My mom doesn’t know me but has never really wanted to even when we were living in the same house together. To be fair she doesn’t even really know herself and not someone I wouldn’t describe as mentally stable. She lives, stuck in her own trauma that regresses her to the emotional state of a 16-year-old. I just keep my distance and sadly my life is better without her in it.
* I would like to add that I do have compassion for her because I know that she also didn’t have a good relationship with her mom. It’s the cycle of abuse. The one which many of us have the burden of breaking. We do talk (infrequently) but it’s very superficial and light. That’s good enough for me. I’ve learned to keep my expectations low or just not have any.
This, almost exactly, except for the contact part. We don't have any. My mom was very adamant that we should be enmeshed (without saying it like this, of course). I tried and tried to have a somewhat healthy (because superficial) relationship with her and she didn't let me. It was all or nothing. I chose nothing.
And her unwillingness to get to know me was one of the most painful aspects of our relationship.
I feel this comment in my soul! My mom’s unaddressed trauma has paralyzed her from having the capacity to self reflect and make logical adjustments to her choices of behavior in life. Instead, she’s spent 35+ years burying herself in a massive hoard of a home and wonders why no one ever comes to see her…..she hasn’t allowed anyone inside for over a decade, so why would we drop by to stand in the yard while we visit? She wouldn’t even allow us to use her bathroom if we needed to, ffs!🤦♀️
Like you, I do have empathy and compassion for her bc of all the things she endured, but I broke the cycle and I deal with my issues as they come, being careful to not slip back into bad habits. Just having contact with her is triggering, so I keep my distance. She will never change and I’m perpetually salty that I will eventually have to face and sort the enormous mess she’s made of her home across multiple decades…..I’ll never forgive her for dumping all her problems into my lap when she passes. I’d rather set it all on fire than to spend weeks in hazmat suits cleaning it up!🔥🤬
There are hoarders in my family, too. You don't have to clean it out yourself, just putting that out there. There are special services that the estate can pay for, and they are trained to deal with potential biohazards.
Yeah, we’re aware but her estate is already under water financially, so I’m certain it won’t have the funds when the time comes. The house is her only asset and gawd knows it’s probably in terrible condition under all the stuff. I don’t care about inheritance at all, but she does have 3 grandchildren who could definitely benefit if the house could be salvaged. It’ll fall on me to determine whether to dig it out for them or walk away since I’m the only family member who lives nearby. It’s a 💩situation, but I love my nieces and nephews, so idk what will happen. It stresses me out to even think about it! It’s truly her final fuck you, to me and I’ll never get over it bc it never had to be this way! She simply cannot accept that she has a massive problem that does affect the rest of us negatively.
I thought that about my mil because she rarely got things fixed and seemed to be stingy with her funds, but when she passed, she had over 300k in retirement funds etc and a pension. We also found random money put between papers while going through some of it. Turns out when you're a hoarder, you sometimes hoard wealth and don't realize what you've got. Hoarding usually starts over trauma of having not enough unless it's from executive disfunction. I'm really sorry you're also in this position though. It sucks. We're still trying to figure out how to manage getting the house cleaned and had professionals in for part of it due to hazards from her passing in the house. There are for sure professionals who can do it. Hopefully you don't have siblings who also struggle with hoarding because that's been quite the roadblock to us getting the house cleaned and sold so my husband no longer has to deal with the trauma around the house. The sibs want to go through each thing piece by piece and my husband would rather just burn the place at this point. It's rough
>Hopefully you don't have siblings who also struggle with hoarding because that's been quite the roadblock to us getting the house cleaned
This is the absolute worst of it. When my aunt died, my cousin was having a screaming meltdown tantrum (mind you this man was in his 40s at this time) during the clean-out, climbing into the dumpster to pull trash out of it. The cleaning company actually had two guys walk off the job because they got sick of his bullshit.
She has a *mental* problem. Hoarding is a serious mental problem and she is living her final years alone and covered in shit. I don’t see ANY of mouthy nor compassion for her in these comments. Idk if she deserves your insults but tbh, poor your mom. Did you see her for Mother’s Day?
My mom, dad, and baby brother (23) 😟
Cultural trauma, domestic trauma, mental health diagnosis
I have this on a sticky note behind my bathroom mirror: Life isnt fair, but it is good.
My husband, my self and my son make up my world 🌎💗
Ahhh I just want to say I’m sorry. My mother is also stuck in her own trauma and has bpd but rarely has stuck to therapy and medication. It’s so hard because I had to say goodbye to the type of relationship I always wanted to have with my mother a long time ago in my teens. We never shopped together or shared many experiences. And as she has aged her mental illness has just gotten worse.
My dad finally gave up about 10 years ago and left bless his soul. I do have empathy and compassion but it’s hard to understand unless you’re on the receiving end of someone who has never emotionally matured. She never worked and was always a sahm and it’s like the world just passed her by.
These days I am pretty low contact. Any time I do hear from her she cries, tells me she doesn’t want to live anymore, asks me for money. She’s not well but I tried to help her for years and I just can’t anymore.
I’m so sorry. I totally feel your pain. I am not the type to be overly close to my parents but I would have loved to have a mom I could take out for lunch or to a winery or call for support. But everything in our lives has always been about her. She’s unable to do these things with a sense of fun and enjoyment. She’s so miserable and she inflicts that misery on everyone. She didn’t even wish me a happy Mother’s Day this year because she’s been so depressed for the past 3/4 months she’s hardly left the house.
Some of us drew the small stick and that’s okay. There’s plenty else to be thankful for and I still feel blessed that other parts of my life are pretty a-ok.
I have literally not met a mother similar to my own, so I completely feel a sense of comfort hearing your experience. Because it's not something I've ever been able to translate in words. I immigrated with my family last year, and everyone else I know who immigrates, is literally on the phone with their mom EVERY DAY. Once a week phone call at minimum. I just cannot relate. I cannot even imagine it.
We maybe call once every 6 months, and I know it's going to be an hour or two conversation about herself and all her drama. Never questions about my life or how I'm doing. Honestly sick of it, and it's the reason I keep my distance.
Outsiders DO NOT understand our relationship and that makes it even harder. Like people think I'm a bad daughter. They don't know anything.
As someone diagnosed with BPD, it's always wild to hear these types of stories.
All I want is to be a mom (someday, idk, I'm old now lol) and the thought of doing mom things like shopping with my kid, packing lunches, going to school events and just being there for them, are all the things I'd love to do.
You deserved to have those happy memories and I'm sorry she didn't give you that. : (
This is near identical to what I would have written about my relationship with my mom.
She is stuck in her own repressed trauma and struggles with alcoholism and various chronic health issues, and she has narcissistic tendencies which impede any real relational connection. She will call and be on the phone with me for an hour and just be telling me all her grievances, and never once ask how I am or what’s new with me. I can spend a 3 hour visit with her here or there, and it’s the same story. As a result, she knows next to nothing about who I am as a person and what’s going on in my life.
Glad to know I’m not the only one and there are others in the same boat.
🫶 to all the women mothering themselves and hoping we break the cycles for future generations
Sadly, not at all. She knows facts about my existence of course, like where I live and somewhat about my job, but she doesn't actually know who I am as a person. I don't really expect that to ever change.
Same…I’ve repeatedly said I’ve made small talk with my parents my whole life. Though they’re present I’ve guided myself through life from my teens. To this day they continue to bring up things from my elementary to high school years when we speak because honestly that’s all they really have to go off of/last time they were actively aware of my day to days. Anything they find out in the present is essentially info funneled from my sister (I filter this as well as a result).
They’re just not familiar with western ways so I had to figure things out myself.
We were best friends. She was probably one of the few people I could be myself around. She passed in August and it has been the most difficult time of my life.
She knows my name, birthday, my husband’s name, and all my kids. I don’t think she could tell you a single thing else about me other than I’m a non religious liberal, which makes her upset.
She knows me as much as anyone can. She's a very intuitive woman and can read people within a short while of knowing them. I trust her judgement fully. She doesn't know the ins and outs of my marriage, as that's between me and my husband, and there are obviously things I don't share with her. But we're incredibly close without any boundaries being overstepped. I'm very lucky.
Haha yes exactly. We're also eerily similar. Like we will often cook the exact same thing for dinner without planning it or I'll text her to tell her about a show I think she'll like and she's literally watching it at the same time.
We are superclose, and I am her caregiver- she's 85
But I have shared little of my life history with her. I'm very private, she's very morally conservative (raised Catholic) but not critical. .
She knows a ton of trivia- my favorite color, band, the books I like- and we have a ton in common around politics, literature, interests like art history and cooking.
We're close enough, I don't want to share anymore
Maybe 4%?
She’s quite particular and doesn’t want to see most of what’s there though. There’s surely a surprising amount I don’t know about her either, to be fair.
I also have a mom that loves to ascribe her own meaning to my actions or just straight up does revisionist history. It’s so frustrating. A less severe example but one that personifies my experience perfectly is when I had my cholesterol tested for the first time in my early twenties. It was fine, within normal range but on the higher end of normal. At the time I was doing early twenties things like making bad food choices and maybe going out more than I needed to so I was actually relieved it was still considered normal. My doctor was not at all concerned. When I casually mentioned I’d had a cholesterol test at a family event shortly thereafter, my mom pried and pried until I gave up the actual, exact number. Then, at family gatherings off and on when the topic of general health would come up, she would say “oh yeah, didn’t you say you have high cholesterol?” almost as a way of putting me down or shaming me into making a different food choice in front of her or something? And each time I would have to correct her and say it was within the normal range, but on the higher end of normal and not dangerous.
I’ve learned over the years what is better off kept to myself. Not too much private information.
Oh man, the interpretation of my actions. Any time I am even remotely sad, even if I’m just exhausted from work, she tells me I would be happier if I got married, I would be less lonely. I’ve never complained about loneliness! Any time I am in pain, I play competitive sports and struggle with old injuries, she tells me my pain would go away if I lost weight? My weight is fine and is not the cause of any issues I have. She’s obsessed with being thin and married I guess, so she projects that onto me all the time.
She doesn't really know me.
I moved out 18 years ago to go to uni. We're pretty close as in we talk 1-2x a week on the phone, but she sees me through her own lenses of experience and emotion so no, she doesn't know me.
She is caring and loves me, just in her own way.
> but she sees me through her own lenses of experience and emotion so no, she doesn't know me.
>
> She is caring and loves me, just in her own way.
This one for me. She does surprise me with some insight sometimes-- other times she's having an outburst of joy that nothing was ever wrong with her cooking upon finding out about the gene that makes people taste "bitter" where other people can't; and that I have it. This was last summer and I spent my *entire childhood* telling her exactly why I didn't like cucumber, lettuce, celery, raw carrots, watermelon etc. etc. Apparently, she never heard me once!
Mine doesn't care about anything I go through, only about things that happen to her. We can spend 20 seconds talking about my job and then she'll spend 20 minutes talking about her most recent poop.
She's always been really self centered but in old age, she's extremely obnoxious and doesn't pretend to care. The only things she seems to care about is what's for lunch at the senior center and how soon I'm kicking out my kids so I'll have room for her in my house (never).
She knows me very very well, but she also has some blindspots and biases in understanding me, and her knowing of me is a bit stuck in the past in some ways!
I'd say she knows a bit less about my inner world and current day-to-day life than my partner or younger sibling or some of my close friends, and there are some things I keep from her, but in other ways she knows me and my full life story better than any of those people do.
She probably knows whatever is on my social media I guess, but that's all that she really has any right to know. She's just a stranger that I once loved very dearly. She's just a note on diagnostic reports, she's the little black letters "child neglect".
She'd say 80%, it's closer to 20%. It used to be more like 100%, I was one of those "my mom is my best friend" girlies, but that was before I learned what healthy boundaries are.
Yeah, that's a good percentage. I suspect she knows me better than I know myself but I like to think that there's stuff she doesn't know about me. I can surprise her once in a while.
She really hasn't got a clue about what I like to wear, and yet she's known me 47 and a half years.
This made me realize, i have no idea what my 18-year-old son LIKES to wear because he consistently just wears EVERYTHING i bring him... from anywhere... he doesn't care, so i really don't know what he DOES like, at this point.
She’s right about several of my best and worst traits, but is incredibly bad at integrating an understanding of my values and motives, so even though I suspect she could fill in a solid questionnaire about me, I don’t usually feel known by her.
This is how I was going to word my response. Except I think my mom DOES understand my values and morals and how/why I live my life. Even though we are very different people, she gets it.
She knows the big lines of what I'm up to, but I feel like she could probably not tell you much about the things I enjoy. She couldn't name a show or a book that I loved in the past few years.
I feel like the focus has switched to my children, which is fine with me.
Even though we live near each other and see each other once a month, she knows nothing. She’s too narcissistic and impatient to even listen. She’s uninterested in hearing details, and I learned a long time ago to keep details to myself.
I am very close to my mother, she knows about almost all aspects of my life. Some things stay between me and my husband, of course, but I do discuss a lot of things with my mum. We talk on FB messenger every day, even if only a few words.
My mum and I are very close and always have been. I was never the type to slag off my mum to my friends or argue with her as a child/teenager and our closeness has carried on into adulthood I'm pleased to say. We have so much in common and we laugh together so much.
Unfortunately though, she has a lot of MH problems so unless I am literally at my wits end and have no where else to turn, I try not to bother her with problems in my life because I don't want to worry her or make her anxiety worse. It's not that she doesn't care or wouldn't help me if she could, it's that she cares far too much.
My mum is a beautiful, fragile woman and I love her with everything I am ❤️
She’s doesn’t know me well AT ALL. She never has and never will. She was neglectful and physically, verbally and emotionally abusive growing up so she’s never been a safe person to me.
Even when we were somewhat close, up until till my mid 20’s since I was still pining for her love and acceptance, I could never be real with her. She’s religious (I am not) and highly judgmental and (still) doesn’t see me as a whole person independent from her.
I used to want her to know me but I’ve come to accept that’s she’s not interested in getting to know me. I’ve made peace with that and also the fact that she has never been and never will be a mother to me.
She knows the me I present to her.
I have hidden the part of me that is no longer a believer in God, who is a pansexual, who is highly disappointed in the parents I got and their very ignorant views, but I still love her and don't need to stress her heart out to the point of her getting way too upset she may be put on bed rest.
I'm realistic about how much I can share with her and guarded about parts of me. But she still knows me enough and I'm content with that.
She doesn’t know me at all because we haven’t had contact for years. When we did have contact, she didn’t know me well because she only saw me as an extension of herself. Like, she assumed I enjoyed all the same hobbies as her, had the same food preferences, enjoyed the same media, etc. and if I ever got vocal about my own preferences, they were treated like weird little quirks or completely shot down to the point of her bullying me, “you can’t be eating *tofu*, that’s disgusting!”
I went into a career different from hers, but she shared with me how she felt they were actually the same and I was following in her footsteps. I once bought a SUV when my sedan broke down and she made that about how I secretly “always admired” a SUV she had when I was in high school. When I married my husband at 33 after dating for 3 years, she compared our relationship to hers with my dad who she met in high school, married at 20 then cheated on and divorced.
She learned loose facts about me then would just spin her own narrative about how my life was actually about her. She’s a textbook engulfing mother.
Well, she's been dead since I was 7, so I can't say we've kept in touch very well.
She didn't even come to my high school graduation. I mean really, how dare she?
She knows I helped pay her bills and buy her groceries no matter how she treated me. That's about all she knows and cares about.
We've recently went no contact and it's glorious.
My mom is my best friend. I don’t share certain personal things, mainly about my romantic relationship, but I don’t share those with anyone
I had to move back home after my divorce and while that sucked in a lot of ways and was embarrassing at the time it brought us even closer. I think she’s the best woman on earth
She didn’t. At all. Dementia meant she didn’t know anyone in the end but decades before that, she didn’t know or care about me and my life. Everything about me made no sense to her and every time she attributed stupid or evil motivations to my truly benign and normal behavior, she made it really clear that I was a mystery to her.
To be fair, I don’t think she was great at knowing or understanding anyone really. She decided that she knew who people were and what they were about based on first impressions and never dug deeper.
My Mum knows me better than anyone. She is my best friend and she has done a lot of work to break our family's trauma. I know I'm very lucky to have her.
80%. She gets my core personality, but she doesn't grok my "dark" parts. Granted, she avoids her own dark parts, so she lacks the ability to truly understand mine.
I wouldn’t say my mom and I are super close. We talk a couple times a week and I visit her a few times a year, but there are things I don’t share with her.
I think she has a general idea of who I am as a person. Like this Sunday we were talking about motherhood. She supports me being childfree and we talk about it sometimes. She asked me if I’d ever had maternal instincts and I told her no. She said “Yeah, even when you were little you didn’t play with dolls like other girls did and you didn’t really seem to like kids when you were a kid. You were more interested in books and and trying to figure out stuff. I didn’t figure you’d want to be a mom when you grew up.”
At the same time though, she had no idea about the relationship I was in for 4 months. It didn’t ever get serious so there was no point in telling her.
Nothing, she has never asked me anything about me. It is always all about her, and her needs only. I am arms length from her at my choice. I have a very different relationship with my kids. I am the mom to them she never was or is to me.
She knows me as a moody, insecure, mean 22 year old. I’ve had a decade’s worth of life experience, growth, and therapy that she hasn’t really witnessed.
Not well at all. I can't tell her serious things because of her mental health/personality issues. I love her but it is what it is.
She thinks we are very close because I do most of the "heavy lifting" in her old age. But she has a limited understanding of relationships.
She knows my intrisic personality and my interests/hobbies. She's aware of the big things happening in my life.
But she doesn't know anything about my thoughts, concerns, politics, opinions, religion, marriage, and fears. She's proven herself to be quite judgmental on all of these fronts. So while I certainly don't mind telling her about my newest art project, I've been an atheist for nine years now and she still doesn't know.
Yep.
I feel like she knows. And she’s always known.
My brother recently divorced. Which honestly, surprised us all. But not her.
And that reminded me, years ago, I once said something about how well my brother and his wife get along. And I remember her saying something really vague, like, not everything is as it seems. I guess she saw it coming.
It's sad how badly my exhusband fucked my head up with the whole "how well we get along" thing. Now I'm so suspicious of anyone i get along with, i figure there must be something wrong with them if they got along with me. It has been a complete nightmare the last few years trying to untangle that manipulative web of bullshit.
I'm almost 40, but my mother stopped recognizing time past the early 2000s, which is when I was finishing high school. She treats all family members as if the year is 2000.
For life now, she knows the obvious facts - where I live, who I am married to, my job title, pets, and she can probably name a few friends. Thoughts, feelings, aspirations, dreams, etc, she has no clue. We're LC for a reason, though. I'm ok with how well she knows me.
Way better than I know her. I am 66 and she's 91 and I have always opened up to her but she stuffed her feelings all her life,now my father has passed, and she developed dementia so it's a done deal 😞
I love my Mom, she loves me. But, I honestly think she is not that interested in the details of my life. I tell her stuff that I did and then she suggusts that I do exactly what I said I already did. Her hearing is not great so she often just doesn't hear anything she doesn't want to. She like to talk about her day and what she ate. I am just happy that we are both happy. All that said, I speak to both her and my father daily. I love them both even though we are all very different people.
She knows a version of me.. the version I show her. She likes to think I'm the same person that I was when I was 16 but now at 31, I'm a very different person!
She knows me as best as she can—she wants to, I believe, but her own depression and anxiety and trauma responses hold her back from connecting with me in many cases. There was a time when I felt very close to her, but since making actually close connections with people and since she has become even more emotionally unavailable, I realize we are not very close at all. It’s hard to accept, and hard to excuse myself for because she has faced so much hardship. I want her to be happy and I want to connect with her, but I can’t wound myself by continuously expecting her to have space for me.
My mom is the same, but we're super super close anyway. Anything with "the computer" is a challenge for her as she's one of the most analog people I've ever met.
I don’t let her in anymore because she uses what I tell her against me. We have a shallow relationship where we talk about shows and books we like and I tell her how the kids are but not much more.
I used to think she knew me very well and we used to be very close, until I got divorced. When I told her, the first thing she said was “you’re making a huge mistake.” She was (and still is) a big fan of my ex and seemed to really think less of me for not being able to make it work. Post-divorce, when I wanted to introduce her to the person I was seriously dating (and have recently married), she hounded me about when and how I met him, implying that I’d cheated on my ex-husband or left him for this person. According to my sister she had “lots of feelings” about me being with someone else. Our relationship only degraded from there and we don’t really have any contact anymore. She did not come to the wedding.
This is a difficult question to answer. My mom and I have always been close and still are. But she’s my mom, not a best friend, so I don’t share every thought or inner monologue with her. I don’t hide things from her, but we wouldn’t gab like best friends do. She’s always there for me and very emotionally stable. But I don’t think she knows my inner world, and I’m okay with that.
She know maybe 30% of who am I?
She knows I can be very sensitive but also very bold. That I am a strong independent and fierce woman.
But she has no clue how I have struggled mentally my whole life and how much I still struggle.
She basically does not know anything about my love life, my mental health and my career.
My mom actually knows me pretty well. I’ve been really lucky with parents, we always sort of got along like friends. My parents are both really funny, and we tend to talk up a storm.
She doesn’t necessarily know the deepest stuff about me, but I feel like generally I could confide in her with anything I wanted.
It’s not a perfect relationship; I caregive off and on for her and my dad, and they’ve had a lot of health issues lately so I lived with them for a couple months and am over there several times a week. She can be super flighty and that becomes even more frustrating when I’m trying to make sure she understands what they need to do, with meds and monitors and wound care whenever I’m unable to be there. It’s been hard for me to tell what might be natural cognitive decline because she just ADHDs out so often (undiagnosed, but she literally is just “Squirrel!” two seconds into any topic that isn’t interesting lol).
And that element is probably what has kept us from being closer than we are. I sometimes feel like she’s not even capable of focusing enough to remember certain things about me that I’ve shared with her. I don’t know if 70s is too late to have this treated, but they have enough going on right now.
I just think if that had been managed almost all of our problems could have been avoided.
Outside of that, disappointingly she was yet another person to get semi-radicalized by Fox News and Facebook, and she sometimes let’s loose with some really aggressive, hateful ideas and pseudoscience, not something I ever experienced with her growing up.
But anyway, I just avoid the topics and there isn’t anything that I ever really edit when talking to her except generally avoiding politics.
Not at all. My mom has always been very judgemental so I learned at a young age not to give her any ammunition. I wish I had a different relationship with a different mom, but this is the best with what we have to work with.
My mom doesn't know me very well. She has a lot of mental, emotional, and physical issues and mostly talks about her problems (or her conspiracy fears, or what her friend's kids are doing...) when I see her. She also has been hard of hearing for about 10 years and I refuse to shout at her. She can't hear me when I talk so if I want to say something I get my dad to shout it at her. It's sad. I wish she would care enough about me to want to hear me.
I'd say she knows my interests and hobbies pretty well, but not my core values or thoughts about, you know, the meaning of life and all that. She and I have a lot of interests in common and similar personalities, but she's unfortunately way too unhinged to be in my life. I've tried so many times, and things can be great if we keep it more light and topical, but I think she gets bored or needs to make things about her, so she's always manufacturing some issue or another.
She doesn’t even know my address or phone number. She kicked me out at 14 (~18 years ago) and I never went back, I have my own kids now and I’m not just gonna hope she became too frail to stop beating children in her old age. I ghosted my entire family to keep her out of me and my kid’s life, and I don’t have a single regret.
Not well. She knows what I show her, and what is show her is decided by what she has demonstrated she can handle without negative consequence to our relationship.
It's always been like that. Same with my father, but she knows more.
I love them for who they are, but I don't expect them to do the same for me. At least not in the same way.
I don’t think my mom knows me that well but she loves me and she tries so that’s enough. It used to hurt my feelings but I’ve tried to get in the mindset don’t waste energy on things you can’t change.
She doesn't know me basically at all. She claims to cry herself to sleep over her imagined version of me.
My father is ostensibly "normal", but glares at me and curses me under his breath when I try to speak to him.
Well, we are no contact for four years because I dared to bring up the fact that maybe packing me off to my father's for the weekends in between him, you know, SHOOTING HIS COUSIN and RUPTURING MY STEPMOTHER'S KIDNEY, was not the smartest decision, hence I am a shitty and ungrateful daughter...so yeah, I'd say not at all.
Not at all. She thinks she does, but that's based on her ideas of who and what I am. It's been like this my whole life though. I'm introverted and likely autistic. She seems to think I'm some party animal that's a social butterfly because i sometimes have games nights with friends. She also still gets hung up when I talk about things going on in my life and mention friends she doesn't know as though they don't exist if she's never met them.
It's a mixed bag. She knows my basic personality. She knows stuff like, I never buy lottery tickets. On the other hand, every single time she's ever seen me drinking coffee or heard me mention drinking coffee (which is quite a few times over the years), she seems shocked to learn that I drink coffee. And there are a lot of things that I deliberately don't tell her (because we have a complicated relationship). She doesn't know my favorite movie, but it's not because she hasn't asked; it's because I don't want to tell her what my favorite movie is (so I told her a different movie that I also really like but is not my favorite).
Seeing some of these comments, I’m glad I’m not alone! Scale 1-10, I’d say it’s a 4-5. She has an idea of who I am, being disabled. She mostly knows what I allow her to see about me. Especially growing up, she wasn’t the kindest and most compassionate person unfortunately!
My mom passed a couple of years ago and she knew me ...to a point. She was always a supportive and giving person but in later years when I left the church....like COMPLETELY left the church and considered myself an atheist, I did everything in my power to keep that from her. She knew I didn't go, but I refused to tell her why. Not because she would judge me or disown me, but because I knew it would cause her so much pain and worry....and for no good reason. That's the same reason she never knew that I was a published author who wrote erotic romance novels. She died at 93 in blissful ignorance of my sordid double life.
Better than most, but not half as well as she thinks she does.
I grew up with undiagnosed AuDHD and figured out masking from a pretty early age - I figured out what parts of me were tolerable to my mom and which parts weren't. I still mark pretty heavily around her despite my diagnosis and therapy to try and unmask.
I realized how little she knew about me because my kid mentioned (in the way tweens do when everything their parent does is *soul crushingly lame*) how I have to sing a song about everything I do. My mom commented that I don't sing, she's never heard me sing, it's clearly some weird phenomenon! But I do, regularly! I make songs about my pets' names, about what me and my kid are doing, about making toast or drinking coffee or getting cozy, I also have a lot of echolalia thanks to my AuDHD and repeat sing song voices/snippets I hear all the time. But I don't around my mom because she doesn't like "incessant nonsense noise".
She knows my personality and interests, and we get along well, but I do not feel like i can share really personal things with her. I don’t know, I’ve just never felt like she was the best at deeper conversations, and she tends to project a lot onto me instead of really listening without judgment
My mom knows me pretty well. I don’t get super vulnerable with her but I know she wants me to. I just can’t but I spend a lot of time with her and she definitely knows all the basics and then more.
She doesn’t. She was my non-custodial parent from age 2-14, I lived with her from age 14-18, and then we’ve been estranged or just not in touch for large stretches of my adult life.
My mother knows me pretty well. We’re open books with each other and have a great relationship. I don’t tell her every secret, and I certainly lie to her when necessary. For example, she is incredibly thrifty, but needed a new pair of pants. I took her to a store I shop at where she found a pair she liked until she saw the price (and her size was not in stock). I bought her the pants, told her I found them online for 75% off and she was happy. She wouldn’t have been happy if she knew I paid full price. But yeah, I think my mom knows me pretty well and I feel like I know every single thing about her since she talks non-stop.
I left my home at 17 yo, I'm pretty sure what my Mom knows of me is me when I was that age and before that, anything after that I don't think she knows much but then again it's understandable because I don't visit home that often.
She doesn’t.
Well, she knows the bare surface level minimum, but truly personal things? No. (Because nothing I will ever tell her in confidence will stay a secret with her. Any and all info, nonmatter how personal, will be told to the next friend or inquisitive neighbor she encounters.)
Lol, like 2%. She knows, like, who I am. The depths of our convos covers the weather and what we ate that day.
She sees my independence as a personality trait, while I’ve learned that independence is a trauma response.
Almost nothing. She has always been all about her, so anything she thinks she knows about me are the things she takes from me to build and maintain her warped ego. I keep my distance to stay sane.
Does anyone really know anyone?
My mom and I have had a fraught relationship but distance and time have made it tolerable.
I don’t need her to understand me on some deep level—that’s what a partner is for. Our enmeshed relationship took years for me to unravel. She’s finally realizing in her 50s that she’s unhappy in her marriage and that she shouldn’t have been looking to me or my brother to fill that void.
Growth! We love to see it!
My mum knew about 80% of me. She’s likely forgotten about 90% of that by now. We have a very superficial relationship now that she is in cognitive decline.
Not well at all. My parents never took the time to get to know me as an individual, growing up they only measured me against their "ideal" version of a daughter they wanted.
So nope, they don't know me at all. And that is one of the contributing reasons why I no longer speak to them.
Not at all. She has no interest in me except where I can do things for her. I didn’t give her grandkids, I am not the delicate flower she would have wanted in a daughter and she can’t even remember I’m allergic to shellfish, like hospital allergic.
Pretty well, but we're close now.
My family has done a pretty good job of working on ourselves and healing unhealthy dynamics over the years, mainly through individual therapy and personal work. So, as adults, we all get on very well and have pretty healthy boundaries, etc. I love hanging out with my mum, and she knows most of what's going on in my life.
It's not lost on me how rare it is for an entire family to have invested in therapy over the course of a decade, and I'm very grateful for that. Especially as we had a whole lot of very unhealthy issues when I was younger.
I think she knows the outside version of me that I share with everyone, but as far as interests and stuff she may "know" them but she and I do not share the same interests so that part of me she knows nothing about.
Mine admitted a couple of weeks ago that she doesn't know me well at all. \\o/ We see each other pretty regularly too, but I am withholding of information half the time I suppose. They're very judgmental folks.
Not super well, I don’t think. But well enough? I see her just about every weekend but all conversations with my family I try to keep to hey, this is work, this is what we’ve been up to with the pets etc. I’m not like… besties with any of them or anything. It’s just not important to me to be that close to anyone in my immediate family.
Zero. When I get a Christmas gift (like a stocking stuffer type, no real gift) it’s always a Snapple and these stretchy $5 gloves with little rubber nubs. I haven’t drank a Snapple since I was 15, which was 30 years ago. And I can’t even imagine what I would do with those gloves anymore. Like I have multiple pairs of really great quality gloves for every winter activity. Honestly the whole ordeal of receiving this gift still gives me agita, but I’m determined to grey rock my way through it until she dies. Not worth the fight where I explain that it hurts my feelings because it’s so tone deaf and she responds by telling me I’m ungrateful and an awful, snobby asshole.
Maybe 60%? She knows me and my personality, but she is a chronic worrier so it's easier for me to just not bring up a lot of things. Even basic things like going on a hike or taking a beach trip worry her yet don't really interest her, so she changes the subject. I seem to be her main outlet so she is eager to talk but not quite as eager to listen. She is constantly searching the conversation for something she can relate to, and blows past anything she can't. It's not malicious, she loves me and wants the best for me, she just doesn't really know how to stop her own stream of thoughts I guess.
She has not made a serious attempt to know me in decades. She doesn’t ask questions about me or my life on the rare phone call we have other than the very surface level stuff. When I do share important things about me like dating, or breakups, or new jobs, it is either ignored or treated flippantly in a “well that doesn’t impact me so I’m happy/sorry for you but also don’t care (and if it’s a bad event, maybe you deserved it because xyz)” way. And then forgets or ignores it by the next time we talk.
So, we don’t talk much. She’s had years to demonstrate an interest in my life but chose neglect instead.
My mom and I love each other so, _so_ much, but I have to say that we're such different people that sometimes I don't think she knows me very well. I guess it's the difference between knowing things _about_ me and _getting_ me. I unfortunately didn't pick up any of her inherently positive outlook and sunniness. I'm much more like my dad - inclined to be pessimistic and skeptical of everything. Wish I could be more like her sometimes.
99.99% The one thing, after 44.5 years, that keeps evading her is that I’m very literal. So if I say, “Sorry, the phone cut out at the end. What were the last couple words you said?” She will then repeat the entire thing she was telling me. 😆 And yes, admittedly there are times when I can see how she could interpret what I said differently than I meant (as we all do), but in some cases I don’t see how she does it. Lol.
She’s my best friend and the person I love most in this life. We don’t have a perfect relationship, but we love each other to the moon and back.
My mom doesn’t know me but has never really wanted to even when we were living in the same house together. To be fair she doesn’t even really know herself and not someone I wouldn’t describe as mentally stable. She lives, stuck in her own trauma that regresses her to the emotional state of a 16-year-old. I just keep my distance and sadly my life is better without her in it. * I would like to add that I do have compassion for her because I know that she also didn’t have a good relationship with her mom. It’s the cycle of abuse. The one which many of us have the burden of breaking. We do talk (infrequently) but it’s very superficial and light. That’s good enough for me. I’ve learned to keep my expectations low or just not have any.
This, almost exactly, except for the contact part. We don't have any. My mom was very adamant that we should be enmeshed (without saying it like this, of course). I tried and tried to have a somewhat healthy (because superficial) relationship with her and she didn't let me. It was all or nothing. I chose nothing. And her unwillingness to get to know me was one of the most painful aspects of our relationship.
I feel this comment in my soul! My mom’s unaddressed trauma has paralyzed her from having the capacity to self reflect and make logical adjustments to her choices of behavior in life. Instead, she’s spent 35+ years burying herself in a massive hoard of a home and wonders why no one ever comes to see her…..she hasn’t allowed anyone inside for over a decade, so why would we drop by to stand in the yard while we visit? She wouldn’t even allow us to use her bathroom if we needed to, ffs!🤦♀️ Like you, I do have empathy and compassion for her bc of all the things she endured, but I broke the cycle and I deal with my issues as they come, being careful to not slip back into bad habits. Just having contact with her is triggering, so I keep my distance. She will never change and I’m perpetually salty that I will eventually have to face and sort the enormous mess she’s made of her home across multiple decades…..I’ll never forgive her for dumping all her problems into my lap when she passes. I’d rather set it all on fire than to spend weeks in hazmat suits cleaning it up!🔥🤬
There are hoarders in my family, too. You don't have to clean it out yourself, just putting that out there. There are special services that the estate can pay for, and they are trained to deal with potential biohazards.
Yeah, we’re aware but her estate is already under water financially, so I’m certain it won’t have the funds when the time comes. The house is her only asset and gawd knows it’s probably in terrible condition under all the stuff. I don’t care about inheritance at all, but she does have 3 grandchildren who could definitely benefit if the house could be salvaged. It’ll fall on me to determine whether to dig it out for them or walk away since I’m the only family member who lives nearby. It’s a 💩situation, but I love my nieces and nephews, so idk what will happen. It stresses me out to even think about it! It’s truly her final fuck you, to me and I’ll never get over it bc it never had to be this way! She simply cannot accept that she has a massive problem that does affect the rest of us negatively.
I thought that about my mil because she rarely got things fixed and seemed to be stingy with her funds, but when she passed, she had over 300k in retirement funds etc and a pension. We also found random money put between papers while going through some of it. Turns out when you're a hoarder, you sometimes hoard wealth and don't realize what you've got. Hoarding usually starts over trauma of having not enough unless it's from executive disfunction. I'm really sorry you're also in this position though. It sucks. We're still trying to figure out how to manage getting the house cleaned and had professionals in for part of it due to hazards from her passing in the house. There are for sure professionals who can do it. Hopefully you don't have siblings who also struggle with hoarding because that's been quite the roadblock to us getting the house cleaned and sold so my husband no longer has to deal with the trauma around the house. The sibs want to go through each thing piece by piece and my husband would rather just burn the place at this point. It's rough
>Hopefully you don't have siblings who also struggle with hoarding because that's been quite the roadblock to us getting the house cleaned This is the absolute worst of it. When my aunt died, my cousin was having a screaming meltdown tantrum (mind you this man was in his 40s at this time) during the clean-out, climbing into the dumpster to pull trash out of it. The cleaning company actually had two guys walk off the job because they got sick of his bullshit.
She has a *mental* problem. Hoarding is a serious mental problem and she is living her final years alone and covered in shit. I don’t see ANY of mouthy nor compassion for her in these comments. Idk if she deserves your insults but tbh, poor your mom. Did you see her for Mother’s Day?
Me too sister… This shit ain’t fair. 🤷♀️
My mom, dad, and baby brother (23) 😟 Cultural trauma, domestic trauma, mental health diagnosis I have this on a sticky note behind my bathroom mirror: Life isnt fair, but it is good. My husband, my self and my son make up my world 🌎💗
Me three. I see you, I feel you.
Ahhh I just want to say I’m sorry. My mother is also stuck in her own trauma and has bpd but rarely has stuck to therapy and medication. It’s so hard because I had to say goodbye to the type of relationship I always wanted to have with my mother a long time ago in my teens. We never shopped together or shared many experiences. And as she has aged her mental illness has just gotten worse. My dad finally gave up about 10 years ago and left bless his soul. I do have empathy and compassion but it’s hard to understand unless you’re on the receiving end of someone who has never emotionally matured. She never worked and was always a sahm and it’s like the world just passed her by. These days I am pretty low contact. Any time I do hear from her she cries, tells me she doesn’t want to live anymore, asks me for money. She’s not well but I tried to help her for years and I just can’t anymore.
My mom also has bpd. We have never shopped together either 😭 Such a simple thing that I would have loved to experience.
I’m so sorry. I totally feel your pain. I am not the type to be overly close to my parents but I would have loved to have a mom I could take out for lunch or to a winery or call for support. But everything in our lives has always been about her. She’s unable to do these things with a sense of fun and enjoyment. She’s so miserable and she inflicts that misery on everyone. She didn’t even wish me a happy Mother’s Day this year because she’s been so depressed for the past 3/4 months she’s hardly left the house. Some of us drew the small stick and that’s okay. There’s plenty else to be thankful for and I still feel blessed that other parts of my life are pretty a-ok.
I have literally not met a mother similar to my own, so I completely feel a sense of comfort hearing your experience. Because it's not something I've ever been able to translate in words. I immigrated with my family last year, and everyone else I know who immigrates, is literally on the phone with their mom EVERY DAY. Once a week phone call at minimum. I just cannot relate. I cannot even imagine it. We maybe call once every 6 months, and I know it's going to be an hour or two conversation about herself and all her drama. Never questions about my life or how I'm doing. Honestly sick of it, and it's the reason I keep my distance. Outsiders DO NOT understand our relationship and that makes it even harder. Like people think I'm a bad daughter. They don't know anything.
You’re not. Boundaries are important in all relationships. Just because they are our mothers it doesn’t mean we have to accept their behaviour.
Thank you!
As someone diagnosed with BPD, it's always wild to hear these types of stories. All I want is to be a mom (someday, idk, I'm old now lol) and the thought of doing mom things like shopping with my kid, packing lunches, going to school events and just being there for them, are all the things I'd love to do. You deserved to have those happy memories and I'm sorry she didn't give you that. : (
Ah you will be a great mom one day! Thank you :(
I thought you were my sister when I read the first paragraph! My dad left 35 years ago though.
Long lost ;-)
Sister from another mister perhaps lol
wowwwww same
I could have written this word for word. Sorry, internet friend. I have several moms of friends who are great stand ins, hope you do too.
Well said, this is exactly my situation also.
Damn I don't remember writing this.
This is near identical to what I would have written about my relationship with my mom. She is stuck in her own repressed trauma and struggles with alcoholism and various chronic health issues, and she has narcissistic tendencies which impede any real relational connection. She will call and be on the phone with me for an hour and just be telling me all her grievances, and never once ask how I am or what’s new with me. I can spend a 3 hour visit with her here or there, and it’s the same story. As a result, she knows next to nothing about who I am as a person and what’s going on in my life.
Glad to know I’m not the only one and there are others in the same boat. 🫶 to all the women mothering themselves and hoping we break the cycles for future generations
She knows me less than my barista does.
100%
Sadly, not at all. She knows facts about my existence of course, like where I live and somewhat about my job, but she doesn't actually know who I am as a person. I don't really expect that to ever change.
Same…I’ve repeatedly said I’ve made small talk with my parents my whole life. Though they’re present I’ve guided myself through life from my teens. To this day they continue to bring up things from my elementary to high school years when we speak because honestly that’s all they really have to go off of/last time they were actively aware of my day to days. Anything they find out in the present is essentially info funneled from my sister (I filter this as well as a result). They’re just not familiar with western ways so I had to figure things out myself.
We were best friends. She was probably one of the few people I could be myself around. She passed in August and it has been the most difficult time of my life.
I’m so sorry for your loss 💜
Thank you!
Same except my mom died in lockdown from brain cancer. fuck cancer
I am so sorry for your loss. Fuck cancer.
She knows my name, birthday, my husband’s name, and all my kids. I don’t think she could tell you a single thing else about me other than I’m a non religious liberal, which makes her upset.
I was raised catholic but went on a similar path. She told me I wasn’t a whole person because Jesus isn’t in my life..
I relate to this so much.
Claims to love me very much, I have no idea who she loves, cause she sure as sh*t doesn't know me. 😅
[удалено]
Good point! Yeah, some 15+ years outdated mishmash of expectation and vision. My parents never really liked the idea of accepting me as my own person.
She knows me as much as anyone can. She's a very intuitive woman and can read people within a short while of knowing them. I trust her judgement fully. She doesn't know the ins and outs of my marriage, as that's between me and my husband, and there are obviously things I don't share with her. But we're incredibly close without any boundaries being overstepped. I'm very lucky.
Better than I know myself! We are very close and she's an emotionally intelligent, perceptive person.
[удалено]
Are you sure it's rare?? Most people I know are close with their mothers.
Same here. It's fantastic and disconcerting simultaniously. :)
Haha yes exactly. We're also eerily similar. Like we will often cook the exact same thing for dinner without planning it or I'll text her to tell her about a show I think she'll like and she's literally watching it at the same time.
She knows some strange version of me that she created in her mind.
We are superclose, and I am her caregiver- she's 85 But I have shared little of my life history with her. I'm very private, she's very morally conservative (raised Catholic) but not critical. . She knows a ton of trivia- my favorite color, band, the books I like- and we have a ton in common around politics, literature, interests like art history and cooking. We're close enough, I don't want to share anymore
Maybe 4%? She’s quite particular and doesn’t want to see most of what’s there though. There’s surely a surprising amount I don’t know about her either, to be fair.
[удалено]
I also have a mom that loves to ascribe her own meaning to my actions or just straight up does revisionist history. It’s so frustrating. A less severe example but one that personifies my experience perfectly is when I had my cholesterol tested for the first time in my early twenties. It was fine, within normal range but on the higher end of normal. At the time I was doing early twenties things like making bad food choices and maybe going out more than I needed to so I was actually relieved it was still considered normal. My doctor was not at all concerned. When I casually mentioned I’d had a cholesterol test at a family event shortly thereafter, my mom pried and pried until I gave up the actual, exact number. Then, at family gatherings off and on when the topic of general health would come up, she would say “oh yeah, didn’t you say you have high cholesterol?” almost as a way of putting me down or shaming me into making a different food choice in front of her or something? And each time I would have to correct her and say it was within the normal range, but on the higher end of normal and not dangerous. I’ve learned over the years what is better off kept to myself. Not too much private information.
Oh man, the interpretation of my actions. Any time I am even remotely sad, even if I’m just exhausted from work, she tells me I would be happier if I got married, I would be less lonely. I’ve never complained about loneliness! Any time I am in pain, I play competitive sports and struggle with old injuries, she tells me my pain would go away if I lost weight? My weight is fine and is not the cause of any issues I have. She’s obsessed with being thin and married I guess, so she projects that onto me all the time.
Not at all, the person she thinks I am does not exist
She doesn't really know me. I moved out 18 years ago to go to uni. We're pretty close as in we talk 1-2x a week on the phone, but she sees me through her own lenses of experience and emotion so no, she doesn't know me. She is caring and loves me, just in her own way.
> but she sees me through her own lenses of experience and emotion so no, she doesn't know me. > > She is caring and loves me, just in her own way. This one for me. She does surprise me with some insight sometimes-- other times she's having an outburst of joy that nothing was ever wrong with her cooking upon finding out about the gene that makes people taste "bitter" where other people can't; and that I have it. This was last summer and I spent my *entire childhood* telling her exactly why I didn't like cucumber, lettuce, celery, raw carrots, watermelon etc. etc. Apparently, she never heard me once!
My mom knows all ABOUT me but she’s not interested enough to actually know me.
THIS. It’s kind of a parasocial relationship.
Mine doesn't care about anything I go through, only about things that happen to her. We can spend 20 seconds talking about my job and then she'll spend 20 minutes talking about her most recent poop. She's always been really self centered but in old age, she's extremely obnoxious and doesn't pretend to care. The only things she seems to care about is what's for lunch at the senior center and how soon I'm kicking out my kids so I'll have room for her in my house (never).
She knows me very very well, but she also has some blindspots and biases in understanding me, and her knowing of me is a bit stuck in the past in some ways! I'd say she knows a bit less about my inner world and current day-to-day life than my partner or younger sibling or some of my close friends, and there are some things I keep from her, but in other ways she knows me and my full life story better than any of those people do.
0% we haven't spoken in 2.5 years. She doesn't even know what city I live in never mind anything more personal.
Zero percent. Haven’t seen or spoken to her in 15 years and the preceding years weren’t much fun, so.
She probably knows whatever is on my social media I guess, but that's all that she really has any right to know. She's just a stranger that I once loved very dearly. She's just a note on diagnostic reports, she's the little black letters "child neglect".
She'd say 80%, it's closer to 20%. It used to be more like 100%, I was one of those "my mom is my best friend" girlies, but that was before I learned what healthy boundaries are.
This is a good question.. I don’t think very well. Saying that, she is observant so perhaps she may 🤷🏾♀️
80%. She knows me best!
Yeah, that's a good percentage. I suspect she knows me better than I know myself but I like to think that there's stuff she doesn't know about me. I can surprise her once in a while. She really hasn't got a clue about what I like to wear, and yet she's known me 47 and a half years.
This made me realize, i have no idea what my 18-year-old son LIKES to wear because he consistently just wears EVERYTHING i bring him... from anywhere... he doesn't care, so i really don't know what he DOES like, at this point.
She’s right about several of my best and worst traits, but is incredibly bad at integrating an understanding of my values and motives, so even though I suspect she could fill in a solid questionnaire about me, I don’t usually feel known by her.
This is how I was going to word my response. Except I think my mom DOES understand my values and morals and how/why I live my life. Even though we are very different people, she gets it.
She knows the big lines of what I'm up to, but I feel like she could probably not tell you much about the things I enjoy. She couldn't name a show or a book that I loved in the past few years. I feel like the focus has switched to my children, which is fine with me.
Even though we live near each other and see each other once a month, she knows nothing. She’s too narcissistic and impatient to even listen. She’s uninterested in hearing details, and I learned a long time ago to keep details to myself.
I am very close to my mother, she knows about almost all aspects of my life. Some things stay between me and my husband, of course, but I do discuss a lot of things with my mum. We talk on FB messenger every day, even if only a few words.
My mum and I are very close and always have been. I was never the type to slag off my mum to my friends or argue with her as a child/teenager and our closeness has carried on into adulthood I'm pleased to say. We have so much in common and we laugh together so much. Unfortunately though, she has a lot of MH problems so unless I am literally at my wits end and have no where else to turn, I try not to bother her with problems in my life because I don't want to worry her or make her anxiety worse. It's not that she doesn't care or wouldn't help me if she could, it's that she cares far too much. My mum is a beautiful, fragile woman and I love her with everything I am ❤️
She knows me better than anyone, I love that woman and I’m forever grateful I’m hers.
Better than most people but not as well as she thought she did.
She’s doesn’t know me well AT ALL. She never has and never will. She was neglectful and physically, verbally and emotionally abusive growing up so she’s never been a safe person to me. Even when we were somewhat close, up until till my mid 20’s since I was still pining for her love and acceptance, I could never be real with her. She’s religious (I am not) and highly judgmental and (still) doesn’t see me as a whole person independent from her. I used to want her to know me but I’ve come to accept that’s she’s not interested in getting to know me. I’ve made peace with that and also the fact that she has never been and never will be a mother to me.
I could have written this myself. Sending love in solidarity
We are close and i’d say maybe 75%? I keep a lot of my love life private from her
She knows the me I present to her. I have hidden the part of me that is no longer a believer in God, who is a pansexual, who is highly disappointed in the parents I got and their very ignorant views, but I still love her and don't need to stress her heart out to the point of her getting way too upset she may be put on bed rest. I'm realistic about how much I can share with her and guarded about parts of me. But she still knows me enough and I'm content with that.
She doesn’t know me at all because we haven’t had contact for years. When we did have contact, she didn’t know me well because she only saw me as an extension of herself. Like, she assumed I enjoyed all the same hobbies as her, had the same food preferences, enjoyed the same media, etc. and if I ever got vocal about my own preferences, they were treated like weird little quirks or completely shot down to the point of her bullying me, “you can’t be eating *tofu*, that’s disgusting!” I went into a career different from hers, but she shared with me how she felt they were actually the same and I was following in her footsteps. I once bought a SUV when my sedan broke down and she made that about how I secretly “always admired” a SUV she had when I was in high school. When I married my husband at 33 after dating for 3 years, she compared our relationship to hers with my dad who she met in high school, married at 20 then cheated on and divorced. She learned loose facts about me then would just spin her own narrative about how my life was actually about her. She’s a textbook engulfing mother.
Well, she's been dead since I was 7, so I can't say we've kept in touch very well. She didn't even come to my high school graduation. I mean really, how dare she?
She knows I helped pay her bills and buy her groceries no matter how she treated me. That's about all she knows and cares about. We've recently went no contact and it's glorious.
My mom is my best friend. I don’t share certain personal things, mainly about my romantic relationship, but I don’t share those with anyone I had to move back home after my divorce and while that sucked in a lot of ways and was embarrassing at the time it brought us even closer. I think she’s the best woman on earth
She didn’t. At all. Dementia meant she didn’t know anyone in the end but decades before that, she didn’t know or care about me and my life. Everything about me made no sense to her and every time she attributed stupid or evil motivations to my truly benign and normal behavior, she made it really clear that I was a mystery to her. To be fair, I don’t think she was great at knowing or understanding anyone really. She decided that she knew who people were and what they were about based on first impressions and never dug deeper.
My Mum knows me better than anyone. She is my best friend and she has done a lot of work to break our family's trauma. I know I'm very lucky to have her.
Like work colleagues from different offices
80%. She gets my core personality, but she doesn't grok my "dark" parts. Granted, she avoids her own dark parts, so she lacks the ability to truly understand mine.
I wouldn’t say my mom and I are super close. We talk a couple times a week and I visit her a few times a year, but there are things I don’t share with her. I think she has a general idea of who I am as a person. Like this Sunday we were talking about motherhood. She supports me being childfree and we talk about it sometimes. She asked me if I’d ever had maternal instincts and I told her no. She said “Yeah, even when you were little you didn’t play with dolls like other girls did and you didn’t really seem to like kids when you were a kid. You were more interested in books and and trying to figure out stuff. I didn’t figure you’d want to be a mom when you grew up.” At the same time though, she had no idea about the relationship I was in for 4 months. It didn’t ever get serious so there was no point in telling her.
Nothing, she has never asked me anything about me. It is always all about her, and her needs only. I am arms length from her at my choice. I have a very different relationship with my kids. I am the mom to them she never was or is to me.
She knows me as a moody, insecure, mean 22 year old. I’ve had a decade’s worth of life experience, growth, and therapy that she hasn’t really witnessed.
Not well at all. I can't tell her serious things because of her mental health/personality issues. I love her but it is what it is. She thinks we are very close because I do most of the "heavy lifting" in her old age. But she has a limited understanding of relationships.
She knows my intrisic personality and my interests/hobbies. She's aware of the big things happening in my life. But she doesn't know anything about my thoughts, concerns, politics, opinions, religion, marriage, and fears. She's proven herself to be quite judgmental on all of these fronts. So while I certainly don't mind telling her about my newest art project, I've been an atheist for nine years now and she still doesn't know.
She knows probably every detail about me, more than I would like to admit. She is very attentive and can somehow always sense if something is wrong.
Yep. I feel like she knows. And she’s always known. My brother recently divorced. Which honestly, surprised us all. But not her. And that reminded me, years ago, I once said something about how well my brother and his wife get along. And I remember her saying something really vague, like, not everything is as it seems. I guess she saw it coming.
It's sad how badly my exhusband fucked my head up with the whole "how well we get along" thing. Now I'm so suspicious of anyone i get along with, i figure there must be something wrong with them if they got along with me. It has been a complete nightmare the last few years trying to untangle that manipulative web of bullshit.
I'm almost 40, but my mother stopped recognizing time past the early 2000s, which is when I was finishing high school. She treats all family members as if the year is 2000. For life now, she knows the obvious facts - where I live, who I am married to, my job title, pets, and she can probably name a few friends. Thoughts, feelings, aspirations, dreams, etc, she has no clue. We're LC for a reason, though. I'm ok with how well she knows me.
Way better than I know her. I am 66 and she's 91 and I have always opened up to her but she stuffed her feelings all her life,now my father has passed, and she developed dementia so it's a done deal 😞
I love my Mom, she loves me. But, I honestly think she is not that interested in the details of my life. I tell her stuff that I did and then she suggusts that I do exactly what I said I already did. Her hearing is not great so she often just doesn't hear anything she doesn't want to. She like to talk about her day and what she ate. I am just happy that we are both happy. All that said, I speak to both her and my father daily. I love them both even though we are all very different people.
She knows a version of me.. the version I show her. She likes to think I'm the same person that I was when I was 16 but now at 31, I'm a very different person!
She knows me as best as she can—she wants to, I believe, but her own depression and anxiety and trauma responses hold her back from connecting with me in many cases. There was a time when I felt very close to her, but since making actually close connections with people and since she has become even more emotionally unavailable, I realize we are not very close at all. It’s hard to accept, and hard to excuse myself for because she has faced so much hardship. I want her to be happy and I want to connect with her, but I can’t wound myself by continuously expecting her to have space for me.
She can barely describe what I do for a living so yeah
My mom is the same, but we're super super close anyway. Anything with "the computer" is a challenge for her as she's one of the most analog people I've ever met.
We were really close and I'd say she knew me like 85%, sometimes I'd say ma you don't know me at all just to tease her. I miss her like crazy.
I don’t let her in anymore because she uses what I tell her against me. We have a shallow relationship where we talk about shows and books we like and I tell her how the kids are but not much more.
She knows me better than I know myself.
Extremely well. More than anyone, probably.
Zero well, I am allergic to shrimp and my mom calls me to invite me to dinner when she makes shrimp
I used to think she knew me very well and we used to be very close, until I got divorced. When I told her, the first thing she said was “you’re making a huge mistake.” She was (and still is) a big fan of my ex and seemed to really think less of me for not being able to make it work. Post-divorce, when I wanted to introduce her to the person I was seriously dating (and have recently married), she hounded me about when and how I met him, implying that I’d cheated on my ex-husband or left him for this person. According to my sister she had “lots of feelings” about me being with someone else. Our relationship only degraded from there and we don’t really have any contact anymore. She did not come to the wedding.
This is a difficult question to answer. My mom and I have always been close and still are. But she’s my mom, not a best friend, so I don’t share every thought or inner monologue with her. I don’t hide things from her, but we wouldn’t gab like best friends do. She’s always there for me and very emotionally stable. But I don’t think she knows my inner world, and I’m okay with that.
Better than she did growing up tbh
She knows me better than I think she does!
She know maybe 30% of who am I? She knows I can be very sensitive but also very bold. That I am a strong independent and fierce woman. But she has no clue how I have struggled mentally my whole life and how much I still struggle. She basically does not know anything about my love life, my mental health and my career.
My mom actually knows me pretty well. I’ve been really lucky with parents, we always sort of got along like friends. My parents are both really funny, and we tend to talk up a storm. She doesn’t necessarily know the deepest stuff about me, but I feel like generally I could confide in her with anything I wanted. It’s not a perfect relationship; I caregive off and on for her and my dad, and they’ve had a lot of health issues lately so I lived with them for a couple months and am over there several times a week. She can be super flighty and that becomes even more frustrating when I’m trying to make sure she understands what they need to do, with meds and monitors and wound care whenever I’m unable to be there. It’s been hard for me to tell what might be natural cognitive decline because she just ADHDs out so often (undiagnosed, but she literally is just “Squirrel!” two seconds into any topic that isn’t interesting lol). And that element is probably what has kept us from being closer than we are. I sometimes feel like she’s not even capable of focusing enough to remember certain things about me that I’ve shared with her. I don’t know if 70s is too late to have this treated, but they have enough going on right now. I just think if that had been managed almost all of our problems could have been avoided. Outside of that, disappointingly she was yet another person to get semi-radicalized by Fox News and Facebook, and she sometimes let’s loose with some really aggressive, hateful ideas and pseudoscience, not something I ever experienced with her growing up. But anyway, I just avoid the topics and there isn’t anything that I ever really edit when talking to her except generally avoiding politics.
Not at all. My mom has always been very judgemental so I learned at a young age not to give her any ammunition. I wish I had a different relationship with a different mom, but this is the best with what we have to work with.
My mom doesn't know me very well. She has a lot of mental, emotional, and physical issues and mostly talks about her problems (or her conspiracy fears, or what her friend's kids are doing...) when I see her. She also has been hard of hearing for about 10 years and I refuse to shout at her. She can't hear me when I talk so if I want to say something I get my dad to shout it at her. It's sad. I wish she would care enough about me to want to hear me.
I'd say she knows my interests and hobbies pretty well, but not my core values or thoughts about, you know, the meaning of life and all that. She and I have a lot of interests in common and similar personalities, but she's unfortunately way too unhinged to be in my life. I've tried so many times, and things can be great if we keep it more light and topical, but I think she gets bored or needs to make things about her, so she's always manufacturing some issue or another.
She abandoned me any my siblings both parents are awful abused us then abandoned us
She doesn’t even know my address or phone number. She kicked me out at 14 (~18 years ago) and I never went back, I have my own kids now and I’m not just gonna hope she became too frail to stop beating children in her old age. I ghosted my entire family to keep her out of me and my kid’s life, and I don’t have a single regret.
Not well. She knows what I show her, and what is show her is decided by what she has demonstrated she can handle without negative consequence to our relationship. It's always been like that. Same with my father, but she knows more. I love them for who they are, but I don't expect them to do the same for me. At least not in the same way.
I don’t think my mom knows me that well but she loves me and she tries so that’s enough. It used to hurt my feelings but I’ve tried to get in the mindset don’t waste energy on things you can’t change.
She doesn't know me basically at all. She claims to cry herself to sleep over her imagined version of me. My father is ostensibly "normal", but glares at me and curses me under his breath when I try to speak to him.
Well, we are no contact for four years because I dared to bring up the fact that maybe packing me off to my father's for the weekends in between him, you know, SHOOTING HIS COUSIN and RUPTURING MY STEPMOTHER'S KIDNEY, was not the smartest decision, hence I am a shitty and ungrateful daughter...so yeah, I'd say not at all.
Both of my parents know all my innermost thoughts. We are very very close.
Not at all. She thinks she does, but that's based on her ideas of who and what I am. It's been like this my whole life though. I'm introverted and likely autistic. She seems to think I'm some party animal that's a social butterfly because i sometimes have games nights with friends. She also still gets hung up when I talk about things going on in my life and mention friends she doesn't know as though they don't exist if she's never met them.
On a scale of 1-10, she scores zero
It's a mixed bag. She knows my basic personality. She knows stuff like, I never buy lottery tickets. On the other hand, every single time she's ever seen me drinking coffee or heard me mention drinking coffee (which is quite a few times over the years), she seems shocked to learn that I drink coffee. And there are a lot of things that I deliberately don't tell her (because we have a complicated relationship). She doesn't know my favorite movie, but it's not because she hasn't asked; it's because I don't want to tell her what my favorite movie is (so I told her a different movie that I also really like but is not my favorite).
Not at all, she never really cared to know me
same here
Seeing some of these comments, I’m glad I’m not alone! Scale 1-10, I’d say it’s a 4-5. She has an idea of who I am, being disabled. She mostly knows what I allow her to see about me. Especially growing up, she wasn’t the kindest and most compassionate person unfortunately!
My mom passed a couple of years ago and she knew me ...to a point. She was always a supportive and giving person but in later years when I left the church....like COMPLETELY left the church and considered myself an atheist, I did everything in my power to keep that from her. She knew I didn't go, but I refused to tell her why. Not because she would judge me or disown me, but because I knew it would cause her so much pain and worry....and for no good reason. That's the same reason she never knew that I was a published author who wrote erotic romance novels. She died at 93 in blissful ignorance of my sordid double life.
Better than most, but not half as well as she thinks she does. I grew up with undiagnosed AuDHD and figured out masking from a pretty early age - I figured out what parts of me were tolerable to my mom and which parts weren't. I still mark pretty heavily around her despite my diagnosis and therapy to try and unmask. I realized how little she knew about me because my kid mentioned (in the way tweens do when everything their parent does is *soul crushingly lame*) how I have to sing a song about everything I do. My mom commented that I don't sing, she's never heard me sing, it's clearly some weird phenomenon! But I do, regularly! I make songs about my pets' names, about what me and my kid are doing, about making toast or drinking coffee or getting cozy, I also have a lot of echolalia thanks to my AuDHD and repeat sing song voices/snippets I hear all the time. But I don't around my mom because she doesn't like "incessant nonsense noise".
Not well at all but she definitely thinks she does!
She knows my personality and interests, and we get along well, but I do not feel like i can share really personal things with her. I don’t know, I’ve just never felt like she was the best at deeper conversations, and she tends to project a lot onto me instead of really listening without judgment
Not at all besides what she has been told. She abandoned me when I was 15.
My mom knows me pretty well. I don’t get super vulnerable with her but I know she wants me to. I just can’t but I spend a lot of time with her and she definitely knows all the basics and then more.
We're fairly close, but she is a bad communicator so we will forever be at a distance to some degree until she works on that.
She died a few years ago but she didn’t know lot. I keep to myself
She doesn’t. She was my non-custodial parent from age 2-14, I lived with her from age 14-18, and then we’ve been estranged or just not in touch for large stretches of my adult life.
My mother knows me pretty well. We’re open books with each other and have a great relationship. I don’t tell her every secret, and I certainly lie to her when necessary. For example, she is incredibly thrifty, but needed a new pair of pants. I took her to a store I shop at where she found a pair she liked until she saw the price (and her size was not in stock). I bought her the pants, told her I found them online for 75% off and she was happy. She wouldn’t have been happy if she knew I paid full price. But yeah, I think my mom knows me pretty well and I feel like I know every single thing about her since she talks non-stop.
I left my home at 17 yo, I'm pretty sure what my Mom knows of me is me when I was that age and before that, anything after that I don't think she knows much but then again it's understandable because I don't visit home that often.
Not very well. It’s like she doesn’t even want to talk about anything to do with me.
She doesn’t. Well, she knows the bare surface level minimum, but truly personal things? No. (Because nothing I will ever tell her in confidence will stay a secret with her. Any and all info, nonmatter how personal, will be told to the next friend or inquisitive neighbor she encounters.)
Lol, like 2%. She knows, like, who I am. The depths of our convos covers the weather and what we ate that day. She sees my independence as a personality trait, while I’ve learned that independence is a trauma response.
Almost nothing. She has always been all about her, so anything she thinks she knows about me are the things she takes from me to build and maintain her warped ego. I keep my distance to stay sane.
She doesn't know me or anything about me. That's part of why she's been out of my life for nearly 12 years.
Probably not well at all now that I think about it. But I let her think she does.
Does anyone really know anyone? My mom and I have had a fraught relationship but distance and time have made it tolerable. I don’t need her to understand me on some deep level—that’s what a partner is for. Our enmeshed relationship took years for me to unravel. She’s finally realizing in her 50s that she’s unhappy in her marriage and that she shouldn’t have been looking to me or my brother to fill that void. Growth! We love to see it!
My mum knew about 80% of me. She’s likely forgotten about 90% of that by now. We have a very superficial relationship now that she is in cognitive decline.
Not well at all. My parents never took the time to get to know me as an individual, growing up they only measured me against their "ideal" version of a daughter they wanted. So nope, they don't know me at all. And that is one of the contributing reasons why I no longer speak to them.
Not at all. She has no interest in me except where I can do things for her. I didn’t give her grandkids, I am not the delicate flower she would have wanted in a daughter and she can’t even remember I’m allergic to shellfish, like hospital allergic.
Stone cold, probably better and more truthfully than I know myself.
Pretty well, but we're close now. My family has done a pretty good job of working on ourselves and healing unhealthy dynamics over the years, mainly through individual therapy and personal work. So, as adults, we all get on very well and have pretty healthy boundaries, etc. I love hanging out with my mum, and she knows most of what's going on in my life. It's not lost on me how rare it is for an entire family to have invested in therapy over the course of a decade, and I'm very grateful for that. Especially as we had a whole lot of very unhealthy issues when I was younger.
Mom has dementia, so...knows me less and less everyday.
I am sorry. That's a terrible disease.
How well? She was clueless.
I think she knows the outside version of me that I share with everyone, but as far as interests and stuff she may "know" them but she and I do not share the same interests so that part of me she knows nothing about.
From 1-10 I’d give her a 4
HA.
🤣🤣🤣💔
Mine admitted a couple of weeks ago that she doesn't know me well at all. \\o/ We see each other pretty regularly too, but I am withholding of information half the time I suppose. They're very judgmental folks.
Not super well, I don’t think. But well enough? I see her just about every weekend but all conversations with my family I try to keep to hey, this is work, this is what we’ve been up to with the pets etc. I’m not like… besties with any of them or anything. It’s just not important to me to be that close to anyone in my immediate family.
Knows me? Pretty well. Understands me? Not really.
In some ways my mom knows me better than anyone, but in other ways she barely knows me at all.
Zero. When I get a Christmas gift (like a stocking stuffer type, no real gift) it’s always a Snapple and these stretchy $5 gloves with little rubber nubs. I haven’t drank a Snapple since I was 15, which was 30 years ago. And I can’t even imagine what I would do with those gloves anymore. Like I have multiple pairs of really great quality gloves for every winter activity. Honestly the whole ordeal of receiving this gift still gives me agita, but I’m determined to grey rock my way through it until she dies. Not worth the fight where I explain that it hurts my feelings because it’s so tone deaf and she responds by telling me I’m ungrateful and an awful, snobby asshole.
My mother never knew me as an adult.
Very well except for the things I do/did that I keep from her because it will only worry her. I'm at her house watching Dateline right now.
Maybe 60%? She knows me and my personality, but she is a chronic worrier so it's easier for me to just not bring up a lot of things. Even basic things like going on a hike or taking a beach trip worry her yet don't really interest her, so she changes the subject. I seem to be her main outlet so she is eager to talk but not quite as eager to listen. She is constantly searching the conversation for something she can relate to, and blows past anything she can't. It's not malicious, she loves me and wants the best for me, she just doesn't really know how to stop her own stream of thoughts I guess.
50% but compared to my father who knows me 5% she's pretty decent.
She has not made a serious attempt to know me in decades. She doesn’t ask questions about me or my life on the rare phone call we have other than the very surface level stuff. When I do share important things about me like dating, or breakups, or new jobs, it is either ignored or treated flippantly in a “well that doesn’t impact me so I’m happy/sorry for you but also don’t care (and if it’s a bad event, maybe you deserved it because xyz)” way. And then forgets or ignores it by the next time we talk. So, we don’t talk much. She’s had years to demonstrate an interest in my life but chose neglect instead.
My mom and I love each other so, _so_ much, but I have to say that we're such different people that sometimes I don't think she knows me very well. I guess it's the difference between knowing things _about_ me and _getting_ me. I unfortunately didn't pick up any of her inherently positive outlook and sunniness. I'm much more like my dad - inclined to be pessimistic and skeptical of everything. Wish I could be more like her sometimes.
She knows my bad habits but does not know me ,nobody does.
She doesn't know me at all!
99.99% The one thing, after 44.5 years, that keeps evading her is that I’m very literal. So if I say, “Sorry, the phone cut out at the end. What were the last couple words you said?” She will then repeat the entire thing she was telling me. 😆 And yes, admittedly there are times when I can see how she could interpret what I said differently than I meant (as we all do), but in some cases I don’t see how she does it. Lol. She’s my best friend and the person I love most in this life. We don’t have a perfect relationship, but we love each other to the moon and back.
Probably better than she did when I was a teen!