Thanks Medaille
Actually, this forum has helped a lot of things swim into focus. So thanks everyone even if we have differed.
What people don't seem to have perhaps taken into account is that, perhaps, my mum was not very nice to me when I was younger. The email I sent her - whilst clumsy - was not strong enough to have elicited the reactions they did. My Pavlina's blog (thanks Bitsy)
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...relationships/ about how judgements about others are judgements about oneself is key to my understand myself and her!
- That her friends (she) would be ashamed of me if they knew how I 'belittled' her. They (she) think I am great.
- That I am an alien to the family
- That she would like to protect me from my father's (her) anger. Ironic since my father is absolutely conflict-averse.
- That she thinks she should call the Samaritans.
And it has always left me thinking why it is I am scared of her and was sad of her when she picked me up from Granny's. Well, now I know. She is scared of me and resentful of me and angry at me. And THIS IS NOT NEW. This is what I have been scared of provoking in her - in lovers, in everyone - since I was a kid, whenever I did not tow the line. I showed off, I was a lying toad, because I wasn't whom she wanted me to be. I never rebelled when younger.
As in all good family dramas, she and my dad are coming to stay the night. I managed to write down a hate-filled invective (for myself) on the train with some real valid stuff and some just nasty stuff to get it out of my system. I feel a lot better now, even though I realise quite sharply that she has revealed to me that she doesn't love me as I am (she has said as much) and that I have good reasons not to love her and don't particularly. Actually, I feel - have always felt - rejected. But in only intellectual terms. Now I really feel it. Strangely it has all subsided now. I know I cannot please her - have tried more and more recently - handmaking a bowl for her, ganging up with her to bully my dad about cleanign the patio, even getting a nurse friend of mine to help her through her pap smear! She has been profusely grateful each time. But when I question her, even gently, mostly saying how her behaviour hurts me, then she says, 'she's not surprised that she wonders whether she should have anything more to do with me.' How is that for accepting love?
So, relief. I don't have to please her any more. There is no point. I cannot see whether we can have a loving relationship any more or whether I want one. It dosen't help that my partner, though quite supportive, grew up with an aggressive mother himself and is scared of me dealing with these issues in these ways; thinks I have transgressed. I guess this is why I am posting so much.
As for you Medaille, I do wonder whether you should be feeling your anger before you are so quick to reason it away. I know you feel you are happy this way - and if you are, then good for you - but it seems like a lot of work to keep these feelings in check. Why do this if feeling them instead allows them to pass.
Going back to Pavlina's post it seems that you yourself suggest that you are pushing YOURSELF away (you talk about it in terms of your mother) rather than getting close to yourself.
All very interesting ... any advice for my dinner party, please let me know post-haste. Just for the record, I am pretty happy about how things have turned out with this. It definitely feels right, so I do not need anyone telling me to Accentuate the Positive. Maybe if I keep posting, then that will be good advice. I would just like any reads on how I might handle my mother given the poisoned chalice that I have handed myself.
A final word. Americans are different from Brits. Some time in the last 50 years, you overtook us on the politeness, embarassment and status front (cf Desparate Housewives, all about these things) and so I imagine whether I come across as very harsh. I would defend myself by saying that I am more in touch with my feelings than most Americans. And I am happy with that I lived in the US for nearly five years, so I do not speak out of my ass.
Love and thanks
Michael x