[lizbeth2009]

I went to visit my mother and aunt in Michigan, which is a 17 hour trip from where I live. I drove with my boyfriend and father. Everything was going fine until my brother and his family came to visit. We were supposed to leave on a Friday and evryone wanted us to stay an extra day, while my boyfriend and I needed to leave. The original agreement was to leave on Friday, but then everyone decided (without asking my boyfriend and I) that we should stay until Sat. An argument ensued between my boyfriend,father and I where we left on time, but now all of my family is angry with my boyfriend and I. My mom is especially mad at me and has told my father that she is cutting me off.

I don't know what to do. My mother and I have never had a great relationship and she has been battling with a severe gambling addiction and refuses to seek help. I thought visiting my family would help my mother and I start building a relationship, but it just doesn't work. If something does not go the way she wants it to be, she outright hates me and says vicious hurtful things.

When the gambling got really bad, I saw a shrink because I had an emotional breakdown in the middle of class. He told me that I need to separate myself from my family and live my own life. Every time I visit my family, my relationship with my mother just seems to get worse. I do better with just talking on the phone than spending time with her. Every time I visit, the subject with my family always goes to her gambling addiction and all it does is bring the hurt that I feel growing up with her and the way she treated me because of the addiction, which was using my student loan money for gambling, verbal abuse from when she lost her money in the casino, leaving me in the casino arcade until 3am because she forgot to pick me up and bring me home... etc etc.

I just want to distance myself from it all, but it is really hard since I work in the same office building with my dad and the subject always comes up. I just want to live my life and every time she comes into it breaks me down. What do I do?

[Jake2008]

I don't see why a little backbone on your end to expect people to live up to an arrangement should be a reason for all that venim from your family to you. You were perfectly right in sticking to the plan to leave on the Friday.

Regardless of the reasons for your mother's behaviour, you have no control over them. If you had stayed over, there would have been something else to cause a rift the next day. You did nothing wrong, and you are not the cause of this by any stretch.

If you think 'who's needs are being met' by continuously compromising your own comfort level with your mother, it certainly isn't you. You said you are much more comfortable and have a better relationship with her on the phone. I'd say you are being generous, and very gracious toward her considering how she treats you, by finding a way to remain in contact with her, that is comfortable for you both.

While you cannot change the past, you can determine your future. I think you've come along much further than you think. Set your own limits, boundaries, and don't be afraid to say nothing when you are put on the spot by your father. His relationship with her, is his problem, not yours.