Letting others influence you
QUESTION: Masters I’m feeling uneasy. I have a rocky relationship with my mother. She does not like my husband. He likes her, tries to be a good son in law. He IS a character, but not mean spirited, just likes to kid. As much as I ask him not to do it, he just keeps doing it. My mother on the other hand can be mean and vicious. At a family gathering recently, my husband and mother were talking, my husband was joking, but my mother was responding in an angry tone. My daughter and I both heard this. My daughter told me that it upset her that my mother responded so meanly to her dad. My mother is 79 years old and lives in a retirement home. We make a point to pick her up on the weekends. I feel she is hurting our family structure at times. Can this be so? ~Dee, United States
ANSWER: You can be hurt by the actions and words of someone only if you allow those activities to influence you. Your mother is very angry about the way her life has turned out. She hates your husband because he will not allow her to bask in misery and negativity. His tool to prevent this is humor. She does not want to feel good so she erupts whenever he starts to get too close to her trigger points and the ability to point out to her that most of her unhappiness is of her own making.
Your mother wants her negativity and resents your husband’s attempts to replace it with lightness and positive love. He is unaffected by her outbursts because he doesn’t take her seriously. He understands that is just the way she feels comfortable reacting to her despair.
You and your daughter have to accept that your mother is just being who she chooses to be. She feels she has the right to be miserable if she so chooses and that no one should have the audacity to try to change her. She is not an intentionally evil person, just a very unhappy one. The influence that her behavior has upon your family is only what you allow it to be. If it becomes too difficult to work with you can always let her stay in the home a weekend or two to get the message you will not tolerate her striking out.
This is a perfect lesson to explain to your daughter the difference between people who are unaware of the reactions others are having to their behavior and the ones who intentionally set out to cause harmful negative feelings in others. You can discuss with her the spiritual need to love others regardless of their actions because they are all souls having a physical experience. Tell her it is her choice whether she lets her grandmother’s actions have an impact or if she just sits back and observes one possible consequence of losing independence as one ages.