When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends: Resolving the Most Complicated Relationship of Your Life

(Paperback)

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A book of great value for everydaughter and every mother; useful for sons, too.Benjamin Spock, M.D.

From the Introduction:
The goal of this book is to help readers achieve that separation so that they can either find a way to be friends with their mothers, or at least recognize and accept that their mothers did the best they couldeven if it wasn't good enoughand to stop blaming them. Among the issues to be covered:

To understand how a daughter's attachment to her mothermore so than her relationship with her fathercolors all her other relationships, and to analyze why it is more difficult for daughters than sons to separate from their mothers, as well as why daughters are more subject than sons to a mother's manipulation
To recognize the difference between a healthy and a destructive mother-daughter connection, and to define clearly the bad mommy, in order to help readers who have trouble acknowledging their childhood losses to begin to comprehend them
To conjugate what I call the Bad Mommy Taboowhy our culture is more eager to protect the sanctity of maternity than it is to protect emotionally abused daughters
To describe the evolution of the "unpleasable" motherin all likelihood, she was bereft of maternal love as a childand to recognize the huge, and often poignant, stake she has in keeping her grown daughter dependent and off-balance
To illustrate the consequent controlling behaviorin some cases, cloaked in fragility or good intentionsof such mothers, which falls into general patterns, including: the Doormat, the Critic, the Smotherer, the Avenger, the Deserter
To understand that the daughter has a similar stake in either being a slave to or hating her motherthe two sides of her depen dency and immaturity
To illustrate the responsive behaviorand survival mechanisms of daughters, which is determined in part by such variables as birth rank, family history, and temperament, and which also falls into patterns, including: the Angel, the Superachiever, the Cipher, the Troublemaker, the Defector
To show how to redefine the mother-daughter relationship, so that each can learn to see and accept the other as she is today, appreciating each other's good qualities and not being snared by the bad
Finally, to demonstrate that a redefined relationship with one's motheradult to adultfrees you from the past, whether that re definition ultimately results in real friendship, affectionate truce, or divorce.

Author Bio

Victoria Secunda is the author ofWhen You and Your Mother Cant Be Friends: Resolving the Most Complicated Relationship of Your Life, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man In Your Life, and Losing Your Parents, Finding Your Self: The Defining Turning Point of Adult Life. Additionally, her writings have also appeared in Harpers Bazaar, Glamour, and Womens Day. She lives in Connecticut.