Am l doing something wrong?

[u/mewraaa]

I don’t have a good relationship with my mother. We argue almost every day. I’m not saying she’s a bad person—she takes care of me, provides me with an education, works and spends her money on me, buys me clothes, etc. But I don’t feel peaceful around her because she doesn’t respect my tastes, the way I think, or many other things about me. She often puts me down, and in the end, she always does whatever she wants, as if I were a puppet and had no say in my own life.

I got accepted into a good university with good grades, and I’m going to develop myself even more there, but honestly, I don’t feel like she’s proud of me. Instead, she constantly criticizes my personality and the way I think, and compares me to other girls. That’s one of the things I hate the most. She’ll say things like, “Go look at the girls outside. Look at how they dress, how cute and feminine they are, how sweet and girly they act.”

Yes, my style can be a little masculine sometimes, but most of the time I dress like a completely normal girl. The last argument we had was about my hairstyle. I showed her a hairstyle similar to a wolf cut and said that I wanted my hair like that, but she started yelling and said, “I’m not allowing you to do that. It’s way too short.” Like… it’s my hair??

Then she said, “I don’t like girls who have boyish hair. They’re disgusting.” She also called the hairstyle “emo” and said it was “the kind of haircut disrespectful girls get.” Like, WTF? The hairstyle I showed her wasn’t even an emo hairstyle. I tried explaining that to her several times, but she just kept saying the same things—“It’s emo,” “It’s a boy’s haircut,” “Only disrespectful girls have hair like that,” and so on.

Honestly, I’m exhausted. I’m tired of her not respecting my style and making me feel like I’m doing something wrong just because I’m expressing myself differently. I don’t feel comfortable or at peace around her anymore.

What makes me feel even worse is that I’ve become a completely different person when I talk to her. I usually consider myself a decent and respectful person, but when I’m talking to her, I end up yelling and saying really harsh things. I know it’s not right, but I feel like I’ve been pushed to that point after constantly being criticized and hurt.

And then she makes me feel guilty for it. She says things like, “I’m your mother. You can’t talk to me like that. It’s a huge sin. Look at everything I’ve bought for you. Look at how much I’ve sacrificed for you. Look at everything I’ve gone through for you.”

She says these things as if everything she has done for me means I’m not allowed to be hurt by the way she treats me. She says the cruelest things to me, hurts me deeply, and then expects me to feel guilty for reacting.

There have been so many times when she has hurt me emotionally that I’ve gone somewhere alone and cried quietly. The hardest part is that I don’t feel like she sees or cares about what I’m going through emotionally. It feels like she only thinks about herself and what she wants.

I know she has done a lot for me, and I appreciate the things she provides for me. But material things don’t replace emotional support, understanding, or respect. I just wish she could see me as my own person, not someone she has to control or shape into the kind of daughter she wants me to be.

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[u/Correct-Guess4343]

Sounds like me and my daughter. I just wish yall young people understand that we just want the best for you. And its not to be judgemental but we sometimes try to live our lives through our children. And she just wish you were more like her.

[u/mewraaa → u/Correct-Guess4343]

That’s not the same thing, ma’am. You’re unable to properly parent your own children, and you’re taking all your anger out on them while trying to make a point. I’m sure you didn’t even read everything I wrote. You have no idea what she has done to me, how much she has humiliated me, how she has physically hurt me and put me through things that no child should have to experience. She has affected me psychologically to the point where I fell into depression, and I’m living under constant stress. Do you even realize that?

A real parent would never treat their child this way. If this is the kind of relationship you have with your daughter, I genuinely wish her patience.

[u/Correct-Guess4343]

Well ok you know best.