Vying for love

I have a friend, who is now a grown women with children of her own, who is still vying for the attention of her mother.

It's sad to have watched how it played out over the course of many years. I remember having conversations with the mother about how detrimental her parenting towards her daughter was. Sadly it fell on deaf ears.

This situation was a case of the mother spoiling her daughter, letting her daughter call the shots, wanting to be liked by her daughter, then having these emotional breakdowns when the daughter's behavior got too overwhelming, then backing down and caving in when the daughter got upset by the yelling and potential discipline.
The daughter grew up not really knowing how to get her own children to behave, though like the rest of us she does the best she can with the knowledge she has on hand.

As an adult she's in a situation where her mother doesn't like a lot of choices she makes and is quite judgmental about the life she leads. She feels like she doesn't have her mother's support or unconditional love... and she's right. She doesn't.

Watching it from the outside, it's heartbreaking because the daughter is the way she is because of her mother yet the mother has no concept of this and does not acknowledge the part she played. To her it's all her daughters fault and it always has been because she was 'such a difficult child'. A tragedy outlined in one of my earlier blogs about the role parents play in shaping their children into decent, respectful adults.

The daughter rants about how hard done by she is and how judgmental and un-supportive her mother is and her mother rants about how selfish and self-absorbed the daughter is. While both still want to be accepted and loved by the other. Neither have ever acknowledged their role in driving the relationship into the swamp. Each blame the other for the way things are.

As adults it's up to us to make the most of what we've been dealt. We can't keep blaming our parents for our crappy lives because once we leave home we are responsible for the lives we create.

Vying for the attention of a mother who never quite showed you she loved you is futile, just as vying for the attention of daughter who resents you for her lot in life.