Your mom is not evil, but she is a very long way from emotionally healthy. And her emotional pathology is enormously destructive to anyone in a relationship with her. You do not owe her a relationship, and you are not required to prove that she is evil, or even unhealthy, in order to withdraw. You need only to realize that a relationship with her, on her terms, is unhealthy FOR YOU, and then to put your emotional health above her sick preferences. She is not going to become any healthier regardless of what decision you make for yourself, so it’s no loss to save yourself.
But it will not be easy. She will make it as difficult for you as she possibly can, and she sounds very skilled and highly motivated. But she cannot make it impossible for you. Though she can, and certainly will, use every form of manipulation she can devise to push you to make a decision she likes, and make your life difficult if you don’t, she cannot take your decision from you.
When I was in this situation, I did not have the choice to go back. I was already in medical school with a biology undergraduate degree that would be essentially worthless without the medical degree. I had a strong brain, but it could not carry the academic burden of medical school and the emotional burden of my mother and her mental pathology at the same time. Something had to give, and it was not going to be medical school.
Since I still depended on parents financially, she thought I was trapped. I knew she could manipulate my dad because he had to live with her. I’m not a trained counselor either, but I was speaking to one at the time who advised me that she probably was not going to give up easily, and that I should expect other members of the family to be recruited, including my dad. When he approached me about it, I was expecting it. I didn’t let the conversation get to the point of financial threats. I explained to him that the Navy recruiter had already offered to pay the remainder of the medical school tuition, and to arrange for a name change and a station in a foreign country so that it would impossible for any of my family to find me again. If she was going to recruit him to use money to force me into a relationship with her, that was going to be my next move.
I was in a corner. I meant it. He knew it. My dad was not a confrontational guy, especially with my mother. But on that day, he went home and told her that her relationship with me was over, and that if she didn’t see a counselor herself, her relationship with him wasn’t going to survive long either.
She spent years in counseling and is not as nuts and abusive as she once was. I spent a few years in medical school and am a doctor now. We spent many years having zero contact, and I similarly abandoned other members of the family that she recruited. I still have no contact with many of them to this day.
Today, she has some contact with me, but it’s at a distance, and it is respectful because she understands, finally, that a respectful relationship on my terms is preferable to none at all… but none at all is ALWAYS an option for me.
I believe that you have no chance of getting to a better place with your mother until you can successfully deliver that message to her. But sadly, you’ll have to mean it, which means you may put it off until she corners you, and at that point, you won’t be trying to fix it anymore. You’ll just be trying to end it. She won’t believe it until she sees it end. Treat this relationship as the toxic, irreparable train wreck that it is and abandon it. It’s over. While she’s spending the months and years it will take for her to realize it’s over, you can see a professional counselor to help identify and repair the damage already done.
Someday, WAY down the road, there might be possibility for some contact that is not toxic to you. Until she can contact you without damaging you, then you should help her to protect you from that damage by not having contact. Good mothers do whatever they need to do to protect their children.
Help her to be one by stopping the contact that damages you.
Look, it's not my fault that tornado dropped a house on your sister. Now get back on your broom and get your ass out of here... and take your monkeys with you
experienced 4 years, 9 months ago.
