Menopausal Monday #18

#mothersday

Living 2,000 Km away from my parents, as an only child, can hinder my ability to support them. When I decided to emigrate to the UK twenty years ago, I didn’t think about my extended future and how that could one day affect my ability to be present when my support could be important.

They (particularly my mum) is always thinking of us. She will know everything that’s happening near us even before we find out: what the weather like, what’s happened, what’s up and coming. She could be our NI: Naturaly Intelligence 😂 Instead of spending time planning fun activities to do, they’ll be too worried that the money they’re spending in themselves could be going towards us. Too much, right? I keep tellingn them to schedule a week away somewhere (they don’t even need to travel abroad, if they don’t feel comfortable to), just somewhere else in the country. God knows it is refreshing to spend time with a different view surrounding us.

My parents lived all their lives pretty much in function of each other. My mum more than my dad, of course, as a wife and mother. How hard can it be to reverse that fifty years later. I hate the belief that older people cannot change. Unless they specifically refuse to, they can change. I’d like to believe I can still change something in me, if I wanted to.

My dad is a very sociable creature. My mum is the exact opposite. She struggles to tust people. While my dad will always give people the benefit of the doubt, once you cross my mum that’s it. There’s no going back. And her experience will turn into protective rules. My dad keeps and makes new friends every few years. My mum has pretty much been refusing to socialise without my dad, which makes it harder for her because she does not get to have time with people when he’s not around. She gets no “ME” time, in a way, because every social interaction she makes rely on his presence, either because he’s the one driving or because she chooses not to go anywhere without him.

Now, I know (and she complaints about it) that she’s often unhappy with this because sometimes she relies on him too much, in a way that it ruins her plans. I’m now trying to convince her to start creating time to do her own things, where he’s not always there. It is, in a way, a toxic relationship. She cannot tell that she’s in it, it just developed and built up that way naturally over time, hence you can’t correct something that you cannot see is wrong. It’s easily done for women in more Latin cultures.

This means that my dad goes out to meet his mates many times and she doesn’t go with him because they’re all men and tend to meet in one of his mates’s car garage, and have men talks, which obvisouly she’s not interested in, so stays home. But finds nothing of her own to do, she’ll be making up house chores or watching a bit of TV or sometimes reading. But none of these activities involve a third party.

I probably should have already offered her some direction a while back but life gets busy and I may have missed a few opportunities to be honest, but I want to make it up to them. To my mum especially. We had a good chat and I need to be careful with my advice because my mum will be very wary of taking it if it means she will become fully independent from my dad, as in their minds this inter-dependence is what makes their relationship stand. So I’m starting to try to make her see that it’s ok to have hobbies and time doing things she enjoys, that he doesn’t need to join in for.

Yes, it’s good to schedule and do things together as a couple, but also important to schedule time for herself. They can still continue with their daily walks together and other outings. I told her to enrol in a Pilates or Yoga class, so that she’s doing something on her own and, at the same time, putting herself out there, susceptible to socialising and make some new friends. I had to brainwash her to convince her that gym classes are not only for young people, that she will find people her age and older there, that going to the gym IS NORMAL. But I also had convince her that she needs to go through the whole journey on her own (from contacting the gym to actually going in). I had to make her see that she still is a fully functioning adult on her own, that she CAN do things without my father’s permission.

Just two weeks down the line, she keeps going and she’s enjoying it. I don’t think she was expecting that. I am really happy to see our chat is paying off. Sometimes it’s all it takes: a chat. She doesn’t really speak and opens up to anybody else but my dad or her sister, and their thought processes can often be old fashioned. I know she values my views.

The title might be a bit blunt in terms of the reality of relationships but this is what happens. And it is our duty to honour our position. They were there for me when I couldn’t fend for myself yet, it’s only fair I try and do the same.

Happy Monday!