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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To ask if you know anyone who turns any achievements into negatives?

33 replies

PinataHeeHaw · 22/04/2025 13:14

I just told someone a recent achievement and she immediately came back with how I was snappy and irritable at her during the time I was working towards it. She does it every single time I tell her good news.

OP posts:
Isittimeformynapyet · 22/04/2025 13:37

Same ex-friend, when I told her my partner had a cancer diagnosis, said "don't make it all about you". I've phased her out. Harder to do with mothers though.

Isittimeformynapyet · 22/04/2025 13:34

Oh yes, an ex-friend of mine would invariably say something along the lines of "that's great, but don't let it go to your head" 😬

PinataHeeHaw · 22/04/2025 13:32

It's my mum too. I was snappy and irritable but she's so negative and controlling and so I was sticking up for myself when I was behaving like that. She's appalling at times. Not how a mother should be. She treats it as an attack on her and so I told her my achievement she said repeatedly about my behaviour.

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Mmmkaay · 22/04/2025 13:31

Oh goodness yes, my MIL. She cannot say a good word about anyone who has achieved something, or if somebody praises someone else in her earshot she immediately puts them down. Even her own grandkids (who aren't my children.) She's jealous of anyone who has done anything. I blithely ignore.

ZebraPyjamas · 22/04/2025 13:30

My mum also. She can turn anything into a negative and disagrees at random with things I say, and then turns around the next time that topic comes up (no matter what it is!) and gives the opposite opinion entirely.

Wasywasydoodah · 22/04/2025 13:29

My mother too. Infuriating.

Sammysquiz · 22/04/2025 13:28

My mum! Every time I achieve something she manages to turn it into a negative. In my rational moments I see how it’s hard for her as she’d have loved a good education and a career but these weren’t things within her reach, so I think a lot of it is pure jealousy. But it massively irritates me. I just got a promotion at work and didn’t even tell her as couldn’t face her finding some form of negative comment to make about it.

ThatNimblePeer · 22/04/2025 13:27

Yep. Had a ‘friend’ exactly like this. Can’t believe how long it took me to see it and realise I should have pulled back from her a long time ago. Or confront them calmly and directly and ask why they’re behaving like your enemy not your friend, and if they realise that’s quite an odd way to react within a supposed friendship? Do they understand that they sound quite envious and spiteful, and is that how they’re intending to come across?

(Having said all that… were you snappy? Does she have any legitimate reasons for feeling a grievance?)