How do you know what's reality when two people differ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter DarkLight
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I’ll tell you what someone I loved dearly told me when I was young.
Moms are nuts sometimes.
Try to just let it go by.
And do move out.
 
I’ll be honest too - this thread really is me trying to be fair and not just all negative.
 
My two cents, read up on gaslighting, there is a lot of information about this and you may find understanding it helps when dealing with it. Maybe try ignoring or rather acknowledging the behavior but trying to just let it wash over you, I have had to do this with a family member. Chances are someone with this behavior pattern isn’t going to change.

I completely understand that you can’t always “just move out”, I had to live with my parents for several years due to high rent/low pay but in the longer term do you have a plan?
 
DarkLight said:
I’ll be honest too - this thread really is me trying to be fair and not just all negative.
Click to expand...
You are questioning whether you can tell what reality is. Either you are being gaslighted or you have learned to care way too much whether or not someone puts credence in your perception of things. Be very sure of this, though: You are totally capable of knowing what you said and what you did not say, if you only pay attention as you speak. You do not have to put it up for a vote later. You can reassure yourself that you know what you know.

On the front of perception, however, look at this excerpt from Letter 26 of The Screwtape Letters:
Later on you can venture on what may be called the Generous Conflict Illusion. This game is best played with more than two players, in a family with grown-up children for example. Something quite trivial, like having tea in the garden, is proposed. One member takes care to make it quite clear (though not in so many words) that he would rather not but is, of course, prepared to do so out of “Unselfishness”. The others instantly withdraw their proposal, ostensibly through their “Unselfishness”, but really because they don’t want to be used as a sort of lay figure on which the first speaker practices petty altruisms. But he is not going to be done out of his debauch of Unselfishness either. He insists on doing “what the others want”. They insist on doing what he wants. Passions are roused. Soon someone is saying “Very well then, I won’t have any tea at all!”, and a real quarrel ensues with bitter resentment on both sides. You see how it is done? If each side had been frankly contending for its own real wish, they would all have kept within the bounds of reason and courtesy; but just because the contention is reversed and each side is fighting the other side’s battle, all the bitterness which really flows from thwarted self-righteousness and obstinacy and the accumulated grudges of the last ten years is concealed from them by the nominal or official “Unselfishness” of what they are doing or, at least, held to be excused by it. Each side is, indeed, quite alive to the cheap quality of the adversary’s Unselfishness and of the false position into which he is trying to force them; but each manages to feel blameless and ill-used itself, with no more dishonesty than comes natural to a human.

First of all, you see that “reality” has nothing to do with this. It has more to do with dropping pretensions than being able to read a transcript and find who really said what. You and your mom could get a transcript and still have a serious disagreement about what was said and what was “meant.”

If you think it might help, you can stop during an argument and say, “Mom, whoa, whoa. I had no intention of upsetting you. Let’s back up, start over, and when we get to a place where I’m not expressing myself in the way I intended, you can tell me how you would rather I say things, and we’ll find out if we have a common ground.” Maybe if you can learn what “invisible flaming hoops” you have been failing to jump through, you may be able to find a protocol that your mom likes and you can live with.

I’m doubting that. I’m thinking you are an adult and your mom thinks you disrespectful if you do not talk as if you were an exceptionally compliant and docile child, which is not a position anyone ought to want to put an adult into. Worse, she may use petty complaints about your “manner” as a way to keep you off-balance and change the subject from the substance of what is being discussed, which is as much as to say she’s trying to manipulate you into doing what she wants.

There have been some poor souls in every age who were stuck taking abuse because the alternative was famine or exposure to the elements, but I urge you to keep trying to find a way to live independently from your parents, even if it means great bodily sacrifice to you. I don’t know if you can have a good relationship with your mom. A relationship takes two, and you cannot force someone to drop toxic interpersonal habits just by keeping your own boundaries. That merely ensures you will only have as much relationship as your health can stand, not that you will have as much as you would like to have.

I’ve probably suggested it already, but do get “The New Co-dependence” by Melody Beattie from the library. It is not just for the families of addicts. It has a great deal of good information about what healthy relationships look like and how people who weren’t raised with any can learn to have them. It isn’t a magic bullet, but it is a good starting point.
 
I got accepted to the overnight shift at work! Not my favorite thing, but it’s an extra $1.50 an hour to work overnight. Plus I don’t have to buy dress clothes - overnight just has to be clean and covered, not dressed up.
 
Not sure how everyone has diagnosed someone who is not even present in the discussion to be “gaslighting”. :confused:
 
pianistclare said:
Not sure how everyone has diagnosed someone who is not even present in the discussion to be “gaslighting”. :confused:
Click to expand...
I had admittedly wondered this as well. I know you all only hear what I think, not what she thinks.
 
pianistclare said:
Maybe the problem is one or both of you don’t really like the other person’s version, because it doesn’t suit the conversation at hand.

The only way 'round it is to always speak in charity.
No one has to “win”. You can have different views. If something needs to be amended or hurt feelings repaired, repair them.
Life’s too short to argue wit a mother.
Truly.
If you don’t at least try to smile and let things go, you will be plagued by this after she’s gone. It’s just not worth it…for the sake of your soul, OR your sanity.
I’ve known plenty of argumentative people. My previous boss (a priest) would NEVER say anything in response to some that didn’t begin with the word “NO”. Or “but it’s not even that” or “you don’t understand” or “no, we’re not going to go with your fubar idea”.

Yeah really.
I walked away while smiling at him.
Smiling. It was tough, but you can do it.
Click to expand...
I’ve been meaning to address this. My difficulty right now is I feel like I’m smiling and trying to make amends right up until I cry. When you live there, you may not be able to consistently walk away.

And that also brings us back to the original question - we have many cases where I feel like I’ve spoken in as much charity as possible while still saying what needed to be said, and she feels I am being pointlessly hateful and mean.
 
DarkLight said:
I’ve been meaning to address this. My difficulty right now is I feel like I’m smiling and trying to make amends right up until I cry. When you live there, you may not be able to consistently walk away.

And that also brings us back to the original question - we have many cases where I feel like I’ve spoken in as much charity as possible while still saying what needed to be said, and she feels I am being pointlessly hateful and mean.
Click to expand...
Then all you can do is love her and pray for her.
If the tables were turned, you would want the same.
Some of us greatly miss our mothers.
Just at least, think about it.
 
pianistclare said:
Then all you can do is love her and pray for her.
If the tables were turned, you would want the same.
Some of us greatly miss our mothers.
Just at least, think about it.
Click to expand...
I do.

But…I feel like I miss my mother too. And I know that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I want a relationship with her. I want to not hurt. And I’m not sure I can have both.
 
[SIGN][/SIGN]
pianistclare said:
Not sure how everyone has diagnosed someone who is not even present in the discussion to be “gaslighting”. :confused:
Click to expand...
I certainly wasn’t attempting an armchair diagnosis. It was just a suggestion for the OP to read about and consider.
 
DarkLight said:
I do.

But…I feel like I miss my mother too. And I know that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I want a relationship with her. I want to not hurt. And I’m not sure I can have both.
Click to expand...
How old is she. She may have the beginnings of dementia.
Maybe she should go for a checkup. 🤷
 
pianistclare said:
Not sure how everyone has diagnosed someone who is not even present in the discussion to be “gaslighting”. :confused:
Click to expand...
If you use a rhetorical technique where you try to get someone to habitually question whether or not she has a firm grasp on reality itself–not how some set of events ought to have been viewed or whether they ought to be judged a certain way or not but getting them to second-guess whether they can remember objective facts about events in their own past accurately when they have made the effort to do so–that’s gas-lighting.

The first few times, OK, maybe the other person is reasonably letting you know that you’re just careless about what you let yourself say and don’t remember for that reason. After you have made a concentrated effort to know exactly what has come out of your mouth and the person still insists that you second-guess yourself, though, that’s when it is appropriate to raise the question of whether you are being gas-lighted.

A normal healthy person will help you to remember the details of shared events and feel confident that you do remember. They don’t try to get you to believe that only they remember the truth and that your perception of reality is not to be trusted. That is manipulative.
 
At the end of the day, much of the struggle is realizing that, no matter what you do, it’s not going to get you to the place where you really want to be.

Financial independence can mitigate the effect. But there is nothing that can make relationships be what you want them to be. You can walk away when hurtful words are said, but you can neither stop someone from saying them nor make them see how they hurt.

And you most certainly cannot replace them. You can separate from them more and more, but you can’t replace them. And it feels like mourning your parents, only they’re still there so it never quite finishes.
 
DarkLight said:
At the end of the day, much of the struggle is realizing that, no matter what you do, it’s not going to get you to the place where you really want to be.

Financial independence can mitigate the effect. But there is nothing that can make relationships be what you want them to be. You can walk away when hurtful words are said, but you can neither stop someone from saying them nor make them see how they hurt.

And you most certainly cannot replace them. You can separate from them more and more, but you can’t replace them. And it feels like mourning your parents, only they’re still there so it never quite finishes.
Click to expand...
What does your priest say abut it? Have you asked him?
 
DarkLight said:
At the end of the day, much of the struggle is realizing that, no matter what you do, it’s not going to get you to the place where you really want to be.

Financial independence can mitigate the effect. But there is nothing that can make relationships be what you want them to be. You can walk away when hurtful words are said, but you can neither stop someone from saying them nor make them see how they hurt.

And you most certainly cannot replace them. You can separate from them more and more, but you can’t replace them. And it feels like mourning your parents, only they’re still there so it never quite finishes.
Click to expand...
Another thread where you ask what to do, are given concrete answers and throw your hands up and say it’s impossible?🤷
 
Hoosier_Daddy said:
Another thread where you ask what to do, are given concrete answers and throw your hands up and say it’s impossible?🤷
Click to expand...
To be fair, DL is moving forward in a variety of ways.

I don’t think she’ll be in the same place in a year.
 
Xantippe said:
To be fair, DL is moving forward in a variety of ways.

I don’t think she’ll be in the same place in a year.
Click to expand...
As far as grief itself goes…what way is there to handle it, except to acknowledge it and let it run its course? Perhaps the progress is to say “there is nothing I can do” rather than to keep trying to make her see.

I think it is.
 
One has to let grief go, if it’s really a matter of grief.
If it’s something else, then compassion is the ONLY way.
Compassion & mercy.
All the best.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top