My parents were married almost 40 years. They shared a business and had a strong relationship. My mom was always an example of a strong independent woman. Since my dad died in 2020 my mom has been on every dating website there is, she has been dating manipulative and borderline abusive men. She never reaches out to me or my sisters, and is really self-absorbed. She lost a ton of weight and now judges me for carrying extra weight after having had my kids. I miss how she used to care for me, didn't judge, and checked in on us. I miss her strength and friendship. I feel like I don't even know her anymore. What can I do?
Thinking back, there were a whole bunch of things that made it seem like Mom had done a 180.
My mother’s house was filthy.
She became paranoid.
She lost her filter/was saying things that were extremely uncharacteristic.
And on, and on.
Can you take a trip to see your Mom to get a lay of the land, and check on her in person?
Your mom probably doesn't want to spend the rest of her life alone and quite frankly, I don't blame her.
Time for you to stop leaning on her strength and go get friends that are your peers. That way you won't miss her so much.
She is entitled to her life as a grown woman. Try to support her in her life more and see if that doesn't improve the relationship a bit. I bet it does.
You are a mom now, time to grow up and not depend on care and check ups from your mom to prop you up.
You may just need to let Mom do her thing. Hopefully, she will see its not taking her anywhere.
On this forum when moms do things like:
- date sketchy men from the internet
- says "judge-y", hurtful things as if their filter is broken
- become self-absorbed
- lose weight
it is possible she has "something else" going on besides a Renaissance. The older she is, the more likely these behaviors might actually be the beginnings of an age-related cognitive problem. If she were 49 or 59 I'd be less concerned.
The weight loss thing can be a short-term memory impairment so that she is not remembering whether or not she ate. This is was what happened to my MIL, and it eventually landed her in AL.
In regards to weight loss, my 68-yr old cousin who had been on thyroid meds was losing a ton of weight. It turned out she had the beginnings of ALZ, was not taking her meds correctly (because she couldn't remember), which caused her to overmedicate herself (and the meds dosage is based on bodyweight), which caused her to become confused, which caused her to lose weight, in a cycle, until a family friend who was an RN stepped in to get her to her doctor and adjust her meds, plus assign someone else to dispense them to her.
I may be in the minority on this post who will say that other issues should be discounted before chalking your mom's new lifestyle up to her second adolescence. This may mean you "play along" with your mom so that you can get into her house to see if there's signs of disarray, confusion, that she's eating properly, she's opening her mail, taking meds correctly, not being catphished, etc. I think it is more important to prove there is no other problem. If I were in your shoes, I'd enlist another sibling or one of mom's friends/neighbors to get her out of her house for a few hours. This will allow you to poke around to look for obvious signs of a larger problem. If you don't see anything, I'd let it go.
The dating of sketchy men is very worrisome to me. Financial scamming of the elderly is a big problem (and you can read the many posts by distressed family as they watch the trainwreck from the sidelines). I'd try to create a calm moment with her to encourage her to create legal protections, if she hasn't already done this. As a businesswoman of 40 years (like myself) I think she'd understand the importance of having a PoA, Advance Healthcare Directive, Medical Representative, etc. She should also be encouraged to have a physical, including a cognitive and memory exam (and test for UTI) to get a baseline measure and "seal the deal" of her PoA to "prove" her capacity (and maybe this test will show otherwise, and that's the point).
I wish you much success in whatever you choose to do. Hopefully, it's just her living out a different version of herself.
If she was a good, supportive, active, involved wife and mother, she may have felt somewhat squeezed out of being just a person in her own right.
Another thought- most adolescents rebel against “judgement”- could you and you mother be experiencing a bit of a throwback to adolescence yourselves, together?