Mothers Who Can't Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters

by Forward, Susan

  Adults Have Options and Freedom

  If you had an enmeshing mother, you may carry with you a great fear of abandonment or separation. You may be overly clingy with partners or your own children. You may hold yourself back because you lack confidence in your own abilities and resilience. And you may know precisely how to make your mother happy but struggle to satisfy your own soul.

  Chapter 4

  The Control Freak Mother

  “Because I said so.”

  • If you marry that man, you’re no longer part of this family.

  • If you take that ridiculous job and move, you won’t see another dime from me.

  • Don’t expect any help from me again if you don’t send the kids to Catholic school.

  These are just a few examples of the stinging, domineering words of overt control. There is nothing subtle about it. There is no “I love you” manipulation, those directives masquerading as affection we saw with the overly enmeshed mother. Overt control is authoritarian and often irrational. It’s full of belittling and bullying. There are very direct orders, and warnings that disobedience is grounds for serious consequences.

  Control is appropriate when a child is small. Children are impulsive, with no life experience, and they need protection. There are plenty of hot stoves and traffic-filled streets they haven’t learned to respect yet, and rules and a mother’s firm no are a valuable part of teaching and guidance. Control at that stage not only makes a child feel safe, it provides actual safety. But an important part of the parenting process is gradually stepping back to let a little girl learn for herself, and when a mother’s control precludes her child from doing that, it ceases to be helpful and loving.

  The control freak mother keeps a heavy hand clamped down on a daughter for as long as she can—often deep into adulthood—with toxic effects. Just like the enmesher, she habitually returns to behavior that keeps you dependent, then takes advantage of your dependence. And all the while, she often insists that “it’s for your own good.” But the unhappy truth is that pushing you around satisfies her, and gives her a feeling of power that is often missing in the rest of her life. For the control freak mother, keeping you locked in that power imbalance is key to her happiness and fulfillment.

  Perhaps most troubling, even when you take great pains as an adult to escape her reach, you’re very likely to carry with you huge reserves of the anger and resentment her control created in you. You may also have a powerful need to exert control in your own life, often by controlling other people. Or, conversely, you may live with the sense that you must always put others’ needs ahead of your own. Those are the pervasive marks of having grown up with a controlling mother.

  Karen: Trapped and Bullied

  When Karen, a twenty-seven-year-old department store sales associate with dark brown hair, came in for her first session, she told me immediately that she was in crisis. Her longtime boyfriend had recently proposed, but at the news of the engagement, her mother, Charlene, had gone on the warpath. Not only had she heaped invective on Karen’s fiancé, whom she’d never liked, but she’d also threatened to “disown” Karen if she went through with the marriage. Karen told me that she was scared of what would happen, but she had enough insight to know she needed to work on getting some distance from her mother’s overbearing interference.

  Her story poured out when I asked for details about what was going on.

  KAREN: “I guess I knew this day would come. By some miracle, I’ve been with a really great guy for the last two years, but my mother never saw it that way. For one thing, Daniel’s Latino and Catholic, and she thinks there’s something criminal about both of those. Then there’s the fact that he teaches math at an elementary school, and coaches soccer. He’s fabulous with kids, and he’s got a couple of advanced degrees so he’ll have more options with the subjects he can teach. Sounds like a dream, right? But Mom talks down to him, and she refers to him as ‘your little gym teacher friend,’ which she says with complete disdain. From the beginning she’s ridiculed him. No one I like ever measures up in her eyes, especially ‘an immigrant,’ which is what she calls Daniel.

  “The whole time Daniel and I have been together, I’ve tried to keep them apart and hoped that would be enough. I thought I could just smooth things over. I’ve always apologized to Daniel about Mom after she’s been awful to him, and I tried to just change the subject when she started in with ‘How can you be serious about someone like that.’ It’s not worth arguing. But after Daniel proposed, he insisted that we go over to Mom’s and show her the ring. I wanted to go alone… . I know that’s crazy. Anyway, we went. What a disaster.

  “Mom didn’t even try to be civil. She criticized the ring, and Daniel, and his family. He tried to be polite, but he was steaming. Finally he said, ‘I’m sorry you feel that way. Come on, honey, let’s get out of here.’ And Mom looked at me and said, ‘If you go through with this, you’re not my daughter anymore. Don’t think I don’t mean it. You’re trying to ruin your life, just like you always have. If you want to defy me, go right ahead. But forget about any help from me with the wedding, or anything else.’

  “I froze. I said, ‘I’m sorry, Mom,’ and Daniel gave me the most pained look and said, ‘That’s unbelievable. You have nothing to be sorry for. Why are you apologizing?’ I didn’t know what to say or do. I just stood there crying till he pulled me out the door.”

  Karen told me that she’d been in a tailspin in the days since, uncertain about what to do or how to deal with the conflict between her mother and Daniel that she’d tried so hard to push away. I asked her if she really thought her mother would cut off contact with her if she didn’t get her way.

  KAREN: “Yeah, I do. She’s been calling and badgering me about breaking up with him. She was at my place until two in the morning the other night, haranguing me about how I’m making a big mistake, and she doesn’t want grandkids from ‘a person like that.’ I told her I didn’t want to talk about it, but it didn’t get through. She just assumes that she gets to call the shots. I told her, ‘Mom, please go home,’ and she said, ‘I’ll go home when you tell me you’re not going to marry him.’

  “I feel so trapped and bullied. I’m sick of her interference, but she’s my only family, and awful as she can be sometimes, I don’t want to lose her. But I keep backing down from saying anything in Daniel’s defense, and I’m sick of that, too. I’m tired of being such a wimp. I feel so disloyal saying this, but my mother has done nothing but control me my entire life. She split up with my dad when I was little and I don’t even know where he is now. But she’s always had me to boss around. Everything she has ever asked me to do has been to benefit her, not me. She controlled what I wore, what I ate, who I was friends with, even the activities I did when I was younger. And now she’s sure she can tell me who to marry.”

  Dominated Daughters Easily Become Doormats

  The foundation for the showdown over Karen’s engagement had long been in place. In the mother-daughter twosome left after her divorce, Charlene had assumed the role of authoritarian and boss, grinding Karen down with criticism. She had provided for her daughter’s physical needs—and many people would look at that as a sign of love—but she rarely offered affection. Instead, Karen told me, Charlene was often derisive, especially when her friends were around. Young Karen often found herself the object of unwelcome attention when the adults focused on her.

  KAREN: “My mom thinks she has a great sense of humor, but really, she was just mean, especially to me. If I didn’t want to wear whatever she chose for me, she belittled and made fun of me. I picked out a dress at the store when I was maybe seven or eight, and when I came out of the dressing room she turned to her friend, who was shopping with us, and said, “Whoever thought a daughter of mine would have such trashy taste?” They both laughed at me so hard. I didn’t even know why, but the shame was seared into me. I just stood there shaking till she said, ‘Go take that thing off!’ It was a yellow dress with flowers, and I never
wore yellow or flowers after that, even though I love both of them.”

  Cruel digs and jokes made at a child’s expense can cut to the core, and as a girl, Karen faced them often. She learned it wasn’t safe to trust her own judgment, and like what she liked, so she protected herself by going along with her mother’s choices. After all, Charlene would brook no dissent. She didn’t hit or slap; she didn’t need to. Her words and tone underlined to Karen that her feelings and preferences didn’t matter.

  As a result, Karen never had a chance to master one of the most vital life skills: knowing and asking for what she wanted.

  When controllers tear their daughters down, whether with threats, ridicule, or criticism, they rob them not only of their dignity and self-respect but also of their volition. The controllers’ constant criticism destroys young daughters’ belief that they’re okay, and it makes them extremely vulnerable to control because it erodes the spirit and sense of confidence daughters need to stand up for themselves and go on to live independent lives. Criticism is the fountainhead of control, and control freak mothers discover early that if you tear your daughter down enough, you strip away her ability to be assertive and her will to resist. So they rely on insults and criticism to keep you one-down, hardly missing a beat when you become an adult.

  The knocks accelerate whenever controlling mothers feel threatened, as Karen and Daniel saw when they announced their engagement. Charlene panicked, seeing that she was losing control over her daughter’s life, and that Karen was shifting her loyalty to her fiancé. In Charlene’s mind, the only way to regain the upper hand was to threaten to cut Karen off. That sounds drastic, and counterintuitive, but Charlene had controlled Karen for so long, she had every reason to believe her daughter would buckle, and that she’d never have to follow through on her threats.

  Karen did come close to giving in, she told me.

  KAREN: “After all the pressure from Mom, I was so tied in knots I felt physically ill. I told Daniel, ‘We’re fine like we are. We don’t have to rush things.’ He just shook his head and said, ‘I know exactly what this is about and I’m not going to have this drama hanging over us. I hate seeing your mom walk all over you, and there’s no way we can have her dictating the terms of our relationship. You need to get some counseling, do something about this.’ I don’t think I would be here if he hadn’t done that.”

  I hear that often. Partners or friends may well be the catalyst that pushes you toward change because they see so clearly how unable you are to do anything about the situation.

  It’s very difficult to move forward from a limbo like Karen’s when your healthy instincts to disagree, to say no, to become your own best authority on yourself—all the essential elements of individuation—have been stunted. All the criticism she heard from her mother when she was small turned Karen into, as she put it, “the most people-pleasing person I know.” And she felt paralyzed as she tried to figure out how to do the impossible and make both Charlene and Daniel happy. Notably, she never thought to put herself in the equation. It wasn’t something she’d had much practice doing.

  KAREN: “I avoid conflict at all costs. I’ll do pretty much anything I’m asked. But here’s the weird part: When I don’t please someone in authority—my boss, my mother—I tend to get sick, break out in hives, and become very withdrawn or shut down altogether. I feel terrible, terrible guilt.”

  Karen became the person who would take jobs no one wanted and be ever available to fill the role of doormat while she ignored her own needs. Raised to be dominated, she had a finely honed ability to abdicate decision making to other people, her mother above all.

  The Perfectionists:

  Holding You to Impossible Standards

  Some controlling mothers, like Karen’s, seem to turn on their negativity almost on a whim, focusing on their daughters’ most recent desires and squashing them, or dispensing cruel put-downs or criticism just because they need to make themselves feel better in the moment. But another variety of controller is far more systematic. These are the perfectionists who seem driven to hold you to a standard that’s impossible to meet. They build their households around rules, routines, and drills that are not to be questioned, and they regard anything less than perfection as failure.

  Michelle: How Criticism Creates a Critic

  Michelle, a thirty-four-year-old graphic artist, told me at our first session that her relationship with her boyfriend, Luke, was on the verge of breaking up. Things had been tense between them for a while, she said, and their last fight had been a big one—he’d taken a few of his things and gone to stay with a friend.

  MICHELLE (in tears): “I really thought he was the one, that we’d get married, but he’s fed up and he says this is it. I just don’t understand why my relationships are so messed up.”

  I suggested that the two of them come in for a session, and Michelle persuaded Luke, a lanky thirty-year-old video game designer with shaggy brown hair, to join her for an appointment. The two of them came to my office the following week, and I asked Luke to fill me in on what was going on, from his point of view.

  LUKE: “Well … it seems like the longer we live together—it’s been almost a year now—the worse it gets. I had to get away for a while, and right now I’m sleeping on my buddy’s couch, but at least I’ve got a little peace. Michelle’s so damn critical. She picks at me for the smallest things. If I’ve got my stuff scattered around my computer, in my own office in my own home, she goes ballistic. I didn’t realize when we first got together how compulsive she was about where she lived and stupid things like the T-shirts I wear. But boy is she ever.”

  MICHELLE: “Well in my own defense, he’s no angel. Yes I have my faults, but would it kill him to put his socks in the hamper or put on something decent? How hard would that be? He’s always leaving a dish in the sink, and it’s so easy to put it in the dishwasher. Little things matter.”

  LUKE: “Come on, Michelle. Of all the things in the world to get obsessed with, why is that such a big, freakin’ deal? God, you sound just like your mother.”

  Their irritation with each other was clear, and it was apparent to me that there was more involved than dirty dishes in the sink. I told Michelle that there seemed to be a whole pattern of picky, critical, perfectionist behavior on her part that was pushing Luke away.

  MICHELLE: “Oh God… . To hear you say that … That’s my mom. Picky. So critical. I’ve always sworn I would never, ever be like her. And here I am.”

  Our mothers’ imprinting and programming is so pervasive that it’s easy to find ourselves behaving like them without even realizing it. But patterns can be broken—with effort—once we’re aware of them, I told Luke and Michelle. Were they ready to put in the work it would take to save their relationship? I asked. They exchanged glances.

  SUSAN: “Think of a container of milk that gets left out on the counter. Sometimes you can put it back in the refrigerator and it will still be sweet. But sometimes, it’s so far gone it can never be sweet again. What point do you think your relationship is at now?”

  LUKE (looking at Michelle): “I don’t know. I’d like to make it work, but we don’t seem to be able to do it by ourselves. We just have the same arguments over and over.” (He gave her a little smile.) “But a lot of it has been very sweet.”

  MICHELLE (tearing up): “I don’t want to lose him.”

  I could feel the still-strong connection between them, and I suggested that Michelle and I work together on our own for a while to get at the roots of that criticism. I told Luke that I thought he needed to go back home. Many studies on marriage have shown that the longer a couple is separated, the greater the chances they won’t get back together. It would be tense at first, I told them, but if Luke could be less reactive and patient for a while, Michelle and I would be working to modify and extinguish the deeply engrained patterns of criticism that had been coming between them.

  THE MAKING OF A BULLY

  Daughters of unloving mothers almost unive
rsally promise themselves one thing: If I do nothing else in my life, I will never, ever, turn into my mother. Yet as we’ve seen, as adults, they often shock themselves by acting very much the way their mothers did toward them. Getting to the roots of that behavior was what Michelle and I focused on in our work together.

  Things hadn’t been easy at home since Luke had returned, she told me.

  MICHELLE: “He’s been calling me on my perfectionism a lot. Sometimes I just get defensive or cry or even yell at him. But I really notice what I’m saying to him now. For some reason when we were here together, I actually got it that I’ve been acting like my mom. It really scares me… . I got away from her as soon as I could, and we don’t see her much now—of course, she really hates Luke. He’s not perfect enough either. But obviously, I took her with me. I’m turning into her anyway… .”

  As she told me about her childhood, we both began to see how many parallels there were between what she’d experienced and what she was living out now with Luke.

  MICHELLE: “I was born to parents who never should have had kids. My father was an emotional hostage to his ultrareligious mother and workaholic father. My mother was raised in a horribly dysfunctional home with alcoholic parents and a verbally and physically abusive father. When I was growing up, Mom was a tyrant. There was nothing soft or nurturing at all. She was the strictest mother in the world. She was all about perfection. Perfect, clean home, perfect husband, perfect job, perfect kids. When I was little I would sometimes tell her, ‘I’m not perfect’ and she’d snap, ‘Well, try to be!’ That was her sole agenda in life. Her clean home and her job as a paralegal were more important than anything else. And if my sister and I weren’t there doing most of the housework, she resented us. My father was constantly working, trying to get a failing restaurant off the ground. Mom resented him, too.