OK, I've got a bit of time; I'm going to try. Be warned, this is likely to be long and wandering, and I may have to drop it before editing, and will then come back to it later.....
Background to this is that I never really felt that my mother loved me -- that is a harsh thing to say, but it's true. My mother says that she just never had any idea of what I wanted, that she didn't know what to give me. That's been something going on for years, not just in yesterday's conversation.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't abused, just "benignly" neglected. My parents were too busy with their own dramas to really worry about any of us.
I called her because of something I think Bewildered put in her post (sorry if it was someone else) about one of the most intimate things two people can do is tell each other exactly what it is that they need the other to do to meet their needs. I thought about my r with my mother, about the fact that my MIL has alzheimer's and can no longer be there in any way for anyone, and thought that I'd try again with my own....
That is the relevance to "being a better person" -- learning to actually ask for what I need. I thought I'd start with her, and maybe a great benefit of this would be an improved relationship with her and lots of healing of past hurts for me.
I was always a sensitive child; one thing that my mother used to say to me even when I was very young was that I was "too sensitive" -- that it was my own fault that I felt bad. And that just made me feel worse. Unaccepted.
Now the background here is that my mother has the skin of a rhinoceros. She also has the gift of re-writing history, and honestly just forgets all the bad stuff.
All things which make life easier for her. I can get angry and resentful about that, but that is her and I'm not going to change it.
Now I'm not sure if I'm any more super-sensitive than anyone else, I think it's that my mother is super UN-sensitive. She said very tellingly last night that it also means that she doesn't feel happiness and joy in great measure either, she just lives life in the middle.
So I started telling her very specifically what I wanted in a given situation. And gave some examples of how she had done that in the past, and one very glaring one of where she had gone totally the other way. I was careful to say that my hurt feelings weren't her FAULT, but that I had found her behaviour hurtful.
The biggest shock was hearing that she had absolutely no memory of that time. It wasn't just one conversation, either, it was a whole two-week period. She was blazingly angry at me, blaming me for all sorts of things that I had no idea about. She just said that she always thought of how nice it had been to visit me. And the truth was that she had enumerated exactly how bad a hostess I had been, telling me that I hadn't washed her sheets frequently enough, that the food wasn't good enough, that there weren't fresh flowers in her room, and much, much more. The result of that was that we again didn't speak for a long time, and that she didn't come to visit for something like 5 years. When about 6 months later I tried to apologise for my part in it all (I was willing to take the blame for everything but one incident), she just brushed it aside. I now know that she really, really didn't remember it at all.
(when she did come next, I pulled out all the stops and put the rest of life on hold for the duration. I had no idea that she didn't remember the previous time....)
Shocking, really.
But that is a digression -- interesting possibly only in that it may be similar to what our MLC spouses do.....
But the bit about becoming a better person is that we talked, not about blaming each other for past transgressions, but about how we would do it better in the future. Specifically, how she would try to meet my needs in the future, but more crucially, what I would expect. I completely owned the fact that I may have always been expecting things that just weren't possible.
The thing that I found amazing was that the minute that she acknowledged that I had been hurt and that she wanted to do something to meet my needs the next time I saw her, I felt a flood of forgiveness. I have been looking for that for years.
She didn't crawl -- she said very plainly for me to tell me what I needed, and we talked about how that would be possible. She said she couldn't do anything about the fact that she didn't remember -- and that's true. She said it most likely was a way for her to cope with all sorts of hardships that life has dealt.
She didn't say that she would try to change. And I think that's crucial. She just said that we would work to try to meet my needs being the people that we are.
Now there is still a ways to go, but I will start by calling her again today and telling her that just acknowledging my needs was a big thing for me. She said that "somehow we never give you what you need even if you say -- probably because you always seem so capable, so we just think you'll be OK". Backhanded compliment, I know.
So I continued repeating very specifically what I would need. It felt a little odd at first, but became easier. I stopped expecting her to "know". I realise that she is never going to be the type of mother that I would have wanted, but if we can do this we'll have come a long, long way.
So through this I do hope that I can become a better person, better in being able to express what I need from someone.
Right, gotta run, this is unedited, more later....
OK, it's later....
Not much to add, only that I know with her that I will have to continually express what I need. Perhaps that is what we need to learn to do with everyone, rather than blindly expecting them to do what we think is right.
This was really an eye-opener.
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Becoming a better person?