how to move forward with my mom? F23 and F54
Opening up to my mom has always been difficult for me. I find it much easier to open up to friends, boyfriends, and even my dad. Something about my relationship with my mom feels different. I’m always afraid of how she’ll react to things. Her responses often be disappointment, judgment, or contempt.
Our conversations tend to stay very surface level. We almost never talk about emotions or anything deeply personal. She always says she’s there for me and doesn’t understand why I “hide” things from her, but I constantly feel anxious and nervous around her. I think a big reason for that lately is how judgmental she’s always been about my dating life.
I didn’t have my first boyfriend until I was 18, and instead of seeming happy that I had finally met someone, she mostly made me feel guilty for spending time with him because it meant she would be alone. My second boyfriend was when I was 21, and the judgment only intensified because he lived in a different country and we were long distance.
Now I’m almost 23 and in my third relationship. He’s also in a different country (but we met at my school in America) and he’s moving to America next year. This is the most nervous I’ve ever been to talk to her about someone I’m dating. It took me a long time to finally tell her about him because I already knew she wouldn’t approve. I told her about him about a month ago, and we haven’t talked about him since.
I’m going next month to visit him, and I still haven’t told her because I know she’ll be upset. She knows I was considering going, but she’s never once asked questions about him or shown any interest in getting to know him. All I feel from her is judgment, and it hurts because it feels unfair. It shouldn’t always have to be my responsibility to bring up what’s happening in my life. She could show interest too.
Then she gets upset that I don’t tell her things, but she makes it so hard to feel comfortable opening up. It was manageable when I was away at college, but now that I’m living at home for the summer, we interact almost every day. Everything feels awkward, like there’s something both of us want to say but can’t. It’s gotten to the point where I try to avoid her as much as possible.
I feel lost. Part of me wants to try to have adult conversations with her about this but another part of me just wants to shut her out. But I fear shutting her out more will just grow the tension. She doesn’t have a lot of people in her life (she’s divorced, my sister and I are soon moving out, she’ll be living alone), so i’m not sure if this is all rooted in a fear of abandonment or something. I hate the feeling of hiding something but also something in my mind is constantly telling me not to tell her things. some days i just sit with a pit in my stomach trying to build the courage to talk to her about something other than “how was your day?”.
TL;DR: I’ve always struggled to open up to my mom because I fear her judgment and reactions. She says she wants me to tell her things, but whenever it comes to my relationships, I feel met with disappointment instead of support or interest. Now that I’m living at home again, the tension and lack of communication between us feels worse than ever, and it’s gotten to the point where I avoid her because I don’t know how to fix our relationship.