What does it mean to honor a parent who is self-destructive and rejects your actions?

  • Thread starter Thread starter DarkLight
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
D

DarkLight

Guest
Yeah, ongoing bit of my mother and what honoring parents means. My issue is…it’s become clear to me that, to her, “loving” and “honoring” her means participating in the dysfunctional system she’s set up. That if I do not affirm and support how she sees everything and what she desires, she will see me as being hateful and cruel for no reason. We have been through this many times, any time I try to resolve an issue with her, she will come back with something like, how could you say such awful nasty things about me, I don’t understand why you’re being so hurtful and choosing to treat me so badly.

I was never really clear on what honor looked like in that case. People say, love them, forgive them, but I never really understood what those looked like. It’s clear to me that if I express love towards her, in a way that I would express it towards someone else, it will be taken as malice. Forgiveness…I really don’t want to hurt her, but I know that any appropriate action I take will hurt her, and I know that if she ever does come to confront what’s going on in her life it will be extremely painful. But obviously it would be better that she go through that pain, and I would push her there if I thought it would do any good. I don’t really know if that counts as forgiveness or not.

I guess I’m just lost on what honor actually looks like here.
 
Still trying to figure this one out to be honest. My situation is not as bad as yours I think. But my father has no interest in my life at all. I’ve tried over the years to reach out and do things together but he would never call of his own accord. It’s always me running after him.

He missed my wedding last year and after that I just decided I was tired of having high expectations/hopes for a normal relationship and made the decision to just not engage. I didn’t cut him off or anything like that. But I decided I was going to stop trying to reach out. If he wanted to talk…he could call me. The door is open for that.

I think my mother dislikes my approach and sees it as being unforgiving. My brother just accepts my father’s behaviour. I just think I’d rather have a limited/no relationship than one that is dysfunctional and based on me having high expectations and getting hurt.

Dunno if that helps you at all.
 
AdamPeter said:
I just think I’d rather have a limited/no relationship than one that is dysfunctional and based on me having high expectations and getting hurt.
Click to expand...
That sounds perfectly reasonable. Honoring your parents doesn’t mean you have to let them hurt you, it doesn’t mean being a doormat. You should love them as best you can (which can be difficult, I know, been there), and pray for them. Sometimes that’s all we can do.
 
Best advice I ever read, do not bring dishonor to your parents.

When you live a moral life, when you respect their dignity as human beings, don’t “drag their name through the mud” or “air your dirty laundry in public”.
 
The main difficulty for me here is that my mother does tend to triangulate - that is, she will go to someone and say “I was just trying to talk to DarkLight and she got mad at me and stormed out! Can you go talk to her?” And then I’ll have someone else (usually my father) coming to me saying “Your mother told me how rude you were being to her, you should know better than to speak to her like that!” And I have to figure out how to delicately say, I’m not going to go patch things up with her, because I don’t accept her description of what I did, without going into badmouthing her.
 
I suggest you say, “While I appreciate your concern, my relationship with my mother is not something I’m willing to discuss.” If they insist, you say, “That’s none of your business.” If they still insist, you say, “Either you drop the subject or I’m leaving this conversation.”
 
DarkLight said:
The main difficulty for me here is that my mother does tend to triangulate - that is, she will go to someone and say “I was just trying to talk to DarkLight and she got mad at me and stormed out! Can you go talk to her?” And then I’ll have someone else (usually my father) coming to me saying “Your mother told me how rude you were being to her, you should know better than to speak to her like that!” And I have to figure out how to delicately say, I’m not going to go patch things up with her, because I don’t accept her description of what I did, without going into badmouthing her.
Click to expand...
How about, “You know what mom can be like” and then cutting off the conversation.

Let them do the heavy lifting of thinking through why exactly you are doing what you are doing.
 
Here’s another one, “Mother-daughter relationships can be tough, can’t they?”
 
I think, on the original question…the tl;dr of the issue is I know the answer will be “you are hateful and malicious and selfish.” It’s difficult to figure out how to show honor and love to someone who you know is still going to turn around and say that.
 
When you’re talking to your mom, and she starts to get heated, stop her right there, invite your father (or whoever else is in the house), into the room, and continue the conversation. Different things might happen

Your mom will change what she was going to say because there is an audience

Your mom will not change what she was going to say and the third party sees how crazy she’s behaving

Your mom will not change what she was going to say and the third party sees how crazy you are behaving.

But at least you will have an impartial witness.

(BTW, I’ve actually done this, with a person I was in conflict with. It changed the dynamic among us for the better.)
 
That’s in fact one of the major conflicts - she’s going on about how badly my father is treating her and how she’s being verbally abused and all that. And then becoming angry with me when I don’t want to participate in those discussions for hours on end, telling me I’m the only person she can rely on and she just needs someone to support her.

So I imagine bringing someone else in consistently would have the same result - that I am being mean and hateful by refusing to have private conversations with her.
 
If she’s yelling at you anyway, what do you actually have to lose?
 
I think that’s the wrong approach. I don’t need someone to prove what’s going on. I need to figure out how to manage the situation that still shows her that I love and honor her as my mother, as best I can, even if I’m in a situation where I know she’s not going to be accepting of it.

I have nothing to gain by bringing someone else in. They aren’t going to tell me anything I don’t know, and they aren’t going to convince her of anything except that I am mean and hateful and selfish.

Honestly, yelling would be easier. What happens usually is she goes and cries for hours about how I am rejecting her, and how she has no one left to be there for her.
 
shrugs

Do whatever you like.
It’s just that…there is so much PAIN in your posts. And you have to admit that what you’ve done so far hasn’t changed a thing.
Believe me, I lived the dysfunctional family dynamic. Nothing will change until you do something radically different.

Peace
 
DarkLight said:
That’s in fact one of the major conflicts - she’s going on about how badly my father is treating her and how she’s being verbally abused and all that. And then becoming angry with me when I don’t want to participate in those discussions for hours on end, telling me I’m the only person she can rely on and she just needs someone to support her.

So I imagine bringing someone else in consistently would have the same result - that I am being mean and hateful by refusing to have private conversations with her.
Click to expand...
“Mom, you’re talking about my dad. This is not an appropriate conversation for you to have with me. You need to have it with somebody else.”

Mom says something about “Darklight, you’re my only hope!”

“If I were unavailable, who would you talk to? Go talk to that person.”

Mom says, something like, “But you are available.”

Darklight says, “Byeeee! I’ll call in a few days. I hope you feel better!” [Quickly disengages and disappears.]

There’s a HUGE wifely submission thread going on elsewhere, but this is what I mean by submission. Soft words, firm actions.
 
DarkLight said:
I think that’s the wrong approach. I don’t need someone to prove what’s going on. I need to figure out how to manage the situation that still shows her that I love and honor her as my mother, as best I can, even if I’m in a situation where I know she’s not going to be accepting of it.

I have nothing to gain by bringing someone else in. They aren’t going to tell me anything I don’t know, and they aren’t going to convince her of anything except that I am mean and hateful and selfish.

Honestly, yelling would be easier. What happens usually is she goes and cries for hours about how I am rejecting her, and how she has no one left to be there for her.
Click to expand...
I don’t think “DL making her mom happy” is even one of the options on the table.

She’s an adult lady–it’s her job to have friends and community support other than her daughter.
 
Xantippe said:
I don’t think “DL making her mom happy” is even one of the options on the table.

She’s an adult lady–it’s her job to have friends and community support other than her daughter.
Click to expand...
This is rather an objective question in some ways.

She may never accept that I love her or want to honor her. She may always be someone who believes herself ill-used by appropriate boundaries. And I may always have to keep contact limited.

So if that’s the framework we’re working in, how do I actually live out honoring her as a parent, even if it’s never something she wants to accept?
 
Honestly a lot of it is…I feel like I end up forced into a dichotomy between “good wonderful parents that you should spend time with and work out any minor issues” and “awful evil abusive parents that you should cut out of your life forever.” There’s just no road map for anything in between, and nowhere I really feel safe offline trying to figure out where that roadmap is that isn’t just draining so much out of me in the first place trying to prove everything.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top