Relationships
Becoming One's Own Good Mother
The importance of mother/daughter relationship in establishing intimacy
Posted April 8, 2016
I can count on my one hand the women I know—friends or patients—whose relationship with their mothers is not the root of their most troubled selves. Virtually every woman I know has a complex relationship with her mother. (The same is true with men and their fathers, but it’s mother and daughter that I’m concerned with here.) It was certainly the most contentious relationship in my own life.
If I had to summarize the issues that are most universal over my 30 + years as a practicing psychotherapist, intimacy would be at the top of the list. The comfort of having someone to share love and closeness brings us back to our mothers. She was the one who first loved us, taught us how to love, and how to accept love. Though the father is also very intimately involved in the life and well-being of the child, the mother is the prime force in our earliest years and the source and dispenser of most of what we need—food, love, comfort, affection, approval. She is the one we look to to gauge our value; she is the template for how we imagine the world views us. As adults, we unconsciously seek out partners who’ll replicate that relationship with her. If my mother was open and approving, it’s likely that I will find open and approving men. By the same token, if my mother disapproved of me and was critical, I’ll most likely develop a damaged sense of self worth and be attracted to partners who reinforce those views. And because this tendency to repeat the mother is unconscious, we have no awareness that it’s happening. We just know that we’re having trouble in our love lives, or are drawn to unavailable partners, or are unable to sustain satisfying relationships. The more the closeness we long for degrades, the more we’re compelled to repeat that bedrock mother-daughter relationship.
In my new book, Orphans, I explore my own crippled experience with my mother, who vacillated between warmth and silence. Cold silence. She’d switch from one to the other without warning and seemingly without cause. I learned to be frightened of silence, and to recognize her anger in it. These silences could continue for days; my only recourse to follow her around begging her forgiveness. For what? I never knew. Amazingly, at some random moment during the course of her silence, she’d turn around pointing to her cheek and say “Give me a kiss. Right Here.” I can still feel the rage incited by that directive. I hated those kisses but had no option but to give them if I wanted to win back her affections.
Not surprisingly, well into adulthood, I didn’t trust silences. I needed to fill in spaces in conversations rather than let a silence settle in. This caused significant problems in my marriage. I married a quiet man who is often silent simply by temperament–his way of relating to the world. But for a long time I read his silences as disapproval. Just as I did with my mother, I’d follow my husband around asking what was wrong, why was he angry with me. He’d insist there was nothing wrong, that he wasn’t angry, but I couldn’t let go. These instances erupted into full-blown battles between us. Unsatisfied in the absence of affirmation, I’d finally storm out of the house hysterical. We almost separated several times. Couples therapy saved us. The wounds that precipitated these battles took a lifetime to solidify, and it can take almost a lifetime to dismantle them. In fact, the mission in therapy is to become one’s own good mother.
Not all women have mothers as forbidding as mine. The norm today has more to do with the way that mothers treat themselves than the way they treat their daughters. For the most part the disappointment of daughters with their mothers stems from what is perceived of as her passivity. Young women I speak to in my practice complain that their mothers aren’t positive role models when it comes to relationships with men. As far as we’ve come in the whole issue of women’s worth, young women still aren’t sure what their rights are in relationships or how to go about negotiating an equally satisfying bond. Having come from homes in which most of the accommodations and compromises are made by their mothers (still!), daughters who have achieved great success professionally and financially are still caught in outdated relationships with partners. They ask for and expect less in terms of help with childcare and housekeeping. This is not the way they want to live, but they find themselves up against the historical precedents set by their own mothers.
The good news is that thirty-something women started the conversation around expectations early. They won’t require as many years in therapy because they opened up far before my generation did. They’re more aware of their resentments towards their mothers than we ever were, calling them to task in ways that were anathema to women of my generation. They’re amenable to seeking therapy, and they have more open relationships with friends. In the 40s and 50s, in my house, we were bound to secrecy about anything that went on “inside our four walls”. To speak about family matters to friends was equal to being a traitor to family. I withheld and kept the silence. The women I see simply won’t.
Both sides, mother and daughter, are much more aware of what the other feels, and that’s a significant change in our society. But mothers and their daughters still puzzle over their relationships. My advice? More talking and listening. “My daughter is always angry with me,” one mother told me. I asked if she ever asked her daughter why she was angry. The mother couldn’t imagine asking her –what onslaught would erupt after such a question? She was afraid. Meanwhile her daughter complained, “I can’t talk to my mother; she’s so passive- aggressive.” “Have you tried confronting her with that? When she says something hurtful or dismissive, telling her how upsetting that is?” “ She’d burst out crying,” the daughter said. “And if she does?” I asked. “You’re both talking about things that upset you. That often brings tears. Maybe you’ll cry, too.”
Having paved a road to honesty with each other is an essential first step, but these women may still experience moments of being derailed. Relationships are complicated. Tending to them is an ongoing process. As women, we’re still learning how to assert ourselves and how to expect equality at home. Mothers and daughters can help each other with this. They share the same challenges, and for the most part, they want the same things. Here are my recommendations for better discourse, and a better relationship, with our mothers:
1. Set time aside to spend together as you would with a girlfriend—treat one another to a facial or massage, go to lunch, fill each other in on how your week or month is going. Just talk. The more honest you can be, the more you encourage honesty in the other.
2. Commit to the truth. Push for it in yourself. Tell your mother (or your daughter) how you feel about your interactions. Don’t give up if the first attempts to talk fall flat or generate anger. That will happen. Go back and try again. Opening up is not easy at any time, so don’t count on waiting until you feel ready. You’ll probably never be ready. Forging intimacy takes time and develops in stages.
3. Admit when it’s not working. Comment when it is. What does her behavior feel like? What does she seem to be saying with her anger or sarcasm?
Ask, or as it was with my own mother, you’ll never know. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. There can be no intimacy without it.
