“My mother was perfection”

“Until her mid-seventies, my mother was an energetic, athletic, determined, authoritarian, impatient, aggressive woman,” recalls 46-year-old Anna. – She lost her temper if she was contradicted. If my parents invited me to dinner and I was ten minutes late, she would start eating to emphasize her annoyance. When she proposed a summer vacation plan for my sisters and me, she demanded an answer in January, and was annoyed if I said that I did not know exactly what I would do in six months.

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• Are you free in your relationship with your mother?

She then retired. She had more free time, she traveled, went in for sports, went to lectures. Little by little she got tired. She, who used to be so mobile, groovy, full of ideas, began to slow down the rhythm. She stopped inviting us to breakfast on Saturdays: it’s too tiring to shop and cook… she’d better lie down. For a good half of my life, I had an idea of ​​her as a woman without flaws, who does not need anyone to cope with affairs. She represented in my eyes an almost perfect image, which caused complexes in me, made me feel insignificant – after all, I was worse than her in managing my emotional life, my career, although I was born with all the trump cards in my hands.

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• “I’m afraid of becoming like my mother”

Today, she doesn’t impress me anymore. On the contrary, I fear for her when I see her so tired, so uninterested. But I benefited from this, because she definitely takes me more seriously, is interested in my opinion. Sometimes I wish I had a time when she was more authoritarian, more principled, ten times more active. This is all the more paradoxical, since before I was looking forward to when, finally, it would seem to me not so impenetrable.

I regret a little about the image of the mother that I created for myself in childhood. I’m trying to forget that I’ll get old too. There is something absurd about existence: we spend years dependent on our mother. Then compete with her. Then, a short period of calm, when we establish a distance and freely manage our own lives. And a little later, the mother returns to us again, once again, she again restricts our movement, but only because from now on she depends on us.

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• When daughters grow up

Commentary by family psychologist Elena Ulitova

The relationship between mother and daughter is a complex, changeable, ambiguous and very strong bond. In these relationships, love, care, the desire to imitate and at the same time be independent, be together and be apart are so intricately intertwined! And often we want to receive support only in the form that love means to us. What is the love of a mother to me, what is the love of a daughter to me? Every woman answers these questions in her own way.

Mother and daughter are similar and different at the same time. At first, the daughter wants to be like her mother, but at some point she begins to want to be completely different, special. This imitation-denial is renewed at different stages of life for different reasons.

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• “How can I help my daughter arrange her personal life?”

This happens in the process of growing up-aging-dying. Looking at the aging mother, the daughter thinks: “Will the same thing happen to me? No, this cannot be! I will be different. I’m not like that, I’m better.” An aging mother causes pity, sadness, irritation, and anxiety.

These processes run more or less smoothly when both women respond flexibly to changing situations and take on new social roles in time. The first important change occurs when the mother gives up the function of care and guardianship (which sometimes takes the form of dictatorship) and releases the daughter into an independent life. Then the relationship becomes more partner, friendly. This is a short happy period when both women are self-sufficient and objectively independent of each other. Everything works out well if the mother trusts her daughter with responsibility for her own life, and the daughter accepts this responsibility. This period for an older woman can decorate (or, conversely, burden) a new role – grandmothers. Around this role, a new interesting and ambiguous relationship with her daughter arises.

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• Why are parents so worried?

The next change, more difficult and sadder, involves yet another reversal of roles. The daughter actually becomes the mother of her aging and infirm mother. And it takes courage for every woman to accept this change. Here for both there are many new restrictions. For the mother, this is a rejection of the usual self-reliance and independence. And for the daughter, in fact, the mother becomes a new child, which requires care, guardianship, time, effort and money. And this “new baby” does not bring the joy that small children give us. Instead, the daughter observes illness, senile changes in the mother’s body and, often, mental changes. But the saddest thing about this stage is that it also passes. And the daughter is approaching the line from which her mother has so far blocked her.

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• “My mother is old”

The bond between mother and daughter is unique in each case. Moreover, if both of them (or at least one of them) understand the characteristics of each period of their relationship and accept its objective patterns (the amount of physical strength and free time, for example), such acceptance helps them move through life more smoothly and put emphasis on the positive aspects. each stage. It is important to learn to consciously let go of the benefits of the outgoing social role and to focus on the good that the new stage of life offers.