fight with my mum sort of....

[jennapowell]

My mum is currently having a very rough time with her husband who is somewhat younger than her (22 yrs). I'm trying to be supportive for her needs but at the same time I'm like make a decision, stay with and figure it out or tell him to leave and file a divorce.

I guess I'm loosing my patients with her and well I might be not the best person to be giving advice to her right now. I gave her my last advice tonight and she said that I felt like I was punishing her.

I can see why she feels like that. I felt like I was getting a little heated, and well it ended up going that way. I have 2 older brothers and an older sister, so when this guy came into my life I was only 13. He was 21 and she was 44. I was the one who had to live with him while everyone else was on their own you know, So feel a little resentment that no one else had to see my mum and her new partner together and well when your 13-14 things are not exactly running smoothly for most teens anyhow. She and me didn't get along and she told me if I couldn't live by her rules I would have to leave. So I did at 16 and I moved about 8 hours away from her at the time. I didn't have a relationship with her for almost a year. I did this to prove to her I didn't need her and I was alright alone. I wasn't always alright but I didn't feel like I could go back to her for anything so I stayed stubborn and did what I had to do. Not many of my family saw me through that period of my life, and for it I feel a bit of a loner from them all.

Well Me and my mum are better friends now, these days, and have been for so long. But I don't think I can handle seeing her upset. I'm feeling like she needs to get a grip and stop acting like shes dying. She tells me she doesn't want to be alone. Well she should try it, It really isn't as bad as she thinks. Freedom I tell her!

She has so many friends and she has 4 kids and 3 grand kids. some people are alone and have actually no one. This is where I get pissed at her.

She has support, and she calls all of us (me mostly) but its not like shes ever really alone. Both her parents a gone so I can understand that feeling of having no parents but she has a sister and a very large family from her kids and so on.

Anyhow I don't know how to handle this for her. I guess I'm not the diplomat in the family. I'm like this way or that way. What makes you happy and make a decision kind of advice. I guess I don't know what she really wants me to say? I wonder if the drama is what keeps the fuel going with her sometimes.

Its funny she used to be so firm and hard on me and I even remember one time when we had a big blow up before I moved out, she took me to the city mission for homeless people and dropped me there with 2 garbage bags of clothes. Yes she did it. I still cannot believe she did it, but some how she did that to me, I won't ever understand why I guess its was part of the tough love period in her life. So I think I'm pretty good at life through some of the things both my parents taught me but I just can't seem to help her.

I'm over it.

But am I, I do feel bad that shes going through a really hard time it hurts to hear her cry. But I also feel she made her bed and she has to sleep in it. She left my dad after 29 yrs to be with this younger man, hes 1 yr older than one of my brothers and 6 yrs younger than my oldest sister. Hes 8 yrs older than me.

My dad wasn't perfect though. He had an affair and basically stayed with mum because she had kids. I guess he felt shitty to leave her alone with 4 kids you know. To top it off after they divorced he went  and has been with the woman he had the affair with. They're married too now.

I always believed mum should have happiness, like dad. They both moved on after the awful divorce that pretty much left them both very broke. But she just chose to be with someone soooo much younger, and shes told me they discussed the future about the age difference. And I feel he might have a lot of regrets by picking someone so much older than him. Perhaps he was looking or a mother figure and she was looking for another childlike figure seen as though I was not controllable.

Anyway again I don't know how to help her from here. I only want peace and happiness for her. I'm feeling like I'm just fueling the problem as shes just going round and round on the same things, not moving forward or back. So I get annoyed and come of harsh I think to her.

I feel bad though I always do when I hurt her feelings. I know shes low right now but its like do something about it. Don't take it stand up and take control. You deserve happiness and go get it or change something but stop sitting around feeling sorry for yourself, is how I feel about this.

I'd like advice so if you have some please tell me it.

[emilyjh75]

Sep. 10, 2008 at 9:54 AM

aw Jenna I know how you feel!! I never know what to say to people who don't want to change things, but want to sit around and complain about it all day long. But I think you're on the right track of not giving her advice about it anymore. You've said your piece, she knows how you feel about it. Maybe now you can just be a listening ear.