nikki1971 said:
I was raised by my Mom after my parents divorced. We did not have a close relationship when I was a child. The relationship was very strained as a teenager. In my early adult life our relationship was non existent. Now my Mom is trying to become closer to me ( for reasons I won't go into) and it is just too late for her to be the mother she should have been years ago. I know this sounds bad, but I much rather keep my distance from my Mom. It is a strain for me to deal with her on a more frequent basis. I just don't want to be closer to her at this point in my life
As a matter of fact I plan to move even further away from her if I ever have the opportunity.
I have several friends who have strained relationships with their mothers. I especially notice that it seems many women in their 20's and 30's have distant relationships with their moms. Maybe it's because when you become a woman, you begin to feel a different sense of self than you did as a child.
Although I'm pretty close to my mom, after turning 21, something in me changed with her. I no longer saw her as the end-all, be-all, and I began to see some of her thoughts, feelings as wrong. I think I also became more confident in myself and my thoughts about things, and realized that even she had ignorances, and "flaws." Now I'm not as afraid to stand up for my beliefs, and realize that some of my beliefs are more progressive and open-minded than hers.
I also had to relearn how to interact with my mom. I love my mom dearly, but she has always been late and disorganized when it came to family/household, and her children. She can get to work on time (and usually early), but growing up, she was always late picking us up from activities. Our house was not the cleanest, unless we had a cleaning person clean it up(except my room, which I kept spotless), and she was never good about deadlines. I studied abroad one semester and sometimes I needed my mail or things shipped to me, b/c I couldn't get them where I was located. No matter how organized I was, or how detailed my emails to her or phone calls would be with the lists, she would always send it late, and not exactly what I asked for. Also, I can almost never get through a conversation with my mom, where she doesn't cut me off mid-sentence. And, no matter how trifling or crazy someone in her family acts, you better not say anything about them, b/c she will defend them, but she has no problem criticizing people on my dad's side of the family. I have recently pointed this out to her, and although she knows she does it, she still continues to take up for her side of the family, but never my fathers. Oh well, that's just my mom, I still love her anyway!
