whiiiiiiine

[metaphortunate]

I snapped at my mother on the phone this evening and I feel pretty terrible about it, since all she had done was ask me if I was happy.

Why is that so fucking irritating, why, why, WHY? Every week when we talk on the phone she asks me if I'm happy. I don't think I'm unhappy, but I truly hate that question and I don't know why. Today, in particular, I have felt unbelievably shitty since lunch; stomach pain, and contractions, and the Junebug had a meltdown on the train home, out of hunger I think, and scratched my face and just had nothing but massive tantrum until we got some food in him. So Mom called during dinner to discuss some logistical stuff, and when we were done with that, she asked me if I was happy, and I said, "….sure." And she said that didn't sound very convincing, and I said I'm really not in the mood to deal with a fucking interrogation and handed the phone over to let her talk to the Junebug. And when I took the phone back I apologized, but you know. It doesn't really help.

I mean, I expect it's the sort of thing I'll want to know about the Junebug someday! Right? It's not unreasonable to want to know if your kid is happy? Aargh.

And the worst part is this was the same conversation I'm asking her to come for two weeks when Hypo is born. So here, let me snap at you and ask you for a favor. Except that it's really not clear how much her coming is her doing us a favor and how much is us letting her help. So does it make up for it if I snap at you and then try to make it up by making an effort to include you? But if she could be here to stay with the Junebug while Mr. E and I are in the hospital, my god, that would be great, because otherwise we're not 100% sure who is going to watch him. We've asked a few people, but of course we don't know when it's going to be, or for how long, and that's a really big favor to ask, and a big worry, and what if I have to go back in the hospital like last time….ARGH. So yes. It will be best for the Junebug if my mom could stay with him. But it will be awful for me & Mr. E. On the other hand what's good for the Junebug is good for us. Not having to worry so much about the Junebug or about putting huge impositions on our friends is good for us. So I can just suck it up and deal with my mother. Right? Somehow, I will cope? For two weeks?

I know that I am so very lucky. I have family that wants to help. The Junebug is wonderful and more amazing every day. Hypo continues reassuringly energetic. My health is, in general, good. My job is going well. I have a lovely generous maternity leave coming up and we can afford a good daycare after that, that keeps the Junebug happy.

Okay, actually I do feel better thinking about all that. Mr. E is in the kitchen doing dishes so that I can sit quietly with my feet up and sip water and hope that it makes things calm down and feel better like it's supposed to. There's nothing that needs doing that can't wait until tomorrow. Things could be worse.

Comments

[snippy]

I don't remember much happiness during either of my pregnancies. But yeah, as a mother, I want my sons to be happy--I just don't think asking them repeatedly is a good way to either help them achieve it or tell whether they really are happy.

As for coping with the visit: in the first place you will be a NEW MOTHER again. You have full permission to be tired, cranky, to want to spend time alone with each of your children and with both of them, to ask for any kind of behavior that might help you recover from pregnancy and birth as well as figuring out the new relationships in your family. With luck you'll sleep a lot of those 2 weeks (nap when the baby naps was my rule) and Junebug will further develop a close relationship with another adult who can be a resource for him later. I mean, what if he doesn't want to grow up to be like you or anyone else in the household--this way he will have yet another model for how to be a grown up. That's how I always thought about it with my kids.

[thistleingrey]

Cosign.

I apply the "further develop a relationship with another adult who can be a resource" thinking to my MIL, especially when she asks whether I'm happy or offers excitedly to do something with my daughter which we've told her gently several times wouldn't work (at this time, at all, whatever).

[metaphortunate]

and Junebug will further develop a close relationship with another adult who can be a resource for him later.

Yes, this is totally true. He loves hanging out with her, too; well, I mean, who wouldn't, she adores him and actually is excellent with babies and is never checking her phone while playing with him (*cough*unlike his mama). That part will be great.

[hunningham]

The question "are you happy?" would annoy me as well, but I can't really work out the whys. What would your mother do if the answer was no - if she's at all like mine it would be ongoing pestering about my emotional state for the next 10 years.

Another thought (I've been mulling over happiness) - parents with young children are seldom very happy by any quantitive measure (from the "Journal of I Read It Somewhere on the Internet"). But they often look back on those early child-rearing years as a time of great joy.

[metaphortunate]

OMG, you genius. That's the perfect answer! "In ten years, I will look back on this as a time of great joy."

[liseuse]

I loathe being asked (particularly by my mother) if I am happy because I have to say yes. If I say no, I get questioned for hours about why not. So I usually snap a "yes" and contradict word with tone.

[metaphortunate]

The moment I'm asked, I'm not happy about it! It comes out in the tone, all right.

[wordweaverlynn]

"Are you happy?" might carry some nasty implications. These are thought-experiments, not comments on your own actual mother. Choose which ones fit. If none of them do, toss the list in the compost heap.

Because if you're not happy, your mother might feel:

--I am a failure as a mother. I need constant reassurance or my world will collapse. So you'd better be happy, or I will be miserable. This is a huge threat. In the immortal words of John Le Carre, everyone who is not happy must be shot.

--Your husband isn't good enough to you. I told you to marry someone else with a better job/religion/ethnicity/body/bank account/attitude/family. [When my marriage of 16 years broke up, my mother said triumphantly, "That's what you get when you marry someone from Long Island."]

--I was right all those times when I said you're ruining your life with your choice of career/locale/friends/hairstyle/music/religion/reproduction strategy/child-rearing strategy/financial decisions.

Basically, the question is far too loaded, and not asked in good faith. The only right answer is yes, even if you're having a crappy day, or you'll make your mother miserable. Because a crappy day invalidates all the joys, achievements, and pleasures of the rest of your life. But also the only right answer is no, because then all her fears will be justified and you'll need her advice and care.

[jesse_the_k]

You are wise.

[metaphortunate]

People are insane about divorce, but that really wins some kind of prize of awfulness.

[jrtom]

ObDisclaimer: I only know your mom through what you've posted (here and elsewhere). I claim no specific insights. :)

"Are you happy?" is a hard question to answer, in part because it can be answered on several levels: are you happy right now in this moment (value estimate), are you happy with the direction(s) that your life is going in right now (slope estimate), are you happy with where you think that your plans/actions will probably cause you to end up (asymptote value estimate)? Obviously the answers to these questions may be wildly divergent, and it's not always obvious which one is meant.

This is complicated by the fact that most people's lives are beset by a bunch of niggling little problems at the best of times, even if you might overall describe yourself as happy (in the second or third senses above).

One could ask that question as an invitation for you to vent about the things that you're not happy about (in any of the above senses).

I could also imagine someone asking that question as a sort of social-interaction tic, i.e., "I want to connect with you and talk about things that are important to you and/or to me, but I don't know how to do that right now other than by asking you this incredibly open-ended question."

Good luck. I have confidence that you will continue to find happiness, and even joy...even if it's not necessarily always apparent in the moment, or easy to explain (although one of the things that I like about you is that you are good at expressing and explaining and exploring and probably other things beginning with 'X' :) ). Say hi to Hypo for me when the arrival happens. :)

[metaphortunate]

Will do. :)

I have moments of happiness, and yes, even ones of great joy! Just not right after I've been asked that question.

[oyceter]

Oh ugh, that question from my mother would drive me up the wall. Most of it is because whenever I feel bad, she manages to make it all about her or co-opts my anxiety or something, and then I end up having to soothe her. Also, she puts a lot of pressure on me to confide in her so we can have valued mother-daughter emotional closeness, and if I do, she offers advice that is frequently anger-making. It also feels like a very loaded question, because there's an underlying sense that she wants me to say yes (as opposed to a more neutral question like "How's stuff going?" or "How are you feeling?"). I have no idea if your mother does anything even remotely similar, but just wanted to say that I don't think you getting irritated at that question is weird at all!

[metaphortunate]

YES argh emotional closeness that is NOT EARNED.

Or not earned anymore. I do have sympathy! I am so close to the Junebug, and I have earned this closeness through an assload of work, and I sympathize with my mother feeling like she and I had this closeness once, which we did, and feeling that we should STILL have it! And you know maybe we should. But ~should~ is useless. Whether or not we should, we DON'T. It is gone. And maybe we could get it back, if we both worked really hard at it. But I know that we can't get there by just acting like we're there already and bulling forward on that basis. It does not work, and I know, because we've been trying that for years and it hasn't worked yet.

[laurashapiro]

Chiming in with everyone to say that if my mother asked me that,* I would go through the roof. In my case, it's because if I answered anything other than an unequivocal "yes", it would mean her posing questions that I don't want to answer about parts of my life and self that I do not want to share with her. Ever.

So then I'd feel like the question is actually about HER. She's asking if I'm happy but she doesn't want to hear anything real, there's only one acceptable answer, and she's asking so that SHE can feel good that her kid is happy. Because my mother is a narcissist and everything is about her.

YMMV.

*Interesting that I cannot imagine my father, or indeed anyone else I know, asking me this question. Is this a question only a mother would ask?

[hunningham]

I can imagine my father asking it, and it would be okay. If I said no, he wouldn't be upset or blame; we'd probably just end up having a really interesting discussion about the nature of happiness, and what makes people happy etc. And he might make suggestions, but he wouldn't assume he had the right answer.

And then he'd go away and do his own thing, and forget all about me.

[laurashapiro]

My GOD that sounds familiar. If my father ever did ask the question, I imagine that's what would happen -- or something similar to it.

[oyceter]

Thirding this! I think the only times my dad has asked me that is when we have an awkward talk that actually touches on my life (i.e. when I first started dating CB and my mom flipped out, when job hunt wasn't going anywhere). Then he kind of backs away and doesn't do anything save communicate remotely via my mom for another six months.

[metaphortunate]

Oh, dads. :/

[kate_nepveu]

It's a question with a huge amount of pressure attached to give the "right" answer, which is why I'd find it incredibly annoying.

I'm glad thinking things through and sitting down helped.

*support support support*

[metaphortunate]

Yep. I find that kind of question very irritating! Thanks. :)

[amaebi]

You cannot have enough people to tell you, "You are doing really hard things, and sometimes it's Seriously Wearing."

I'll be thinking of you and wishing you well. You're in a tough place.

[metaphortunate]

Thanks. I only sort of am, though! A lot of people have been in a place like this that was much tougher! I have lots and lots of support. I just gotta keep that in mind.

[amaebi]

It's been hard work for every one of those people, too! And I'm glad you're not winning the Hardship Derby. :D

[lovepeaceohana]

Oh, yeah, I don't know how well I'd do with a question like that. It does feel loaded and uncomfortable, and to me it presupposes that I'd trust the person who asked it enough to answer honestly, and there's no answer that I could easily give that wouldn't take that underlying presumption of trust for granted. Or, you know, if it's for the sake of small talk - that's not exactly very small talk!

And even if I thought it was a perfectly innocent and normal question to ask, I'd still say that you have got plenty of leeway for snapping at people - even people you love, even people of whom you are asking favors/requests - and I mean, hey, at least you apologized afterward? Pregnancy is just tough like that.

[firecat]

Not at all the same sort of interaction as you had, but...My mother asked me that question a lot after her dementia got bad. I usually answered "I have a really good life," listed some of the things that were good about it, and told them they were all because of her.

[serene]

"all she had done was ask me if I was happy." No. She asked, and then she expressed dissatisfaction with your answer. And you were at the tail end of a frustrating day. Slack. Let me cut you some.