Dear Love100%:

You are welcome. A few comments regarding your two posts:

A child naturally feels guilty when a parent is unhappy, distressed. As if the child is the cause and it is her job to fix what she has done wrong (make the mother unhappy). Many adult children keep believing the same thing they believed as children. Keep reminding yourself the truth: you did not cause her unhappiness. It was never your job to fix it, neither is it possible (as you found out).

Your husband’s complaint that your mother is imposing, that she”wants whatever she wants now, if not she gets mad” is congruent with your statements that she “has always been very demanding of me” and that “she manipulates me”. Her message: my way or I get mad at you! is manipulative, demanding, unloving.

It was your husband’s right to not have her in the room, changing his baby, during the family reunion. She ignored him and came into the room. Her behavior there was clearly disrespectful to your husband.

You wrote: “I put myself on both sides”- please put yourself on the loving side. Your user name is Love 100%- I believe the 100% should go to the loving side. If you put yourself on the side of the unloving side, the manipulative, demanding, playing victim side, and accommodate that side, you are harming the loving side, causing anger and resentment there. The latter is not loving at all.

anita