To ask if you've ever known someone like this?

[FGSholdthedoor]

Have you ever known someone who makes you question everything?

In a way that you know they're in the wrong but they will bring forward lots of convincing arguments and make sense and it will begin to make you question your stance?
Even if you know you are right but in their presence you just can't bring yourself to argue the point or your mind goes blank and you can't counter anything they say?

Sorry if this is vague but I'm currently questioning my sanity

Yes I have, I keep him at arms length (he's in an in law) he's always got to be an expert on everything, he's always right and anything you say is wrong, he's studied everything and knows the world and everything in it inside out. Even when he's talking utter shite arguing with him is nigh on impossible.
I feel your pain...
who is this person to you?

Yes. She sits next to me. I'm so glad she's resigned, she sucks the life blood out of me. she's a social worker with extreme policial views I deem dangerous but no one listens to me

My DM. I hold her political views in contempt and can argue them quite easily but then (not having any rational points to make) she starts on my personal attributes and I can't distance myself enough from that to be objective.

Oh god, yes.

My mind doesn't go blank, but I have to mentally stop myself from getting visibly annoyed with them as they are always argumentative.

It's a power play. It's best not to engage, as I remind myself.

Yes! I had a “friend” like this. She dumped me. I still don’t really j is why, but in retrospect it’s such a relief.

Try to detach a bit and view them the way a sociologist might. Or an anthropologist??? See your interactions with them as a slightly interesting social experiment.

I am trying and failing to do this with someone.

Vampires. Ditto what EnidNextDoor said.

I used to have a member of my team like this and I couldn't understand it for years. Then I realised that everything he said made perfect sense if he were the centre of the universe and everyone and everything revolved around him. He just had the overarching assumption that his view and his view only was the most logical and therefore the most correct (logic being defined by him, of course). And from his standpoint it probably was. From other viewpoints it very often wasn't e.g. women should dress a certain way to avoid rape. I'm sure that is very logical viewpoint for a bloke, who reads the Daily Mail and who isn't affected by the consequences (and if you ignore the ton of evidence to suggest that clothing has no bearing on whether you are raped). As a woman, being told what I should or should not wear isn't that great!

So it could be complete selfishness and an inability to see other views or it could be more sinister and be gaslighting that you're experiencing.

That person is my DM.

She went on a short rant yesterday giving me lots of examples why someone is wrong (there was a fallout between her and that person). I feel there's fault on both sides but my DM is mainly to blame as her behaviour has been really bad (I've not really told her as that would unleash another type of hell) however she started throwing all these examples at me and basically said how what she did was justified because "insert reason here" even though it seems almost contradictory.
I just kind of sat there and nodded as my mind went ----

But the scary thing is I ended up going home thinking about it and actually questioning weather she's right and I've been wrong all this time.
She sounded so confident and sure of her opinions, actions and choices.

Yes it’s called gas lighting. No point engaging in argument with people like this you will never win no matter how wrong they are.

Agree with mowglik. Don't engage. Nod, placate, change the subject (or whatever it takes to shut them up!). By the fact she would unleash hell if you told her that her behaviour was bad she will never be wrong in her eyes. Ever. They'll have an answer for everything as no answer that they give could ever be considered unreasonable in their eyes. The world revolves around them!

Have you seen the Stately Homes threads in Relationships? They might prove useful!

There are people that would do their best to convince you that you didn't give birth to your own children. Purveyors of such mind fuckery should be avoided at all cost.

Met someone like this recently (thankfully fairly briefly).

I just said, "Gosh, how interesting," every time he did this. And then left the room if possible.

Lucky for me he was just a friend of a friend and I can hopefully avoid in future.

Our bloody electrician used to be a PITA. What ever you tried to talk about he'd already:

been there,
done that and done it better,
seen that,
bought that,
had that,
learned that,
could do that standing on his head AND had done it in fact that very morning at dawn

And if he hadn't it was because he'd decided it was a total waste of time and money and anyone doing it, going there or buying it was a twat.

And you couldn't get a word in edgeways. It was so draining. He used to leave me and

Yes. My ex-husband. Hence the ex.

Yes df and dsis. It's incredibly irritating. They just make stuff up to 'prove' their points and speak about it with such conviction that I think they must believe their own lies.

They also make up pointless facts to seem clever. I once told dsis my dp and I were thinking of going on a long weekend in Northumberland. She informed me that there is no such place and it's "Cumbria all the way across". I gave up arguing against her, and a room full of people listened to that bs and no one even raised an eyebrow, that's the crazy power she has.

The electrician is our X electrician now.

New MN term: XE?

My abusive father was like this, thankfully he’s dead now. He had to be right on every subject, sometimes his views really were outrageous but we weren’t allowed to argue with him. For example, he had the view that a woman’s adultery was worse than a man’s adultery and he was also strongly homophobic.

Yes. I just nod and smile and say ok.

Sounds like my parents, god help you if you dare point out they might actually be wrong! I just don't bother anymore just smile and nod then get on with my day. It's taken years to learn that attitude but just can't be bothered anymore

"I once told dsis my dp and I were thinking of going on a long weekend in Northumberland. She informed me that there is no such place and it's "Cumbria all the way across". "

Classic! Since my DF was born in Hexham during evacuation, I'd have laughed in the face of anyone suggesting such fuckwittery. I'd buy her a UK atlas for Christmas.

Someone on my degree course is like this. Thinks that because she's the oldest, that she knows more than everyone else. She's so fucking patronising too 😠

Had a boss like this. She managed to misunderstand everything I said (she would literally hear the exact opposite of what I’d said) and then yell at me for not explaining myself properly. If I tried to correct something she’d misunderstood, she yelled at me for “getting defensive”, or even “being argumentative”.

It made me wonder if I really was expressing myself badly, since she apparently couldn’t even understand a simple sentence like “Mrs X is having her scan this afternoon”. And she seemed able to listen to other people. But it was only her who I had that problem with (glowing feedback from everyone else before and since), so I’m going to assume it was just her.

Yes my mum too. The funny thing is that as well as being like this, she also moans about other people who are like it (well makes sense I suppose as they can't both be right!)

She talks utter shite, and says things that are downright wrong, in a very emphatic, almost outraged way as if it has to be true. I can easily argue against her with facts and evidence. However if I do, she gets upset, cries, then starts on a personal attack against me. So it's not worth the bother.

I did. I divorced him. Couldn't even be arsed to argue with him in the run up to leaving him because he would have just steamrollered me and then probably have threatened to kill himself for good measure. I had no idea of the concept of grey rock, back then, but that's exactly what I did.