Mother/Daughter Estrangement

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I've always been very close to my mom. We're a lot alike.

My mother was practically my best friend throughout my childhood (even if she had HORRIBLE ways of dealing with me and my brother, like making faces intended to frighten me when I was little and she was angry at me, knowing how easily and intensely frightened I became). In the last few years, however, I feel as if she has chosen to become estranged from me due to my own decision to effectively cut my brother out of my life. She ignores his lifelong treatment of and demeaning attitude toward me, insisting I made the decision hastily and rigidly following the last such incident she can remember. She says I am "filled with hate."

I still speak to her daily; we still laugh and talk. But we fight more, too, and more horribly when we do. I feel a strong resentment toward her due to her dismissal of me. She seems to actually FIGHT understanding my perspective or experience in any way, even while she acknowledges my father and brother's unfair and hurtful treatment (if it hasn't happened in the last week, it's something they have overcome, and I am clinging to hateful thoughts because I find pleasure in them). It hurts so much, because I love her and I NEED her support. I am bewildered as much as I am saddened, frustrated as much as I am angered.

YES. I was my fathers son growing up. I'm not a girly girl and don't how those friends. I am more comfortable in male company although I do have some good female pals... but they are down to earth ppl, straight talking etc.

Thankfully my mother died when I was 15yo. This brought calm to the house and I had to take over the running of the house, so had responsibility etc. It did my younger sister no good at all I suspect as she was 10yo. But I suspect she is/was Aspie too, as she used to hit her head hard with her hand during her first few years of life. I remember the nurse not being able to explain this behaviour to my mother. I now guess it was part of the hand flapping phenomenon.

I now suspect one of the reasons I got on better with my dad is that he took a firm clear and consistent disciplinary approach to my Aspergers. That taught me what was acceptable behaviour and what wasn't. While my mother was all talk, and that probably just went over my head or in one ear and out the other. We never got on.

My relationship with my mother is off-again/on-again...many times we get along, MANY times we don't...I don't feel I can tell her things like I see other girls with their moms...never a hug that I can EVER remember between us, much less a kiss...not even on the cheek...hmmm...

I too feel much more comfortable talking to men...I have very little in common with most women...

I love my mother, I really do but sometimes she drives me nuts with her constantly trying to force her religious views down my throat. Not to mention she's very controlling. i.e. If I lose my virginity before marriage, she's going to kick me out of the house and cut off financial support. Same thing will happen if she thinks I've become an alcoholic. I've been 21 since July and only had 5 drinks in the past month. I'm not a lush for wanting a small drink with my meal, okay? D:

I'm working on getting more distance between me and my mother. It's hard because I love her very much.
She hurts me by critizising me and wishing I was more like her. She is pulling me down in a way that is hard to explain. I know I'm very sensitive and that dosn't make things easier.
Growing up I felt I had to protect her from my father, when it should have been the other way around.

For me it's harder to relate to men in general. That's because my father is a narcissist. He scared the s.... out of me when I was a child.
I talk to him a few times a year, and hardly have any fealings for him at all. When my parents got divorced I felt a relief.

I think a lack of a father figure makes me more attached to my mother.

My mother loves and cares for me very much. She worries about me when I'm away on an adventure in some remote corner of the globe. She researches health and behavioural stuff for me. It was my mother who took me to be diagnosed with ADD at 3yo and took me off ritalin because she loved the ADD me more than the zombie. She also knows that ADD was a misdiagnosis and recommended I get tested for AS.

As a mother, she did what she thought was best, there were no parenting courses back then that they could attend, she used Dr Spocks book as a guide to correct parenting.

The feelings of guilt and ingratitude still taunt me whan we catch up because I can not tolerate more than a couple of hours in the same room with her. Almost everything she says annoys me. I despise her for how she treated my dad for 20 years as she suffered a long drawn out peri menopause and menopause.

My memories are full of rejection and ignorance from my mother. I avoided going home in my younger adult years, or even calling, so I didn't have any contact with her but now, as I understand more about myself and as she is getting older and more needy, I am compromising myself and my own feelings by giving her more of my time. We catch up a few times a year and speak on the phone about once a month, briefly. She has no idea how much she hurt me as I have no concept of the full extent of the pain I caused her as a child. I cannot nurture negative feelings for her.

I will never be a mother so I will never understand or experience the complexities of a mother/daughter relationship but I do know that our parents are faciltators for good life, teachers, guardians, they do not necessarily need to be good friends.

My mum had a lot of issues so I had to deal with a depressed, tired, sick one. She has always loved me very very much but this apparently hasn't been enough. I'm twenty and still looking for attention from women older than me.

I do not have a very good relationship with my mother, in fact it's terrible. I was always trying to make an effort to build a friendship with her but she didn't want a friendship with me. Last christmas she kicked me out of my own house and I'm currently living with my boyfriend. The reason why? Because I'd finally stood up for myself and grew a backbone. We haven't spoken since then or when I saw her when I collected my things, she would act hostile towards me. I'm a very quiet person who recently started to find her own voice I remember her as a passive agressive and controlling woman, she wasn't very pleasant to deal with. Since moving out my life has been less stressful

I stopped talking to my mother years ago. She was an awful person, probably just mentally ill and could be fixed with a happy pill or two but she refused to see a doctor and remained destructive, violent, abusive and awful. I finally had enough of that element in my life, especially when she started hurting my kids, and cut all ties. I talked to her once after my dad died. She's gone now, too. Learning Dad was gone crushed me. Learning my mother was gone relieved a bunch of stress. That probably makes me a horrible daughter, but that's how I felt. I just don't have the enduring spirit other daughters may have for their mothers.

I am currently estranged from my mother and three of my sisters, I do get on with my father, brother, stepmother and youngest half sister.

I prefer the company of men on a day to day basis, I'm not sure if that's because I mostly work in technical, traditionally male roles and it's something I've grown used to or if it was always like that.

I do seek out female company, but generally only enjoy it in few and far between short bursts. I find it much harder to be comfortable and trust women.

I've been trying to completly cut my mother off since I found a letter written to my sister 17 years ago, my sister had been complaining about me I gather from the tone of my mother's reply (my sister and I were living together at the time in a flat).

My mother basically wrote for my sister not to pay any attention to me or anything I say because "she's (me) always been weird".

I've struggled since then to try and make a relationship with her, for her to understand me. I've tried to explain the way I feel and think, tried to build a close relationship. But nothing has worked.

I found my self in a situation last year where I had to make a decision to do something that was the right thing to do, but which I knew would permanently estrange my mother and two of my sisters forever.

I did it, and the final permanent estrangement, a thing I could never do for me, happened because I had to do the right thing for someone else. It was taken out of my hands really, that was very upsetting at first, but as time has gone on, I've found it hugely relieving that I don't have to struggle any more with all three of them that have wronged me, shunned me, lied and let me down consistently throughout my life so far. I'm relieved that I can stop trying to make them like me and craving thier acceptance all the time.

I think I will be much happier and have vowed not to cave in if any emotional blackmail to get back in touch comes my way. Thats what has happened in the past, but they are very unlikely to make contact this time because of the seriousness of the situation last summer.

I enjoy the company of my 10 year old daughter even though she chats a lot, but she's cool about letting me chill out if I say I'm tired and trying to watch something or do something on the internet.

I have a great relationship with my mother, however, our taste in movies and books tend to be different... My mom loves romantic comedies. I love fantasy and sci-fi... But with differences aside we always manage to find something similar and when we do, it's amazing... She is one of those people like myself that does not like being under the radar. However, my father and brother... not so much...

Now, my father is different, I mean, when I was younger I didn't really have so much of a relationship as I did now. I mean, he is a pilot you see and he was pretty much home one week for every two weeks so I sometimes felt like I was in a single-parent home with an absent and I didn't see it until later, but he really did love me, he loved me so much that he provided the family with the money to send me to a private school where I had the loving teachers.

However, now he has a job where he is home more often and he actually feels like a real father because he felt like he was often a bit absent in me and my brother's lives and more like a voice through a telephone or a visitor.

I love my mother very much, and she loves me too.

But there are issues I'm just now acknowledging. She seems angry all the time. I understand why when I was younger, there were reasons. But I'm in my 40's now, whatever it was back then, be happy!

Being ASD I was prone to meltdowns, which in that house were tantrums, with harsh spankings, followed by another if you didn't shut up soon enough. My issues:
Getting my hair brushed. I would cry and cry. She wouldn't cut my hair because of religious reasons. The result? I got spanked every day.
Every time I'd do something childish and creative she'd fuss over my mess. (Maybe less often than I remember.)
Her anger outweighed the degree of what I'd done, almost always.
Most of my punishment came in church, for wiggling too much. Dad said she was too harsh, and expected us to sit like little soldiers fromt he time we were toddlers. Luckily, my Grandma would bring us snacks and play quite games with us in church.
I'd get punished for things I didn't know was wrong til after the fact.

My sister doesn't remember it as being as bad as I do. I think because she's NT. I'm ASD, I'm very highly sensitive, and I always picked up on other people's feelings.

I also didn't see problems when I lived away from her for 20 years. But I lived with her for a year. what a nightmare.

Last time I was into visit her, I went to see my kids. I told her very clearly "I will be gone a few days. I'll call you Before I come back." I left Wednesday night. She called me on Monday, very angry, didn't even say hello, just "where are you? I've been waiting for you all day" When I returned, I said "I'm sorry, I didn't realize I said I'd be back Monday, or I would have called." She said "Well the snow melted, I was sure you would be back, and I waited all day."

This is when I'm 40! No wonder what all I experienced as a child....When I was 16, Mom was trying to hold her grandbaby (my sister's child) and because the baby wouldn't stop crying and kicking, she spanked several times on the leg! The baby was only one year old.
I actually took the baby from mom, and I was only 16. Did she do this to me as a baby? My sister took baby to Dr., at Mom's request, and the baby had an iron deficiency. Then Mom "felt bad" for spanking her. What about having the maturity to realize this is just a baby? Put her to bed and walk away. (Not that I always did better as a parent, but as a general rule I did.)

Mom expects me to call every week. It's painless, I love her, so I do. But she makes me feel like a child pretty often.

That said, I'm sick, and I miss my Mom right now...(just the flu type sick.)

I dislike my mother.

She stayed with my father despite his alcohol abuse and emotional abuse towards us, when she did leave him that's when she become physically abusive towards me, in my teens she constantly tried putting me up for adoption as a way to punish me for things I never actually did wrong ('welcome home from school, here is a man who is going to take you away because you're a bad daughter'), she cancelled Christmas once (but gave me a Christmas card with an essay on why she hated me - I was selfish, a bad daughter, etc.) - as an adult I had to go back to live with her for a while, the abuse was worse than ever and she tried killing me twice. She had this great thing of sort of adopting other people's kids, doing things for them, encouraging them to do hobbies that she didn't think I was capable of doing, hugging them, going round to the neighbours house to spend Christmases with their kids while I was left at home alone.

It's one of those things, I never really saw the abuse because to me it was normal, so as an adult even though I know exactly how bad it was I still make excuses for her such as the fact she suffers from depression and her father was physically abusive towards her - I didn't learn this till a few years ago.

To me what really stopped us having a relationship was in part being aspie prevented that sort of mother/daughter relationship, she was very protective/smothering and she did all my talking for me when I was unable to as a child...she had to because I couldn't, but as I grew older I started to resent that about her, that she often stopped me from talking for myself as I started getting better at communicating with others. When I was in therapy from age 12-15 for being 'anti-social' she was nice enough to make sessions all about her, one in particular she told the therapist that I was incapable of giving her a mother/daughter relationship - all my fault, as much as I may know this is not totally true it's a pretty nasty head-f*** to put on a young girl.

Right now we sort of tolerate each other, I considered cutting off all contact when I moved into emergency housing, but I kind of needed her for borrowing money and to use her washing machine until I got my own (selfish, I know, but I can't say I feel too ashamed of this and bear in mind that I was homeless and had nothing so it was a matter of survival), I see her maybe once or twice a year...I know it bothers her sometimes that she doesn't seem me much. Too much has gone on for us to ever have a mother/daughter relationship or bring issues to the surface, so we don't mention things that have gone on in our past. As a person she is very different to me in her interests and being sociable (although we're similar in being stubborn, bad tempered, strong, independent - many qualities that cause friction) she largely talks about what she wants to and totally ignores anything anyone else says, so when we visit each other it's all very civil.

Needless to say - I have no female friends, I generally dislike females and find it close to impossible to get along with them.

My mom loved me a lot. I love her so much too. I like to panic if my mom gets mad at me. Sometimes it results from me "running away" from my house, but that was years ago. Now we're good. It's just that I still wouldn't receive my mom's hugs wholeheartedly.

My mum was abusive my whole childhood. I managed to move into a hostel at 17 but she has sort of tried to forget the past. She hasn't apologised, she likes to blame my dad and her own childhood. She also likes to call me ungrateful etc to the rest of my family. It hurts so see her, I wish I didn't have to. I know I don't have to really, but it's hard to grow a backbone when you've never been allowed to have any confidence. I hate it.