Is this or should this be my problem?

Ames

If both he and his brother have the same attitude then maybe there's more to it than you know?

paulineb_2

We can all take parents for granted, easily done. I speak to my mum most days and see her around once a week, sometimes more, but shes only 2 miles from me and I dont have much family, my gran died 3 years ago very suddenly and one thing my mum was glad of, was that she saw a lot of my gran before she died. Its very easy to lose touch, but in years to come if he doesnt step up the effort a bit, he may well regret it.

I do agree with the poster who said, if you stay near enough can you see his mum on a certain day, like a Sunday, even if its every few weeks, invite her over for dinner, then she'll see both of you and it might go some way to resolving the situation.

aileth

His brother sort of pops in more, say after work surprise visits.

Me and my parents don't talk often, maybe once every two weeks, and see each other every 1-2 months, but we accept we're all busy.

Think next thing I'm going to do is invite her over for plenty of wine and a slap up meal, then pay for her taxi home.

itsanne

bagginslover wrote: »

When my OH and his mum weren't talking for a while, I'd periodically just ask him how she was, I would ask about other family members too, and he soon realised he had no idea about his mum, yet did about the others, and took it on himself to contact her after a while. This way I wasn't nagging, and he came to the realisation on his own.

I think this was a brilliant approach.


Aileth, I'm going to go slightly against the consensus and suggest you don't simply ignore the situation. Have you asked him why he doesn't want to phone her? Going quiet and saying "I know" suggests he's actively avoiding it rather than just not bothering. Why not try bagginslover's strategy and see what happens? You could ask your OH about his mum when he tells you about his dad.

aileth

itsanne wrote: »

I think this was a brilliant approach.


Aileth, I'm going to go slightly against the consensus and suggest you don't simply ignore the situation. Have you asked him why he doesn't want to phone her? Going quiet and saying "I know" suggests he's actively avoiding it rather than just not bothering. Why not try bagginslover's strategy and see what happens? You could ask your OH about his mum when he tells you about his dad.

Yeah love that strategy and will put it into effect. I have said for example "your mum says you haven't talked to her for a month, how come?" And I'll get a shrug, "dont know". That is his answer to most things like that though.

paulineb_2

aileth wrote: »

Yeah love that strategy and will put it into effect. I have said for example "your mum says you haven't talked to her for a month, how come?" And I'll get a shrug, "dont know". That is his answer to most things like that though.

Do you believe he cares about her and hes just lazy? Or that he doesnt really care one way or another whether he speaks to her or not?

wiogs

paulineb wrote: »

We can all take parents for granted, easily done. I speak to my mum most days and see her around once a week, sometimes more, but shes only 2 miles from me and I dont have much family, my gran died 3 years ago very suddenly and one thing my mum was glad of, was that she saw a lot of my gran before she died. Its very easy to lose touch, but in years to come if he doesnt step up the effort a bit, he may well regret it.

I do agree with the poster who said, if you stay near enough can you see his mum on a certain day, like a Sunday, even if its every few weeks, invite her over for dinner, then she'll see both of you and it might go some way to resolving the situation.

I suppose it is possible he has no desire to resolve the situation

He might be perfectly happy not contacting his Mother

ostrichnomore_2

I think he's just rubbish at keeping in touch. I know I was in my 20s, and I'm paying for it now as my son is the same. It hurts my feelings a bit but I put up with it and hope he'll grow out of it, same as I did. There's no animosity, no problem (last time I did get hold of him on phone we chatted for ages and he ended up asking me for advice on relationship problem so pretty close really), just...other things are more immediately interesting than mum at that age.

Also (and again he shares this fault), the more someone tells me to do something, the more I put it off, just to be stubborn. So nagging makes it worse.

Different people have different contact styles. some are in touch daily, some weekly, some monthly, some less often. I think what is more important is how good the communication is when it happens. I'd rather have an hour of giggling myself silly over something with son, and sharing lots of news, and a bit of time for the serious stuff, every now and then. OH 'reports in' weekly to his mum and they never seem to have much to say to each other, apart from 'how are you' and talking about 'well I went to town on Wednesday and bought a bag and cousin violet has got a rash' and they are all done in 5-10 minutes. They don't have the same sort of conversations that I have with my son, mine are a lot less frequent but a lot more in depth.

paulineb_2

wiogs wrote: »

I suppose it is possible he has no desire to resolve the situation

He might be perfectly happy not contacting his Mother

He might be, but from other posts the OP has posted about him in the past, hes struggled to motivate himself to do other things and it might be due to that.

aileth

I think he's just lazy really, and it wouldn't bother me in the slightest how often or not they talked, but I know it's actually making her cry, which stings. Her friends said all she wants is a text a week asking how she is.