My Neurotic Mother

This is a story about my relationship with my mother, the problems she was experiencing, how I thought to resolve those problems, and what happened in the end. I should start by explaining that although I loved my Mother very much, she was not an easy person to live with. She exhibited all kinds of strange behaviours I didn't understand at the time, and it was only much later I came to realise those behaviours could be characterised as Neurotic.

I'm not a psychiatrist so that's not a formal clinical diagnosis, but it was certainly the impression I was left with after living with her for many years. When I (later) looked up the term, I found Neurosis is defined as "a relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety, obsessive behaviour, hypochondria) but not a radical loss of touch with reality" (as distinct from 'Psychosis' whereby the sufferer looses the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is not).

My mother certainly displayed many of the characteristics of Neurosis listed above. For example, she always seemed to be ill and suffering from a variety of things that could never quite be pinned down, or ever got significantly worse (hypochondria). Likewise much of her behaviour was about controlling her world and ensuring she was always the perceived victim (obsessive behaviour). She was adept at manipulating me and others around by re-interpreting (and even reconstructing) events in a manner that suited her preferred vision. She always managed to cast herself as the poor, weak, (and usually unloved) old woman. She was never happy (depression) and continually complained about how people were inconsiderate of her needs, and even sometimes how they were deliberately 'out to get' her (anxiety).

She frequently exhibited a classic symptom described in psychology as the 'Double Bind' (as I later learned). This is where two opposing communications are provided at the same time making the recipient confused and uncertain. A simple example of a 'double bind' would be when I would ask mother how she was feeling, she would reply, 'I am fine dear', but this was said in a feeble and faltering voice indicating she was anything but fine. The double-bind tends to be used as a tacit strategy for keeping others off balance and maintaining control of situations. Many times my mother would say something (verbally) whilst clearly indicating (in a non-verbal manner) she didn't believe what she was saying (another example was her frequent suggestion after dinner that 'I'll do the washing-up today dear', whilst making it visibly clear she was struggling to lift herself up from her seat). This strategy would make her appear 'brave and noble', whilst at the same time making it obvious she was ill and suffering, and I should feel sorry for her.

To be frank my bloody Mother used to drive me up the wall! I spent years of my life trying to help and support her but nothing I did seemed to make any difference. She seemed 'stuck' in a time and place in her life, and my role was exclusively to listen to her troubles and take the blame. Don't get me wrong, as I said I loved my mother very dearly, and all I ever wanted to do was help her and make her life easier, but I couldn't seem to no matter how hard I tried. If was as if her neurotic behaviour served some purpose and she didn't want to or didn't know how to let it go.

However, despite the fact I was never able to provide any apparent solutions to my mother's problems, she made it clear having me around helped in some way. I would listen to her whinging about the world without complaint, provide a sympathetic shoulder for her to cry on when she was miserable, and if she was really down I was the 'dog' she could kick. I was always there for her and it was clear she needed me in some way, so I could never abandon her, even if at times she was like an emotional vampire sucking me dry.

We lived in a small house in a rather old-world town in Lincolnshire in the North East of England. My Father had passed away when I was 12 years old, and my mother was never the same after he went. I was 19 when the events to be described here occurred. I had few (if any friends), I was a virgin, and I spent most of my time looking after my poor (apparently) sick Mother. She was 57 years old, no longer working, and surviving on the meagre amount my father left, plus a disability pension she was awarded because she was suffering from 'stress'.

Despite her 'illness' mother was quite able to occasionally pop round to see her friends and go out shopping when she wanted. Indeed it was mostly when she was home that her apparent infirmities seemed to become manifest. She did the cooking, but everything else round the house was down to me. I was at college at the local Tech three days a week (studying Art and Design), but when I was home my days were filled with cleaning, washing, and caring for mother. That said she never appeared to acknowledge my efforts around the house. If she said anything it was usually a critical comment about something that was not 'up to scratch'.

She was moderately short in stature (about 5.1) and relatively thin (possibly the result of her nervous condition) but not unsightly, and indeed there were photos around the house which showed she had once been quite attractive. She had a nice figure, brown hair (often in curlers), brown eyes, and full (even sensuous) lips. She had, however, let herself go, and when at home she spent most of the time wandering about in an old dressing gown. Her face was weary and worn and starting to show lines, but she always seemed to me like a potentially good looking woman, who, with a little extra work, could still be quite fetching. She didn't really look her age apart from wrinkles on the back of her hands, which curiously enough now always remind me of her.

Perhaps that's where it all started. It was only her and I in the house, and although I was her 'punch-bag' I was also her only companion. She would hold me sometimes, when the mood was on her, and cuddle me and tell me I was the only man she loved. It didn't happen very often but there were those few times when she seemed to appreciate me being there. As I said she wore a dressing gown a lot of the time, and sometimes not a lot underneath. I confess it was hard for a pubescent and virginal boy not to look when the gown slipped and showed too much of her underwear. I never consciously thought about my mother in a sexual way, but some part of me was very much aware she was a woman and had 'attributes' that were both unfamiliar and interesting. In truth there were probably times when I was too close to her.

Looking back I think I was very confused by the situation. Mostly I felt trapped by a responsibility to look after mother (because in truth there was no one else), and I wanted to escape both that responsibility and her thankless behaviour, but there was another part of me who occasionally 'enjoyed' the intimacy of being near her. I was after all 19 years old and had normal sexual needs which I rarely even acknowledged let alone addressed. Although I'd not seen very much of her body, nor had any kind of inappropriate relations or even thoughts, there were moments when I looked more at my mother than I should, and I think I instinctively saw these opportunities as some kind of shadowy reward for all the anguish she put me through. As I said it wasn't conscious. I hated being around her during the day, but in the evenings I didn't seem to mind so much. Looking back I think it may have been something to with the fact she took sleeping pills for her nerves (and sometimes combined these with a small 'tipple' of sherry), making her unsteady in the evening, and less conscious of her attire. Her dressing gown wasn't held so tight and I could occasionally see the edge of her bra or the cleavage of her breasts. Sometimes she would lie on the sofa and show an expanse of nylon covered leg. As I said I never did anything, except maybe look when I should have turned away.

However things changed between mother and I after something occurred that made me question my understanding of her situation. It was a throw-away comment made by the man who came to repair our hot water boiler that changed things, and set me on a new (and controversial) path. The poor man was struggling to fix our very old and wonky system, which kept breaking down. He was trying to explain to mother how we desperately needed a new boiler, but she wouldn't listen, berating him instead for not fixing it properly, and lamenting how the cold water was making her various illnesses so much worse and how it was all his fault.

Eventually he got it working after a fashioned. He warned us it would not last much longer, hurriedly grabbed his tools, and rushed out to escape my mother's vicious tongue. I showed him to the door, and as he left he looked at me and raised his eyes to the heavens. "I don't know how you put up with her," he half-whispered. "What a neurotic old woman! What she needs is a damn good rogering!" And then he was gone.

I confess I didn't understand at first what he meant by the term 'rogering', and it wasn't until later I realised he was talking about sex. He was saying my mother was the way she was because she wasn't getting enough (or indeed any) sex. It had never occurred to me before that a lack of a physical relationship might be the cause of her problems, but I suddenly equated all her symptoms with the concept of being frustrated. Could it be, I wondered to myself, that sexual drives are a form of energy that need to be expressed, and if blocked the energy 'leaks' out in other (perhaps entirely inappropriate) ways?

As you probably guessed (with me still being a virgin at 19), the events I describe took place many years ago, and I was not very sexually informed (lets be honest I was naive). But in those days things were very different. I'd had a few girl-friends, but in the early 60's the female animal was still (mostly) the official guardian of moral values (not like today!). Sexual intercourse was a no-no, and even touching a girl's breast was a privilege a boy had to earn. That said, I don't suppose many of the young people today understand just how much joy a couple could experience just by kissing and cuddling all evening. There was a kind of innocent 'bonding' in those days entirely absent from many modern relationships. Back then full sex when it came was a 'rite of passage' (and the end of a very long road built of trust and belief).

Anyway my point is, I knew enough to understand what it meant to be frustrated. I was, after all, pretty frustrated myself! My sex life (whilst living with mother) consisted of snatched moments in the toilet, masturbating to smuggled pictures of women in exotic lingerie (usually stolen from mother's Home Catalogues or very rarely a smutty magazine I'd found somewhere). I confess there were even times (when mother was out) when I'd open her underwear draw and gently finger her bras or stockings or suspenders (in those days female under-garments were much more complex... and far more interesting). I should add, however, that in the beginning it was the lingerie itself that turned me on, and not the fact it was my mother's.

For many days after that engineer's visit I thought about what he'd said, and what it implied. Since my father had died I'd only seen mother with one other man and that didn't last very long. I wondered to myself why she had not sort to make other new relationships. Maybe in those days it was hard for an older person to meet new people (I mean it wasn't exactly easy back then even at my age. This was long before the Internet!). So maybe she'd given up, and all that pent-up frustration was coming out in another way?

What followed started out as a sort of personal joke. Whilst considering how I might be able to help mother find a new and more satisfying relationship I suddenly thought to myself, 'well maybe I should take the initiative... and seduce her myself'. I remember I laughed out loud. That would solve both our problems, I thought, and I had a momentary vision of holding my mother down and having sex with her on the cold kitchen floor. I chuckled again at the idea and immediately dismissed it.

But it didn't want to go away so easy. That fleeting vision had made me hard, and it was like a seed that once planted grew all by itself, and the idea would never quite banish itself from the periphery of my consciousness. For a while it just festered there, popping up every now and then (usually when I was close to mother for some reason). But slowly I began to look at her differently. I couldn't help it. She started to seem more attractive... and more desirable.

Then one day, while masturbating to a picture of a model in bra, pants and stockings (in the bathroom), I closed my eyes to come to a climax and the women in my mind suddenly turned from the young model in the glossy photo to my own mother, standing there before me in the bathroom dressed only in her underwear. I could see her dark nipples through her bra and her legs in brown stockings, forced into a taunt and elegant pose by the stiletto-heeled shoes she was wearing. The image in my mind, although unbidden, was strong and clear and my head fizzed with the power of it. I moaned and shot my load all over the bathroom floor. It was the most amazing orgasm I'd experienced. It was like somebody was clenching my balls very tightly, squeezing out every drop, and aiming my fluid directly at the mental picture of my mother standing there half-naked. Instantly I felt an immense sense of shame and guilt. How could I do such a thing? How could I fantasise about my own mother?

But despite my puritanical objections the guilt faded over time... and the fantasy grew. Eventually I found myself exclusively masturbating to visions of undressing and touching my mother. I knew it was wrong, but the power of that particular vision was so strong that when my sexual persona took over there was only one door it wanted to open.

How my fantasies eventually migrated into a plan to seduce my mother in real life I'm not sure. I think I just woke up one morning and it was there. It was a perfect idea. Having sex with mother would cure her neurosis, it would give her some joy and pleasure in life, and it would show her how much I loved her. Ok, so there was the side benefit of me getting my rocks off (and fulfilling my fantasies) but I was sure that wasn't the important part. No, this idea was all about helping my mother through a difficult stage in her life and giving her what she really needed, and if I had to sacrifice my shame and guilt in the process, then so be it.

At least that's what I told myself at the time (although even then I knew deep down it was really mostly about getting my hands on my mother's body). What I didn't see at that stage was the slightly darker motivation underneath the whole idea. I didn't just want to fuck my mother, I also wanted to punish her for the way she'd treated me.

The only problem, of course, was how to make it happen. As you can imagine I spent a long time wrestling with that one. I went through all the options I could possibly conceive. I ended up with a long list of possible strategies, all of which I played through in my head (usually when I was masturbating, but sometimes in bed at night).

To begin with there was the straightforward version. I could leap on mother, tear at her clothes, fumble at her breasts, whilst at the same time swearing my undying love. It might work... if she was in the right mood, but it didn't seem very likely. If not maybe I could drug her. After all she did have some sleeping pills, so perhaps I could slip her a slight overdose? Once she was unconscious I could drag her across and into my bed, and try to set things up so it looked as if she'd come to me. When she woke up I'd make out I was (reluctantly) fondling her tits only because she wanted me to. It seemed like a promising idea, and I even toyed with the thought of maybe poking her while she was still out for the count (you know, just to get the hang of it). But in the end, however, I wasn't convinced she'd fall for it.

Then there were the more psychological approaches. I could imply I was going 'gay' and I needed help to get back on the straight and narrow (being gay was a no-no in those days). You can imagine it can't you, with me fluttering around doing my best 'fairy' impression, and all the time implying that mother could solve the problem if she would just take me to her bed for the night, and show me the joys of illicit sex (or indeed any sex!). The problem with this one was mother might just accept my new sexual orientation and wish me well, which would leave in the embarrassing position of having to keep up the act ad infinitum.

On the other hand I could go with the "I have this unhealthy compulsion" strategy. It would start with me admitting I was sexually attracted to mother. I'd blame her for letting me see too much of her naked flesh (which to be fair she hadn't), and indicate that my fantasies about her 'body' were becoming dominant in my head (which by then wasn't so far from the truth). I'd tell her how frustrated I was becoming and how I was losing control of myself, implying if she didn't let me play with her tits right there and then I'd probably go out and assault some poor old lady (which wasn't true of course). But then I realised she'd probably just call the doctor and get him to give me something to control my 'urges'.

Maybe I could try something similar. The "I love you too much mother" ploy, with the implication I'd become obsessed with mother. This obsession, I would subtly suggest, was now so deep that it would affect my future life forever... unless it could be overcome. Indeed I would have to carry around this 'torch' for my mother for always, whilst at the same time 'crippled' by the guilt of my incestuous desires. I would make it obvious the only way to overcome it, and save me from a life of misogyny and despair, and the inability to ever have a girlfriend or wife, was for mother to 'get em off' and let me 'give her one' right there and then (using a slightly different terminology of course).

Now these were all good ideas and yet I wasn't convinced I could carry any of them out in practice, and I was forced into thinking how I might reverse the situation. In other words, how could I make her want me! Not a lot of options there however. I suppose I could try getting her drunk and merry and gay and (hopefully) sexually receptive, but it didn't seem very plausible. To be honest mother was a bit of an old-fashioned 'stick-in-the-mud', and the chances of awakening her hidden physical needs enough to overcome her moral aversion to having an incestual relationship with her own son, seemed a trifle unlikely.

Eventually I was so desperate I even considered some very 'out of the box' ideas. Maybe I could get some training in Hypnosis, and put her to sleep, under the guise of helping her relax. Then I'd give her the post-hypnotic suggestion to come naked into my room at night and leap on me. It was a good idea (for a fantasy anyway) but I would need training and it would take too long. Another one was to sneak in her bedroom with a mask on and tell her that her son owed money for unpaid bets, and I wanted payment in sex or he'd be taken away and 'punished'. But I guessed she'd probably know it was me.

The truth is I was much too young and far too naive to ever have to courage to try anything like I'd described. The ideas were great fantasies and fuelled many masturbation sessions, but they were not in any way practical and I knew they were never going to leave the safety of my mind. That said, all those fantasies eventually affected me and my behaviour, and made something different and slightly darker happen.