I feel like I isolate myself from my mom and I don't know why

[FB2000]

This is gonna be long, but it's something I've kept inside of me for a long time and I really wanna fix this, so beat with me.

I'm a 16 year old boy and in my opinion, I'm in a weird situation. So I live with my mom, my parents are divorced. I don't do anything bad, like parties, drugs, etc. I am obedient and never rebel against my mom, I ask her permission for everything and always obey. I am involved with ALOT of clubs in my high school and my youth group outside of school. I have night school as well and I spend alot of time outside of home. I never do bad things and my mom knows this.

My mom is very caring and loving. She may be hard to deal with when it comes to certain situations, but I appreciate everything she does for me. However, for a long time now, I have something I've been wanting to get off my chest but I don't know how...

I feel like I am a completely different person at home to my mother and outside of home. I am very talkative, open, and different around other people. But to my mom, I am very quiet and isolate myself in everything I do. When I go home, I go straight to my room and spend almost all my time there. It is in my nature and has been for a long time now to only really speak to her for permission about stuff. Whenever she speaks to me or tells me about things I usually only listen to her who does most of the talking and give one word answers. Another thing, if I'm out somewhere and my mom is there as well, I become a whole different person there. I have this weird feeling like I don't want my mom to know about my life (even if the things I do are good) and I don't want her to see that better side of me, the side I have when I'm around anyone but her.

My mom is completely aware of this. She's talked to me before about this, because I know she feels something is wrong and she's always felt it. Whenever she brings it up, she's always sad that I don't open up to her or that I'm so monotone around her. When she asks me why, I don't really say anything for two reasons. 1. Even though I know what the reasoning kind of is (this underlying desire to be like this), I don't know how to put it into words. And 2. I know it would make her very hurt.

A few years ago before my parents got divorced my family was very shaky. They fought alot for alot of reasons, and I was always kind of just neutral. I don't feel this problem around my dad or my brother's, just with my mom. Me and my mom don't really spend quality time together (or with other family/family friends), and if on a rare day she asks me if we wanna do something together, I always say know. I feel like these are a few reasons that I was formed to feel this way now in my teenage years, the lack of relationship and quality time with family/mom. Despite that, I don't want that to be a reason alone not to do anything to fix this.

I know how crazy I might sound. I really do understand that I have such a great mom and I am a good son to her, but the reason our relationship is like this is all on my part and not hers. Even though I do wanna fix the fact that I'm a completely different and isolated person around her, I personally do not feel like I am capable of doing that on my part or even want to when the opportunity comes up. Maybe it was my upbringings or maybe it's something else, but I am stuck and I have no idea why exactly I feel this way.

I ask for a third party for your take on this whole thing. I know it's alot to take in and I know it might sound weird, but this is something I wanted to get off my chest and if there's the slightest chance someone can help give me a different perspective, I'll take it.

Thank you all for taking the time to help me out, and I'll appreciate any responses.

[RockRose]

I agree with what Annie said,  and have a couple other points.  

You are very articulate and leave a pretty clear picture of your mindset.  Two things stick out:

"She may be hard to deal with when it comes to certain situations, but I appreciate everything she does for me."

and

"1. Even though I know what the reasoning kind of is (this underlying desire to be like this), I don't know how to put it into words. And 2. I know it would make her very hurt."

I think you do know how to put it into words - and I think it would be something like this - "Because of what she did,  she doesn't deserve me,  and doesn't deserve to enjoy what a really good kid I've turned out to be".  Does that sound right?

Best wishes,  and hope you are able to work through this.  You're kind to be sensitive to not wanting to hurt her,  despite whatever is causing you to want to withdraw.  

[AnnieBrooke]

Hm.  I'll tell you something about my dad, he never once called my mother by her name in the hearing of any of us kids.  He would yell a question to her in the house without a name attached, and we could tell it was not for any of us because with all the kids, he would use our names.  They would joke and talk normally, and discuss events of the day and friends, it's not like they didn't talk to each other, and obviously he saw her as a person, but he would never address her by name.  Later I read that this is a way of psychologically resisting a person or withholding yourself from a person when you don't want to give them any (more) power.

Maybe some feelings you are carrying around from the times when your parents fought are still with you.  When parents fight around a child, it hits the child at the most basic level, in his survival fears.  It's frightening and also feels unfair to the child, a kid should not have to be worried that his parents can't keep him safe, part of the general social contract is that two parents working together makes the child feel safe.  Probably rather than feel fear all the time, and react every time your parents fought, you learned to tune out the fear or stuff it down, so you wouldn't have to be constantly anxious or mad.  And that could be still with you, and/or the disconnect it caused with someone who should otherwise be your biggest nurturer is still with you too.  Not to mention that you probably feel it shouldn't be up to you to have to act like something unfairly dumped on you as a kid is all just fine; you don't want to be forced to say (by your behavior now) that it is OK that it happened or was trivial.

My cousin has a child who was adopted from another country where the babies in the orphanage didn't get any nurturing.  They were fed and kept clean, but kept in cribs and never held nor played with, and if they cried, most of the time nobody would come.  He still has anger issues, though he was adopted at 18 months and is now 14 and has had a lot of therapy to try to help him cope.  And who can blame him?  A child shouldn't be treated that way!

It might be that the feeling that you didn't get the parental situation a kid should have had, won't ever entirely go away.  And it's not like suddenly behaving all warm and relaxed to your mom is going to erase the painful past.  

My thought is, you really don't have to try to change your reactions to your mom at this time.  You could talk to a counselor over the next few years if you can make the opportunity (especially since you do want to have a normal marriage of your own in the future, not a bad marriage).  One thing that might ease your future is to decide that whatever happened, the present is a different time and its own time.  If you do begin to have small, normal moments (I'm not talking about anything big) now with your mom when talking about pedestrian things, you will have some civil communications to look back on when you are older, not just the memories of being emotionally hurt by your parents' fighting.

I don't say to rewrite history with a golden glow.  After my uncle died, my cousins spent a lot of time reminiscing about their father, an angry alcoholic who took things out on their beloved mother, in a way that made him out as a wonderful guy.  Yet things had been awful for a number of years!  I couldn't even bring myself to go to his funeral, things had been so bad between him and my beloved aunt.   But 'awful for a while' doesn't have to mean 'awful forever.'  For your own future sake, as an adult who is going to have loving relationships of his own, stay open to the small touches of humanity that you and your mom can have starting now, just small ones, that don't impinge on you wanting to keep yourself to yourself.  Because you might need these in the future.  

ps -- Regarding the part where you don't tell your mom much about how you are doing at school --- my sister got elected vice-president of her class in junior high, and never even told my mother in that whole year.  How's that for just not wanting to let someone in?