more and not wanting to spend every day with my family. My mom didn’t take this adjustment well.
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My mom had issues with my husband from the start. I will note that my husband is amazing, supportive, loves me unconditionally, and he does not control my decisions in the slightest. I think the enmeshed family dynamic made it so that my husband was viewed as an outsider, and though he was eventually welcomed completely by everyone else in the family, my mom constantly finds issues and will latch on to seemingly insignificant things that happened throughout the entire course of our relationship, and she’ll bring it up even years later.
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This has been compounded by mine and my husbands decision to leave our religion, which has not gone over well with my parents. They think my husband is the reason I made that decision, but he didn’t have any influence over my reasoning. My mom especially has had a very hard time with it. She seems to think I’m incapable of making a decision like that, and therefore blames my husband for it.
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She has said things ranging from comments about him being too quiet/not boisterous enough for our family all the way to saying things like “I don’t think he’s a good husband,” “I hope you understand what TRUE love is one day,” and “if he truly loved you he wouldn’t have let you leave the church.” She tried to break us up when we were dating, tried to get me to go on dates with other men THE DAY before I knew he was proposing, and she’s hinted at wanted me to divorce my husband. She and I have had some pretty explosive fights over those comments, obviously. My husband and I deeply love each other but that doesn’t matter to my mom.
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I understand completely that parents have a hard time letting go, and in their perspectives it’s hard when your children aren’t making the choices you want them to make. But since we left the religion, it seems like my mom is trying as hard as she can to be in my life as much as possible. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing in itself because I do enjoy my time with her, and I’ve moved on from a lot of things, but she comes to my work every week for lunch, we go over almost every Sunday for dinner, and it still seems like it’s not enough for her and I’ll get random invitations throughout the week to go to their house and do things. I have a puppy at home who’s alone for 8 hours a day, which is hard on any pet (let alone a puppy) so going over after work isn’t really an option, and I keep reminding her but she still always asks.
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I also work 6 days a week right now and I’m exhausted at the end of every week. Sunday is the only full day I get with my husband anymore, and yet we still go over for Sunday dinners and do weekly lunches.
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Last Sunday, I told my mom I needed to just have a day of R&R at home instead of going over. This was after she called and also had my sibling call to see if I wanted to be picked up for dinner. I explained to her why I would not be going over and she seemed to drop it. I got a call a few hours later from my sibling however, who asked again if I wanted to come over. I said no and reiterated why I needed a break and then I heard my sibling on the phone tell my mom to drop it and stop having them call me.
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Frankly, I feel like she’s trying to manipulate me, and the call on Sunday was blatant evidence of that. I’m hurt that she would disrespect my boundaries that I’ve been trying to set, and that she would use my siblings to try to get what she wants from me. I’ve told her multiple times that I’m always exhausted or that I want to see my husband but she’s sent me long texts invalidating that by saying that she never had free time as a young mom, and it’s selfish to want to be alone, and she’ll also invalidate me in her responses by saying things like “me too, I worked 3 12-hr shifts this week at my job” and then continue trying to make plans.
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My dad has told me a few times now to just tell her no or tell him when we don’t want to come over and he’ll tell my mom, most recently after I asked him last Sunday to tell my mom to stop trying to get me to come over when I need a day off. My mom keeps trying to get me to make plans though, and she still invalidates me a lot. She also gaslights me all the time and makes me feel like a terrible person for ever having problems with it, because she’s my mother, and she would NEVER EVER hurt me. She also will only come to our home unannounced. She never calls and always comes in the middle of our plans, or super early in the morning.
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If I miss dinner or other plans one night, she’ll try to make up for it another day that week. She also tries to make plans ranging from dinner to full on vacations that will exclude my husband.
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I don’t know how to not be offensive but I just don’t feel like my mom respects my time, my husband, my decisions, or my marriage, and I feel like she’s trying to fill my free time with plans with her and my family instead of understanding that my husband and I also need time together, and a few hours every night after work just isn’t enough.
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I’ve tried to set boundaries and I’ve had the support of my husband and dad in that, but I just don’t know how to approach this. I tried to set boundaries on the phone a few weeks ago, and I ended up being the one to apologize for even having an issue in the first place, but I know this isn’t a healthy dynamic. I also don’t think it helped that I never lived away from my family until the day I got married. I don’t want to feel like I always have to make plans to keep her happy, because I just don’t have that much time to myself.
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Between making dinner, getting groceries, walking the dog, doing chores, etc. after work, I’m lucky to have 2 hours a day to do what I want to do, and then my mom tries to make plans so that time is even less. It’s getting so hard to try to coordinate schedules and keep her happy and still have the time to myself and with my husband that I need, and I feel kind of powerless right now with her. I’ve told her all of this but I’m always invalidated, or she’ll say she understands and then tries to make plans the very next day.
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I just don’t know how to deal with her always having to fill my time, the manipulation and the gaslighting, the guilt trips, etc. I want to have a relationship with my mom because it’s not all bad, but every time I think it’s getting better she pulls something that just shatters my trust all over again. I just feel powerless and if I cut contact I’m afraid my siblings will have the wrong idea and I’ll lose my relationship with them and my dad. I’m scared that she’ll destroy their perceptions about me because she’s very opinionated and extremely strong-willed.
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How do I handle this? Any time I try to bring things up with her she turns it back on me and gaslights me and makes me feel like a bad person because in her head she cannot do any wrong and my husband or I are always the problem.
4 comments
Unreasonable people will think you are being mean and unreasonable when you are being reasonable. You have to accept that as the price of living a reasonable life. You can either satisfy reasonable people or unreasonable people, but not both. Catering to the unreasonable will destroy your relationships with reasonable people. so, you need to learn to let your mom be hurt and upset when you act reasonably and stop apologizing or making it your problem.
You see your mother super frequently. First, I just want to point that out. That’s a ton. Second, your father seems like a real asset – use him. Tell him no and let him deal with it like he offered. Third, you do not have to answer a phone just because it rings. Start managing your time. Decide when and how you actually want to spend it. Set limits. Decide on a frequency for how often you actually want to see your mother. You can tell her that you have decided that you only want to see her X often most of the time, so that’s what you are going to try to schedule. She will say you are selfish. So what? Tell her, “You may think what you want, but this is what I have decided.” Honestly, I think it’s kind of sick and twisted that she wants you to see her more often than is good for you. If she thinks it’s selfish, that means she thinks that you seeing her less is in your best interests, but she actively does not want what is best for you. But whatever. Just make your boundaries, stick to them, let her whine if she wants to. You can also end a conversation when you don’t want to discuss it more.
Note, when you start strongly enforcing boundaries, toxic people will usually ramp up bad behavior to try to figure out what methods will break them down. It gets worse before it gets better. But if you hold firm, they usually give up and accept the boundary.
Sounds like your mom is an extremely difficult person, and I’m sorry you all are going through this.
Since you said you’ve talked to her about boundaries and she either gaslights you or agrees and then renegs later. So, I’d say your mom has now hit the “find out” portion of “fuck around and find out.”
ENFORCE the boundaries. Don’t answer your phone. Don’t respond to text messages. Don’t answer the door. Tell her you don’t want to eat lunch with her. Call them out on unacceptable behavior.
You said you value your relationship with your father and siblings, so let them know you’re planning on reducing contact with your mom until this behavior stops, and you’d appreciate it if they rejected any attempts she makes to use them as a proxy for communication. But if they side with your mom, you need to be willing to enforce the boundaries with them, too.
Let her know you’re no longer tolerating her talking shit about your husband, and every time she goes back on that, it’s another week/month/whatever of not showing up to dinners.
Put your foot down. You’re an adult and (I’m assuming) financially independent. You don’t have to tolerate this, blood be damned.
Tell your siblings first. “Mom is kind of overwhelming and because I’m now working 6 days a week abd exhausted I’m going to need to take a break from some things. I wanted to tell you this because I noticed that if I say I can’t come over she sticks you in the middle and tries to get you to ask for her. I don’t like it when she does that to us. I would appreciate it if in the future you said no to her. I also hope you will support me during this time because she is really too much and I’m trying very hard to set some boundaries so that I don’t have to stop talking to her entirely.
Thank you for listening. “
Say something similar to your dad. And do not feel guilty if you choose to let her calls go to voicemail when you are busy.
I sincerely hope this does not come off as disrespectful, but it sounds like your mother has some things she needs to work on before there is ever any hope of a less turbulent relationship here. And none of those seem related to you, personally.
One thing I want to note is regarding your concern that mother will destroy your other family members’ perceptions of you. It sounds like your siblings and father already see your mother’s poor behavior toward you given it seems they have tried to help you out themselves (both by your request and even on their own in the case that your sibling told your mother to “drop it”). Because of that, it seems rather unlikely they will fall into any traps your mother tries to set regarding your standing in the family. Hopefully seeing this will make it feel easier to try to take harder measures to improve your mother’s behavior towards you.
I understand completely that you want a relationship with you mother. However, I think the fact she shatters boundaries seemingly the moment they are made shows that she is unlikely to relent without serious repercussions to her actions. Maybe a temporary “cut contact” period would be enough to make her think twice about her behavior. If you go this route, it would probably be good to give the rest of your family a heads up because she is unlikely to respond well at first. Simply letting them know how you are feeling (in reality, they probably already know and understand, but a little reminder for context could help) and what you plan on doing would be enough.
No decision you make has to be a permanent one (assuming she does not resolve on her end to make it such), but again it seems like anything less than a seemingly “drastic” measure (it really does not need to be seen as such a big deal, but she certainly will see it as such) will not help promote change. So, that is my advice. Limit (or eliminate) contact temporarily, let her throw her tantrum over it (might be a crude way of putting it, but it is accurate), and after a while of being without you she may come around (at least to avoid losing you for good – whether or not that is something you ever plan on doing, she does not have to know it is not). Feels a little manipulative, but I cannot think of a much cleaner way to do it.