My mother (62F) wants to rekindle a relationship with me (33F) after I discovered a family secret and I don't know if I should give her another chance.

Throwaway account jic, long-time lurker, and first-time poster. I never knew I would end up with a story worthy of posting, but here we are. Mostly looking for some advice here as I am at a loss.

A little bit (but more like a lot) of background for you:

I live in the US now, and have for most of my life, but my family has deep roots in a culture that puts special emphasis on family ties, faithfulness, male children, and a successful career. I am sure some of you can read into that and realize that I break pretty much all of these.

I have been estranged from parents for most of my life. As a 17-year-old, I ran away from home and have been no/low contact ever since. Growing up was something of a nightmare. My father was pretty much hands-off, having been disappointed his eldest was a girl. He was actually willing to "see how I turned out" since he was willing to bend gender norms in our culture for my mother and let her be in charge of raising me, since she has a very strong personality and likes to be in charge (something that will make many appearances in this story). To him, perhaps I would take after my mother (spoiler alert: I don't really take after her in any way that he thought I would). My mother, perhaps making up for the lack of my father being in my life, never gave me a moment of privacy or an inch of slack.

Everything about my life was shared and subsequently judged. Nothing was good enough for my mother and she never let anything go. I was "too thin", "looking like [I'm] gaining weight", my grades were "too low" and then when they were higher I "wasn't participating in a sport and being lazy", and when I added sports and other extracurriculars and my grades dropped, I was right back to where I started. Too pale, too tan, too ugly, too much makeup, you get the idea.

Nothing was good enough for her.

And, of course, my father was no help, because he wanted a boy and he got me and therefore my mother must be right and I must be a complete failure, right?

Then, when I was in elementary school, my mother had another child. Surprise! Another daughter. Just what they wanted. Not.

That being said, my father treated us completely the same. My pre-teen self was treated no better or worse than my child sister, and that continued as we aged. The same can't be said for my mother. As I'm sure is not unusual for you readers to see, my sister was the golden child of us two. My mother kissed the ground she walked on.

Well, not really, but you get the idea.

To skip a bunch of emotional asides, I will cut to the chase for the breaking point that signified my running away from home: my sister died.

We were close-ish, at least enough to be prepared to stay in contact with her even if I decided to go low-contact with my parents, so this hit me really hard. It wasn't anyone's fault and I don't want to go too far into it, but it was a freak accident that happened on my 17th birthday. That being said, my father retreated even further away and my mother DID blame me, despite me not having anything to do with the accident other than being born on the day it happened.

Things got much worse after that. Nothing physical, but every time I talked to my mother after that day, we were screaming. My father didn't say a word to me. Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore and I ran to stay with a childhood friend of mine that was close enough to be my brother and continued going to school. My mother probably knew where I went, but made no effort to get to in contact with me, not even calling or anything, and if she didn't know where I was, it's not like she filed a missing person's report or anything.

We didn't talk for almost five years after that. That was the no-contact part of this.

At that five-year mark, my girlfriend at the time finally persuaded me to reach out, and so began the low-contact part.

Now, that's most of the background.

The background covers two of the four cardinal family values: family ties and male children. Two failures, right? Well, now we get into the other two: faithfulness and a successful career.

Since we started low-contact again, my parents have discovered what I do for a living, which, honestly, isn't much. At least in their eyes.

Now, what does that mean, you might be asking. Well, I do odd jobs! I travel all over and take on clients who need a person with a varied skillset, mostly in business management. Sometimes this is helping to start a business, turn a business into a franchise, other times I have helped move a company overseas and set up base in a new country, a lot of that kind of stuff. It's not really a job title with a neat little description and the pay varies wildly depending on what's in my scope and how many random skills they need me to learn. I'm a bit of a jack of all trades.

Of course, my ex-lawyer mother and surgeon father aren't a fan of this.

To me, I have had a very successful career. I'm happy with what I do, travel a ton, have learned a bunch of languages, have friends all over the globe, and I make a lot of money. A lot of money. With all the businesses I've worked with, I have plenty of friends who taught me about investments and I have also made my money make me more money. I live very comfortably and work in bursts which leaves me with a lot of free time.

Now, my parents, who don't really understand what I do despite how many times I've tried to tell them, don't see it the same way that I do and have made it very clear to me that their disappointment is strong. Very, quite, very strong. Every time we talk they start suggesting law or medical schools and assuring me they could get me a "much better job for someone from this family".

Whatever that means.

This recently ended up in a very special edition screaming match, with my father actually joining in the screaming as a special guest.

I took off from that "family dinner" to one of my friends and we got very wine drunk, and she asked me why my mother hates me so much so we decided to come up with the most ridiculous reasons why as we got progressively drunker. This led my friend to jokingly say that maybe my mother hates me so much because she's not really my mother.

Well.

I knew that EXACT scenario wouldn't be possible because there are pictures of me in the hospital room right after labor but there's another, very close, possibility that stuck in my head for weeks after that. Eventually, it ate away at me enough that I did one of those ancestry DNA tests and realized why exactly my mother hates me so much.

Faithfulness.

According to my DNA or whatever, I have plenty of relatives on my mother's side and not a single one on my father's side. So. She cheated on him, and I was a beautiful reminder of her own failure. Yay me!

I knew even then that she cheated because my parents tried for children for years before they had me and even had two miscarriages before having me, as was often hurled in my face during arguments.

When I finally calmed down after this revelation, I took my mother out for lunch and showed her my evidence, and told her my findings, after which my mother broke down right in front of me.

Now, remember when I said that my mother took the role as head of the family in place of my father - who as the man of the house would have traditionally taken on the head of the family role - and this only happened because of my mother's strong personality? Yeah... up until that point, I don't think I had ever seen my mother cry before in my life.

And that's when I got a hell of a story.

My mother actually apologized, though I don't think it was really directed toward me and more about the situation in general, and told me the man who is my bio dad (BD) was a one-night-stand and she didn't even know his name. She had been in a really low place when she just happened to meet him, having just fought with her husband over their second miscarriage several months prior. My BD was charming, smooth, and - as my mother put it - "magical". She said it was the first time in many months that anyone had made her feel desirable and beautiful and not like a failure, which isn't surprising considering the pressure to have children young in my extended family/culture.

This resulted in her sleeping with a stranger, something she just did to "scratch an itch" before returning to her life.

When she found out she was pregnant with me, the thought that I wasn't my father's daughter didn't even cross her mind. In fact, she didn't have an inkling until I was old enough to really develop what she described as my BD's exact smile.

This instilled a lot of fear in her that I was a product of her infidelity and was the start of her hatred toward me. After my sister was born, she again thought that perhaps things were fine because obviously, she was capable of having children with her husband. Unfortunately for all of us, my sister passed and I started to resemble her one-night-stand more and more the older I got, and my mother had nothing left but disgust for me.

Of course, that was before I figured it out.

It's been about a week since then, and I have decided I need help from people who are less biased than my personal friends, because, at the end of my mother's story, she was crying and apologizing, and even admitted that the person she really hated all these years was herself. She begged me not to tell my father and asked if I could ever forgive her and come back into the family, and I told her I had no idea what to say to that because I'd been dealing with this for so long for it to just, come to a point like this.

I don't know what all I left out and have just sort of been rambling so feel free to ask clarifying questions and whatnot, but I guess I just need to see what people think I should do? Should I keep it from my father? Should I try to get along with them now that my mother seems to have let go of some of her resentment now that the secret is out? I know my mother and have seen so many of her sides that I can really tell when she's being sincere or lying to me and she did seem entirely sincere about trying to "make amends" for all she's done to me so far.

So. What should I do?

TL;DR!

My mother was verbally abusive during my childhood and it's been 16 years since I ran away from home now, been low-contact for 11 years. I recently discovered the root of her hatred toward me as a child was because she had a one-night-stand and cheated on my dad, resulting in her pregnancy with me. Now that she's come clean, she wants another chance to have a relationship with me, as I am her only living daughter. Do I give her another chance?

Submitted April 12, 2022 at 07:13PM by mortalisvirgo https://ift.tt/FcgPjE0