What is, or was, your relationship with your mother like?

For my first 38 years I was very close with my mom and then they moved to Florida. Even with the distance between us our relationship remains loving and respectful.

Lousy. She made me her confident from an early age and her helper. She was generous in a very manipulative way and used guilt when I was older to make me do things. She was a narcissist. With all that, she was a lover of nature, walking, reading and an intellectual so some of my apples haven’t fallen far from her tree.

Edit: “confidante”

Fine, why, she wouldn’t harm a fly :(

Good. She was one of the first people I told about my homosexuality and was completely accepting and supportive, as she has been about most things. My mom and I have always been close.

my mother was openly manipulative and suicidal during my teens. She and my father had a co-dependent, abusive relationship and I broke all ties with them at about the age of 22. Never looked back.

My only contact with my mother since has only reinforced the wisdom of my decision. She has totally alienated both of the children she had with my father.

I had a complicated relationship with my mother. She died a few years ago, and I feel unresolved in my relationship with her.

She and I shared many interests, but we shared virtually no political, religious or philosophical beliefs. Those differences limited the scope of our conversations.

Several years before her death, and at a time when I only saw her four or five times a year, we agreed that we would avoid all but the most mundane topics for conversation, as I felt it was a tremendous waste of love, for lack of a better phrase, to spend our precious little time together in heated arguments over [fill in the blank].

I know she loved me; I know I loved her; I wish we could have created happier times together.

Complicated. She loved me with all of her heart, but she moved 2000 miles away when I was just 19, after her divorce from my dad. She took my youngest sister with her and left me and my other sister (who was 16 at the time) with my dad. I was in college at the time.

The weekend after she moved, I talked to her on the phone and she said, “You didn’t even come home last week end when I moved.”
I said, “I didn’t think it would really happen.”
She said, “Oh, that really hurts.”

She was mostly concerned with the things that hurt her, not really so much with the things that hurt other people.

She was depressed and attempted suicide 3 times when I was a teenager, via alcohol mixed with some pills. On the third attempt I got angry and said, “What about US mom?”
She slurred, “Fuck all of you. I don’t care about you.”

She could be sort of mean, and it really upset me when she did it to the kids. When my daughter was 12 she’d heard that cold water boils faster than hot water. We were visiting Mom, and my daughter mentioned this. Mom snarled, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of!” And proceeded to fill a pot of water and slammed it on the stove. Not sure what she was out to prove since it didn’t have a control, but I’ll never forget the look of dismay and hurt on my daughter’s face. I knew exactly what she was feeling.

Other times she’d go out of her way to do special things for us.

Non existent.

I’m sorry.

Nah, I have a wonderful relationship with my grandmother, she’s all the mom I need. :)

Meh.

Lovely. She’s one of my best friends and I only speak to her slightly differently to how I speak with friends my age.

I’m so sorry to anybody who wasn’t lucky enough to be born to a wonderful woman. All children deserve that.

My mom is fine,just a very different person, I get along better with my dad.

Edit: Actually I said to her “I didn’t think you would really leave.” It still astounds me. I would never, ever move 2000 miles away from my children for no other reason than to move back to the comfort of my family, sisters, cousins, whatever.

It’s only one facet, but when I started acting on stage, one thing that hit me like a ton of bricks was what it feels like to not be interrupted by my mother.

@janbb There was a great article in the toast recently about mothers who do things like this. In most parts of the internet you need to stay far away from the comments, but on this blog it’s the opposite. The commenters are witty and insightful and really add to the articles, especially here.

My own mother confided in my sister and I about some things that weren’t age appropriate. When her marriage to our stepdad was ending, she hashed out a lot of her feelings with us. It was a pretty unhealthy marriage. We were also the “go betweens” for messages between her and our dad. We were in middle school, and it really should have been shared with another adult.

I was talking to a colleague the other day. His parents were happily married, and he’s now happily married with two kids. He asked about my family, and it was so weird to explain it out loud. Each of my parents had two marriages that ended in divorce, then my mom died; my dad had two kids with his second wife, and is now on partner number three. She’s actually really nice, and it’s the first time I’ve seen him so happy. My mom died twelve years ago, so it’s no longer something I think about in everyday life.

Reading about other people’s experiences helped me gain some perspective. I think one of the hardest realizations we face as adults is that our parents are not perfect and they make mistakes. A lot of parents get big, serious things wrong while raising their children, leaving them with issues that last into adulthood. It’s so important to forgive them (if possible), and find ways to move past it.

not good growing up. I left home at eighteen and moved 3,000 miles away. As I matured, married and had kids we somewhat resolved our problems. we are still not close but we can talk and be civil to each other and not bring up old crap. She is now in her 80’s and I don’t want any regrets about her when she passes away so I make big efforts to get along. I never bring up the past and neither does she.

^^^ Wise.

Mother’s love always remains out of the world… Although my mother don’t live with me today but i still love her…