Dear Loveandkisseszaphod:

You wrote about your mother, regarding your boyfriend at 23: “she thought he wasn’t husband material for me”. I suggest she is not mother material for you because she “is still comfortable calling me names.. telling me I am cold, stern, emotionally unavailable.. compares me to her daughter I law, to her friends’ daughters etc.”

Regarding your boyfriend telling you that “she was old now and she needed a mother daughter relationship”- she established the existing mother-daughter relationship with you long ago, and she is currently maintaining it, the same relationship that she established by calling you names etc.

She established the relationship as it was and as it still is, not you, because she had the power over you, not the other way around. This is why it is  not in your power to change what she actively established and is still actively maintaining.

“I became intolerant and very angry at her… I wonder how I can reach that state of indifference? I don’t want to think about my relationship with my mother anymore if and when I have a man in my life. I don’t want to carry that resentment”-

-my input, from my very personal life experience, having been angry at my mother for decades and at present time no longer being consumed by that anger, it not being an active anger:

Your quest to be indifferent toward her while she is still calling you names and comparing you to other people’s daughters is impossible. She either has to stop these behaviors or you have to not have her in your life. You cannot not be angry at her while she is still actively fueling your aggressive inner critic.

It is very difficult and a long process to manage and change the nature of that inner critic. Cutting off its original fuel supply is a necessary step in healing.

My intense and decades long anger at my mother didn’t do me any good because I didn’t listen to the valid message behind my anger at her and I didn’t act accordingly. What do you think is the valid message behind your anger at your mother?

anita