Oh my gosh I was just talking to a male coworker about this issue and he had never heard of it before. He is expecting a child and we were talking about the unique relationship differences btwn a girl and her mom vs her dad etc.
My mother is very competitive with me and we have had a complicated relationship for years because of it. I love her because she is my mother but she has never been the nurturing mom...more like a jealous competitive sister. Picking mothers day cards for her are always dreaded because they all talk about this wonderful person who has done so much for you...and I do not have that experience except with my grandmother who has been more my true mom. My mom and I are about 20 years apart and she looks young and people always tell us we look like sisters. She got married at 17 and was a military wife until her and my father split when I was 12 and had a rough road from there in supporting us with no help from him. She is very depressed in my opinion though she will never admit it about how her life has turned out while she looks at me and how great I am doing. She has struggled to get by in odd low wage jobs for decades...excluding periods where she was remarried and not working. Much of this struggle is also due to her poor habits with money, party girl lifestyle, and overall bad choices which there is some resentment from myself and my younger brother that we have to come in and rescue her financially all the time because she can't pay the rent or electric bill or whatever but has new clothing overflowing out of her closets. She has rarely ever in her life sent me, my brother or her parents birthday cards, Christmas presents etc. but always had them for her boyfriends or friends. She has always been too busy to have time for you until she needs something. We have been in different regions of the country for decades now and maybe talk on the phone a handful of times a year. When we do I can barely get a word in edgewise. She really has no interest in hearing what is going on in my life. She distances herself from family mainly because we often tell her the truth about her poor habits and what she needs to do to get on track and other things she does not want to hear. She is in her 50s and has never had a home, a car, a consistent phone number or residence, and has no retirement or savings to speak of. Anything she has ever made has gone to supporting her lifestyle that she cannot afford. She has never kept a job for more than a couple years without quitting (without a new job lined up mind you). My grandparents are elderly and she never goes to the state they live in to visit...there is always some excuse but she can find a way to get time off work and money to go on casino trips with girlfriends. It annoys the hell out of me how selfish she is and how she thinks of no one but herself and my grandma is struggling to care for my grandfather at home with Alzheimers and I am pretty much the only that comes home to help her out and to do what I can from long distance. My grandparents do not have much of anything as they are very poor but as irresponsible as my mom has been over the years and with me being a lawyer my grandma asked to draw up power of attorney papers giving me control over everything on her behalf. My mom was of course peeved by this and I tried to ease her mind about it as much as I could. I am always the one helping them, am more responsible and have more resources to assist them so it was inevitable that they would choose me over my mom who can barely keep a phone on, wastes her own money and lives beyond her means and has not ever acted like caring for them would ever be a priority in her life. I think she is very peeved that my grandma treats me more like her daughter as she is embarrassed by my mother and proud of me.
She blames everyone else for where she is in life. Blames my grandparents for why she didn't go to college or finish nursing school saying they wouldn't co-sign for school loans (which they wouldn't for me either). She seems jealous of what little support they did give me while I was trying to go to college and law school by sending me $20 to $100 here and there which helped a ton and was sometimes all I had for food etc. My brother has jealousy about that as well but the difference both of them fail to realize is that they would have gladly done the same for them with what little they had if they were seriously pursuing an education...but neither of them ever were....they just wanted the financial assistance without the effort toward a goal to better themselves. Though I was barely eating and paying rent often while in school if she ever called and needed the usual loan til payday I would skip paying my bills to help her. Of course multiple paydays would pass and I'd never hear from her. I sent thousands to her while I was in school and never saw any of it back.
When I was buying my first home she had won a $20k settlement for a slip and fall accident. I was closing the following week and unexpectedly needed another $2000 to close. This was also around my birthday. I only wanted a short term loan and she said she'd send me $1k for my bday and for the house and to save her a room if she ever needed to live there. It never came and I had to scramble to get it from others. Per my brother who was staying with her at the time she blew it all shopping. Now she keeps hinting around about moving to live with me in this home one day and I feel like over my dead body about that.
I flew my mom out to see my new home after I bought it and she had nothing but criticism and anything she could think of to diminish my excitement of being a first time homebuyer....something my own parents never achieved. Her and my father were singers/musicians in the 70s and I got my singing ability from them. She always competed with me as far as who could sing better. It was competing over TV games shows when I was younger like Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy. Competing over attention from men. Competed over physical appearance. You name it...
Anyway let me stop ranting...I can so relate to this topic and have a very estranged relationship with my mom because of her jealousy and competitiveness with me. I can understand her being disappointed with her life and I have tried to offer encouragement and be there for her. She really does not want my advice and feels like I talk to her like she is the child and I am the parent but she does act like a child. My whole life I have felt more responsible and had to be mom to my lil brother as a pre-teen and teen because she was not.
There are many deep wounds and scars that would take a novel to write about here as I will never forget the things she has done and not done. Not sure how to fix but frankly I'm grown now and not sure I even care to anymore. There were many years I wanted her to the mom so badly and just be there for me and now that I am grown and have made it without her in my life...I really don't care anymore. I feel like the pro athlete whose father was absentee their whole life and then comes calling after they make it into the NFL or NBA. But as I am the successful one in the family...her care in future years will inevitably fall to me which I disdain based upon how she has never been a supportive figure in my rise to where I am.
since it makes her appear to be younger and it seems like she competes a lot about our figures.. she always has to weigh less then me even if it's just 2 pounds.
