DEAR ABBY: I’ve been having an issue lately involving my mother.
It feels like she isn’t really my “mother” but someone who thinks we’re best friends. It’s like she never really grew out of her high school days — and I’m almost 30.
I’ll have days at work where she texts to tell me about her day or her recent struggles, or she asks me to find furniture that would interest her. I feel awkward answering her questions, and wish I had a parent to talk with about some of my issues instead of feeling like I’m the more mature one.
She’s telling me that only I know what she likes, when I know her taste changes on a dime. She doesn’t speak to me the way most mothers talk to their sons. It’s more like how two teens at school talk to each other.
I know she has been through a lot, so it’s not that I want to ignore her. I don’t know what to say because I don’t know how to talk to this person anymore.
I’m tired of feeling my stomach sink every time I have to respond to her. Please help.
— SON, NOT FRIEND, IN WASHINGTON
DEAR SON: You are not going to change your mother. She is who she is — needy, emotionally immature and determined to depend on you. You can, however, change the way you react to her.
A step in the right direction would be to restrict the time she can contact you during work hours.
Another is to tell her you are not comfortable being her interior decorator and she should find someone with more time to spend with her.
And last, remind her that you are her son, not her contemporary, and that you would like to be able to talk with her son-to-mother instead of as “buddies,” because you already have enough of those.
DEAR ABBY: An old friend, a sweet elderly woman who lives alone in California, is suffering from some form of dementia.
I live in New York, and we keep in touch with phone calls. Our phone calls are important to her and to me, but our conversations, more and more often, are becoming endless, repetitive loops.
The duration of a call is usually 45 minutes to an hour. But because every few minutes there’s a total reset of what we discuss, my friend seems to think I’m ending the phone call after just a couple of minutes. She doesn’t remember we’ve been saying the same things over and over.
The calls would go on forever if I didn’t end them.
I try to end the calls gently, but is there some way to help my friend understand, without upsetting her, that we have indeed had a long conversation and that I’m not rushing to get off the phone after a couple of minutes?
— PHONE PRISONER
DEAR PHONE PRISONER: Because you didn’t mention anything about it, I am going to assume that your friend has relatives who know what’s happening with her, and that she has a safe environment in which to live.
A way to end a conversation without hurting someone’s feelings would be to say you need to do it because “a pot is boiling over” or because you “must remove something from the oven, take your pet out for a walk, have an important call coming in or need to leave for an appointment.”
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.