You know, dude, you’re allowed to not like your mom, and maybe you even have good reasons for it. But damn, dude, why do you have to hate everyone else’s mom, too?
READERS! Stay tune tomorrow for a look at a much longer and in many ways even nastier MGTOW disquisition on motherhood and mother’s day, which was helpfully left in the comments here by a very angry dude!
Digital Degenerate:
Please allow a non-digital decadent to explain to you how Mother’s Day works. Mother’s Day was invented for guys like you; Mother’s Day is there so you can get off the hook très cheap. Here’s how Mother’s Day is supposed to go: 1) You don’t get along with your mother. 2) She doesn’t get along with you. 3) You don’t want to spend much time around her, and 4) She doesn’t want to spend much time around you. 5) But!! Fortunately for you both, there’s a thing called Mother’s Day, which means 6) You can get a bunch of flowers online and send them to her once a year and consider your duty done, plus 7) Nobody is going to contest that view, because this is America. In this country we’re all about time-saving gadgets and practices.
See how easy? It couldn’t be simpler!! So send the frickin’ flowers already and don’t be such a dolt. Thanks for your time.
@mrex
What would paternity wards even consist of?
@Tov01
Gravid trans dudes?
Hugs to all who have crappy parents. And a big cheer for the moms!
I’m on friendly terms with my parents, especially my dad. My mom was a good parent but she is the biggest fucking mystery I’ve ever come across. I’ve talked about her here before, a long time ago, but I don’t think I can adequately explain how incredibly strange she is. She’s impossible to communicate with. I know, lots of people think their parents are uniquely weird, but my mom really is a space alien in a meat suit.
A place for the new dads to hide out and avoid the responsibility of newborn-caused sleep deprivation in an official way that allows for claims that their ‘condition’ must improve before they can go home – roughly when the kid reaches age 2 years. The paternity ward concept is now a thing, requests for proposals should be submitted to uh….the government?
There of course should be some classes involved, preparing new dads with the issuance of one of those realistic dolls which mimic many of the common behaviors of a real live infant such as crying and faux-soiling of diapers at all hours. Can’t just let them play video games and talk about the days when they were single and only claimed themselves as a dependent on their tax returns.
Much better use of taxpayer funds than private correctional facilities with no purpose other than to profitably supply space that encourages law enforcement to find bodies to fill.
@Tov01
“What would paternity wards even consist of?”
I assume it’s the hospital ward where new father’s go after getting their nutsack crushed for 6 hours so that their hemorrhaging nutsacks can get “pampered” by nurses?
( I’m putting “pampering” in scarequotes because the hospital I gave birth at got rid of it’s nursery because mothers were “abusing” it. So if a mother just spent the night in a tough labor, and then topped that off with a C-section, she gets to spend the entire next day taking care of a newborn and breastfeeding instead of sleeping and healing).
@axe
“Gravid trans dudes?”
But, but, but, that’s musandrony! /s
I have to say, the above sounded funnier in my head than when I read it afterwards.
Point is, there’s an inherent level of physical damage that happens to women during birth, whether it’s vaginal or cesarean. Which is why women need to stay in maternity wards, to make sure that we don’t start to hemorrhage, or get an infection, or etc.
A need that CIS men don’t have.
@Dreemr
This is my nightmare.
This is my dream.
I am terrified I am going to feel this way when my parents die, because, you know, everybody bashes it into your head that you should like your parents a lot and be sorry when they die.
@Jesa
@Dali
[accepts hugs gratefully]
@Francesca & Dreemr
Same. I contemplate the possibility of their natural deaths with something approaching relief, and that makes me feel like a very bad person. Kinda like how I felt before I was willing to admit that I don’t like my mom at all.
We’re brainwashed into thinking our parents are always awesome and we should like them even if they’re objectively terrible. Kinda how we’re taught to think about men and husbands. Because god forbid relationships with children or women should involve respecting the other person too.
I wished my mom a happy mother’s day, though. I was up this morning at 6 AM, and it’s complicated. It’s not that I dislike her, it’s that she hurts me and I don’t want to be around her.
@IgnoreSandra
I gave my mother a card and a gift as always.
Really sorry you have to endure this. It’s awful.
@Francesca
It is. I’m sorry you have to endure this too. Sometimes I think I’m being too hard on them because they’re just so nice as long as it isn’t about my gender, sexuality, life choices, favored entertainment, name, or history.
I didn’t get a card or a gift for her. Not intentionally, these things just kind of pass me by, and I haven’t been out of the house for a few days. It’s kinda fair. I didn’t get a gift on my birthday. And she’s walking around behind me, so I don’t feel safe discussing this any longer.
@Francesca, dreemr, IgnoreSandra
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who feels like that. It actually cost me a lot to say “I hope my dad dies first” – I don’t think I’ve ever said it out loud before, or even acknowledged it. But the idea of my beloved mum going and then I’ll be the one dealing with all his emotional manipulation and mansplaining on a daily basis (my sister lives in another town and he has no close friends) fills me with dread.
I do love him. It’s a complicated relationship. I have some very happy memories of my childhood with him. He had an abusive childhood himself and never dealt with it, and the results are clear to see. He’s lived his entire life trying not to be like his own father…and his behaviour is nearly identical (minus the violence).
It makes me sad. In some ways it’s not his fault, but in some ways it is. I’m not sure he even can change at this age.
My mother died four years ago and I miss her horribly.
My father and I used to get her a fuschia every year for Mother’s Day until she asked us to not get her another plant she’d have to take care of all summer. 🙂
Hugs (if you would like them) to people with crappy parents. I’m sorry.
I am reminded of my mother every day, because I grew up to marry a man very much like her. I grew up to be very like my dad, so it works out.
The more I learn about other people’s parents, the more grateful I am for mine. Part of it was being the sixth child of seven; they were experienced, hard to shock and somewhat tired by the time I came along. My husband told me that my dad made him think of a smooth stone from a stream, all sharp edges worn down over decades. Dad got along with him, but most people do get along with him (one of the ways in which he’s like my mother).
One of my favorite stories about my parents – just before going off to college, I went with them to the local mall to get a tweed jacket. Mom’s emphysema was getting worse, so she waited on a bench while Dad and I went and got the jacket. Walking back, we saw her talking with another woman on the bench.
“Who’s that, Dad? I don’t recognize her.”
Without turning his head or changing expression, he replied, “That’s someone she met fifteen minutes ago, and now they’re the best of friends. I don’t know how she does that.”
@Francesca, IgnoreSandra, & Violet:
It really hasn’t been so bad to be, and even to admit to others, that I am relieved that my parents are dead. Mine weren’t the worst of the worst – I definitely have friends whose parents were much more damaging than mine – and after I was older, in my 40s, I was able to at least say that they did the best they could with the tools they had.
Even so, though, I knew much earlier that they weren’t healthy for me to have in my life.
I don’t go around dancing a jig of happiness whenever the topic of deceased parents comes up, but I also don’t pretend that they were awesome and amazing, either. I am lucky in that I have several close friends that I’ve known most of my life, and who knew the circumstances of my upbringing, and who understand themselves what it’s like.
This isn’t to say that I don’t occasionally miss some things about them. They weren’t wholly evil or anything, more like, perpetually immature and self-centered, handicapped by untreated mental illnesses and alcoholism, and quick to lash out in fear or anger.
Relationships are complicated, and relationships with our parents are no exception. You feel the way you feel about them, and for some of us it’s a mix. You know how much or how little is healthy for you, and there’s nothing wrong with having those boundaries for your own peace. Don’t fall into the trap of feeling guilty when there’s no need to.
Same here. I should probably tell them that, but I’m so bad at expressing those kind of things.
Hugs to anyone grieving lost parents or who have parent that aren’t so great.
http://i.imgur.com/xSEC7J9.jpg
My heart goes out to those whose relationships with their mothers is/was poor. I’m lucky that my mom and I get along very well, she was there to help when my mental health messed up my whole life and I lost my home and job.
I thought this Mother’s Day would be harder than it is, to be honest. It’s my first since finding out I can’t have kids biologically, so I was privately prepared for some bitterness to come to the fore, like it did when I found out my cousin knocked up his gf. Two things are helping though, focusing on it being something to appreciate my mom, and my wonderful bf who has been with me through my ordeal and with whom I someday hope to adopt a child of our own.
My mother nearly died last year, which highlighted her profoundly human, mortal state. It was terrible. I was working, and I have a long commute, and that was doubled, so I could see her in hospital, and brush her hair.
No one is ‘born’ to be a good mother. Mine made mistakes all over the place. And now, as a parent myself, I watch myself making entirely different mistakes. I can’t work out how to weigh things up, I can’t manage to even predict if most of the time I am doing the right thing. I try, but being a parent has such an uneasy, tight-rope swing to it. Am I being indulgent, am I too strict…when do I get to be a person again?
Then again, my kid handed me a card that said ‘You are the best cook in the world’ in her shaky hand writing, while staring dead level at my partner. Such shade thrown.
It was hilarious for the two adults, and she had no idea why. Adults are weird!
I googled Bircher and all I got were pages and pages about Muesli!
I am a very unsentimental person and have NO idea when Mothers or Father Day’s are. I have 2 kids and have never expected special treatment – my relationship with both of them is so good that I get the love and appreciation ALL YEAR ROUND!
That said I do have very negative opinions of both of my parents, but I managed to break the cycle with my own kids, and I may not have achieved much in life, but that really makes up for it.
I had a really good mom but she was definitely from the “children should be seen and not heard” school. She had a very short temper, too, and I quickly learned not to cross her or challenge her ideas about things. My ideas, I realized by the age of 6 or 7, were very different but I went along to get along and my childhood was smooth, if somewhat stymied.
My mom died of lymphoma when I was 21. I was pretty much over it in a week or so and always felt a bit guilty about that. The only thing I felt worse about was being in the military stationed overseas and being unable to be with my dad because I’d used up my emergency leave when my mom went into the hospital.
The upshot is, I loved my mom and she loved me but we were very different people. I can’t imagine having her around now because I’d never be able to be myself with her.
@Ellesar
Googling “John Birch Society” should get you a better explanation.
@PaganReader:
@Dali
You’re the last person I ever expected to be posting that…
@Troubelle
Are you kidding? That’s a classic!