r/Advice•
jen1que

I feel like I owe my mother love simply because she sacrificed alot for me

My mother immigrated from Jamaica 14 years ago. And it took her 10 long years of work to become a citizen, so she sacrificed alot for me. Though unfortunately, whenever we get into disagreements she never fails to bring up all shes sacrificed for me to deflect blame. And my step father. Who is white and is not an immigrant, enables it. My mother, like most black immigrant mothers perfers to parent in a authoritarian way. When I was a child this was easy because I was mostly scared of her, and didn't think to question her. But as I got older I started to use my voice and speak up whenever I felt things were unfair. I didn't do it to challenge authority, or to bend the rules. I did it to figure out the reasoning behind the rules to better understand why things were the way they are. But she saw my questions as disrespect and would just resort to tell me, "because I said so". I wish I could forever erase this phrase off the face of the earth, because its not okay. I fully beleive that both Authority and logic can coexist together when parenting. So I feel like if there is no logic behind the rules, then you're just doing it to exercise more power. And whenever I voice my frustrations, I often feel like my voice is being ignored entirely. She either completely ignores me, or goes on long tangents on how she doesn't have to ever explain herself to me, because she's the parent and I'm only the child. This whole dynamic of how she deals with conflict makes me resent her. I'm the oldest one, who's always offering an extra hand to help my younger siblings, has very good grades, and doesn't even do the "wrong" things that teenagers do. So its also not like she has alot of reasons to get mad at me. I'm still scared of her, because she still threatens to hit me so its not like I can raise my voice or even show the slightest bit of attitude. The worst part is, whenever I try to talk to her she immediately starts talking about how much she sacrificed for me. And when I naturally pull away, she starts telling me how much of a horrible mother she is, almost to guilt trip me. But she never has any incentives to change. Now that I'm older I've gotten to the point where yes I do love my mother, but I hate how she gets whenever we have disagreements. And disagreements are inevitable in a relationship. So I dont even want a relationship. But at the same time she has sacrificed alot for me, so I feel like I have to love her.

Posted Dec 4, 2025, 9:39 PM UTC

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