Listening post on LiveJournal<\/a> argument I wrote a very long piece that I saved to think about whether to post or not. The post was so long that I would have put it online in five parts. After thinking about this post for several days, I decided that posting it wouldn’t accomplish anything. The person that I most would have wanted to read it can’t read anything I write without interpreting it in some harshly negative way. I am saving the bulk of it for another time and another place. The short of it is this post.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
That exchange with my daughter brought up old unpleasant memories of
\nmy marriage to her father. This was the kind of argument that her
\nfather and I would have. Nothing would be resolved. The situation that
\ngave rise to the argument would not change. Six months later we’d have
\nthe same argument again. And so it went … on and on till I left and
\nthen till he stopped talking to me a year later. Other than the
\nimpossibility of being able to be a team as parents from that point on
\nand its impact on all of our lives due to that, the consequences of his
\ndecision were good.<\/p>\n
I know the difference now between that kind of arguing and a healthy
\nargument. In my second marriage we do have arguments but we resolve
\nthings! I noticed this early on in my relationship with my current
\nhusband. It is such a relief to have an argument that can be resolved,
\nwhere you feel satisfied that something has been figured out, where no
\none leaves the argument feeling frustrated that efforts to communicate
\nhave been in vain. No one has to feel as though they are bloodied and
\ncrushed into the mud.<\/p>\n
The recent dialogue between my daughter and myself brought back
\nmemories of those frustrating unproductive repetitive arguments between
\nmyself and her father. Nothing ever gets accomplished that way,
\nespecially when one person’s agenda seems to be to get their foot
\nplaced firmly onto the top of my head so that they can squash it into
\nthe dirt. That is how it feels to me. That it seems important to her
\nthat she control me and make me realize how worthless I am. I just
\ncan’t participate in that kind of argument. I’ve had enough of arguing
\nwith people where the arguments can’t go in a positive direction. What
\nis the point? There is no point. Nothing can be accomplished. It
\nreminds me of arguing with my ex in the sense that nothing can progress
\nto some more positive point. <\/p>\n
Switching thoughts here to my mother. The relationship with my
\nmother had a lot of similarity to the relationship with my ex but she
\nis truly mentally ill and has the kind of illness which makes her
\nbehave manipulatively and abusively, especially to those who are close
\nto her. You either have to put up with being abused or walk away.<\/p>\n
While I have identified with being the daughter of an impossible
\nmother for much of my life, I have come to recognize that many adult
\ndaughters have unreasonable expectations of their own pretty much
\nnormal mother’s. They are quick to criticize, quick to take offense,
\nand convinced at every turn of their mother’s inability to be a decent
\nhuman being. The same kind of consideration that they would give to
\ntheir friends in not making judgments about their lives and minding
\ntheir own business, they are unable to do for their mothers. The leeway
\nthat they give their friends they can’t give to their mothers. The
\nleeway that they expect and demand for THEMSELVES, they can’t give
\ntheir mother.<\/p>\n
In essence, these daughters act as though they are the bad mothers
\nor bad husbands of their own mothers and as though they are ENTITLED to
\nbehave that way. SOME daughters do this. Far too many daughters do
\nthis. Failing to recognize the rights that their mothers have as women
\nand as human beings. These are daughters who fail to appreciate their
\nmother’s accomplishments, their possible wisdom, their triumphs, their
\nlove, and their pain. For both the daughters and the mothers the result
\nis the tragic loss of what might have been —- a good relationship.<\/p>\n
Snicks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After the recent unproductive argument with my daughter in the Comments of the Listening post on LiveJournal argument I wrote a very long piece that I saved to think about whether to post or not. The post was so long that I would have put it online in five parts. After thinking about this post…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-parents","category-weblogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}