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I agree with the poster who pointed out your daughter's age and the "rebelling" comment. Your daughter is an adult. She's not rebelling, she's dealing with issues in a way that she feels is helpful for herself. Obviously, it is not the way you deal with issues so you are now uncomfortable. That's OK. Maybe your daughter making the statement was all she needed to get over it. The only thing you can "fix" is how you choose to deal with it. You can just accept that it's over based on your daughter's actions, or you can mull over it, pick it apart, and try to have a conversation with her. I suspect a conversation would not go over well.
Maybe going to a therapist for yourself is the better choice. Someone outside the relationship can sometimes see things more clearly.
I’m visiting her now. After she told me, I was upset, said I just couldn’t sit there & watch a movie and needed to be alone and left the room. This was something she could have kept to herself. She had to know that it would sadden me, and that I would never have found out if she hadn’t told me. I feel she could have used discretion and thought ahead of how the news would effect me.
Life for me has been rocky for the past decade. Starting retirement has been scary and tedious, and not at all what I had planned and hoped for. My relationship with my daughter has been a large part of my issues. She became distant after she met her husband and they started graduate school. It's like she is in some permanent rebellion mode, only I don’t know what or why she is rebelling. I’m talking about a woman in her 30’s who is a professional & has a pretty sweet life. She lives far from me & contacts me if/when she feels like it, so no demands on my part.
I’m placing this here because of the anonymity and because I feel I “know” other posters the best in the Retirement Forum. Also, others have mentioned relationship difficulties with their adult children. So, maybe someone else understands what I am trying to explain.
I almost feel like, from her facial expression and tone of voice, that she enjoyed telling me the bad news and seeing my reaction.
I don’t even know what to do now. Her preferred method for dealing with our “issues” is to drop it and pretend it never happened. My style is discussion and closure, which I haven’t been able to do since she started acting cold & testy with me. I mostly feel like we have no real relationship at all anymore.
For now, I’m going to go to sleep and face her and her husband in the morning. Any comments appreciated.
It’s time you share your feelings about your relationship with your daughter rather than with strangers on a forum. I’m not saying this to be “smart.” I’m saying this seriously. If you’ve been harboring unaddressed concerns about your relationship with her for the past decade, she no doubt senses this. The issue of your daughter sharing uncomfortable information is not the problem. The problem is that you have an unhealthy relationship with your daughter. The incident you describe is just a symptom of the problem.
This issue is further complicated by your impressions of her relationship with her husband. Reading between the lines, she has also sensed that you have not been happy with her since meeting her husband. I think most would agree that it’s not in a parent’s best interest to come between a child and their spouse. In fact, this might be the source of most of the issues.
It’s time you clear the air. Be clear before you start that the problems you are having are yours. They are not your daughters’s fault. In addition to your sadness about your relationship with your daughter, you should share your own experiences of being scared in retirement. Admitting your own weaknesses will be important for her to know. She may open up or she may not. If she does open up, you need to listen and not be defensive. If she doesn’t open up, your confession is not a failure. At a minimum, she will have heard your concerns and she will have some info to soak on long after you’ve returned home.
The scenario that popped into my head is the daughter had an abortion. I can see this being devastating to a mom who really wants grandkids and/or has moral objections.
In this scenario the daughter should have kept it to herself but if the mom was pestering maybe the daughter snapped.
I'm not sure why daughter having an abortion or anything else daughter did would deeply hurt OP.
First thing popped into my head was the daughter told OP something that happened to OP that she didn't know about. Like maybe being cheated on by spouse, or something terrible another relative said about her.
I have a sibling who deliberately told me a few things after we became adults just to hurt me. Like OP said, you can tell by the way they look at you, hoping to see your pain. It's not rebellion, it's mean and spiteful. I'm no longer in contact with that sibling. She's toxic to me.
Last edited by LillyLillyLilly; 06-22-2019 at 09:38 AM..
The scenario that popped into my head is the daughter had an abortion. I can see this being devastating to a mom who really wants grandkids and/or has moral objections.
In this scenario the daughter should have kept it to herself but if the mom was pestering maybe the daughter snapped.
^^^my speculation exactly.
It's not clear from the OP whether the something "painful & shocking" was done TO the daughter and she was trying to confide in the mother OR if the daughter was "flinging something" in the mother's face out of spite. The scenario above would have aspects of both.
*****
The secret of happy adult mother-child relations is to back off and get your own life and let your kids live theirs. Contrary to popular opinion, children are not here to fulfill YOU--they are here on this earth to fulfill their own destiny. I tell my girls all the time that as long as they're happy I've done my job. I don't care if they get married or have kids or whatnot. Anything I get from them from now on is a bonus.
Since kid #2 has gone off on her own she has come to realize that my advice while she was growing up was pretty spot on. She tells me at every opportunity how it has positively contributed to her life. We used to fight like heck when she was a teen until I "physically extricated" myself from the family and moved out because I was tired of taking crap from everyone. Kid #1 OTOH doesn't confide in me much and when I try to give her constructive criticism she melts down so I don't "go there" with her. To be fair, we always worried about Kid #1 because she is/was painfully shy and we tended to "helicopter" her more. Now approaching 30, she's still struggling but is finally coming into her own which from my standpoint is good to see.
Sorry, been there. Understand how you feel. But all you can do is to be the mother and rise above the hurt brought by the revelation and love your daughter through it however that unfolds in your situation.
Would recommend that you see a professional yourself to help you work through your needs. Agree with the grow your own happy life comments.
Will say this, sometimes 'inexperienced' people keep things bottled up and they fester inside and feel the need to explode it out or share the problem with someone to whom they feel the closest on the deepest level, their mothers. Then their air is cleared to them. Problem solved they can move on. But some secrets taint others or they take it to heart and it is devastating. Inelegant indelicate solution but better ways of handling things come with time.
Can't say more than that other than give it time and work on how you ...
It’s a hard blow to us mothers when our children stop needing us, or even thinking about us much, but this is what happens. I have a warm relationship with all my children, but I can go a very long time without hearing from them.
So I don’t know if OPs daughter was trying to punish her, or was hoping to unburden herself, or what. It’s hard to say.
My advice is that OP should keep her daughter at arms length if being around her will upset her.
The scenario that popped into my head is the daughter had an abortion. I can see this being devastating to a mom who really wants grandkids and/or has moral objections.
In this scenario the daughter should have kept it to herself but if the mom was pestering maybe the daughter snapped.
The scenario that popped into my head is the daughter had an abortion. I can see this being devastating to a mom who really wants grandkids and/or has moral objections.
In this scenario the daughter should have kept it to herself but if the mom was pestering maybe the daughter snapped.
but that's a guess on your part. and a pretty wild one. Maybe she didn't have an abortion and gave the baby up for adoption.
maybe the secret has nothing to do with sex at all.
The issue isn't what the secret was, it's how the mother deals with knowing it.
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