Do you know anyone who receives undue adulation and respect?

[CatWorm]

This is going to sound mean. But it really baffles me. And I wonder if anyone else has similar experience?

My FIL is spectacularly lazy. My MIL (a saint of a woman) worked day and night to keep the family afloat despite him being qualified in a lucrative sector at a time when his peers were making great money, he just preferred to be at the pub. Often not even doing the childcare. He wasn’t around a lot, but because he never left and they always knew where he was, they consider him this amazing Dad and Husband despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Even now he’s incredibly stubborn and miserable, putting little to no effort into family life but they treat him like some kind of deity. Parties thrown in his honour, plans and holidays centred around him and what he likes, praise him regularly. I find it quite weird. I’ve known the family for 20 years and am I adore my BIL/SILs and MIL, so it’s not like it’s just bad first impressions. I get that he’s their husband/dad, but it’s almost like they’re all in denial of his flaws and go above and beyond for him despite him generally being quite disinterested and ungrateful.

Owen Jones

@Cuppasoupmonster 🤣🤣preach!!!

I was in a similar situation years ago, although it was not a family member thankfully. There was a person who was in my circle of friends, although to me more of an acquaintance, who a couple of my friends thought hung the moon. Lots of deference to this person's opinions and constant praise. I thought they were okay but fairly ordinary like the rest of us. To this day I don't understand it.

Several people at work - always the same faces getting awards and praise in meetings and so on. It tends to be people whose faces fit and who are performative rather than getting their heads down and quietly getting on with it.

Exactly

It could be that the mother in law treats her husband as the man she would like him to be rather than what he is and the children have grown up and have been influenced by the way she treats him
and have followed suit.

One of my siblings. She's a pathological liar, gets caught out all the time but because she's beautiful/charismatic/plays the vulnerable narc role to perfection, everyone eats out of her hands. I just don't get it. Well I do but it's tedious and annoying (Said as the black sheep of the family).

@Tamarindtree sounds about right. Just very strange to witness. Like they’ve brainwashed themselves.

Fil.

People seem to think he is extremely intelligent and cultured.

Not sure why.

I thought of another one. A family I knew growing up had a "golden child" whom they seemed to worship to the detriment of the other equally deserving children. I remember being perplexed by this (I was a friend of one of the other children) because my parents always bent over backwards trying to treat us equally.

In this case though the golden child was actually a nice person; in fact, she would collude with her siblings when they wanted something from their parents; if she asked, the answer was almost always "yes."

Um… me I think. Sorry, don’t know how to word this so it doesn’t sound like a giant humblebrag. I run a charity, and I have young twins. One or the other or both these things together mean that I’m regularly treated like some sort of parenting authority/latter-day saint, deferred to and generally treated like a Ming vase. I’m so not. I’m a fairly ordinary person and have a particularly short fuse as a parent.

My mother

shes a narcissist and she has the whole family running round after her 24/7

im not joking when I say my brothers have dumped girlfriends because she didn’t like them (or they saw through her bullshit more like) or given up jobs/homes/possessions because ‘mum doesn’t like it’

two are married to women she approved of and the other is still looking
it’s a joke-if she’s not happy (99% of the time),they all tie themselves in knots

trying to sort it out for her,even though she’s playing up for no other reason that she can’t get her own way

she has to choose where to go on holiday,what they all eat,wear,jobs,how to spend money,what cars they drive,what they name their kids,how they bring up the kids,what the kids wear/play with-any detail,no matter how small,has to be run past her or else

meals are a nightmare-she gets first pick and will watch someone else stave while stuffing her face with way too much food

shes selfish,stubborn,greedy,a liar and the biggest shit stirrer,but everyone who meets her can’t see it and they all think she’s wonderful

i went nc with her and the shitshow was unreal-14 years on I’m still the unreasonable one for not licking her arse

its still going on but I refuse to play her game,I’m grey rock all the way and am just living my life the way I want to

Oh yes. Been watching the 2 faces of this person for all my life. Some people have rumbled her but the majority have bought her whole performance of religious devotion, saintliness and selflessness. I wish they could hear the remarks from her once they leave the room.
Gossip monger, bully, sneering self obsessed social climber who would pull people apart for her own entertainment.
But I have to admire how she's kept her reputation intact t for a very long time

Yes. Someone selling herself as a psychotherapist despite being totally unqualified and inexperienced, and additionally crap. She is an expert at working the PR angle, positions herself with a smattering of psychobabble, and the local newspapers just eat it up and give her PR after PR, she even got a "testimonial" from a famous Olympian sportsperson who had never actually used her services.

I was taken in by all her "as seen on XXX news" and "member of XXX governing body (which when I dug at it, turned out not to be a real governing body)" when I was very vulnerable and the fall out from that terrible decision is still following me 4 years later. She spent a lot of my sessions talking at me and asking for reviews, denigrating other clients etc.

Every time her poor abilities catch up with her, she just closes down her company then opens it up under a new name. Her body count on Companies House is growing every couple of years. She's just so well-connected she gets away with it over and over again.

I think she's a narc but obviously I'm not a qualified professional so I don't know for sure. And since she's unqualified she's not regulated by a professional body so there's no comeback to be had.

There is a couple that live locally to me that everyone seems to worship as they have a massive house and lots of money.

The man is a drug dealer (its well known in the area. He gets away with it long term). The woman fancied herself as a wannabe mum/style instagrammer and blogger. She only has to post on social media that she's taken her children to the park and people will start arse licking her and saying she is a total inspiration.

When she was pregnant with her second child she held a baby shower and apparently over 100 people attended.

Neither are particularly nice people. I don't know why everyone fawns over them!

One of my colleagues. She's managed to position herself as a guru in her field. Nothing she says is that insightful but she everyone acts like it's some amazing piece of information when she gives her opinion and defers to her.

Drives another, more qualified colleague mad!

My boss’ boss. I met her properly for the first time a couple of months ago (a very brief introduction years ago) and she was both horrible and incompetent.
I cannot imagine how she got promoted to this position, not how she keeps it.
Everyone at my level (and a few at the level above me) feel the same yet higher management sing her praises.

My father. Nasty nasty temper which sometimes got physical. Was constantly bullying and piss-taking. Nothing was ever good enough.
But he's very good at pretending to be nice to other people.

All the male, pale and stale men I work with.

Wow, do we work at the same place? Describes my manager’s manager perfectly!

My brother, treated like God himself by my mother. Couldn't do anything wrong, even when she saw him doing it

The SENCO at my school. Arrives at the last minute, out of there like a rat up a drainpipe. Doesn't know the children and coasts on the title...

🤣🤣🤣🤣I was about to post that too

Same where I work. One person in particular gets credit for things other people have done. It’s incredibly annoying to see him swanning around the place smiling and looking ultra confident, soaking up the praise, while other people work just as hard if not more and don’t get noticed.