To ask for your quotes from narcissistic mothers

[itsgoodtobehome]

Slightly tongue in cheek. My DM is a total narcissist which I'm mostly used to now, but every now and then she comes out with a new classic which makes even me wince.

So, next weekend, DM has invited me and DSis and our families for lunch to mark a family birthday. 9 of us in total, including kids. DM was telling me the other day what she was planning to serve for lunch. She mentioned a particular thing as a starter, which is quite an acquired taste. I know for a fact that my DDad and DH don't like it, and the 3 kids won't eat it. So basically 5 out of 9 guests don't like this dish. I told her this was a bit of a waste.
Her response: 'but I have planned this menu to look a certain way, and it won't look right if I don't make this dish'

So she is quite prepared to have most of her guests not eat something just so her menu 'looks good'. I give up. Has anyone else got batshit mothers who only think of themselves and nobody else?

Forgot the absolute best one

she posts on Facebook that my Dad is in remission from his cancer. Both my sister and I call her in a fluff, as she and he had neglected to tell us he had cancer. Turns out he didn’t. It took months of digging and eventually it all came out that he never had cancer. He’d had a bowel growth, non cancerous, which we knew about. She thought it “sounded better” to say he was in remission.

We were out once and 2 very tall, very beautiful girls with long blond hair and Laura Ashley dresses walked in. My mother elbowed me and said ‘why can’t you look like that’.
As an adult I would say ‘genetics’ I’m short, dark, with curly hair like her. She also wouldn’t buy me clothes and expected me to wear 6ft brothers hand me downs.

Omg. This has really helped me. Awful experiences that I hope you all come out of a better and stronger person.

1. Mine called my sister in the pandemic and told her I was keeping the kids from her.
2. My sil attacked me and trapped me in her house for an hour. Sil mother was there (my mum's friend) told everyone I was lieing. Brother (golden balls) told me he didn't want anything to do with me, as I had made it all up. My mother says she loves sil and will always be part of this family. Has only kept in contact with them since.
3. I am a massive problem because I'm fat (size 14/16) she has blatant eating disorder that everyone ignores. She often said to me "I would rather have cancer than be fat".
4. Growing up all "bad" food was locked in a cupboard and the key was kept round her neck.
5. Never hugged me, I have to love you, but I don't have to like you.
6. I went NC last year when she took my kids to see the sil after I told her not too. She writes me pathetic letters saying. Is it because I was nasty to you as a child. Because it wasn't my fault. I was lonely.

And my father is the narcissistic one.

Too many to write.

Worse thing was I ran a business with them. And now I am unemployed because they pushed me out took all my shares etc.. off me. Pretty screwed now.

Big hugs all x

For any survivors of a narc parent, it may be useful to consider whether you have codependancy issues.
I realise that I do.
I was parentified, spent my childhood trying to support my narc mother, in order to give myself a sense of safety.
This experience left me with self love deficit, and my own sense of peace and happiness dependant on whether others are happy. Constantly care taking, trying to "fix" people, making sure everyone is looked after and feeling OK.
Thankfully through therapy and other techniques I am healing.
The trauma of having a narc parent can last a lifetime.

Yes, this is true. I am a people pleaser and go out of way to make sure everyone is ok. Organise everything. Because I looked after them.

Another problem with going NC is that friends and family dont understand. You get the "but its your parents, you cant stop talking to them". I found this extremely hard and have lost contact with friends and extended family too.

Yes it's a huge upheaval. But definitely worth it. Not only did I realise I was carrying and putting up with an now ex with similar traits (partly I didn't expect/know better and partly because if I'd have had different parents perhaps would have kindly pointed it out sooner.. they think ex is great of course!). But I also realised I had a couple of friends who treated me badly.
It was a tough time. But the example being set for my DC has made it all worthwhile.
I have the ultimate in 'people pleasing' career (charity work) so I'm now reassessing that too! I mean I literally went into a job to help other people!! My parents on the other hand think charity is a waste of time and homeless people deserve it etc etc (they do support donkey rescue!)

Ooh. Blimey. I am a serial volunteer for stuff - Ents and sports club secretary at uni, social committee and first aider/fire warden at work, now youth groups and parkrun. Partly, I suspect because I think that if I don't do things for people, nobody will like me. 🤔

Years ago I had depression. Im was a single parent of one DC at the time who was 5, and my mother was a single parent from when I was 2 until I was 10 (I have 3 older sisters)

When I told her I had MH issues - she said “I had 4 of you to look after, you never heard me complain”

"I pride myself on my parenting, look how happy your sister is"
This was when we were in a family therapy session my counselor had requested.
Counselor asked why she didn't understand that it wasn't about how happy my sister was, it's the fact that I wasn't and that I felt (and everyone else that knows her universally) that her dismissive attitude towards me was at fault.
Her response?
"Yes, but that's her problem, her sister is happy, and successful, she was always more popular and it's not my fault that Reformed is jealous of our closer relationship"

Even the counselor, bless her, was unable to respond and wrapped up the session.

Years later I found out my sister was the product of an affair with a man she loved and who she didn't leave my dad and me for because he had no job and no prospects and she wasn't entirely dumb. I wish she would've naffed off frankly.

Oh I’ve got a lots. She excelled herself when my marriage ended though.

When told her that I was getting divorced (not a massive surprise, had been on cards for a while) she stormed out of my house. When I next saw her, she told me that I should have told her in a more sensitive way and that I was selfish because I didn’t think about how the news would affect her as a grandmother.

She then helpfully told me “I hope you’re not doing this as you think you will meet someone else, because you won’t. So you need to accept that you will be on your own forever” and then told me never to ask her to babysit in the evenings as she wouldn’t be doing it.

She added “Your ex-H will meet someone else though, it’s the sort of person he is, he gets on with people”.

I was leaving him for very good reasons, he was almost as narcissistic as her and I had been through enough already - most of which she was aware of. My friends were delighted that I was leaving him. DM was just concerned about how it would look to other people, and she periodically wailed to me about her grandchildren being “from a broken home” and how hard that was for her to bear.

This was done whilst selling herself publicly, and to me, as being a really supportive mother who always goes out of her way for me!

(As it happens, I am very happily remarried to someone wonderful who treats me very well 😊)

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas i moved 30 minutes up the road and she acted like I was moving to a different country not county 🤦🏻‍♀️

oh the health issues! I honestly don’t think I could count how many she has had 🙄😑 most of which I doubt have ever been genuine! Though she’s always thought she’s superior and knows more than the medical professionals anyway

When first daughter was I asked her what she'd like the baby to call her when she could talk. Obviously I meant nana, nan, granny etc. Her response "mama" I had to point out that name was already taken 🤣 Months later I was looking through the cards we had been given at the baby's birth and noticed my mum had signed hers " love from grandad and mama" bloody priceless!

My Mother is exactly the same
She copies what I buy for my home, my clothes etc
I can guarantee that if I wear say a new shirt with leggings and trainers she will copy my look
She's 86 and looks bloody ridiculous

I had my shoulder length hair cut really short, a few of her cronies commented 'oooh you can tell that SHE'S her Mothers Daughter now that her hair's short'! After about the 3rd time of her telling me, I purchased a wig on Amazon which was very close in style to my original cut. She had the raging hump because 'we don't look like twins anymore'

Oh Mother dearest, do fuck off

I love this!

My daughter loves tangled but I find the lyrics to the songs extremely triggering - our mothers sounds unfortunately similar xx

Marking thread

I think my mother married at a time when you were supposed to be a virgin, stop workin when you got pregnant and spend the rest of your life as mum.

When women said sod that I'm going to have fun , go to college, use reliable birth control, meet a man who I'm an equal to and hold onto myself albeit on the back burner for a few years when the children are small. They're jealous. I suspect many of them are actually more intelligent than the men they married and somehow this keen intelligence became twisted.

This twisted led my mother to have a number of affairs over the years. Always with intellectual types.
She really believed one particular man would leave his wife for her, of course he didn't. His wife said he'd always been one for flings being an author and scriptwriter he was like catnip to women.

You are going to die and I don’t care if you do. When I was 11 with tonsillitis then she left me alone in bed and didn’t speak to me for 2 days. Little naive me thought she would come and apologise that never happened

I wanted my long hair down when I got married but my DM said 'if there's one thing I ask of you it's to wear your hair up' I did what she wanted even though I hated my hair on the day😔

I lost a baby at around 10 weeks, my DM said 'you might be upset, but this is my grandchild, how do you think I feel?"

My MIL is truly (I think narcissistic - I think anyway), on his birthday some years ago, she sent a card, in it was a letter, which said that she had inherited some money, she was sharing this with her other DC's (all of whom are around the same age as DH, none of which have DC), but she was not going to give any to him, because he was not a good enough son. Wow

Not mom but rich narc dad here, he’s a property investor and had something close to a million pounds Hiding in a tax heaven (I was fully unaware). That account had been frozen/locked by the US government because it had ties to Bernie Madoff. My dad has cancer and contacts me, asks if I can help him to unfreeze his Swiss account as he’s in the middle of receiving chemotherapy. I get in touch with Swiss government, Madoff victims fund in the US, I fill in the paperwork. It takes me one month of admin work of my free time. I file all the paperwork for him. 3 months later his account gets unlocked. The Swiss bank has lifted the clawback under order of the US, my dad can get his one million pounds back. Seems I did a good job, so tapped myself in the shoulder.

He informs me He won’t be paying me a penny for my help, but wants to invite me for a drink to celebrate it. (Thanks dad…) We meet at the Mandarin hotel in Knightsbridge (London), I order a glass of champagne, he orders some tea and thanks me profusely for helping him get his money back but reminds me I won’t see a penny of it. (I didn’t help you get you money back thinking in the reward dad, I did it because you’re all alone, have cancer and none of your children from your 3 marriages speak to you). Asks for the check to the waiter.

Yells at me for half an hour in the taxi because my glass of champagne was 29 pounds. How dare I order such an expensive champagne!!!!

I went NC with him a while ago.

Age 5 , was asked by DM and aunts "what would you like to be when you grow up"? I said a dancer and was humiliated by the cackling laughter that went on forever... to the comment " oh you will be very lucky to even work in a shop"

Age 10 - given hideous short perm ( I had, had long hair) I looked like the old woman upstairs

Age 13 told that if ever I was raped, I should just lie back and try to enjoy it (wtaf)

On her literal death bed ( she died a week later) I arrived for a visit and had bought some clothes in a new shop that was on my way there , I showed them to her and she screwed up her face and gesticulated that I was too fat for them

Every job I went for, every home I went for, every decision I made was wrong in her eyes. I figured out that it was my father she resented and took it out on me - You kinda get flashbacks when you are held by the face up against the wall and being hissed at " YOU ARE YOUR F'ING FATHER". He left her because he didn't trust her when I was a baby and she made sure he would never be part of my life. I still look for him now
Just remembered, she was always telling me to get my sons hair cut because he was the spitting image of my dad, I said no, he has his own hair how he likes
She did none of this to my siblings , supported every choice they made , they also had different dads
Could write several books!
Sorry for the rant, I have found this thread to be shocking, sad and a bit cathartic
I hope it helps others, I am sad it has taken me back to those times but I feel a bit "lightened " to be able to tell myself none of it was me or my fault
( i am an absolute people pleaser and can see why, looking at other posts)
Ty to all, you are survivors X

You're a beautiful person. Wish I could give you a big squeezy hug ❤️
They're poison. So glad you're away.

@dlizi4 I’m a people pleaser too. I’m currently undergoing intense CBT and have just been referred for EMDR therapy. This has amazingly, and thankfully, all been paid for through my Employee Assistance Programme at work.