Hi Anita,

I agree my mother was very selfish as well. She is not the innocent victim. I wish she had done the mature thing and left him earlier, but I think she had her own selfish reasons to stay, and not just because he didn’t love her. She also used the religion as an excuse to try and keep my dad.

But I would be interested to know why you think it can’t be a “good loving relationship now”?What should my mother and I do to make it more good and loving? I find our relationship pretty good these days. What could mother do differently apart from apologizing? She can’t take back the past. Wouldn’t it been worse to deny any wrongdoing?

If she is selfish then really as I am just living through her, I am selfish too.

Hi Anita, Thanks for writing back.

“maybe you don’t want to be like your mother, desperate for a man and you make sure that you are not, that you do not give men “too many chances”-

That is very true, I’ve actually thought this about myself as well. The first guy a talked about (the strange one). He actually was very much like my father (accept far, far worse, but very familiar) and even though I was so, full of a lust and my brain wasn’t functioning properly. I still didn’t want to come across as desperate. So even though I wanted to run to him all the time, I forced myself to hold back. I mean I did run a few times, but I tried so, so hard to control myself and not to. I didn’t want to be my mother. Of course it made no difference, he still treated me poorly. I’m pretty sure that relationship was about me seeing this guy acting like my father (except a whole lot worse) and me trying to fix the past. I swear I had the same conversations with my dad as I did with this guy. Just re-enacting the same scenes with a different man. I gave up in the end.

You wrote, in that same paragraph I quoted above: “my father was quite childish and irresponsible.. and my mother because so in love made excuses for him”- this may be why growing up you “always wanting him to save his money rather than spend it”- wanting him to be responsible and love your mother.

Yes I certainly would agree with that. I wanted him to be responsible and love my mother. I think I really felt for my mother deeply and felt she deserved to be loved, because she was a) a nice mother (despite all her issues) b)I thought she deserved to be be really loved c)I could feel her pain d)maybe knowing her story about her father, her mother, my father not loving her, I just desperately wanted her to feel happy and loved e)so I suppose yes, I was sort of transferring her desires on to me.

I wonder if you made a decision in your mind, early on, that as long as your mother is not loved (her theme was, you stated, that she is unloved, not only by your father but by others, like her own father), it is not okay for you to be loved. I wonder if this belief is underneath your great discomfort when the last man in your life put you on a pedestal…?

You could be right, I am not sure to be honest. I guess there could be something in there about me “not feeling okay to be loved as long as my mother is not loved”. I am not sure how to know this though?

The last man that put me on a pedestal was uncomfortable because it was a bit over the top and theatrical in nature.A little bit of a pedestal is fine, but too much and it’s unnerving, plus lots of other red flags. It was too much pressure on me. Especially since, I saw cracks on how he critisized others with such trivial things and I thought eventually when he gotten over the lust phase of our relationship he would start to find issues in me and I would be off that pedestal.

I think I did progress a lot from the first to the second relationship though and it help me get some clarity. The way I was treated by second guy was like “night and day”. I really did want to give it a chance, because there were some lovely aspects to him, like he was always contacting me, checking up on how I was, trying to nut certain things out, affectionate, made me laugh like no one else has been able to, appreciative of things I did etc And so when the red flags came I really was like “are they really red flags?” or is this me just trying to make excuses because I am not used to being treated like this? But no really, there were too many red flags, so despite the lovely aspects of him, it still would have not worked. But it taught me a lot about what good aspects to look for in a man.

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by Mia.
• This reply was modified 7 years ago by Mia.

@Anita – Thanks Anita I will look into psychotherapy, but in some ways my therapist might be best to stick with. Psychotherapy isn’t claimable in my country, whereas a psychologist is.

I felt like I probably became more the mother when I was around 18 and my he left my mother. I didn’t feel much of a mother figure to my dad growing up (perhaps slightly as I always wanting him to save his money rather than spend it so we could buy a house). But that went in one ear and out the other.

@ JayJay for your reply, but no I was a pretty switched on kid. No my father definitely didn’t want to be with my mother anymore. Plus I could hear it in the arguments what he was feeling. However, my mother not wanting me to grown up in a single parent household, so she begged him to stay. He almost had an affair and my mum convinced him to stay (I heard this in the fights and discussions themselves, so no one was telling me a different story), but once I reached around 17-18 he had enough. He kicked my mother out one night (granted he was manic but we didn’t understand at the time what was happening) and said never to return (and never apologized for his behaviour even when better).

I do understand partners when manic, can do this and don’t mean it and still love their partner, and feel so much guilt.  But I feel deep down that was my dads true intentions to end things and the manic episode just made it unfortunately a really a harsh way to end it. He never said he regretted leaving my mother or how he handled it even when he got well. I’m sure he does regret how he handled it somewhere deep down inside of him. But to really admit it, he would have to confront his ability to not take responsibility with things, and that’s just not him. You know something I found a blog post of his after all this happened (quite recently) and his perception was quite skewed as to what happened, he said that my mother had enough and wanted to leave. I think that’s what he needed to tell himself to feel okay about it all.

I have discussed with my mother not long ago about my dad (because I asked and sort of suggested that maybe he never loved her) and she’s pretty level headed about it all now and she told me her perspective. She believe he did love her in the beginning but just fell out of love with her. I think his losing interest in the religion (caring too much what his parents thought about being in such a religion, as they were devout Catholics), perhaps the undiagnosed bipolar (that went under the radar), my mother being too pushy and her own mistakes (she’s knows she could of handled things a lot better) and also the loss of my sister, just was too much for him but stayed because of religious requirements (and religious people convincing my dad to stay). Basically my mother and father had very different values after he lost interest in the religion. It just wouldn’t of worked, because it was such a strict religion and my father was now interested doing things that were completely different to my mothers values.

I don’t think my dad hated my mother, he got along with her well enough (there were certainly good times and fun times) but he just fell out of love with her. They “got along” with each other, but that was certainly not enough for my dad.

I also played up a lot because of this confusing childhood, I stole, I lied, I cut up clothing (all under age 6). My mother realises I was obviously effected much more than she realised and I was playing up to get attention and I was obviously hurting very much. She is very remorseful and feels terrible (hindsight is a funny thing). To be fair my mother lost a child at that time as well, and I think she probably was depressed.

Yep, I have a therapist and she does help a lot, but obviously there are still a lot of wounds.

I’m thinking now, it was just seeing the toxic dynamic between my parents that had such an impact on me wanting to avoid relationships, plus an over zealous religion. Maybe my mothers “negative talk” wasn’t such an issue, but more the fighting and me observing parents staying in an unhappy marriage for too long. It’s not good seeing one parent “over loving” and the other “not wanting to love at all”.