I need some help with my mom....
 

First let me give you some background. My mom is the type of person who wants to be the center of attention and who thinks my brother and his family are the best. She is always telling everyone about them and when they ask about my family she tells them that we are ok. She makes up storys to get attention. Anything from I might have cancer to I have grown my hair all the way to the floor(butt yes, floor no)

For years she tells me to my face that she loves my(boyfriend at the time) husband but she goes and tells people taht she knows that he can't provide me with the life I derseve. Stay at hom mom and get to go out and buy anything I want and do nothing but sprend money. I am a SAHM but we live paycheck to paycheck.
Fast-forward to November 27,2007 I found out I was pregnant and due in July she was happy for me. I told her not to tell anyone(I lost two before) because we were going to wait till I was 3 months to tell people. I get home and I have 8 emails telling me congrats. I called her up and she said" i am sorry dear I guess I did not hear you" BULL. Three weeks later I lost the baby I was heart broken again I tell her not to tell people because it was my job to tell people. I get a phone call that night from my step-sister telling me how sorry she was. I broke down in tears I wanted to tell my sister about that. I called up my mom and told her that she was wrong and she had no right to tell anyone including my sister. She tells me again that she is sorry and that it slipped out. BULL S**T she wanted to get the attn. I told her that I am never going to tell her about anything that imporent ever again she burst into tears and I hung up.

Now last week I called looking for my Dad because I pulled some stuff way from the wall and the wallboard was full of mold and falling apart.so both of our outside walls need to be fixed. She told me that she would pass teh message onto my Dad when he got home. I just found out yesterday that she was telling my MIL(she works at the doc office where my mom goes) that" My daughter is so upset the home she is living in is falling apart and there is nothing Mark can do about it. If I ever win the lottery i will give Susan the hiome she rightly deserves". She is trign to make my MIL feel like that her son can not take care of her daughter. (She does not like my MIL because she get to spend more time with my kids than she does.) I am so mad because I did not want my MIL to find out about this problem untill she got home I did not want her to worry. I tell my mom it is not her place to tell anything that I say to her to my MIL. At her job is not the right place for her to find out anything about our home or the family. She looks at me and startes talking about my brothre and his family.
How can I get her to care about what I have to say? She acts like there is nothing wrong. what can i say to get it through her head that she need to keep her mouth shut about somethings?


Thanks for letting me vent...

Right now I have no girlfriends, I am very close to my step-sister she is my sister but she lives an hour away and she is never home ( full-time job and school and family) We hardly ever see each other. But I am going to count on her more offten than I am my own mother. I am hoping that when My kids get into school I will met someother mom's

thanks

My parents are both gone now, but I have several people in my family that are as you describe. I have learned over the years to not tell them ANYTHING. When I find out someone passes information along without my permission, they get cut out of the information stream.

It's a hard lesson to learn and it makes it hard to have an actual conversation with any of those people, but I value my privacy and I cannot stand when someone makes my information theirs. When they ask nosy questions I just look at them in absolute silence or put them on the spot and ask a question like "why on earth would you need to know that?" or "why do you ask?", or just change the subject. If they continue to bug me I tell them right straight out that I don't care to discuss it with them and why. Most people stop bugging me after one run through the mill. It's not my problem if they are insulted because they have diarrrhea of the mouth.

I am sorry that you don't have the relationship you want with your Mom. Sometimes we have to re-define our relationships to what we can live with, even if it is not what we need or want from that person.:hug:

I don't know but when you find out how to handle this let me know. My mom is very similar in that her way is the right way and a dark cloud follows her. She just had brain surgery as you know and now that she is getting better she is really pushing every nerve us kids have. She is closest to us girls and takes things out on us. The boys? Well, she would never ever tell them anything...haha When she was discharged from the hospital she told me that Jim and I are who she feels comfortable with and she can be herself. That felt good to hear and a rare happening. For my mom it is the control factor. She does not want to be out of control no matter what. Once she resigns to the fact that she is getting older and not in as much control I think she will relax a bit, we pray. :-)

Hugs to you and I hope you find the right words to make her stop. My suggestion is to not tell her anything even if you need your dad. Just ask for him to call you, nothing more. Maybe she'll get the point then.

I have issues with my Mother too. She likes to gossip about people and things. My example would be when I thought I may have MS. I told her not to fret or talk to anyone about it. Told her we need to get all the tests done first, and then, and ONLY then, if it was positive, I would tell people.

By the next day, she had spilled her guts to my Grandmother, Uncle, Brother, SIL....everyone, including her next door neighbor. That was not enough. She made my Brother call my Dad in Utah (whom she's been divorced from since 1981) to tell him. I get a call out of the blue from my Dad almost sobbing over the news. I was SOOOOO angry!!

I've learned over the years NOT TO TELL HER ANYTHING that is private, and so far I've done pretty well and not had so many episodes, but I slipped this one out: I was NUMB....it was hard to not talk about ya know?

Anyway, here we are months later, and now everyone is suspicious of my possible MS episode. Everyone tells me how THEY TOO have this thing or that. It caused more stress to me, and I wish I'd never said a thing.

You can't change Mom (God Bless and Love them!) so the best thing to do is be very careful with what you share. If they can't keep their mouth shut, then don't give them anything to fill it with! JMHO!!

The first thing is you have to realize that the problem is hers, not yours. The only person in this situation that you can change and control is you. It's not what you want to hear, but you will have to accept her as she is and change how you interact with her.

You are not getting the emotional support you need / want from her and that is a crying shame. Your mom will never know what she is missing. If you keep trying the same things you will keep getting hurt.

I know you can't just run out and get new girlfriends, but you do have us. I promise I won't call all your relatives with every last detail.:p

Seriously, I have gone to therapy over similar issues and the only way I got to be at peace with the situation was to accept things as they were and change my reactions / interactions. I really needed the therapy more to deal with giving up on ever having the relationship I felt I should have had. It was almost like grieving a loss.

I don't know if any of this makes sense, but I hope what I'm trying to say gets out of the fog that has taken over my brain! I truly feel for you and understand what you are going through!

:grouphug::hug:

I don't even TALK to my mom. She's an alcoholic (don't know if she's still drinking but she was when I stopped talking to her a few years ago when I was 36ish).

Some people you can't trust, as Brain said. And WHAT do you mean you don't have girlfriends right now? Huh?? You have US. We're better than a bunch of old neighborhood girlfriends. :D

My MIL and one of my SILs were like that--blabbing things all over the place but they'd put THEIR slant on it and turn you into the bad guy. Great. All I did finally was to talk about the weather, how big the kids had gotten, and my look at the grass (flowers, trees, clouds, blouse...)--isn't it really nice?

Censor what you tell your mom. You have to for YOUR sanity. And reassure your MIL and more importantly your DH that you're happy with your life JUST the way it is (ok, maybe not with the MS part of it).

Parental/family relations try the best of us. We just learn to deal with it somehow. And sometimes, like in my situation, disassociating from the person's the best move. I'm not saying you're there with your mom, but for me it was the right move.

:hug:

So sorry for your losses. I'm sure you were devastated. It's never easy.

I have similar problems with my mom. She had a head injury when she was 17 and it's really difficult to deal with her irrational thoughts, and her ability to not keep a secret.

I had to make sure that all my doctor's offices only have my cellphone number for contacting me, because everytime the phone rings for me, my mom listens in on my conversations. It drives me batty.

She ended up telling the entire family about my MS before I was ready to out myself on it.

She's a serious drama queen too. If I complain about a weird MS symptom, she has to one-up me with a worse problem.

I just keep my mouth shut, we got cordless phones in the house that tell me if someone is listening in, so I can tell her to get off the phone, and I dont tell her anything that I dont think she needs to know.

personally after a brief spell check i would copy and print this letter and some of the replies out and give them to her, ask her to read i

i also agree with river, certain folks dont need to know anything

Oh my! You are certainly NOT alone Sue.

For some it's their mothers, for me it's my sister.

Not only does she pass on any tiny tit-bit she can lay her hands on, but she thinks I'm making up this whole MS thing!!

When I told her that I'd broken my sacrum in yet another fall a few years ago, and I also had a nasty concussion........she said I fell on purpose to get some sympathy! Hello???

I went through a particularly bad relapse not long before my big bowel cancer operation, and when I mentioned it to my ONLY sister, she told me she was sick of hearing about my @#$%# MS, because she had a sore hip..... and although I'd phoned her and given heaps of advice to try and alleviate her pain, all I wanted was for people to believe that I really have MS. ....when I've obviously made it up to get sympathy!

BTW her doc told her there was nothing wrong with the hip except for very minor arthritis on Xray.

I add here I was diagnosed 31 years ago, and have had some rather nasty exacerbations in between then and now...but.....she's always sicker than I am no matter what I've been through.

It's got to the stage that I tell her nothing any more, and she's the only "family" I have left now apart from DH, our children and a cousin!

* I'm sorry Sue if I hijacked your thread! I didn't mean to.

Koala, my feeling is that when you get to a certain age you can pick your own family. :)

I'll volunteer to be a "sister" as I have no bio sisters. I do have a bio brother, but he's about as worthless a bro as boobs on a bull or fiberfill in Madonna's bra.

Thank you Gazelle. I must admit that in the midst of my own little pity party, I forgot about all my sisters, and my brothers here on NT. Please forgive me everybody.


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Honey, I didn't see a pity party. I saw an intelligent woman discussing the problem that she had with her sister. ;)

And you NEVER forget about your NT family. Ok, at least not from what I've seen. :)

Vent away, Sue. We won't tell anybody..:D

My Dear old Mom and her Mom were old Irish gossips. If they knew then everyone knew..:rolleyes: I just had to get used to it. They meant no harm, just had to do it. I broke the cycle...You can tell me anything and I will not repeat it, unless you want me to do so. My DD is the same way.

:hug:

I've got several family members (aunts and cousins) who think that I'm faking the MS. They've always thought that I was a hypochondriac (because my mom is one, and I'm apparently guilty by association) They just found out recently about my MS, and I've heard thru another family member that they think I'm nuts and that there's nothing wrong with me

I havent talked to those family members...my last surviving uncle on my dad's side of the family (dad's brother-in-law) is dying of cancer, and I've only got MS...I dont want to draw the attention away from them. My uncle has a few months left, and his kids and our other relatives need to focus on him. They dont like me or my mom anyways, so I'm staying away from their toxic hatred for my mom.

I'd like to make those family members that dont believe me about the MS experience the funky symptoms of MS that I've had so far...not for a long time, maybe a day of vertigo, numbness and some nasty spasticity...and a little optic neuritis thrown in just for fun. Maybe then they'd understand that a lot of MS symptoms are invisible and very disturbing and distressing.

At least I have one (second or third?) cousin who believes me about the MS. She has it too. (and she's way worse than I am...I'm lucky so far)

It sure does hurt at times, doesn't it Erin?

To others who also have similar stories........hugs to everybody. :grouphug:

thanks everyone I am keeping things to myself now and my mom willnot be hearing things from me anymore. I will tell my Dad I know that he can keep quite about things. She still thinks that she did noting wrong. I guess it is her loss.

thanks again for letting me vent and to let me know that I am not the only one. :)