katie53

Well, it's ad's birthday. I told my gd I would make lasagna and have mom over on Sunday. She relayed the message to her mom today by phone. AD said "I wonder if gramma will let me bring my boyfriend. So gd asked about it. I said I didn't mind and I would talk to her mom about it .Ad then calls me and asks the same question. I said o.k. He could come over. I told her I knew who he is, not personally,but about him. He was in prison for drugs until 07, arrested for drunk driving in 08. He also had restraining orders in 06. She started seeing him 1 month after she got out of jail for dealing. She will claim she is all done with that life, but no longer feels she needs to go back into treatment, jail reformed her. She got VERY upset with me when I informed that I knew about him. She said "I am going to hang up now as I don't like your tone of voice or attitude" I said it very calmly!! I am upset that she went right into another relationship after saying in jail that she wanted to go to meetings and spend time at the club to meet others in recovery and wanted and needed to do alot of work on herself. She even told her daughter she was going to take parenting classes. None of it took place. I AM upset that she has found another one, she always has to have a man in her life and is in love within weeks!! I would like for her to be content with spending her b-day with her girls alone, but it 's not her plan. Why does she feel justified in jumping on me?? I never told her my feelings on this setup, maybe I should. I believe now it was all jail talk.

Serenity Bound

katie, sounds just like my RAD, while in jail she sent her daug wonderful letters how RAD was going to get better, do the right thing, be a GOOD mommy. My RAD is exactly the same when it comes to guys. For the life of me, I can't figure out why she can't be without a guy. I look back through the past and see that any of the guys she was with that were good guys she would just blow off. Today, TG she is working her program, she is still with her 2nd H, however every other day she's going to leave him. Drives me nuts. And as her mom that's where I get pissed at her, and at him.
Anytime I would say something to my AD that she didn't like, she'd immediately hang up on me. Of course, as soon as she'd want me for something she'd call back like nothing had ever happened.
Today, I pray that she sticks to her recovery. She has 60+ days.
Sending prayers your way, for both you, your AD & your gd.
Hugs,
Chris

winnie12

When I was younger I always thought i had to have a man to be complete. Its kinda like that hole that the addict is trying to fill but instead it was with men. As women i think we still have that night-in-shining armour mentality - a man will fix everything - love will make it all better. Because i didnt have a lot of self-esteem i dont think i ever tried to have a relationship with a good man - thinking they would never want me. the bad boys - the ones who had been in trouble a lot i seemed to think wouldnt look down on me and lets face it they were a lot less picky and a lot easier to get but they came with lots of problems that always sidetracked my goals. So the cycle would continue over and over. I dont really know how i let go of that except that with age and maturity I finally realized that none of them were making me happy and started seeking happiness on my own. Even now I deal with the constant barrage of "why dont you get a man?" its as if our society still thinks a woman couldnt possibly be happy without a man. Even my own kids tell me I should date - but i dont want to until i'm completely stable and happy in myself. Only then would i be able to make good choices on who to trust with my heart.

laurie6781

I read your post late last night and with my gut knee jerk reaction, knew I absolutely could not respond at that time. I immediately heard my mother in this:

It's not that you 'said it calmly.' It's what you said.

You are probably NOT going to like what I say, and I am sorry but here is what I see in this.

I have to say BRAVO for your daughter. She caught the 'negativity' and chose to end the conversation.

You sound just like my mom did in my early recovery. Nothing I did was right (I wasn't doing it her way). I was hanging out with the 'wrong' people (they were all in AA). My job was beneath me (it was putting a roof over my head and food in my belly and I was starting to pay back some of the debt I owed all over the country). I lived in a dump. It was a small 1 bedroom apartment in a really nice complex, but it was not Beverly Hills. And on and on and on.

I was not meeting 'her' expectations.

I tried repeatedly to explain to her to please not be negative and how it affected me. She could not see it as negativity, she after all "just wanted the best for me."

So I became drastic again. This time I shut the door on her. I changed my phone number and did NOT TALK to her for another five years. (Continuing to work on me and grow and change in recovery). She did not know where I was. Now my sister did, but at my request would only tell my dad when she heard from me and that I was still clean and sober and moving forward.

Yes, it was drastic, but her 'negativity' was affecting my sobriety and was very stressful to me.

Now I say all this to show what could happen. Maybe, just maybe, you could keep your conversations with your daughter SIMPLE. GENERIC. ABOUT THE Grand daughter, etc. If she and boyfriend do show up Sunday, focus on positive, how nice she looks or you love the way her eyes look, something you can be sincere about.

Katie please remember the 3 C's. You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it. No matter what "IT" is. Her choice in boyfriends, her choices in recovery.

BTW, since I am as 'stubborn' as my mother was, she did finally get it, and the last 12+ years of her life we had a FANTASTIC relationship.

We daughters who are whole have a hard enough time meeting our mother's 'expectations' of us. There was a great book that my sponsor found for me and I cannot remember who wrote it. It was called "Jewish Mother's Guilt Syndrom." lol but it was really about how unconsciously many mother's have this way of being able to make a child feel guilty. Compliments that were 'back handed.' ie "That B is really great, but an A would have been better." "That looks nice on you, but ....." And yes, I recognized myself in the book also and doing a lot of the same things and saying the same things that my mother had said to me, and her mother had said to her, etc.

J M H O

I typed all of the above, because I have learned, for me, and have seen it work with others also, that

When I CHANGE MY actions or reactions to someone, they CHANGE THEIRS toward me. I can only CHANGE me and lo and behold when I do, others around me seem to change too. Go figure.

After five years of working on me, I was able to be with my mother, talk with my mother, and if she would say anything that was troubling to me still, I would change the subject. In the meantime, in that 5 years, Mom had done some work on herself so, we both grew and changed.

BTW, I never ever did fulfill her expectations of what I could, should, or would be, but it was A-OK. I am what I am.

Love and hugs,

serenityqueen

Boy can I ever identify with Winnie! I had to have a man in my life, no matter how much of a mess he was. But you see, I was also going to fix them all, but I won't hijack this thread with all of that. I'm only bringing this up because it seems that a great deal of addicts, epecially women, IMO, do this as well. If we aren't getting our fix in drugs, we get it from men. Like so many other areas in life, you have to let her learn this on her own. I can only imagine what my Mom thought when I brought home my latest "the one." It's like her Recovery,you can't work her Program for her, you can't pick her boyfriends for her.

I agree with Laurie in a certain aspect as far as I have a Mother who seems to have that Jewish Mother's Guilt Syndrome. My Mom wouldn't compliment me first though, she kept commenting on how I needed to change something over and over and over to the point that I would change it how she wanted it to shut her up! She knew this and it only continued on a cycle of madness. I remember one time I had painted my entire downstairs on the house I used to live in. This included patching all of the holes where when I was using, I rearranged everything on the walls constantly. Anyway, after I painted it, it really looked nice, I was so proud of myself. Mom's response when she saw it. "Oh, you could have picked a better color. I really can't tell much of a difference. I was expecting it to look better." Take a baseball bat to my knees next time Mom.

Although we don't realize it or mean it, there are times when things are said that someone else really is hurt by. I'm not defending your daughter nor am I saying what you are doing is wrong. Just wanted you to take a look at how this may have seemed to her.

Judy

Chino

Throw perception into that mix and it's the reason for my signature. I read it several years ago but it didn't really click in my head until a few months ago, when I began working on myself in earnest.

katie53

hi laurie6781, I appreciate your post and I'm fine with it. What I resent is that she is not in recovery, she just quit using. She had told her daughter that she wanted to go to treatment and meetings when she got out of jail. It didn't happen. Much of her time is spent with her friend rather than her girls and her oldest feels it. I would be happy if she hung with friends in aa or na , that was her original plan. I have met many friends in my grouup along with recovering addicts who have helped me alot during the last 4 years. As far as her bf, I did not tell her what I knew about him, just that I knew who he was. For the last 6 weeks she never mentioned his real name. I went along with it all the while.After 6 weeks I felt i needed to tell her that I knew his real name. I don't feel she thought about her daughters when she decided to move in. He had numerous restraining orders on him for abuse, this is scary for me, as she was severly hurt a couple of years ago by her then bf.

laurie6781

Katie, please, please go to AlAnon. I know there is EXCELLENT AlAnon in Wisconsin. Yes and in Fon du Lac, lol I have been to meetings there, West Bend and Milwauke when I go back to my 'home state' to visit family.

I know you are 'afraid for her.' Problem with that is YOU CAN'T CONTROL HER or HER CHOICES. I am grateful the granddaughter is with you.

I wish my mom was still alive, she could tell you EXACTLY how she Let Go of me and actually shut the door on me. Hung up when I called, closed the door in my face if I showed up at the house, and would have called the cops if I tried to steal from them again. It still took me another 2 1/2 years to really FIND RECOVERY and the last 1 1/2 years I lived on the streets of Hollywood (3,000 miles from them, on purpose, they were in Florida by then).

BUT............................................... ............I can tell you that their actions of SHUTTING ME OUT with NO CONTACT until I took care of MY PROBLEM, was the very best, absolute best thing they could have ever done for me. They let go, because they had to. Years later, they told me that had they not done what they did, they would have ended up in a mental institution.

Please try some AlAnon. It will help.

Love and hugs,