Dear Prudence,
I have an issue with my mother that I feel is maybe a bit over dramatic but is still bothering me. My parents divorced almost 15 years ago. My father screwed my mother over in the divorce and it was really hard for her for a couple of years. I had a strained relationship with my father because of it. About 10 years ago, my father died unexpectedly. His estate was a mess. Basically, my sister and I had a good claim to most of his money and we, along with my mother, all had some legal claim to the house. Because of the money we got, as well as the way my father treated my mother in the divorce, my sister and I decided to let my mother have the house to make the legal proceedings easier. I don’t regret this. What is making me upset, though is that my mom doesn’t seem to be very grateful about it. It’s like she felt entitled to the house. I understand that, but it was still a sacrifice my sister and I made.
Well, she sold the house to move closer to both me and my sister. That doesn’t bother me, the house wasn’t special to us. What bothers me is that my mother claims to want to maintain a relationship with me, but is buying a house that will make that extremely difficult. I got a job offer and was able to pick a city close to where my sister lives. My sister is pregnant and my mom decided to move closer to her as I don’t expect to have kids. That’s all fine. But now my mother expects me to come up regularly, yet won’t buy a house I can stay in. I live about 2.5 hours away. It’s not impossible to do a day trip to see my mother, but it is difficult and not something I want to do regularly. The problem is I am very sensitive to mold due to a chronic illness. I cannot stay overnight in a home with mold. After getting very sick in a home with a lot of mold, it took me two years to recover. I then bought a crappy house, tore it down, and built something new to make sure it didn’t have any. After seeing how sick I got, my sister did the same thing.
My mom is not willing to do that. It is the cheaper option for my mother and my sister even found a good house through some local connections. My sister told my mom she could stay with her while it was being done. My mother is refusing. I get that building a house is difficult, but I literally won’t be able to visit my mom in her own home and won’t be able to visit that much at all (my sister has her mother-in-law living with her, so I only have a couch to sleep on there, which I am not comfortable with). I can afford to pay for a hotel every so often and my mom can come to visit me, but she is being incredibly stubborn about both of those options, saying, “They don’t work” for her. I’m feeling very resentful about the sacrifices I made when I was young and how little my mother is willing to sacrifice now. I know that once I gave her the house, it was hers to do with what she wanted, but I can’t help feeling like my mother took advantage of me when it was convenient and is now throwing me away when it’s not. At first, it seemed like this was out of the blue, but now I’ve realized my mother has a pattern of prioritizing small conveniences for herself over things that are big issues for me. I don’t really know what to do. She used to be such a good mother. A part of me feels like I might be blowing it out of proportion, though. What do you think?
—Moving Mother