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?

Why aren't you light and pretty like Jenny next door? She's like a little fairy.
A few years later: Don't worry, nice looking boys like to play around with attractive girls, but they usually settle down with a plain one.
A few more years later, while looking at my beautiful daughter: She's just like you but better looking.
After a lifetime of carrying a huge inferiority complex and suffering anorexia, bulimia and some drink/drug experimentation I no longer care. It's taken over 60 years to be content at last.

Many, many years ago, similar thing with MiL.

MiL: “What’s that muck on your face?”
Me (sitting quietly with SiL, minding my own business and reading the papers with a charcoal face mask on): “It’s a face mask, I’ll wash it off in a minute”
MiL: “Well what do you want that on for?”
Me: “It helps with my skin”
MiL: “I suppose I wouldn’t know, I’ve never had pimples like yours” (leaves room)
Me & SiL: 🙄

This is absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things, your post just reminded me of it. MiL was/is the most spiteful and toxic person I’ve ever known, and I can only reconcile the amount of damage she’s done to all those around her - particularly DH and BiL - by treating her as mentally ill. Which I believe she is - NPD is a genuine mental disorder, so it’s doubly sad that she’s now 95 and has spent the last decade or more completely bewildered at how little time her friends and family want to spend with her.

"I brought you into this world and I can sure as hell take you back out"

@Sheepreallylikerichteabiscuits it is scary how similar they all are. I also had the:

• can't wear that! - 👍
• wedding invite for abuser - 👍
• "living in sin" - 👍

Added bonus: when at my BIL funeral loudly lamenting to everyone that would listen how her children had been horrible and ignoring her when she had just lost her Son-in-law of over 20 years! Funnily enough we had been more focusing on our sister who had just lost her husband!!!

Thought of another particularly spiteful one, constantly calling dd by my sister's name, then doing a tinkly laugh, 'oh sorry, it's just that she's so like XXXXX and not you, thank god'.

Sister is golden child, obvs. Dd is nothing like her. Thank god!

I suffered with bulimia as a teenager (got no support from her when she found out but that’s a separate issue).

years later we were sat around the table having just finished a Chinese takeaway.

She turned to me and said ‘sometimes I wish I could just throw it all up so I don’t feel guilty for eating all that delicious food’ followed by tinkly laugh.

I had to leave the table.

when telling her of my wedding plans which she was heavily criticising she said ‘I thought you did this for a living’ and scoffed ( I was an events manager at the time)

I recently worked hard to lose weight and dropped a couple of dress sizes.

she asked to try one of my new dresses in as she really liked it and waltzed into the room laughing her head off saying ‘ look it’s enoooormous on me’ and flapping her arms like she was wearing a fucking tent

My aunt is a raving narc. My cousin struggles with infertility.

Aunt - well it’s a good job you can’t have any kids with the state of your shrivelled up womb! They would come as fucking awful as you.

For context my cousin doesn’t reply or engage and is usually always deeply hurt by these rages. She’s now in counselling and has finally gone no contact. I’ve never known a woman to be so evil let alone to her kids. Baffles me.

Some of these are truly awful. My mum is more of a lightweight really:
When I was in tears, struggling with toddler DC1

"I dropped my stepson (physically disabled) back to his flat early on Christmas morning (alone for the day) because I was too tired to have him hanging around all day and his mother had the audacity to complain about it, the bitch!"

So I had a serious mental health breakdown in my early 20s, had serious depression and PTSD due to trauma in my teens. Two gems related to that:

Firstly, I tried to explain that I had kept repressing all of this trauma (some of which she knew about and some she didn’t) but that it had all exploded to the surface.

Her response: well couldn’t you keep repressing it until you finished your exams?

Second one- she was absolutely insistent on finding out what the trauma in my teens was (I was gang raped). At the time I couldn’t talk about it at all and especially didn’t want to tell her, as somehow she always makes these things about her. She completely hounded me with messages about it, and my boyfriend at the time, “because she needed to know to help me”. I had to block her for w bit because it got so bad.

About a year later she turned to me and went “you know what? I’m glad you didn’t tell me what happened to you. It would have upset me too much.”

Yep. Would have upset HER too much. Literally not a thought about me.

Ugh, why still no edit function MN?!

When I was in tears, after struggling with toddler DC1: "Oh, darling, I think I made it look too easy."
😶

Popped in to recommend going nc.
20 years of blissful peace.
No regrets whatsoever..

Oh! And also when I was under the care of the parent-infant psychologist for a bit due to PND: "So you just go and have a nice chat once a week? Lucky for some, is that what I'm paying my taxes for?"

With some distance, I can see why she may have felt my difficulties in early motherhood might have reflected poorly on her. So maybe less narcissism, but still weirdly unkind and not a way I hope I'd ever be with my own children.

Oh god, this. I’ve heard this so many times in my life. This whole thread is so triggering 😂

My mum doesn’t have NPD as far as I’m aware but she’s a strong contender for borderline PD (according to my therapist who I can see mentally shaking his head when I then rush to her defence to say that in fairness, he only gets my side of the story).

But, a few from my childhood:

”I never wanted a child - when your father and I got married, he asked me after a couple of years whether we shouldn’t have kids and I asked if we could get a dog instead. He won that argument.”

“God, you’re an embarrassment to be seen with, look at that mother and daughter over there, why can’t you just look nice like that?”

after stripping me naked and pushing me in front of a full length mirror at the age of 18 “HAAAA!!! That’s where all your money has gone, the pounds have gone on you. You don’t have any pounds in the bank, the pounds have gone on you. Hahaha! Look at yourself. You look disgusting. You’re disgusting. I’ll be so humiliated to be seen with you in public.” For context, I’d gone to uni and gone from a size 12 to size 14. I’m six foot.

sits me down in a coffee shop “So, I have a brain tumour. It’s your fault. The consultant told me that it was probably caused by stress and you have caused me so much stress recently. So congratulations, I’m probably going to die and it’s your fault.”

”You don’t love me. You’ve never loved me. You only love cats and books, you don’t have the capacity to love people. You know that’s weird, right?”

7am on Mother’s Day morning when I was 4 years old, watching cartoons “How could you forget Mother’s Day? It’s my one day of the year. Every day is your day, this is my one and only day and you forgot. You are the worst daughter in the world. I don’t want any of your presents or your card, why would I want anything from a daughter who doesn’t love me?”

Not that I’m traumatised or anything but I have been in therapy for the last five years and not leaving any time soon 😂

“Oh, you make me feel so guilty” accompanied with a burst-into-tears. I had told her that years previously I had had to catch the bus to the hospital to have a mastectomy.

My mum sat GCSE maths and English at the same time as I sat my GCSES. We both got an A and she told me “I’m glad you didn’t get A*s - I’d have been really annoyed if you’d done better than me.” Just one of a million similar things.

I was in ICU after a medical 'incident' and she was living about a 3 hour drive away. I woke up after a couple of days to see her sitting there and the first thing she said was "well when you get your compensation from this fuck up you can pay me back for the petrol and hotel that I've had to pay out to see you".

I've so many

The worst is 'i forgive her for everything' after I had my first child. I don't know what she forgave me for. I was always kept down and criticised but when I got married I grew stronger. Less available most days she tells me everyone else's daughter is amazing so kind. Have more

I have achieved loads but my self esteem is non existent

So interesting (and sad ofc) to see the common threads in these. So much about looks, weight, other people’s opinions, trashing big life events, the circumstances of the child’s birth (my mum hits every one of these).

Although she has a slightly different spin on the “you weren’t wanted story”- apparently she wanted me desperately but my dad didn’t and he turned abusive after I was born. Took me years to learn that’s a common pattern for abusers and not my fault, as implied!

Ooooh some more. Won't tell me what she wants for Christmas, so I get her the 'safe' inoffensive presents each year, which she leaves behind. Every single year.

Last year she told me in great detail that she didn't want presents, blah blah blah. So I obliged. Only to be locked in the back garden when I was clearing up everything and putting rubbish in the bin (I have to cook the entire thing each year, no help with the cooking/clearing etc), she rocks up when it's ready). Freezing cold in the back garden, and she only let me back in when I apologised for not getting her presents. In MY fucking house.

Think I mentioned that she said everything is my fault. She needs a hip replacement apparently, and it's my fault, because she once tripped over the baby gate and damaged her knee. Not quite sure how that's resulted in a hip replacement, and she didn't trip over the gate, she actually ripped it off the wall and stamped on it as she refused to be shown how it opened 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Oh and she never gets me presents. Ever. Not even for dd. Unless it's some utter Shit she's found in her house and brought along with her.

My mum moaned about the soldiers widows winning their case to get their widows pensions when they remarried 😭

My mother said to me that she was worried i have a heart attack and die because i had put on so much weight during pregnancy (i hadnt really) i couldnt get it out of my head for the rest of the pregnancy. Second time around im alot heavier and still have that niggling worry in my head.

She called my baby a narcissist! Because he would look at people smile and expect a smile back and got sad if he didnt!

Those are just two of many many years of jems!

Unsurprisingly i have not spoke to her for 4 years, im alot happier!