March 28, 2024, 03:27:12 PM

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"Welcome to WiseWomenUnite.com -- When adult children marry and leave home, life can sometimes get more complex instead of simpler.  Being a mother-in-law or daughter-in-law can be tough.  How do we extend love and support to our mothers-in-law, adult children, daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, and grandchildren without interfering?  What do we do when there are communication problems?  How can we ask for help when we need it without being a burden?  And how do our family members feel about these issues?  We invite you to join our free forum, read some posts... and when you're ready...share your challenges and wisdom."


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Messages - Tabathadog

1
Adult Sons and/or Adult Daughters / Distancing daughter
October 17, 2020, 07:31:12 PM
I can't believe that I am even looking for and even writing on a site such as this.  I have finally reached my limit, and it is so heart and soul crushing that some days I can barely stand it, but it is what it is.  My daughter and I had a really good relationship pretty much through her high school years and I assumed that it would only get better as she grew.  I had a really good relationship with my mom and talked to her weekly, sometimes daily and often went to her house for visits always taking the my children, so they were exposed to that type of relationship between a parent and a child.  Once my daughter met her husband she changed and I suspect he had something to do with that.  He comes from a family that had a higher income then us and supposedly are more sophisticated than my husband and me.  I can't believe that my daughter lets this sway her thinking she was not raised this way, but she does.  It didn't happen overnight but has increased to a point where she ridicules things I say and puts me down.  All this occurring while I have been the one who has babysat her children saving her that expense as she does not pay me.  I don't get it, there is no reason for her to act this way to me but she does, and the things she does are so stupid and petty.  One example a couple years ago I told her I was thinking about growing out my hair and she told me that I "did not have the type of hair that can be grown out" Now mind you I have had long hair way past my shoulders more than once during her younger years so not sure where this is coming from but evidently I now have witchy hair that can't be grown out according to her.  Now she has long hair but I can't have that.  I know this sounds like a petty insignificant thing but this is just one of many put downs, some small so more greater.  She once even told me I didn't know how to post on facebook and proceeded to tell what I should do.  I asked other people to read my post and let me know if I had done something wrong and everyone said No it was perfectly fine.  She does stuff like this all the time.  Then she will all the sudden stare at my face like she is looking at a flaw and I will say what is wrong, what are you looking at, do I have food on my face or something and she says nothing.  I will go to a mirror and check and there is nothing there. My husband and I have helped her out financially and never asked for repayment, we have taken her and her family on all expense paid vacations.  I have tried for years to get her to love me like she use to and it just isn't happening. I was recently hospitalized and she didn't come to see me until my husband called her, but I was there for her when she was in the hospital.  What can I do, well today I realized nothing.  It is her, not me, I can do nothing about her behavior, but I can control how I respond to her treatment of me.  But that is the hard part, because it is so hard to realize that I will never get back what we had and I had no say in why it changed.  However I have to accept what it is now, and learn to deflect her negative comments and realize that those comments are not true, they do not define me.  I need to do this to get back my confidence in myself and help myself heal so that I can become once again the person I was.  But it is very hard, and very sad to grieve and mourn over all the lost opportunities that we are missing out on, because I don't cut the mustard anymore, according to her.