Harriette's advice here isn't bad, per se, it's just aggressively useless

[conuly]

DEAR HARRIETTE: Over the years, my mom and I have struggled to forge the ideal smooth-sailing mother-daughter bond that other people have. We used to bump heads a lot. Now that we no longer bump heads, we just have a hard time connecting and enjoying each other. I want things to get better, but she often compares my relationship with her to the one I have with my dad. My dad and I are pretty playful together, and he's easy to talk to. I think my mom constantly mocking the dynamic I have with my dad is her version of banter or "breaking the ice," but I wish she would stop comparing so that she and I could find our own groove. How do I get her on the same page as me? -- Mommy Issues

DEAR MOMMY ISSUES: Invite your mother to do things with you without your father. When she makes comparisons, change the subject. Find one thing you both like, and suggest that you explore that together regularly. Focus on her and let her see that you want to spend time with her independent of your father. Accept that your bond with her is unique, and be OK with that.

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Comments

[conuly]

1. Not every mother-child pair has this amazing, fantastic bond that LW imagines. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that hardly anybody has an "ideal smooth-sailing" relationship with both of their parents, even if their parents are generally okay people and not terrible and they all share interests and whatever.

LW would have benefited from being told explicitly that their expectations are probably always going to be unrealistic.

2. Harriette offers four disconnected pieces of advice, doesn't expand on any of it, and... honestly, I'd be surprised if LW hasn't thought of at least two of those things already. (It's possible they haven't figured out that they shouldn't respond to provocations, and we can see for ourselves that they don't like the relationship as it is because they're comparing it to some imaginary ideal they made up in their head.)

And while this advice isn't exactly bad, it doesn't address the core problem which is

3. LW's Mom keeps dumping her insecurities and resentment onto her child.

I would have focused on the strategy for managing that - respond blandly, change the subject, perhaps at some quiet moment ask her to stop doing this, if the behavior does not improve then start removing yourself as soon as it starts - and left out the rest of the advice, because this is the problem, this right here. Mom has feelings and will not manage them appropriately, so LW has to manage their own reactions instead.

And I would've actually explained *how to do this* rather than just writing an extremely useless list with no follow-through. JFC, Harriette.

[mrissa]

Yeah, I feel like while LW is comparing them to other hypothetical mother/daughter pairs, her behavior--at least from her perspective--is not constantly bringing up that comparison. LW's mom is the one who is going to have to accept that they have their own unique bond and be okay with that...or not, there's no rule that she has to, but "Mom, will you stop treating it like you're in a contest with Dad" is an okay thing to say out loud under these circumstances.

[nineveh_uk]

+1 LW's chasing a fantasy. Not because some people don't have great mother - daughter relationships, but because the "ideal" doesn't actually exist. By definition, a great mother - daughter relationship isn't founded in a fantasy of what it should be like, but in the reality of the specific people concerned. If LW wants things to improve, what she needs to address head-on with her mother is therefore the specific behaviour that's a problem.

[bookblather]

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that hardly anybody has an "ideal smooth-sailing" relationship with both of their parents, even if their parents are generally okay people and not terrible and they all share interests and whatever.

I have a great relationship with my mom, who's lovely and shares a lot of my interests, and even then there are pretty serious bumps sometimes. I'm not sure that's a reasonable expectation for any relationship.

[ashbet]

Harriette is pretty much always aggressively useless when she’s not dead wrong, I still want to know how the hell she has a job!

[watersword]

There are at least three commenters here who would be 1000% better at that job.

[conuly]

Only three?

[watersword]

Three is the lower bound!

[ysobel]

Invite your mother to do things with you without your father.

...that's...not the issue???

Mom is saying things like "Why don't you joke with me like you do with your dad", and/or mocking the relationship dynamics (probably out of jealousy), not ... argh.

(When my parents divorced, I didn't enjoy spending time with my mom because 95% of what she wanted to talk about was The Divorce, most of which also involved insulting my dad, and it was generally unpleasant. My pulling back was, in her mind, proof my dad was poisoning me against her. Mind you, I was in my 20s. And I liked time with my dad because he *wasn't* obsessed.)

It might work for LW to point out to mom that the comparisons and mockery both *damage* the mom/daughter relationship, and then either stop reacting or change the subject or something when mom persists ... but also, she should realize "other people" are curating the parts of the relationship that other people see, and also the "ideal smooth-sailing mother-daughter" closeness is pretty rare and takes effort on both parts ... being ok with an imperfect relationship is probably easier for LW than getting mom to change