A_diff_view:
Your mother made her own choices. She was not forced to stay in a bad M. I grew up with a supposedly happily married mother and father but, with the explosion in our own marriage, I see now that my mother is very disrespectful of my father and more or less gets her own way on everything -- and she humiliates him if he disagrees with her. Guess what I did when I went into our marriage? It took five years for my H to say enough and he did it by cracking my skull. I then entered the world of his parents' marriage, with his mother completely ignored by his father. And I blew up, not after a broken arm but after I exposed an affair.

Please realize that you have some hidden assumptions about how marriage is supposed to be. If you are aware of it, you may be able to change it. But don't get married until you find someone who believes in win-win approaches to problems. Your mother, like me, believed in sacrifice and tried her best -- from what I gather, I don't know of course -- to be the best wife and mother she could, and she is overwhelmed with anger that she should end up as she has. Your father seems to have an element of cruelty in him that he would have much dealing with her now. The marriage failed. There is no reason for them to continue communicating.

Just my thoughts.... I have a H willing to work on the M, so I'm in a different spot from your mother, but two years ago I was where she is now and it was dreadful. I used to wake up asking God to have me killed -- maybe a car accident? I didn't want to live. And yet my Christian faith kept me alive.

Please love your mother. She needs it.