I Hate My Mother

She's a whiney cow who blames every problem she's ever had in her life on me and I am SICK of it. She and my dad were perfectly happy being married nearly 10 years (without kids) before they had me. Yeah, lucky me, being an "only child".

They made it more than clear that their lives were perfect before I was born. (So why did they chose to have a child? Because everybody else in the 1950's was doing it??? )

Every time I suggest to my mother that she and my dad would have been better off not having me, somehow she twists it into an insult: "Oh, I know you think I'm a terrible mother and all your problems are my fault!" I never said that but there's no convincing her, because she's bloody well determined to be a martyr. My dad was the same way--any time I ever dared disagree with him about anything, he always said the same tired old thing: "Oh, I know, you think I'm just an old fool!" (Which I had never said--or even thought--but it made no difference. There was no talking him out of that delusion.) If anyone made my life miserable, it was the other kids at school who teased me relentlessly--but that doesn't figure my parents into the equation, so they block that out--all they ever wanted to hear was that I was blaming THEM for all my problems.

I think they were the nuts in the house, not me, even tho I'm the one who ended up with all the labels. That way they could feel good about themselves--all their problems were the fault of their wicked daughter. They never made any mistakes. They did everything right. But I, through my own free evil will, chose to make them suffer. Martyrdom must be sweet.

I'm sick to death of my mom sniffling and whining and complaining about how I have nearly driven her to suicide--yeah, she's actually said that. Never mind that I have actually attempted suicide in the past, and not for the fun of it. But there you have it--once again, I did it just to make them suffer needlessly. I am soooo evil. And they are such long-suffering saints. Well, not my father anymore, he died and I'm sure he's now happy in heaven--IF he is capable of being happy anywhere. (Even if I'm not there to ruin things for him.)

My mom will be 84 in June so maybe before long she'll be happy in heaven too. Lucky them, I'll never show up there to ruin Paradise for them. I've known since childhood I was going to hell. Where else do evil people like me end up? Of course they forced me to attend their Fundamentalist church where I was assured each and every Sunday that ppl like me had no hope of heaven. That was a lot of fun---esp. for a child. Not that they cared, they hoped it would scare me into being the perfect daughter they wanted and expected. Of course all it actually did was make me walk out of church at 16 and never go back. I'm funny that way, I don't enjoy hearing the torments awaiting me described in lurid detail week after week. Living with two sadly reproachful saints every day was hard enough.

I wish my mom had had an abortion. We'd both be better off dead.

forgive your mom. forgive yourself.

And when does she get around to "forgiving" ME? Never! She will hold this over my head forever, she isn't about to let it go--her way of staying in control is in trying to drown people (ME!) in guilt. It's very effective too, as she well knows, altho she'd rather hold onto that whip than see me get better. Not that she has a clue about any of this, she doesn't want to understand just what she's doing--it's much easier blaming it all on me.

And by the flippant way you toss the word "forgiveness" around, I'd say you haven't had much experience with it. Forgiving someone isn't as simple as flipping a light switch, you know.

Maybe "forgive" is too hard a word to believe, but "accept" is probably more likely. It won't happen overnight.....and with BPD you have her painted the blackest of black. But my Mum made my life difficult, and she never asks how I'm doing or tries to see my kids.....I don't forgive her but I accept that she is how she is. Same with my sister. I don't like either of them, I love them because they're family. But I've learnt that I can't change them, however much I want to. They are who they are....accept it and get on with being the best YOU can be.

I dislike my mother sometimes too, I was the parent to the parent pretty much. My mother has always done a lot of wonderful things for me as well. I constantly switch between the two extremes of like and dislike. I think understanding your mother's history is quite important to understanding how she is now. E.g. how she was brought up as a child, her family, her life experiences etc. Just like how we are understanding ourselves at the moment. It really does help explain how your mother became who she is. Like the other posters said, you will be able to accept her for who she is. You simply need to work around her and understand that she has limitations, she is human therefore fallible. For your other needs seek them elsewhere as you will obviously not be able to get it from her. Do not expect her to change for your sake, as she has 84 years of layering. You'll then be able to feel more connected with your mother and yourself, a certain level of being content.

In terms of forgiveness, I hold grudges forever. I am working on this, just take baby steps first and maybe who knows it may lead to some kind of forgiveness or something like it. For the meantime just work on understanding the context and then maybe afterwards - accepting.

Forgiveness is not easy, and unfortunately, not always attainable.

Here's my reason for forgiving those who have done harm to me; by holding a grudge, those people still have control over me. They have control of part of my mind. They are occupying my mind that could otherwise be used in a much more important manner. By holding a grudge, the attention is still on them. The things children do for attention sometimes are not that different in adults; bad attention is better than none at all. Do you think you're strong negative feelings on the subject (and toward your mom in particular) are "fueling her fire"? I imagine that deep down, that's exactly what it is.

I don't expect you to suddenly be your mom's best friend. I agree with what Isoko said..... Your mom isn't a young pup anymore - ever heard the saying, "can't teach an old dog new tricks"? Well, trying to get her to be any kind of person other than what she's always been is mostly likely a lost cause. At this point, it's not even about her reasoning or "why" or anything like that; at this point, that's simply just who she is. No amount of anger or sadness or resentment or anything will change that now.

Holding a grudge for so many years (born in the 50s, I imagine you're my parents' age) has surely taken a toll on you. You're carrying around extra baggage. Can you imagine how much "lighter" (subjectively speaking) you'd feel if you could be rid of all this negativity? This whole ordeal is indirectly playing into your mental health, and not in a good way.

In short; by trying to learn acceptance and forgiveness, you will be doing yourself a favor more than doing her one. She will likely hold on to her negativity. Don't bind yourself to that same way of thinking.

And by the flippant way you toss the word "forgiveness" around, I'd say you haven't had much experience with it. Forgiving someone isn't as simple as flipping a light switch, you know

I never said it was going to be easy to forgive her.

And i never said that she's going to forgive you or treat you any differently.



If you base whether to forgive her or not.........on "when does she forgive me"..........

Then you'll probably never find any reasons to forgive her. If she was a good person and treated you the way you like.........then we wouldn't be having this discussion.


And i do have experience. I'm a BPD/HPD.........a big reason i'm that way, is my mother. If you don't know about BPDs/HPDs.......we tend to have our feelings hurt a lot. LOL




But regardless of whether i have experience or not............


You can forgive your mother and yourself............or not.

You've tried not..........for quite some time.


If you want to insist, that you should continue hating her and hating yourself.........then nothing will really change.


So i don't understand...........do you want to just keep insisting that everything you feel/think.......is correct and beneficial to you?

Or do you want to just keep thinking and feeling the same way, but hope it magically changes your life some how?


You have a disorder.....(correct?)............that disorder, affects what you THINK.

These feelings you have, are based on your thoughts.

Those thoughts, ergo those feelings.......are disordered.



Believe me.......i'd rather hate my mom. I mean , it would be far easier than forgiving her. (as i'm so used to hating her)


But for me, it's just much better not to hate her. If i can forgive her.........it makes it far more likely/easy for me to forgive other people.........especially other women.


Not to mention.........if i can forgive that monster..........i can forgive myself.

Pondscum wrote:And when does she get around to "forgiving" ME? Never! She will hold this over my head forever, she isn't about to let it go--her way of staying in control is in trying to drown people (ME!) in guilt. It's very effective too, as she well knows, altho she'd rather hold onto that whip than see me get better. Not that she has a clue about any of this, she doesn't want to understand just what she's doing--it's much easier blaming it all on me.

And by the flippant way you toss the word "forgiveness" around, I'd say you haven't had much experience with it. Forgiving someone isn't as simple as flipping a light switch, you know.

Could it be that the way you are looking at your mother is through the eyes of a 'borderline' ?

Nobody is perfect, even parents aren't perfect.

I'm the mother of a borderline daughter and I feel such guilt every day for anything I said or did to her throughout her life that I shouldn't have said or done. Did I cause this illness because I wasn't/am not the perfect mother? What is a perfect parent? How do they treat their children? Even parents have problems, be it mental health problems or be it personal/financial/professional problems... and we can't always be 'perfect' parents.

Sometimes, just sometimes.... a borderline, who would have been a borderline however he/she had been brought up, will look for blame and will place that blame onto those who love them most. Those who are most familiar to them, those who found it hard to cope with the borderline behaviours of their child, those who lashed out through sheer frustration at the 'differences' in their child, the difficulties it brought to the rest of the family, the drug abuse, the alcohol abuse, the self harm (when they didn't understand why), the sheer recklessness that tore their whole family apart........ please take a step back; ask yourself... have you been the perfect daughter? Have you caused distress to your family? And. what came first.... the chicken or the egg?

I'd just like to add that, my mother wasn't the perfect mother either... she had six children and she had her favourites.... is it wrong to have favourites? Or, is it just human nature that a mother will love/like one child over another?

My mother was very beautiful and had six beautiful children, but she was only beautiful on the outside. She hid it well; everyone thought she was a wonderful woman and mother, and I suppose she was, bearing in mind that she had six children and very little money.

We all suffered as children due to our parents having no money.... holes in our shoes, elastic bands round our socks to keep them up, school uniforms that were far too small for us, having to use old, torn up sheets as sanitary towels..... etc.... yet our mother had the finest clothes/make-up/skin-care and went to dinner dances that cost an absolute fortune. I seem to be leaving our father out of this; why would I do that? Of course he was just as bad as he adored my mother and wanted her to have the best of everything.... to the detriment of his six children.

My mother could be quite nasty too... from an early age, I recall her telling me to stop crying when my two older sisters were bullying me. Shouldn't she have been telling my older sisters to stop the bullying? Into my teenage years, I remember her forcing my siblings to not speak to me, just because she had fallen out with me.... and this would go on for days and days. She would cook a meal for everyone else apart from me, and when I got home from my first job at the age of 16, I had to cook myself a meal from whatever was left.

She was just as nasty to my own daughter when she came along..... making it very obvious that she had her favourite grandchildren, and my daughter wasn't one of them. My daughter remembers these occasions very well, and dislikes her intensely.

My mother is dead now... I don't miss her at all. I could perhaps blame her for my own mental health problems, ( I suffer with depression) but I won't dwell on it. Was I just a result of typical middle child syndrome? I always felt like the 'black sheep' of the family, and still do to this day, even though my siblings are lovely and try their best to include me... I just don't feel like I belong, somehow.

Pondscum wrote:She's a whiney cow who blames every problem she's ever had in her life on me and I am SICK of it. She and my dad were perfectly happy being married nearly 10 years (without kids) before they had me. Yeah, lucky me, being an "only child".

They made it more than clear that their lives were perfect before I was born. (So why did they chose to have a child? Because everybody else in the 1950's was doing it??? )

Every time I suggest to my mother that she and my dad would have been better off not having me, somehow she twists it into an insult: "Oh, I know you think I'm a terrible mother and all your problems are my fault!" I never said that but there's no convincing her, because she's bloody well determined to be a martyr. My dad was the same way--any time I ever dared disagree with him about anything, he always said the same tired old thing: "Oh, I know, you think I'm just an old fool!" (Which I had never said--or even thought--but it made no difference. There was no talking him out of that delusion.) If anyone made my life miserable, it was the other kids at school who teased me relentlessly--but that doesn't figure my parents into the equation, so they block that out--all they ever wanted to hear was that I was blaming THEM for all my problems.

I think they were the nuts in the house, not me, even tho I'm the one who ended up with all the labels. That way they could feel good about themselves--all their problems were the fault of their wicked daughter. They never made any mistakes. They did everything right. But I, through my own free evil will, chose to make them suffer. Martyrdom must be sweet.

I'm sick to death of my mom sniffling and whining and complaining about how I have nearly driven her to suicide--yeah, she's actually said that. Never mind that I have actually attempted suicide in the past, and not for the fun of it. But there you have it--once again, I did it just to make them suffer needlessly. I am soooo evil. And they are such long-suffering saints. Well, not my father anymore, he died and I'm sure he's now happy in heaven--IF he is capable of being happy anywhere. (Even if I'm not there to ruin things for him.)

My mom will be 84 in June so maybe before long she'll be happy in heaven too. Lucky them, I'll never show up there to ruin Paradise for them. I've known since childhood I was going to hell. Where else do evil people like me end up? Of course they forced me to attend their Fundamentalist church where I was assured each and every Sunday that ppl like me had no hope of heaven. That was a lot of fun---esp. for a child. Not that they cared, they hoped it would scare me into being the perfect daughter they wanted and expected. Of course all it actually did was make me walk out of church at 16 and never go back. I'm funny that way, I don't enjoy hearing the torments awaiting me described in lurid detail week after week. Living with two sadly reproachful saints every day was hard enough.

I wish my mom had had an abortion. We'd both be better off dead.

WHY do you suggest to your mother that she and your dad would have been better off not having you?

You say that she ''twists it into an insult'', but surely you are insulting your mother by saying that to her?!

You say that you don't suggest that your mother is the reason behind all your problems, but just by asking the above question, surely that is what you are suggesting?

It seems to me that you are fueling your own distress... why do you do that?

By saying that you wish you'd been aborted.... you are suggesting that your mother hasn't done her best for you.

I wonder how your mother feels about you saying that?