I hate my daughter
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Stupid question, but have you ever tried to discuss and clarify the past with your daughter? even if its a difficult situation of listening to her grievances about the situation only?
You won't be around forever, you should try and make peace regardless of the past(same for your daughter but she's not the one posting :) ).
Life is very short for such things to take away valuable family time together.
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Your son and daughter are two separate people. They will each have had their own experiences and will have acted and reacted to those experiences differently. It is unfair to dismiss your daughter's experiences of growing up and her teenage years by pointing to your son and thinking "we'll he's OK".
Your daughter might be totally and completely unreasonable. Or she might have very valid reasons for believing what she believes about you. She is a different person, with a different personality and different perspective to your son. Your son might not be as bothered by how your partner treated you, and them. That doesn't mean your daughter is wrong. It just means your son coped differently. Maybe he didn't notice as much. Maybe he wasn't targeted by your partner in the same way. Maybe he was, but was oblivious to what was actually going on.
You are very dismissive of your daughter's feelings. You list off a long list of all the things you've done for her. But much of what you listed are standard things a mother does for her children.
You are both adults now and if you are to have any chance of having a relationship you both need to put your own perceptions aside. There is a whole lot of anger and neither of you seem to be willing to let your defenses drop to make allowances for the other.
It is often said that children who grow up in an abusive household blame the victim of the abuse for subjecting them to that life rather than the perpetrator of the abuse. The child looks to you to be their protector, even though you were not in a position to protect them, or yourself. When you "fail" to protect them the anger is directed at you, the easier target. You brought a man into your children's life who was abusive. You were obviously a victim of that control and abuse yourself and as we all know it's not easy to break free from that. However, from your daughter's perspective, she was a teenager. She had no control over the situation. She had no alternative. She had no choice. This man was brought into her life and allowed to abuse you, her, her brother etc. She can't blame him, because he simply doesn't care. So she blames you. Because you're the closest thing to her. It's not fair. It's not your truth. But it is her perspective. It's her truth. It's her lived experience.
It's going to be a very difficult road to travel if you want to unpick all the hurt. It might be something that you can come together on and work through. Or it might be something that you two are never able to address head on together. Time, age and wisdom might change her perspective and she might come to realise that life isn't ideal and black/white. I know as a mother in my 40s I have a much better understanding of my own mother now. In my 20s and even my 30s I wouldn't have appreciated her life and experiences as comparable to my own. Now as a mother of teenagers, and a woman with a bit more life experience under my belt I can appreciate everything my mother has done and continues to do for us all.
Your daughter might come to that point herself someday. Or she might never. But there's not a whole lot you can do if she refuses to engage with you. Have you ever had counselling for yourself? A trip to your GP might be a worthwhile visit. There is a a lot of history there, and a lot of hurt. If you can start with dealing with that yourself then your relationship with your daughter might follow. But if not, then at least you will have addressed your own issues and hopefully be able to make peace with them.
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My mother was married again when I was 7. I was scared at that time. They were apart when I was 9 and she was married again when I was 11.
I was scared becoz she never really introduced stepfather to me properly.
She thinks I was a child I don’t know anything so she didn’t believe there’s need to talk to me.
I was so scared in my childhood and teen life. Becoz I don’t feel secure.
And that was the time kids need their moms the mostly. Not when they are grown up they can look after themselves.
you made her felt insecure and upset Her feelings. And made her felt she was abandoned.
you need to put a lot of effort to regain that trust. Lady!
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I’ve read through this whole thread and really had my eyes opened about the effects of a difficult marriage/abusive partner on kids.
but I just can’t get past this. If the daughter has legitimate reasons to resent the OP and not want her in her life, why did she take money from her for a deposit and avail of all the free babysitting. She can’t have it both ways - either the OP has callously disregarded her daughter’s wellbeing (abusive ex etc etc) and the daughter has legitimate grounds for cutting her out of her life and not trusting her to care for the grandkids OR the daughter is just a user.
my gut reaction is the latter but I have to say that the responses defending the daughters actions have been enlightening.
OP, no matter what, you need to try to establish a healthier relationship with your daughter. Could a trusted 3rd party (maybe an uncle or aunt that has a good relationship with both of you help persuade her to do some family counselling with you.
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I think there's a massive difference between marrying a partner and dating a partner.
The guy was on the scene 2 years of that it was only every second or third weekend he stayed with them.
The daughter also lived with her dad. On a week on week off basis.
I just can't help but feel if the relationship was so abusive, so toxic why she wouldn't say, actually I want to live with my dad full time....or at the very least have some sort of discussion.
She was a teenager at the time, teenagers tend to speak their mind.
Also if it was so bad how come the father didn't notice....if there was a new adult in my children's life I'd definitely be asking subtle questions and keeping an eye and ear on the situation.
To me it feels like the daughter might be feeling her life hasn't turned out the way she wanted ...from the sounds of it career wise anyway.....so she's looking for someone to blame. She can't take responsibility for herself so she's pinning everything bad in her life on her mother's toxic relationship with an ex boyfriend. It's the easiest thing in the world to blame someone else for our own shortcomings.
The mother has acknowledged the situation and apologized. She can't go back and change the past.
To me it sounds like the daughter wants to have someone she can control and dominate and each time the mother doesn't dance to the daughter's tune she gets hit with..."when I was 15 you did x y and z to me"
The mother is living in some sort of purgatory.
Also it needs to be remembered that while the daughter may feel justified in what she's saying, the guy is still her little brother's dad. No one should have to listen to their dad being run into the ground by another person...even if it is justified... he's still the boys dad and the only one he'll ever have.
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There are two co-existing things here. OP, your daughter is treating you terribly. There’s no excuse for it. That stonewalling and denying access to the grandkids is in itself a trauma.
She’s also playing out some deeply painful and unresolved trauma of her own, probably unwittingly. Rojastar’s post is brilliantly insightful and struck a chord. That parent-child relationship at such a precarious age is so important, it sets the scene for the rest of the child’s life both in how she will feel about herself and in her own future relationships.
I had a family trauma at a similar age that resulted in a total lack of emotional support or parenting from both parents. They were scrambling and I got caught in the crossfire. I was left to sit alone as my world crumbled around me, taking with it my sense of safety, sanity, my sense that there was an adult in the room to support me and nurture me through.
I can’t tell you the profound impact that has had on my adult life, from relationships to career choices to depression, self sabotage, extreme loneliness. It’s not something that’s easily articulated - I’ve spent most of the last 20 years thinking I had a “great” childhood because of all the material things I had, while grappling these repressed feelings until I started therapy a few years ago. Even now, I’ll find myself latching onto seemingly trivial events - like your daughter and the anger she has towards you for going on holiday without her - as a way to try to add logic, reason, a timeline, a moment, anything TANGIBLE to what is just this enormous, engulfing wound. A dark hole of abandonment, rejection and emotional neglect I have for the void in parenting during a really traumatic time in my childhood.
Im not saying this to guilt you OP as I know you feel terrible. And the thing about life is that it’s complicated - more so with family. Another set of co-existing truths - you did the best you could do at the time but it wasn’t enough. I’m going to guess that your daughter isn’t working through these issues and the pain is manifesting through this raging anger she has towards you. I have a sister like that and we have a difficult relationship. I’ve had to set boundaries, she’s not currently talking to me. It’s hard. It’s hard even when there’s a mutual commitment to working on this stuff - virtually impossible without that.
All i can advise you to do is to invest some time unpicking this stuff with a trained professional. Your daughter may not, but it might help you at least to understand, have compassion and forgiveness. If at some stage she decides to come back. Meeting her with anger and defensiveness is not going to help to heal this relationship.
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My reading of this is, she is happy to use you when she wanted a deposit for a house, she probably got the same from her dad only never told either of you. She’s happy to use you for babysitting but she wants to give nothing in return. Face it you got to mind the kids but not spend time with her.
She probably resents you for breaking up with her dad and him moving out. She needs to learn life is not that simple.
I’ve seen this with one other family, there is no logic to it and there is no way for you to fix it only she can do that. All you can do is keep sending the gifts for the kids and hopefully when they are older they will want to see you. As your other kids get older they probably will have kids and hopefully you’ll be included in their lives. Will your daughter excuse herself from events and exclude her children from seeing their cousins because you are there, who knows.
I would say one thing, if you apologise again you are only validating her grudge, don’t, this one is on her. She threw the toys out of the pram for 40 euros. She needs to make amends not you. She's robbed her children of a relationship with their grandmother. If you apologise she’ll never learn and keep doing it.
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There's a lot none of us know here. For all we know the abusive ex also abused the daughter and the OP was oblivious to it at the time and has been being "punished" for it by her daughter who blames her for it. Or less dramatically, the daughter resents a childhood during which her mother prioritised (at least for a time) a relationship with a man she now describes as abusive over her relationship with a daughter that was still probably reeling from her parents separation.
I've noticed a trend that people quickest to use the "how dare you speak to me like that?" schtick tend to be the ones who most need to listen to what's just been said to them instead of immediately going on the offensive themselves in the mistaken belief that offense is the best form of defence and that it's more important to "win" than to listen to the potentially valid viewpoint of the other person (even it it's put hurtfully or too bluntly). Perhaps there's an element of that playing out here OP? You're objecting to the way something is being said instead of hearing the thing that's being said in a hurtful fashion?
It may just be that the OP's daughter has seen a happier ideal of what family life can be in her new husband's family and is ashamed of her own past and dealing with it badly by trying to keep her mother at a distance and going on the attack when called on it. None of us know, from the sounds of it, not even the OP.
Family counselling could be worth a shot if your daughter is open to it but don't go in with any naieve notions that such sessions will be all about the therapist validating your world view and telling your daughter how to do better. It'll be a hard path for all involved and with many uncomfortable things to be said, and heard, by all involved.
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she had the youngest christened last week and invited everybody from both sides of the families but excluded me.
I feel resentful towards those who went knowing I was excluded, I cried pretty much the entire day
Today I can honestly say I hate my daughter, despise the nasty, hurtful, spiteful person she has become. I dont even know what my youngest Grandchild looks like and the older girl will have forgotten me and we loved spending time together. It has split the family in two but I dont think I can ever forgive her for how shes behaved.
This is very sad. You say it has split the family in two. You say it is about a holiday that you left her out of 15 years ago, but it's clearly far more than that now. Otherwise it would be just her excluding you, but it seems like your whole family is also excluding you too?
I think you need a mediator. someone that your daughter respects, and you also respect, to be a peacemaker between you. If there's no-one like that, then a professional counsellor could also take that role.
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I stopped reading at this part " I wasn't Mary Poppins but my kids never went without, they had holidays each year, they were dressed in the latest fashion "
Adding that sentence alone in your post is a huge red flag, why say that ? do you think giving your kids holidays & the latest fashion is what they need from a mother ,why is it relevant
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Is there any chance that this all stems from her father demonising you in order to absolve himself of any responsibility regarding the separation?
Post edited by Curious_Case on1 -
Ok I have one more comments.
the way OP used to treat her daughter, was she spoilt? might give her daughter an idea that she is trying to make up for the broken marriage. And she take granted for everything?
then op mentioned her attitude changed since she had a relationship. So I wonder if the son in law side have some influence?
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From the information given here it does seems that your daughter is a little spoilt in my opinion.
She wants nothing to do with you, until she needs deposit, babysitter etc.. Wants her cake and eat it I think
Has she made any effort to pay back deposit ? it seems strange that it has got worse since this and moving in with his family
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