Mom Does it Again...

[Lunar Snow]

I need a good vent. I've vented about my Mom before, but she has gone and done it again.

This morning, both of us woke up late...but SHE missed answering the door to the hydro people with an appointment SHE made. How was that my fault? Then, she proceeds to dig into me about how unhelpful, horrible, and nasty I am and if I don't do things exactly her way, then I should just leave (which is a financial impossibility for me right now)...my one of my best allies is starting to sound like my Dad (who is one of my worst enemies sometimes). It really stung this time around, since I have been making more of an effort this week to be helpful with chores (true, I could be more helpful...but I didn't deserve the raking over the coals I got), etc. ...but I guess she hasn't noticed and definitely has no tolerance for people doing things in their own way and with slightly different time variants (e.g., I suggested that I have a laundry basket and have a laundry day once a week and she gave me the evil eye and said that I had to do laundry every day). It went on and on...

Later, I thought we had made up and were watching a movie together that we both really wanted to see and had taken from the library on a walk together (more like a mini series, with two parts...so I also thought it was implied that we would watch the second part tomorrow since she had gone on and on about our poor sleeping schedules). She kept drifting off to sleep and my SO had already called once and I had ignored it. So, I stopped with about 30 minutes to go and said that we should watch the rest later or tomorrow when we would be more awake for it. She AGREED and also suggested I should go to talk to my SO. I go downstairs to get a hat on (bad hair day for Skype) and then come to where she is and she is suddenly perky, chowing down on chips and watching the movie again! When I call her on it, she almost laughingly says "Well, I'm watching it now--aren't you coming to watch? I guess you have decided not to phone your boyfriend after all. *evil grin*" She is beyond thrilled that she could curb my talking with him...but I go upstairs not wanting another argumement, hoping and suggesting that she will just finish the first half and I can catch up easily to watch the second together. I talk to my SO and decide that we will watch one episode of a half hour show together after talking (we did talk for sometime, but really not as long as usual), then come back down.

I guess my Mom rushed through the entire thing (part two, as well). I again called her on it and said that I thought we had agreed to watch it together. She claims that people change their minds. The argument goes on with her citing that she decided she only wanted to watch that movie and didn't want to suffer through it again with me and didn't want to stay up until 3 finishing it (and later when I take her up on her offer to have that room to watch what I missed in as a compromise, she won't vacate and says she will watch the movie again and why should she have to leave). She says she won't apologize to me, because she thinks it's silly, stupid, and unimportant to not move on over something about a movie....but it isn't even about the movie anymore. Plus, even if it was...she also just gave me the guilt trip that I hurt her feelings by going to see movies with my friends without her at school and that we could have seen some of them together at break time (but she couldn't name one movie). It turns out the whole thing was motivated by her not wanting me to "devote [my] entire day to [my] boyfriend" and, the cherry on the cake was that she spent a majority of the conversation either screaming at me or laughing at me (and definitely won't fess up to being jealous over time I spend with him...I mean, if he lived close by, I would be going on dates for longer than I talk on the phone...and she wouldn't be there during our date to be so malicious).

Has an alien inhabited my Mom's body? If anyone finds my real Mom, please tell me...

[Mara]

I'm just curious has your mother acted this way before when you were in a relationship or is this your first serious relationship?

I once had an ex whose mother could not stand for him to spend any time with me or even to mention my name. He was her only child and she could just not stand the thought of losing him to me [even though that was far from the situation].

Have you tried talking to your mother about the way she has been acting as of late? It sounds like she is just worried about losing you to other people [boyfriend, friends, etc.] and may be acting the way she is because of it.

[Mizpah]

I am sorry that you are going through this Is this your first relationship? If so, it could be that your mother has always had issues, but they were simply easier to hide when she didn't feel like she had a rival for your attention. My mother started changing toward me in much the same way when I started dating my ex at seventeen. She started nitpicking and started to be snarky, much like your mother and then progressed to being just as verbally abusive as my dad. They would literally team up on me, and the whole day or evening would be them screaming and tearing me down. My mother then progressed to being homicidal in the name of "good parenting" and now claims it was because she hated my ex, knew he was wrong for me, but I got engaged to him anyway. At the time, it was over ridiculous things--like me sleeping in my own bed. Yeah. I think my mother's issues rooted in the fact that she's an insecure person. She and I had more of a friend-like relationship prior to my start of dating and college when I was seventeen, and the more independent I became and the more friends or activities that I had, the more controlling and crazy she got. Her nitpicking got so bad that my dad who was never my ally got on her. She was literally standing over my shoulder screaming at me for the way I was doing dishes, because it wasn't exactly the way she did it, and I was doing it "wrong."

You need to establish your independence, and focus on getting out on your own as soon as it is possible. The more threatened your mother feels, the more difficult she will become. I doubt that she will take it to the extremes that my mother did, but I wouldn't give it the chance to. My now-husband helped me out of that situation by providing me with a home just three months into our relationship. My parents still refer to it as my running away, or abandoning them. I was twenty years old. Stand strong I am not sure of your age/full situation, so I apologize if my advice is off-mark.