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

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DarkLight said:
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.
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I think there are a lot of people in the middle.

My mom, for example, was physically abusive to my sister and me when we were tween and teens, and had very little in the way of parenting skills suited to kids that age, especially girls. Her parenting philosophy was a) don’t talk back/don’t argue b) do what you’re told NOW and c) WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! when that didn’t work. Now that I have a teen and tween of my own, I realize that my mom was totally unprepared for parenting tweens and teens (although she’d done OK with younger children), as at this age, you need to be prepared for some back-and-forth, some persuasion, some compromise and some logic. It’s not as easy on the parent as instant obedience, but it is much more educational for the kids, as they learn how to make decisions and they learn about mom and dad’s thought process, not just mindlessly executing orders.

Now that I’ve been out of my parents’ house for 20+ years, I have a much better relationship with my mom. My mom was just particularly bad at dealing with tweens and teens–she’s actually great fun to tell my stories to on the phone once a week, now that I’m 40-something and she’s almost 70.
 
DarkLight said:
she goes and cries for hours about how I am rejecting her, and how she has no one left to be there for her.
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You really can’t be your mom’s parent no matter how hard you try and even if you had perfect social skills and a high EQ. That simply does not happen. Because it’s not true. She is your mother and you are her daughter. The only thing you can do is move on with your life, pray for her and for yourself. If you feel guilty about this pray to God for forgiveness and strength.
 
I think a lot of the current problem is, I’m in a position where there is no good way to set a boundary that isn’t turned into “I don’t understand why you’re suddenly being so mean to me.” She’s defined anything form of negative feedback on her behavior as a “nasty accusation” where I’m just trying to hurt her. Therefore boundaries are hurtful, because they imply that she’s doing something where I’d need to put a boundary up.

That’s the issue here. I want to say “I love you, but this isn’t working and there need to be some limits.” And I know the response is going to be “How dare you talk about loving me and turn around and treat me like dirt, if you actually cared about me you wouldn’t treat me badly.” And I don’t know how to still actually show love when I know that it’s still going to be taken as being hateful and cruel.
 
DarkLight said:
That’s the issue here. I want to say “I love you, but this isn’t working and there need to be some limits.”
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Skip that part and go straight to the, “Gotta go! Byyyee, mom! Love you!” whenever she starts raving about your dad or anything else inappropriate.
 
I would suggest that you treat her in a loving way, the way that YOU know is loving, and stop worrying about how she takes it. For your own sanity, limit your interactions with her, and stop trying to change her or get her to feel good.
You need to take care of yourself and lead your own life. What she makes of your kind behavior, even if she misinterprets it, is her problem.
 
I think it is as much the struggle to know what is in fact loving in a case like this. My instinct when asked, how to be loving, involves finding out what someone else needs and what would be valuable to them. Figuring out how to show love to someone who wants something that’s not reasonable to give and doesn’t want what they probably need is…not something I really understand.
 
Marquess of Queensbury rules go out the door in a street fight where you are fighting for your life.

When you are dealing with a toxic person (my experience was dealing with an alcoholic family member when I was growing up), you often need to put your foot down, “read the riot act”, and not give them an inch, even if they are an elder family member that, under normal circumstances, people would say you owe honor and respect to. If you’ve seen the movie “As Good As It Gets”, see how the Helen Hunt character did not let the Jack Nicholson character get away with anything. And, he ended up changing his behavior.
 
@DarkLight

I noticed that your question began with “honor” and the discussion then includes love.
I think they are separate. You are not obligated to love your parents! Love is God’s nature
and we can’t force love. Find out what you understand “honor” to be. If your parent is a
neighbor to you, then you are obligated to pay the due of love.
Honor means requests to honor.
Your task as I know it is to get the message in what is happening.
The message might not be literally stated in exact words.
Think about a parent who has no living will and suddenly dies.
You and your brothers and sisters want to honor that parents last wish for burial
arrangements.
The question is how to get the message, the overall message, without listening to the words.
This comes from my experience.
Good luck.
 
Spheroid400 said:
Find out what you understand “honor” to be.
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I think this is where the difficulty is. It seems to me that everything I would know how to understand as honor would demand of me something that would be inappropriate in this situation. It’s clear to me that what she is requesting of me is not right, or at least not something I can bear at anywhere near the level she desires.
 
I think that kind of goes back to my original question.

Love, clearly, is not sitting around manufacturing nice feelings. But very clearly, right now, there is nothing I can do for her that isn’t going to simply result in “you are mean and hateful and selfish.” So what does love even look like there?
 
DarkLight said:
Love, clearly, is not sitting around manufacturing nice feelings. But very clearly, right now, there is nothing I can do for her that isn’t going to simply result in “you are mean and hateful and selfish.” So what does love even look like there?
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Not offering her an opportunity to do evil to you.
 
You sit on the end of the teeter tot while i’ m standing up. Means even Jesus said “get behind me satan, for you are speaking as men and not as God.”. My point was to the understanding of what love, expressed, means.
 
DarkLight said:
Love, clearly, is not sitting around manufacturing nice feelings. But very clearly, right now, there is nothing I can do for her that isn’t going to simply result in “you are mean and hateful and selfish.” So what does love even look like there?
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Doing what you know is best for her, even if she can’t see that it is. It can be very difficult, but there it is.
 
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Praying for her. Not returning evil to her “You are mean and hateful and selfish”
gets a reply of “I love you mom. Will talk to you another day, goodbye”.

When you get an extra $10, have a mass said for your mom. You do not have to have her name printed, or listed, just tell the secretary it is for a private intention.
 
Sometimes the confusing thing is…often it is good. Especially when her mood is better, we have a lot of fun. I just can kind of never tell what I’m going to get on a particular day.
 
In situations like this there is no fix. Especially not a quick fix.
 
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.
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If you don’t need someone to prove what’s going on, you need to do what you know you need to do.

I wouldn’t be so quick to rush to the conclusion that you don’t need any help to draw the boundary you need to draw. Knowing what to do and finding the way to do it, the courage to do it, and the support to do it are two different things.

Have it your own way, though. You’ve come here, you’ve told us what your problem is, you say you know how to handle it. OK…don’t be your mother. Don’t beat the dead horse over and over again. Stop talking about it and do what you “know” you need to do.

Honestly, though, in your shoes I’d need support and guidance if I were trying to deal with such an entrenched situation. It is extremely difficult to change a family dynamic like this, and there is no guarantee the family member entrenched in abusive behavior is ever going to want to change, let alone actually do the work to really and truly change. The person who is invested in keeping things the same usually digs in and gets several times worse for awhile, just to keep things the same. They didn’t get in their controlling situation by being vacillating, by lacking a strong will or by having scruples about what they’ll do to hold on to the status quo. That is quite a lot for one person to go up against alone.

The problem is that support and guidance can’t help if you don’t believe they can help or if they aren’t a good enough fit for you to earn your trust. You’re right to avoid wasting time or resources on help that you have decided ahead of time that you can’t trust. Professional help is not magic, you’re right about that.
 
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DarkLight said:
Sometimes the confusing thing is…often it is good. Especially when her mood is better, we have a lot of fun. I just can kind of never tell what I’m going to get on a particular day.
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In other words, you are at the mercy of her whims. That is not “often good,” not really. (You can’t really ever have a good day on a golf course if you are always afraid that lightning might strike you without warning, can you?)
 
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I think you’re misunderstanding me. I’m saying the answers I’m getting here (how to draw boundaries) aren’t answering the question that I’m actually asking. The problem I’m getting is, when I go into the stuff on boundaries, I get a lot of “well, if the relationship isn’t working, just dump the person completely, you have no obligations whatsoever.” I’m kind of looking for the next step - once the boundaries are in place, what can I do that still shows that I’m honoring her? Or how do I show love in a situation where there the ways I know to show love don’t apply?

The objection to having someone else in the room is that in this case it doesn’t provide any useful move towards that goal.

Professional help…yes, that is something I have a long and generally very bad history with. There’s a reason I try to avoid it.
 
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