Dear sossi:

You shared that your mother teased you (“the teasing that my mom liked to do”). When you had a boyfriend over, she teased you in front of the boyfriend at the time, and the boyfriend joined her in teasing you (“my mom would tease me and the boyfriend ..would join in”). The two of them teasing you was “a sort of bonding experience for them at my expense”.

When your mother bonded with any one of your boyfriends at your expense, she took away the bonding you had with the boyfriend,  and the happiness you experienced within that bonding.

You wrote, not in reference to your mother: “from an early age, I learned that if I had gained something, others were jealous”- when you gained a bond with a boyfriend, your mother was jealous and took the bond away from you.

“My sister has always been jealous of what I had… When I was a teenager my closest friend was very jealous… there are always problems, hardships, mostly jealous people… I feel that I am targeted a lot because women here are very jealous and possessive”- I think that your mother targeted you with her jealousy, and that you have been projecting your mother into other women, from your sister perhaps to your teenager friend, and to “women here”.

Regarding your recent ex-boyfriend, you wrote: “When I was out with my ex.. strange women would come sliding up to him trying to get his attention.. I was so happy around him, that they wanted some of it to rub off on him”- a similar experience to when you brought a boyfriend home, happy to be around him, but your mother tried (and succeeded) in getting your boyfriend’s attention for herself, and bonding with him at your expense, taking your happiness away.

Your mother’s jealousy extended from the context of your romantic-social life to the context of your professional life: “only a few years ago, I achieved something amazing, my first home and renovation.. my mother never wanted to come and see it. When she did finally, she seemed sulky and attributed the success to her suggestions. I have done two renovations and she had the same reaction”.

You wrote, not in reference to your mother: “when I am feeling successful and confident and beautiful, when it feels like it is radiating out of me.. I feel that is dangerous, because bad things happen, I attract unhappy comments, unhappy people who feel it’s unfair somehow”- when you felt successful, confident and beautiful, ever since you were a child, your unhappy mother felt that your happiness was unfair to her. To make it fair, in her mind, she took away from you the attention you received, the bonds you experienced, the credit for your professional success renovating homes, etc., by making unhappy comments about you and teasing you.

“Why am I attracted to witty and entertaining people only to find them mocking me and making fun that turns into hurtful cruelty?”- you were born to a witty and entertaining woman who mocked you and made fun of you and was cruel to you. Next, you see her in other people, often assuming that they mock you and make fun of you when really, they don’t. For example, I doubt that the woman who stepped outside of her apartment with her phone, a woman you never met before, was referring to you when she said to the person she was talking to on the phone something like: “oh! you should see the scene out here today!”, and I doubt that neighbors are talking about you as much as you think they do, when you are out on your balcony.

Again, I think that you are projecting your mother into women and men, including into your recent ex-boyfriend: “he appears to enjoy demeaning me.. putting me down in front of clients, teasing in meetings and pointing out mistakes”- that’s what your mother did, demeaning you, putting your down and teasing you, and she enjoyed it.

Having experienced all that growing up with your mother was a very, very difficult experience for you, and would be for anyone. You experienced betrayal by the woman who was supposed to be for you, not against you. When she repeatedly turned against you, it hurt you a whole lot.

“when my parents met my ex’s parents.. They were sitting around a table and talking and she suddenly, like a young girl, got up and sat on my dad’s knee and she talked to hem and laughed girlishly. As I was there, I thought it was highly bizarre behaviour”- what her behavior suggests to me is that when you were growing up, she didn’t feel like a grown woman and a mother. She felt like your peer, a child and later, a teenager of the same age as you. She was jealous of you much in the same way one teenager girl is jealous of another teenager girl. She wanted the attention, she wanted the spotlight, she wants to be #1 at your expense, at the expense of your sister, at the expense of your father and at the expense of everyone else.

anita