Create the life...

[Elbereth]

Thanks DnJ. Your suggestions are right on target…and, I have been reading up on boundaries and I feel I still have a lot to learn, but I am moving in the right direction in trying to do them correctly. Or trying to set them in the first place.

Mom, when you tell me how someday I’ll meet a great guy and I’ll be happy again, it makes me feel sad and stressed. It really hurts to be told my happiness is tied to meeting a new guy. I can be happy on my own. Therefore, when you bring up me meeting a new guy I will end our phone call. I love you Mom, but I need to do this for my own health.

Actually, I feel like this is pretty close to what I expressed to my mom that had her blow her top. When I had brought it up previously, I just mentioned the “I don’t need a guy to be happy” and what my goals were. I did not try to establish the boundary but tried to send the message that I felt differently about it. This happened more than once in different ways without the boundary statement. Then when this episode happened, the only part I did not say is that I need to do this for my health. I’ve expressed a similar language boundary around the conversations she wants to have about how awful her marriage is, complainants about my dad, and other complaining. I’ve expressed how her unhappiness hurts me and I feel I cannot hold her unhappiness with my own right now. That I need to be supported and uplifted and encouraged. This one had a similar emotional response. She has tried to be more careful, but her misery is her life. She is consumed with it and feels trapped like she can’t divorce now and she’s too old etc. I understand that her response is probably due to her own feelings…and that what I’ve asked for is not unreasonable.

My brother is out of town right now, and I’m guessing she would have pulled him in on this episode like she did when I asked her to have more positive conversations with me. When I spoke to my brother the last time he insisted that I was harsh (which I told him I was very careful not to be) and he also was like “why can’t you just listen to her…she needs to complain and have this outlet. Or just change the subject, or (insert here more of what works for him)”. So, I feel invalidated by my mother and I feel invalidated and unsupported by my brother.

I know that some of what bothers me about my mother is the helplessness I feel in helping her. I’ve tried, believe me. But she doesn’t want to be helped. She just wants to be the victim. I mean, these issues she complains about have been going on for over 30 years. I am trying to grow. I’m trying to stop putting others feelings and needs above my own. I feel depleted by these relationships instead of lifted. Maybe the issues are with how I see things and I have things to work on. I can accept that. However, I want to feel like it is okay to have the feelings I do, regardless of whether someone else thinks they are valid or not. I want to support my mom, but I can’t heal her wounds or continue to be her dumping ground, or continue to have her past disappointments be the center of our relationship. It also doesn’t help that she lives far away and her only connection to me is by phone. And she lives a very isolated life in an isolated location.

I find myself defending or repeating myself in a different way when I provide a boundary. I guess I just keep hoping that I can explain it in a way that is more gentle or more loving or more. I think I am realizing that in doing that, I am again taking on their feelings at the cost of myself again. I am proud of myself for trying to open the conversation as I realize it is a way to also build more closeness, but I can’t control how they will choose to act or respond. And by defending or repeating myself, I’m taking on their feelings again. After mulling over this for a few days, that is where I think my area of growth also needs to be. I have seen in myself how I am always the one trying to do more to be seen or validated. This is stuff to be worked out with my IC.