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Originally Posted by Briolat21
Agreed - that particular example at least makes her seem really funny...
Kathryn - I don't know how old you are, and I don't really care to ...
but - at a certain point you either tell your pushy parent that you've grown up, or you don't.
And your example "that its easier just to be crowded" -- suggests you've never really assertively (not cruelly) that you're an adult now.
If I'm wrong, I apologize - its hard sometimes to pick up nuances in this format.
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LOL I'm sure it's my fault for giving the impression that I'm not assertive in my interactions with my mom or in my daily life.
My dad, who is a very assertive person naturally, has a saying related directly to dealing with my mother, though it has very good practical applications in life in general:
"Never tangle with someone who is prepared to be more ruthless than you are."
You have to understand - my mother has LIMITLESS energy when it comes to fighting. She would tell you, "I'm a fighter." She says that proudly. Yes, she is - but you don't have to fight everyone, especially not the very people who love you and are willing to help you.
For whatever reasons, my mother is very much into control and power. This would suit an executive or a world leader rather nicely. Not so great for a stay at home mom, wife, and church lady.
My life has been very different from hers. In my professional life, I've been successful in outside sales, sales management, as a corporate trainer, in real estate (listing agent) and a bank manager. Those are all fields which require an assertive, problem solving, persistent sort of personality - and if you're good in any of those fields, you also need to be a good listener, have some empathy, and be fair and ethical. Not trying to brag, but I am those things.
I've been "those things" with my mother as well - or tried to be, that is. It's just VERY DIFFICULT with her, because she has a very difficult time allowing anyone to "lead" her - ANYONE. She is a non conformist and proud of it. Example - I was very successful in real estate for many years and in fact am reactivating my license now. Do you think my mother has ever listened to a single word of advice from me regarding real estate? Heck no. She had an agent out of state when they were buying a house, and no matter how many times I would tell her, "Mom, don't all the listing agent if you want to see a house - call YOUR agent. If you call the listing agent, you can really confuse the issue, and besides that, YOUR agent represents YOU. The listing agent represents the SELLER." Etc Etc - do you think she would ever listen to that advice, from me or from my dad, or from her agent? Nope. Never. She wanted to call the listing agent to "see what she could find out." She's not stupid. This is not beyond her grasp. She just wanted to do it that way so she did it and to heck with everyone else.
Honestly, dealing with her is like trying to herd cats. If she was a customer, I would drop her as a customer. If she was an employee, I'd terminate her. If she was a parishioner, I'd have the elders do some sort of intervention to try to get her to quit raising cane in my church. If she was my neighbor, I'd have to build a really good fence. But she's my mom.
Don't get me wrong - she's not what I'd call a "toxic person." She's got many good qualities. But she has a really hard time respecting boundaries - ANYONE'S boundaries. She honestly seems to have no clue about them at all. She considers the boundaries of others as more of a personal challenge, something she just HAS to step over.
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Your mom seems like a dynamic, funny, (likely charismatic, at least to some degree) elegant older woman (who now unfortunately is having some significant issues). And when you describe yourself in these situations, you sound like a kid asking for permission.
But you're not.
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My mother is actually not as outgoing as I am. She's not nearly as warm or affectionate. She can be, however, very artistic and elegant - you're right about that. She also often offends others, even strangers. She can be very inappropriate socially.
For instance, what she considers "speaking the truth" is often embarrassing. Back when my kids were younger, she and I took them back to school shopping. I was at one end of the kids' department and she was at the other end, of a very large store. Suddenly I hear her hollering across the many aisles, "WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T BUY THEM ANY LEVIS!" I looked at her and shrugged and said, "Why not?" to which she yelled back, "BECAUSE LEVIS SUPPORTS THOSE ***** RIGHTS."
Mom. Stop.
Recently we were on a walk through her neighborhood. We came across some new neighbors. My dad introduced us all and my mom immediately pipes in with , "Yes, that's us. We're not DOCTORS AND LAWYERS like so many other people moving in here seem to be. You'll find out soon enough that I have a healthy disrespect for DOCTORS AND LAWYERS."
The couple politely just gave us our names and then quickly made their exit. My dad turned around to her as soon as they left and said, "Why did you say that? What if they ARE doctors or lawyers?" to which my mother replied, "Well, if they are, now they know where I stand."
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You don't have to be the life of the party. You and your mother might have completely different personalities (not at all uncommon)..
but presumably your mother has dealt with other adults before, that did not share her flair for the dramatic..
That's how she should be treating you..
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My mother has been sheltered from the natural ramifications of her actions for decades. She hasn't worked outside the home and she has very few friends.
My mother is dramatic, that's true. She's an artist at heart - she paints (or used to before her vision became so bad) and writes poetry. She has painted some very nice oil paintings over the years. She's also self published a book of poetry. (Now she tells everyone she meets - and I'm not exaggerating - EVERYONE she meets - that she is a "published poet.")
I am also artistic and I've painted large murals for schools and organizations, as well as done quite a few things like portraits and that sort of thing. But what I love to do most is interior decorating and refinishing furniture.
I've also written professionally off and on over the years - for various organizations and publications, mostly small stuff like articles or columns. I've had some work published in a book of poetry compiled by a psychiatrist as well.
I say all that to say that I don't generally bring that stuff up. It's never been my "claim to fame" or anything like that. I've enjoyed my small, personal successes in those hobbies, but I doubt that even most of my friends know that I've had poetry published or that I can paint murals. People are always very surprised in fact, if they manage to find out out (usually via my husband or my dad) and that's OK. I don't do it for money or for recognition - I do my "artsy" stuff because I like doing it. Period.
But my mother considers all of this to be competition with her. I'm not competing with her! I'm doing my own thing! The MINUTE - the MINUTE she found out that some psychiatrist I'd never met out in California had published a poem of mine in a book, she began researching self publication and published her own book of her own poems. It's not the same thing. I didn't criticize her or point this out, but dang, Mom, it's not the same thing. So now, she is constantly saying, "I'm a published poet," or "I'm an author - my work has been published." OK. Mine has too - but 1) I didn't publish it myself and 2) I don't go around telling people "I'm published." Sheeze!
One of my published poems is prose - it doesn't rhyme. It's not even one of my favorite poems but apparently it resonates with some people. My mother won't openly criticize it but what she says, EVERY TIME the topic of poetry comes up, is "Well, it's my opinion that a poem that doesn't rhyme is just lazy work. It's not a poem at all in fact. It's substandard. Nope, I don't want to hear any of those. If a poem doesn't rhyme, I'm not impressed. It's nothing but pretentious."
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When she says "there - I've created Kathryn Space, is that enough?" - I would probably have said, "Keep going old woman... you're crowding the border and Kathryn Space has a 10 ft demilitarized perimeter".. (or something equally flip and impertinent..)
Of course in my family such sort of banter wasn't unheard of, and I basically (politely) told my mom off when I was 19 and I felt she was treating me in a way I was no longer willing to accept. Our relationship was better from that point on... while I'm sure she still felt like I was a "child" - she no longer openly was dismissive of me as one.
You can't change who your mom is. You can only change how you respond to it. Your changing your behavior *might* change hers. But even if it doesn't, if your new way of responding makes it easier for you to deal with things.. then that's a win right there.
best to you and mom and mil!!
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LOL I've tried all that before. I've tried calling my mom's hand. I've tried establishing boundaries. I've tried bantering with her. I've tried dishing back what she's dishing out. But we get back to my dad's admonition of "Don't tangle with someone who's prepared to be more ruthless than you are." My mother has more staying power than I do when it comes to a fight. I don't like to fight. Don't want to fight. Not about EVERYTHING. My gosh. I prefer to pick my battles. Booth space with my mom is a battle that's not worth the effort it will cost me.
When I say, "It's easier to just let her crowd the booth," I mean I've reached that conclusion because I've already joked with her about it. I've already pointed it out. I've already even physically moved her over. Several times. Many times. It just doesn't work with her, and if you get her mad enough, then she becomes more ruthless. By that I mean that if you try to establish healthy boundaries with her, she eventually gets so put out that she begins doing things that are so out there you begin to wonder why you ever thought it was all that important to begin with.
I'm not kidding you. She's a force to be reckoned with.
For the record, I too told my mom off when I was 19. Her response was to kick me out of the house completely. Her right - I was an adult. Our relationship was NOT better after that point - we were just distanced from each other. When I really got my head together in my thirties, and was finally able to establish healthy boundaries, my mother's response was visceral and incessant.
I'll give you an example: I was very interested in and studying theology very seriously. I had checked out some books from a library, on various theological topics. This was when my parents lived out of state so my mother came to my house and stayed several nights. Most days I had off but I had to go to work one day - leaving her alone with the library books on theology.
MY MOTHER WROTE IN EVERY ONE OF THOSE BOOKS - in ink - hateful, inflammatory, insulting notes, throughout all the books. Stuff like "This is b___s__t" and "Utter crap" - that sort of thing. Well, as you can imagine, I was furious. I called her and told her that she was going to have to pay for these books, - that I had looked up the prices of hardback books like these online and here was the amount of the check she'd need to send me to cover the cost of reordering the books she had defaced.
She was petulant. My dad was furious (at her). But I was adamant - and I got my check. You'd think it was over, right?
You'd be wrong.
My mother and father came to visit me several months later and this time my mother came armed with secret weapons - a pen and a sticky pad.
This time she didn't write IN the books - sometime while they were there, I don't know how or when, she managed to go through my book shelves and take out books and write the same sort of scrawled, insulting, sophomoric notes in them - but on sticky notes instead of on the actual pages.
For YEARS I was finding these wretched notes - in fact, there are probably books in my bookcase now with some of those notes in them.
Now THAT is a person with no respect for personal boundaries.
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