Dear Abby: I’ve been having issues lately with my mother. I feel like she’s not really my “mother” but more like someone we think of as our best friend. It seems like she hasn’t grown up at all since high school. I’m almost 30.
While I’m at work, my daughter sometimes texts me to talk about her day, her recent struggles, or asks me to help her find furniture that she might be interested in. I feel awkward answering her questions and wish I had a parent to talk to about my problems instead of feeling like I’m the more grown-up.
She says only I know her preferences, but I know her preferences change quickly. She doesn’t talk to me the way most mothers talk to their sons, it’s more like two teenagers at school talk to each other.
I don’t want to ignore her because I know she’s been through a lot. I don’t know what to say because I don’t know how to talk to this person anymore. I’m tired of feeling like my heart is being squeezed every time I have to respond to her. Please help. — Washington’s son, not his friend
Dear son,: You can’t change your mother; she is who she is: demanding, emotionally immature, and dependent on you. But you can change the way you respond to her. A first step in the right direction is to limit her contact with you during work hours. Another is to tell her that you don’t feel comfortable being her interior decorator and that she should find someone who can spend more time with her. And finally, remind her that you are her son, not her contemporaries, and that you want to talk to her as sons, not as “friends”, because you already have enough “friends”.
Dear AbbyAn old friend of mine, a sweet older woman who lives in California (I live in New York), has some form of dementia. We keep in touch by phone. She lives alone. The phone is important to her and to me, but our conversations have become more and more of a never-ending, repetitive loop.
Calls usually last 45 minutes to an hour, but every few minutes the conversation completely resets and my friend thinks I’m trying to hang up after a few minutes. She doesn’t remember us repeating the same thing over and over. If I don’t hang up, the call will go on forever.
I try to hang up gently, but is there a way to make sure she understands that we had a really long conversation without upsetting my friend, and that I’m not in a rush to hang up after a few minutes? Telephone Prisoner
Dear Telephone PrisonerSince you haven’t mentioned anything, I’m going to assume that your friend has relatives who know what’s going on and that she lives in a safe environment. The way to end a conversation without hurting someone’s feelings is to say that you need to do so because “the pot is boiling over” or “I have to take something out of the oven, take my pet for a walk, or have an important phone call or appointment.”
Dear Abby was written by Abigail Van Buren (aka Jean Phillips) and published by her mother, Pauline Phillips. To contact Dear Abby, please contact us at http://www.DearAbby.com or write to PO Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
