My Teenage Daughter Was My Best Friend, and Now She's a Terror!

You are most assuredly enmeshed and co-dependent. That is not "friendship" nor is it functional parent-child relationship.

You get an awful lot from so very, very little. Co-dependent daughters don't go to school seven hours away and most certainly do not study in Ireland, as I have for the past four months. My close relationship with my mother has acted as a springboard from me. I have her full support to follow my dreams and she has my full support to achieve her goals. Quite the opposite from co-dependency, using my mother as my role model, I have grown into a fully functioning, independent adult well on the path to achieving everything I've hoped for. My mother has always made it clear that our relationship as a parent and child came first and that under no circumstances did the fact that we were so close mean lack of discipline. However, my mother trusted me. She never questioned the phases of clothing I went through or the little things that so many parents stress over. There was never a point growing up when I couldn't talk to her and because of that, I never lacked for guidance, advice, a sympathetic ear or a shoulder to lean on. My only rebellion was a fashionable one when I developed a taste for black and chains, at which she laughed and took me shopping for. I never drank, never did drugs and when I finally decided to have sex at 18, I knew how to protect myself from pregnancy and STDs and took care to do so because of her guidance.

Are you clear on where she ends and you begin?

Yes, we are wildly different people with very different personalities who have had to learn to get along and have formed a very tight bond despite those differences.

Wrong. You clearly don't know the first thing about parenting, and your daughter is probably more screwed up than you realize.

I'm the daughter and I'm not at all screwed up, at least not more than average, all of which can be blamed on my father.

Good for you, Alicia! I was also my mother's best friend from the age of nine, when my dad left us. She worked so hard, but we never had enough. So at 16, I quit school and went to work, so we would no longer face evictions.

I was just one of those rare children who truly cared for her parent and did whatever she had to do, to support her. I respected her and was considerate of her feelings and her concern for me. In turn, she trusted me, and we never had disagreements about dating, etc.

Of course, it helped that I was a born again Christian, and trusted that God's rules were for my good. (Newsflash: No promiscuity = no STD's, no out-of-wedlock pregnancies, no dating drama / broken heart, and no running roughshod over your mother's heart in an insane, fruitless attempt to get some selfish, sex-driven jerk to be faithful to you .)

At 22, I married, and my mother was able to retire and live with us. I was very happy to take tender loving care of her until the day she died.

Alicia, I'm in no way trying to be cruel, but sadly your situation is text book 'Victim Mentality'. The bond you feel you have with your Mother is actually a defensive mechanism your emotions have come up with to circumvent the emotional damage that you both 'chose' as a result of your Father leaving. I said 'chose' because how you experience every situation in your life is up to you - no situation is good or bad, it's merely your INTERPRETATION of the event from whatever angle you experience it (something looked at as 'bad' by one person is looked at as 'good' by others). Blaming others for who you are is escape-ism, it's a way of not accepting responsibility for your own influence in who you are (extremely common today).

The most common cause of a male leaving a relationship with a female is he no longer feels attraction for her, sadly most of the time that's the RESULT of him being manipulated and/or alienated by her (especially after they have children). Once 'attraction' is gone the relationship will either end or if it fizzles out will become what is known as 'co-habitation', a state of a relationship that is not attraction. I highly doubt your Mother would ever admit that she was the reason your Father left, but if she did the most common result would be that your relationship with her would change dramatically.

As for why people have accepted hormonal changes as the reason their daughters become out of control irrational females - again that's escape-ism. These parents have failed in teaching their own children how to make good decisions, even when challenging influences are pushing them to the contrary. More and more of society is spiraling further and further away from a state of 'common-sense' and becoming a society (who in their minds) are nothing more than emotionally insecure and unstable little children.

The phrase "Knowledge is Power" is very true, equally important is 'acceptance and application' of that knowledge.

#Knowledge: You can chatter about escape mechanisms, but I've known many mental health professionals in my time, none of whom diagnose without knowing the full story, so all you've achieved is sounding like a quack. I'm glad my dad left. I was miserable when my parents were together because they fought all the time. Where my dad went wrong was choices me made afterwards that exposed me to molestation, emotional abuse and his alcoholism, all of which he has made amends for and for which I have forgiven him. Quite the opposite of escapism (a method I practiced throughout middle school using fantasy novels to escape bullying) my issues with my father and my relationship with my mother has taught me to look my problems in the eye and either fix them or accept them as inevitable and move on. "Give me courage to change what I can, the strength to accept what I can't and the wisdom to know the difference" Spew your pseudo psycho babble at someone who hasn't lived with psych majors, taken psychology courses and spent hours in the offices of true professionals for the past six years.

Even though you have absolutely no idea how extensive my knowledge is in this field you quickly discredited my response as not accurate, I find that incredibly interesting and even more revealing as to your emotional situation. In contrast to your opinion of my response the additional information you supplied about "molestation, emotional abuse and his alcoholism" adds even more accuracy to my original comments expressing that I felt your Mother and yourself are emotionally bonded thru a shared 'Victim Mentality'.

Most people are truly oblivious to their own B.S., in many cases a knowledgeable outsider can quickly identify the most significant underlying factors contributing to a persons issues with surprising accuracy. I'm certainly not ridiculing you or trying to cut you down, I'm merely trying to help you open your eyes to your own situation. 'Denial' is an incredibly strong emotionally based defense mechanism, quite obviously the amount of defensive comments you've been making in your posts shows a very strong sense of denial concerning the subject being discussed.

Another incredibly wide spread problem today (that may apply in your situation as well) is that more and more people are becoming 'addicted to their struggle' and want as many people as possible to know how they are a 'Victim'. These people will often gravitate toward each other for the purpose of constantly trying to 'justify' their struggle and reap as much emotionally self-fulfilling sympathy as possible (sometimes referred to as 'mental masturbation').

There's a huge difference between how long it will take a 'Professional' to help someone and how quickly it could be done - the key factor is almost always MONEY. It's not in a professionals best interests to 'fix' someone quickly, that doesn't pay very well, but having to 'treat' someone for extended periods of time is very beneficial to their wallet.

I've offered you what could be looked at as hard truth, not the candy-coated emotional fluff many professionals use to keep customers coming back again and again. I wish you the best in your life and hope that your relationship with your Mother doesn't suffer too much if you ever realize that she most likely was a huge influence in your Father not only leaving, but also being the person that he was when they were married.

Parents cannot eb best friends and effective parents at the same time. Later on in life you can be friends. But during your development and growth a parent is a parent

Um no, I'm not. I've been there 100% for my mom through everything she's been through as she has for me. She's my best friend in the world and I wouldn't change that. Until you've lived it, don't knock it. It takes a little bit of extra work and understanding, but it can work and this "kids suffer psychologically crap is f^cking bullsh&t. I suffered more from my father's insistence on controlling my life and decisions than my mother's support and understanding.

Pauline, My mom and I were best friends and yes I did go to her when I was 15 and talked to her about starting a sexual relationship with my boyfriend and she told me about birth control. Then took me down to get me started on birth control pills. When I was 19 and got married, I got a bladder infection, the first one I had ever had, I called my Mom to find out what it was and how I could have gotten it. I was to embarrassed to ask my same age, good friend.These are just two example of me and my best friend Mom. I now have a 20 year old daughter and she is my best female friend (my husband is my best friend), when she was ten I did not talk to her about my sex life just like I didn't talk to my adult friends about my sex life. Now that she that she is 20, she is dating and came to me to ask about birth control. I talked openly about what I used over the years and what she might like for protection. She also came to me and asked if it was "normal" to try "different positions" and I told some of the things I tried and liked. So you can't tell me it is impossible to be best friends with your daughter. I wouldn't want our relationship to be any other way.

Yes, when I was 11, my mom DID talk to me about financial issues she was facing. I might not have understood, but it gave her someone to talk to and I had a chance to help her and be more understanding about why our lives were the way they were. If my mom had had a sex life since was 7, she might've talked to me about it, but I assure you, that is not the case (now that I'm an adult I know that). She has shared with me past sexual experiences as a way of expanding my knowledge. Every difficulty at work, every crushed hope and breakdown my mom has had since my dad left 11 years ago, I have been there to see, hear and try to hep her through. I wasn't lying when I said we are a team. I'd thank everyone to stop judging the relationship I treasure most in my life because it's "abnormal."

I remember, at the age of nine, standing in a children's clothing store, begging my mother to not buy me a $40 coat, because we couldn't afford it. I wanted her to buy me a $5 jacket at K-Mart, even though I knew it would cause the kids at school to look down on me. That is what you do, when you love and appreciate your mother.

As a teen, I actually sat down and helped my mother work out a budget. Instead of cashing her paycheck at the grocery store and shopping as she had been able to do on my father's income, she learned to have checks made out for her bills, mail them as soon as she deposited her paycheck, then spend only a set amount for groceries. Of course, to make that work, we had to check the grocery ads, clip coupons, plan menus... I am a detail person and organizer / planner by nature, and she is not. I loved helping her and she appreciated my help.

I need to run, but you hang in there, Alicia. Sad that more people don't understand what is possible when you love your parents.

Hope you learn to forgive your dad. Not for his sake, but yours. In my latter years I've learned and realized things about both of my parents, their childhoods and their relationship, that has changed my heart toward my dad. Too late for me to tell him so... But choosing to remember the good things, as few as they may be, (his sense of humor, that I inherited, etc.) has made my life much better than when I was angry and only remembered the negative things.
Blessings to you all...