5 Signs That You’re Experiencing Loneliness in Your Relationship with Your Mother

There is a unique kind of loneliness that can exist within a mother/daughter relationship, one that can be difficult to spot. It isn’t necessarily about physical distance or how often you talk. In fact, you may speak regularly, have weekly phone calls, see her often, or even consider your relationship a close one. Still, something can feel like it’s missing. Loneliness can be a nuanced emotion to identify, especially when it goes against the story you have told yourself about your relationship with your mother.

When a mother struggles with emotional immaturity, the relationship can leave an adult daughter feeling unseen, unheard, or emotionally unsupported. This can happen in overt ways, and in more covert ways. When this pattern becomes the norm in the relationship, the loneliness can become harder to ignore.

Here are five indicators that you may be experiencing this kind of loneliness.

1.        You stop sharing the things that matter most.

One of the clearest signs of emotional loneliness is realizing that you no longer tell your mother what’s happening for you in an authentic and open way. You may still share the concrete details of your life, like where you’re going, what you’re doing, how work is going, but there’s a limit to the depth of what you’re willing to share. There’s a subtle guardedness to the stories you tell. You may have learned that when you open up, your feelings are dismissed, minimized, redirected, controlled, or turned into an opportunity for your mother to talk about her own experiences. Fears, disappointments, hopes, struggles, joy, all are opportunities for emotional isolation. Over time, you learn to shut down your vulnerabilities, not because you don’t want to be known, but because you only end up feeling more alone. 

2.        You find yourself managing her feelings instead of expressing your own.

An emotionally immature mother may struggle to tolerate uncomfortable emotions. As a result, you may find yourself hypervigilant to her emotions, a hyperattunement that becomes a barrier to your ability to feel connected in the moment. You’re tracking her affect, tracking how her words and body language, maybe tracking how much she’s drinking, you don’t have time to track your own emotions. You may also be avoiding sharing your own feelings about things because you are aware that she cannot tolerate it. This work is exhausting, and can leave you feeling lonely and unseen.

3.        You feel like you can’t talk to anyone about your experience.

Your mother may be beloved by her community, making it impossible to share any evidence that may contradict the narrative that she is anything but thoughtful, kind, attentive. She may be highly skilled at presenting that image to others, while behind the scenes she is absent, neglectful, volatile. This can be particularly isolating because it can feel like those reactions are your fault. There is also a loneliness in the experience of simply having an emotionally immature mother. You may be surrounded by individuals who have strong relationships with their mothers, leaving you to feel completely isolated and misunderstood even in your community.

4.        You feel guilty for wanting more from the relationship.

You know how hard your mother works, how much she cares, how much she has been through, how could you possibly ask her for more than she’s giving you? You may begin to feel selfish, dramatic, or weak for wanting more. You may even have been told that by her or by an observer at points along the way. As a result, you internalize the belief that the need within you is a problem, and it is your responsibility to manage. When other family members seem to be able to tolerate or accept what she is able to give, that narrative only becomes firmer within you. This is an incredibly lonely belief to hold.

5.        You’re beginning to grieve the relationship you wish you had.

Disenfranchised grief is yet another emotion that is often misunderstood. Grieving your relationship with your mother while she is still alive, even while you have an ongoing relationship with her, is an ambiguous loss that lacks acknowledgement societally. There is no obvious place where it fits. This is because you are not grieving your mother, you are grieving the relationship you deserved to have with your mother. There is an important distinction, and it is a distinction that can leave you feeling incredibly alone in your experience.

The good news is, you are not alone. Many adult women have experienced something similar, and there is a path forward. In fact, you don’t have to stop wanting connection with your mother. The goal instead is to manage your expectations in your relationship, to learn to stop chasing emotional validation and connection from someone that may not be capable of consistently providing it.

Giving yourself permission to acknowledge the presence of loneliness in your relationship with your mother opens the door for you to begin to take proactive steps to both protect yourself in your relationship with her. Once you shift your perspective, once you radically accept the relationship for what it is, you can learn to shift your focus to the parts of the relationship that do feel positive. Additionally, you will be able to free yourself to build relationships where being known feels natural. The problem was not the desire to feel seen and connected, the problem was who you were trying to feel seen by and connected to.

You have always deserved to feel seen. You may simply be longing to be seen by someone who may not know how.