Welcome back to Geoff Rodkey’s Bad Advice! Today’s question comes from an Adult Daughter who’s mired in an emotional dynamic that a few of you might recognize from your own lives:
My mother gives a lot of unsolicited advice. She calls it "help." I call it "hlep" because it looks like help, but isn't. Her advice comes in the form of suggestions that are actually orders, and she gets upset when I don't obey.
(I feel compelled to point out that I am 40 years old, not a recalcitrant teen. I am an obstinate adult.)
Sometimes she gives me a good suggestion, or suggests something I was already going to do, and I'm so annoyed that I don't do it out of spite.
“How do I get past this?”
This is an excellent question, A.D.! So much so that you might want to think about submitting it to a columnist who actually offers good advice. In the meantime, I’ll do my best to be unhelpful.
There’s a saying I’ve encountered in twelve-step recovery programs (not that I’m in one or anything):
Our parents know how to push our buttons, because they’re the ones who installed them.
Depending on the particular parent-child dynamic, these buttons have widely different functions. But most of them trigger explosions.
The blast radius can be pretty huge, and in the aftermath, those of us who did the exploding often find ourselves wondering, “Why did THAT apparently minor comment set me off?”
Everybody else at the dinner table will wonder this, too. The frustrating thing about these incidents is that they often make us look like the guilty party, for popping off over something that might seem insignificant to both outside observers and the parent who did the button-pressing.
On the other hand, if we just repress the explosions, all of the damage will accumulate between our ears and possibly result in self-sabotaging behaviors like substance abuse, compulsive shopping, or dating people who kind of suck but allow us to recreate whatever form of domestic dysfunction we find most familiar, and therefore oddly comfortable even in its chronic misery.
If we want to free ourselves from this dynamic, the only real option available to us is to do the maddening, difficult, years-long work of tracing the emotional tripwire back to its source, figuring out how the button operates, and somehow managing to disarm it so the next time a parent presses it—as they will continue to do, for the rest of our lives, because God love ‘em, they just can’t help it—the result will be less a conflagration than a dull mechanical click to which we can respond with a wry smile of detached amusement at how much this kind of thing used to bother us.
I’ve been using the first person plural here, but on the off chance that my mother reads this column, I’d like to be VERY VERY CLEAR that none of this applies to her, me, or any aspect of our relationship over the last fifty-three years. (Hi, Mom! Love you! Everything’s great! I’ll call soon!)
To put the shoe on the other foot, though…
Here’s how this looks from a parent’s point of view:
As the father of three newly adult sons who definitely aren’t reading this—because it’s delivered via email, and their entire generation is mysteriously unwilling to so much as check their inbox, let alone read its contents—I have to confess that I’ve unintentionally conspired with my wife to install similar buttons in at least one and possibly all three of them.
Just like your mom, offering them unsolicited advice is an itch I can’t quit scratching. Mostly because when I was their age, I made some bad choices and learned some painful lessons. And when I see them approach the same pitfalls everybody encounters at that life stage, I can’t help trying to suggest ways to navigate around the hazards.
This is true even though I know, deep in my bones, that experience is the only true teacher, and it’s the very act of falling into those holes and then digging their way out of them that will make my kids independent adults.
So I keep serving up what you call “hlep” (great line, by the way). When I do, my kids react in ways that are both unique and so internally consistent that they can only be the product of buttons my wife and I inadvertently installed.
For example, let’s say there’s a behavior “X,” which I’ve found through personal experience is an important component in building a healthy, balanced life.
If I tell each one of my kids, individually, “Hey, you might want to consider doing X,” here are the likely results:
Kid #1 (I’ve randomized their birth order for both privacy and rhetorical effect) will say, “That makes a lot of sense. I’ll definitely do that.”
Sometimes, he’ll even ask follow-up questions. It will actually feel like he’s listening!
He probably isn’t. Most of the time, I suspect he’s just placating me. But as a parent, hearing him pretend to listen to my advice is so emotionally satisfying that I don’t even care if I’m being manipulated.
Kid #2 will shrug and say, “Okay.” Then he’ll just do whatever the hell he was planning to do in the first place. This is much less satisfying, but pressing him on it is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. So he’s gradually training me to detach with love. Which I guess is good for both of us, although in the context of the parent-child developmental arc, it’s a little anticlimactic.
Kid #3, presented with identical advice delivered in exactly the same context and tone as the other two, will snap like a dry twig.
“You ALWAYS do this! You and mom! X, X, X! Quit telling me to do X! IT’S MY LIFE!”
So he’s got a button in there. Which we installed. I don’t know how or when. It definitely wasn’t intentional. And if I could somehow uninstall it, I sure would.
But I can’t. The cruel paradox of this situation is that while the existence of the button is entirely our fault, the job of disconnecting it falls to him.
As, unfortunately, it does to you.
But you’re forty now. You’ve probably been tugging at those wires for years. If you could’ve fixed this, you would’ve.
Right?
So I think it’s time to move on.
You need a new mom.
Just wipe the slate clean and start fresh with another one.
There’s no need to formally break up with your current mom. That’d create a lot of drama, and possibly even paperwork. Just ghost her. It’ll take a while, but after a few missed holidays, she’ll get the hint.
Your bigger challenge will be finding her replacement.
Where can you get a new mom?
Obviously, it depends on what kind of mom you’re looking for. But here are a few suggestions to get you started:
The mall.
Is there an indoor mall near you? The kind that used to be a bustling commercial mecca, but is now so desolate that it looks like the set of a zombie movie? Go there on a weekday morning. It’ll be silent and empty, except for small clusters of potential moms walking briskly in adorable pastel track suits. You don’t need to tag along after them, because they’re all going to end up in the food court, having post-walk coffee. Get yourself a cup, find a seat at the outer perimeter of their group, and strike up a conversation with your new mom!
Nursing homes.
These aren’t open to the public, so you’ll have to do some volunteer work to get a foot in the door. Offer to run Board Game Wednesdays, or The Puzzle Club, or whatever activity you think would be a good bonding experience for you and your new mom.
Political campaigns.
Another volunteer work situation. The down side is that whatever mom you find in this milieu will almost certainly be a cable news junkie, and probably unable to discuss anything except politics until at least mid-November. So don’t sign up unless you’re into that kind of thing.
Twelve-step recovery programs.
Again, not that I’d know…but these meetings are chock-full of two primary types of potential moms.
The first is brimming with kindness, serenity, and wisdom. Not only will she be an active listener, she’ll be solution-oriented! You’d be lucky to have a woman like this as a mom!
The second type is an emotionally crippled control freak with decades’ worth of toxic baggage that she will eventually unload on you in ways that’ll make your current mom’s dysfunction seem like a walk in the park.
The tricky thing is that it’s often impossible to tell which type you’re dealing with until you’ve known her for a while. So you might have to sit through a lot of meetings, and possibly feign a substance use disorder, before you commit to a candidate.
Book clubs.
I have no idea how to infiltrate one of these. I’ve been trying for years and still haven’t wrangled an invite. But if you can somehow get on the inside, holy cow are there a TON of moms in them.
Good luck finding your new mom! And seriously, that “hlep” joke was great. You’re an excellent writer. Have you considered starting a Substack newsletter? It’s free! And fun! At least until Substack’s venture capital funding dries up and the whole platform vanishes overnight, along with this column.
To everybody else who’s made it this far: thanks for reading! If you’re enjoying Bad Advice, please share it with others who might also find it unhelpful. And ask me questions! I can’t do this without them.