I think negative patterns from my relationship with my mother have dominated my choice in partners. Therapy is helping me through it.

My relationship with my mother has always been a bit weird. She very obviously always favoured my older sibling over me and I’ve grown up in a hot and cold ish environment with her, which she partly blames me for. I never felt like my emotions were safe with her and I’ve never been able to open up to her about my thoughts and feelings, she also gave me a lot of grief about not opening up to her instead of trying to understand why I don’t open up to her.

I was often judged on my character / my emotions / my thoughts etc by her but she never tried to understand why they’re the way they are. And alot of it came from her constantly crossing my boundaries not just growing up but even now as a 31 year old. My therapist says that at some point, I started equating her hot and cold behaviour with love in my formative years which is probably why I tend to have low self esteem / could possibly feel like I’m not worthy of a better form of love.

I want to also mention that my mother in NO way was a bad mother. Yes, she has her faults but so do I. She gave up her entire career to be home with me so that I could get the attention I needed in school. She also showed up for me like a best friend when I went through one of my worst breakups that had me wanting to d!e. She’s done so much for me, I cannot begin to explain. She and I also love going on walks together and growing up we’ve definitely gotten closer but our fights also have gotten worse.

I love my mom but it is tough for me to spend too much time with her and I find myself having to work very very hard for her approval while seeing that my older sibling gets a lot of love and forgiveness from her irrespective of her temper / negative character traits.

I’m tired of the cognitive dissonance where I know she loves me and she’s constantly doing so much to make my life better but I also feel emotionally unsafe around her (and that makes me extremely
Guilty)