Post Eight: Did my mother love me?

Did my mother love me?

In the land of ACON (Adult Children of Narcissistic parents) the big question is: Did they love me? Did mummy/daddy love me?

Yes it sounds pathetic, especially coming from a grown woman. But this is the really big question. Did they love me? In my case, the short answer is yes.

Here’s the long answer.

You need to understand something about the Narcissist and how they see their children (or anyone else for that matter).

Children are not separate entities to the Narcissist, they are extensions of the Narcissist. They are property. And like a new car or a new pair of shoes, the child’s primary purpose is to give the Narcissist ‘narcissistic supply’. And lucky kids, they are trained from birth to do just this (Pavlov’s Dog again).

Narcissistic supply comes in many forms: emotional support, domestic help, a mirror for her fabulousness as a mother, a sounding board, the provider of validation for her bad decisions. Sometimes making you cry is enough supply for the N: if she can make you cry she has the power and control. Obedience is supply. Fear is supply. Let’s face it: when you fear someone they sure do have your attention!

(An aside: NM and I were watching a SIL with her toddler son one day. SIL was cuddling and playing with him after a scary fall-down. NM had her ‘disdainful-stone-face’ on when she said, “This bonding crap is overrated. Fear is easier”).

Whatever she needs at any given time to make her feel alive and good about herself, powerful, better than you and in control is supply. And children of N’s exist to provide supply. It’s all about her and her feelings and her wants and if you have to not feel your own feelings and subordinate your very existence as a human to support her, so be it. She gave you life and your life is hers. You owe her!

Which means any love she gives is conditional. Conditional on you being exactly as she needs you to be, providing whatever form of supply she needs, at any given time or place. Make yourself useful kids, that is your job in life.

Back to my experience of the question, ‘Did my mother love me’? She says she did. She has always said so. She has told me so. For all I know she still says she does.

But when someone makes a statement, any statement, we hear the words through the filter of our own experience. We hear the words and assign our own meaning to them. It is human nature and it is as unavoidable as the behaviour of Pavlov’s Dog. Think of it via the following true example.

She said: ‘Well, at least you know your mother loved you’.

I heard: ‘Well at least you know your mother loved you unconditionally’.

I had drunk the kool-aid of the cult of motherhood and assigned my own meaning to her words, specifically, the concept that ‘unconditional’ was part of mother-love’.

But just because someone says something, does not make it true.

So I suggest we all stop listening to what is said to us and instead, focus on the actions of those who say ‘I Love You’. Is what they say backed up by actions, or are words just words?

So yes, my mother did love me, by her definition, but not by my definition.

My definition of love now includes the obvious. 

If a person deliberately ignores my feelings; steals off me; threatens to falsely accuse my partner of elder abuse; lies to me and about me; berates and belittles me at every chance; undermines my confidence and rages at me at will; ignores my basic personal boundaries like ‘please don’t call me 8 times in my working day’; spreads vile and untruthful gossip about me; chooses to abandon me as a teenager and sucks me dry emotionally at every opportunity, this person does not love me regardless of how often they say it out loud. Or who they say it to.