When The Price Of Convenience Is Your Life

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

I met them on a tour bus a few years ago. The bus drove importantly through European cities and the highways between them. A woman of about forty-five and next to her in everything and always is a mother of about seventy. Days and nights they make friends with the same people in one way or another. Find out where the hotel room is, drink coffee together on the next excursion.

I do not remember which of them first spoke to me, rather my mother. Skillful questioning of me - age, profession, family … The daughter kept silent and smiled. Then the mother gave her a tangible kick in the back. Between excursions and transfers, I managed to listen to their story.

Mother divorced a long time ago, is raising her daughter alone “She has put her soul into her, lives as one daughter, breathes her. And that weak one - was ill, studied poorly - only for a silver medal, "sighed the mother and holding her daughter by the elbow, continued," I found a job for her as an accountant, where will this long-nosed freak still go to work? so she was still drinking. Well, nothing, mom's best friend, she will listen to everything and understand. And what women are now traitors, do you know Anya? Only a mother can love and be friends. " Another jab in the back. “One thing is bad, there is trouble with men. The normal ones were transferred, they were transferred, I can't wait for my grandson”. My back ached so much where in the past I got poked.

In the evening at the hotel, taking advantage of the fact that the eldest was tired, I lured my daughter to drink coffee on the seashore. After repeated assurances that I would return the girl by 22.00 and that I would protect her from any encroachment, I pulled her out to walk along the coast, and insidiously replaced coffee with beer. Drinking coffee under the velvet Bulgarian stars seemed blasphemy. It was interesting for me to hear my daughter too. Daughter's story “Everything is fine. Mom does a lot for me, I should be very grateful. She found a job for me, she prepares dinners for me. How am I alone without her? " “Here is my mother who was lucky to see the world. She's my best friend. Not like the others, the hungry girls. " "Of course it happens that you want something different, some kind of a different life, but with mom it is calmer."

Later, on excursions, I heard the older lady whispering, “Look at Anya, it seems like nothing special, and what a smart girl can do it alone…” And I felt like the notorious “son of my mother’s friend”. At the end of the trip, I invited my daughter for psychotherapy. She did not go: "This will upset mom and she will get sick."

I have met such “mom-daughter” couples more than once or twice. Only the cut of the eyes differs, or it may be that instead of poking in the back, there are more verbal jokes, or maybe the daughter has time to quickly get married and divorced and return to her mother with the child.

Stories about when the separation of mother and daughter did not happen and they live as if as one whole, in one merger. The daughter is tightly on the needle of guilt. After all, “my mother put her life on her then” and then it turns out that “now we have to … we have to put our own …”. The child gives a lot to his mother - and tenderness, and smiles, and many stories and pride, and development. And the mother, if she knows how, enjoys these qualities, and then motherhood is not a sacrifice, for which you have to pay later, but an equivalent exchange. And then the child should not return anything to his parents. A child can help out of a feeling of love, but it certainly shouldn't.

However, it happens that mothers were not able to get joy from contact with a child, do not have other vivid contacts with other people, repeat the familiar family history. They may have had a child as the only creature loving and obedient to them. And then it is impossible to let go of the child from himself, because the growing up teenage child reduces the share of his attention and love, switches to others. Friends and girlfriends become more authoritative, their approach to life and their interests are gradually formed. And in the future, the child leaves to live his own life.

What should a mother who “put all of herself into the child” do, if the child stops sharing his life and leaves, then her life will not be there either? Instead of developing your own life and interests (which is difficult). Such a mother begins to develop methods for keeping her daughter with her. Feelings of guilt “life has put on you, so now let's put your own” and the creation of helplessness - the daughter grows up inept and not ready to cope with everyday issues herself, since the mother decides these issues for her, and isolation from the world - it will simply be suggested that the world is evil and ungrateful, friends envy and betray, and the best friend is only mother (it is doubly convenient, because if a daughter shares everything with her mother, then it is more convenient to control her).

As a result, the woman grows up helpless and embittered. Indeed, in her understanding, the world is dangerous and cold. It is difficult for such a woman to get in touch with the world, also because she herself begins to radiate the danger and coldness that she sees in the world.

And the support of such a mother is … convenient. The daughter is not accustomed to solving everyday issues, to take responsibility for herself. And then she is forced to endure dependence on her mother, endure barbs, pressure and screams, because if she leaves, then too much will be lost: from solving household issues to responsible decisions.

Taking responsibility for yourself is not easy, it is easier to whine and wait for a decision from another. And with mom it seems like it's convenient, you don't have to think about everything that is ready, you just have to be patient a little. A bit all my life.

Life is wasted as payment for convenience. For example, this forty-five-year-old lady refused to study where she was interested. She doesn’t go on dates and never did, because “mom is worried” and “the worst thing might happen”. She doesn't have girlfriends to tell her what's really going on on dates. She does not notice that her life is slipping through her fingers like sand, that she endures and endures, bypassing the opportunity to find hobbies for her soul, losing the opportunity to love, make friends and enjoy children.

I described a general image, copied from different people in stories. See if you recognize yourself in this image? Where is your life and responsibility exchanged for convenience and the need to be patient?

If yes, then psychotherapy will help you understand yourself, protect yourself from jabs and barbs. It will be a long and difficult process - it is not so easy to be responsible only for yourself. However, it is the ability to be yourself and be in equal contact with others that makes it possible to rejoice, live and love.