Contentment

I still have been thinking a lot about my relationship and my future relationship with my natural mother since we went on vacation together. I previously wrote about how our time together was different than what I had pictured before we went on vacation, but I never thought that I would be content in my relationship with her.

I have finally (for now) have calmed down my feelings and have taken control of them.

When we met over 18 years ago and I was a young 21 year old and she, was 39 and wanted a mother/daughter relationship, but I just couldn’t give her that at the time. I felt like if I gave her a mother/daughter relationship that I would lose my own mother/daughter relationship with my adoptive mother and father. I know now that that would not have happened, but at 21, I didn’t know any better. Six months later into our new found relationship, I wrote the “I can’t see you or talk to you” letter to her. Well, that letter costs me my relationship with her forever. Since then she will not go down that road again.

About 2 years later, I called her up and started talking with her and getting to know her and her family. But it was always me calling and striking up a conversation. We lived 3 hours apart and she would not ask if I wanted to come visit or meet somewhere. It was a relationship that if something was going to happen or grow, I had to do it. It was very difficult for me to have a one-sided relationship with her and I felt like she didn’t care enough about me to have a relationship, so I quit calling. Since she never called and I never called, the relationship stood still. Well, really just died. Every year and a half, I would call, we would talk, and then nothing. It was always a one-side relationship.

Years had past. I grew up and had kids of my own and then over 6 months ago, I called my mother and asked if I could come visit one weekend. Since then I have called and visited several times. This is the longest time we have actually spent in our relationship. But I now see why I decided to do that in the past. For 18 years I thought that it was always my fault for not wanting a relationship or my fault for the relationship to not develop into something. But now, I realize it wasn’t. Relationships are two sided and not everything falls on me.

When it comes to my relationship with my mother, I would have to put it in the category of “just being there”. At one point in time, I thought I would like it in the “very close mother/daughter” relationship. Or I could even go with “very stable friendship plus some” relationship. But that is not going to happen. I am content with “just being there” relationship. What that means is that we have a relationship that it is stable as long as I don’t expect anything out of her. She will not call or contact me unless she needs to. I don’t need to go visit her unless she wants me to. I would think that if it wasn’t for me wanted a relationship and accepting the category of “just being there”, that she would keep the relationship at the category of “she can take it or leave it”. So with her “I can take it or leave it” state of mind, I settle for “just being there”.