Quote From: brunhildeAfter watching today's show, I feel a little bit better, knowing that my situation isn't completely unheard of. I am a twenty-six year old female, who has "mom" issues. Growing up as an only child gave me a special bond with my parents, which I love, but sometimes having your mother as your best friend can make life difficult. I was raised in such a way as to not talk back, and to do everything I was told, and unfortunatelly, this has carried over into my adulthood.
Over the years, I've gotten a bit braver, and although I'm too nice to tell her to quit ordering me around, I have tried some psychological experiments on our relationship. I've tried to create boundaries on our conversations (I avoid telling her anything that she might criticize, or that she sees as a weakness). At first, this seemed to work well...I was able to get away from calling her every day. In return, she decided to make our conversations extremely cold, and awkward to the point where she would only talk for a couple of minutes, then make up an excuse to hang up the phone. I didn't want it to turn out like that, so I called her one day, and apologized. Now, I'm back in the same old trap, and feel hopeless about ever having a normal relationship with her.
This issue has caused problems between my fiancee, and I. My parents have never really liked him, because he's not what they had in mind for me. They wanted me to be with someone who has good looks, a high paying job, and a lofty education. Did they mention anything about being a good, and kind person? No. They would rather see me with my ex boyfriend, who was physically abusive, but by gosh, he has a computer science degree and makes good money! I can't understand why any parent would even suggest such a thing...it makes me sad. I sometimes feel like my parents pick apart my relationship with my current fiancee, in hopes of splitting us up. There have been times when my fiancee has told me that he doesn't know how much more of this he can take. He knows how my parents feel about him. I have tried pointing out all the positive attributes, but it is still not good enough.
The last part of this problem is one that's been going on for the majority of my life. My mom likes to make suggestions, even when I'm not asking for her advice She will come up with what she perceives as a great idea, and insist that I do it. I usually make the mistake of giving her "lip service" just to move on to a different topic of discussion, but then she will nag me for weeks (or even years) about whatever this idea happens to be. A great example of this is that she doesn't like my current job, and is constantly emailing me links to other employment opportunities. I especially *like* it when she sends me jobs that pay less than what I currently make, and are several hours away from where I'm living! She purposely finds jobs that are close to where she lives, and insists that I need to move closer to "home". This is so twisted! She's also famous for "bubble bursting"...I will get excited about something that I'm doing, or planning to do, and she will always find something negative about it. The current example of this is that I am getting ready to go back to school to finish my degree in social science (with the end goal of becoming a family therapist of some type). While she has been actually encouraging me to go back to school for the past two years, she is now trying to get me to change my college major (again). She doesn't want me to pursue this degree, because she doesn't think therapists make much money...while this may be true, therapists make decent money, and it is something that I would enjoy for a career. Not only that, but I only have two quarters left before I graduate. It's almost like she doesn't want me to "finish" anything...strange. The worst part of this is how she pulls a "180" on me...where she tells me she wants me to do one thing, and as I'm doing that very thing, she decides that she wants me to do something completely different. It's so distructive, and I never get anywhere when I listen to her. It makes me mad when she goes around, telling everyone that I never finish anything! I am only following her directions (because she gets so nasty when I don't do what she wants me to do). I have gotten to a point, where I don't want to let her know what my plans are, just so she can't ruin them.
I just hope that I can get out of this mess, before I'm 50 years old!
My grandma does the same kind of things. For example, I got pregnant and was diagnosed as high risk, so I had to quit working. Needless to say, we quickly realize we couldn't live on my husband's $9.00 an hour, so we moved out of our apartment into a very nice subsidized housing townhouse that had three bedrooms and was twice the size as the apartment we had been living in. My grandmother was appalled that we would move into government housing "with all those poor people." My grandmother has a real problem with people who don't have a lot of education or make a lot of money. They have never liked my dad or my husband because they only have a high school education and work blue collar jobs (my dad's a welder and my husband works in a warehouse). She's constantly clipping out ads from the paper of land or houses for sale and has even said she would buy it for us and let us pay her back. I keep telling her that we like our townhouse and don't want to buy a house, but she won't listen. She's always making comments about the people in our apartment community too. Everyone in our community has kids and are pretty much nice people. I recently had a baby and so she has been coming over to help me out during the day and she won't even let my son go play with the other kids in the neighborhood (he is five and they play right behind our townhouse in plain sight). She's afraid he'll learn something bad from the "poor" kids. She doesn't want him trick or treating around our neighborhood either because she's afraid that the "poor" people will poison his candy. Of course, her neighborhood is safe to trick or treat in because it is all rich people. She drives me crazy. She's also famous for "bubble-bursting" with any idea we come up with. I considered a Montessori school for son when he starts next year because he doesn't do well in a traditional classroom environment and I thought he would benefit from the more "hands-on" learning experience he would get in a Montessori school. Of course, she poo-pooed that idea. We had also talked about moving to Columbus (we currently live 30 miles outside of Cincinnati) because they had a job opening for my husband that would pay substantially more. I won't even list all of the reasons she gave us why that was a bad idea. Just know that you aren't alone. My advice, just stop telling her anything but exactly what she wants to hear.
(Original Air Date: 10/12/05) They won’t let you walk down the street alone. They call your house five times a day, screen your calls, and monitor your every move. It’s not the FBI; it’s mothers! When 14-year-old Ashlee was on the show nearly two years ago, she said her mother, Teresa, was embarrassing and strict, and she wanted it to stop. Now she’s back and says her mom still won’t allow her to have any freedom. See the assignment Dr. Phil gave them that brought Teresa to tears. Plus, meet a 43-year old woman who says her mother is so overprotective, she calls the police if she comes home late. Can her mom learn how to let go? Share your thoughts.
