Quotes from Narcissistic Mothers (& support for their victims) Thread 2

[01Name]

Following on from this thread: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4610023-to-ask-for-your-quotes-from-narcissistic-mothers?page=39&reply=120137262, started by @itsgoodtobehome as a tongue-in-cheek repository for anecdotes of appalling remarks/deeds from parents/siblings with rampant NPD. It morphed into a place where those of us suffering the effects of such behaviour could share experiences, solidarity, advice and support. I hope this thread can continue the good work of the original. Your voice will be heard; your opinion and thoughts matter. You are welcome and valued here.

I'm sorry but thank you.

I've stopped inviting my mum out on family occasion meals because she always ruins the atmosphere.
Starts as soon as you sit down, she will look over the menu with that tight lipped face, lots of sighing and picking up and putting down the menu. Comment about the cost even though she is never paying. Declares there's nothing she would like even though it's stuff she eats. Then it's the sulking and the one word answers,followed by pushing the food around the plate and more sighing.
The family who haven't cottoned on to this then start to pander and coax her. Drives me nuts.

This all changes if its an event for her when suddenly she is smiley and happy and making sure all the staff know its her birthday.

@Nicola101177 ugh. I feel like I want to get all these women in a room.

Can you imagine what might happen! 😂 A nightmare, (think my mother would blow a gasket) but as @girlswillbegirls said hilarious! 🤣

Argh! Can you imagine the competitive misery?

Hehe, they'd kill each other within minutes. And the last one standing would post a massive rant on FBB about the others' selfish actions of spilling their blood on her best skirt. 🙄

Mine is another firm believer in the power of prayer and how it is the answer to everything. I got very cross with her after 9/11; we knew a couple who worked in the World Trade Centre and they survived by an odd chance (forgot their keys, had to go back for them and thus were not in the lift when the first plane struck the North Tower). Obviously, they survived through prayer. I said what about all the poor people who were in the lifts, on the planes and above the impact zones - I'm sure lots of them were good people who prayed. Didn't they pray enough to be saved? That conversation went about as well as you can imagine. Similarly during lockdown - Covid survivors made it through prayers. The local vicar asked me to say something because "someone" was going around putting batshit pamphlets through peoples' doors in the town.

I don't question it anymore. Just smile and nod, smile and nod.

Sending love and hugs to you all. x

Blimey - are we sure our mothers weren’t related?!

I’m conscious again that I’m jumping on every post, but absolutely this as well!

I also discovered eating and food was often used as a manipulative tool.
She would decide she loved a particular restaurant, so we would regularly go there - and then suddenly out if the blue, “the food I had last time was disgusting.”
if I chose anywhere I was as tense as hell because I just knew she would find fault with either the service or the food, even if there was none.

She would announce that she never ate meat - totally untrue - and that she preferred fish or vegetarian. Fair enough, but her idea of fish was only cod in batter with chips and she never actually ordered a vegetarian option. If battered fish wasn’t on the menu, we’d have a total sulk and she’d announce she didn’t want anything to eat thereby ruining the meal for everyone.

When the order was taken, she invariably said to the waiting staff, “And I want my food cooked properly!” Cringe!
As the food was delivered, if the plates weren’t scalding hot (seriously!) she would feel the plate, tut loudly and complain that she didn’t want lukewarm food. I often ended up apologising profusely for her behaviour because she also looked down on servers and treated them with total disdain. This was a woman who was the daughter of economic migrants who came to England to better themselves but despised “manual workers” as she called them.

Things were no better when I cooked. She would invite herself to stay and then turn her nose up at whatever I prepared - dissecting it like a medical specimen and then asking for a slice of toast! Never had a problem demolishing a pudding though - either at my home or eating out.

Yes, reading this I often think my mother must have been cloned! Extreme fussiness about food has always been a way of controlling family events. It doesn’t matter whose birthday we’re celebrating, if we’re going to a restaurant it must be one she approves of. Woe betide the poor server if the one or two things on the menu she’ll deign to eat are unavailable. Sigh.

I can’t believe the similarities here. This is exactly what my mother says. . Tries to drive a wedge between me and OH. Makes out I’m impossible and somehow unnatural. On the one occasion she came down to help me when I had my third child, she moaned about how bored she was looking after my middle child whilst I was in hospital recovering from a section. When I got out she moaned about how I should have stayed in the hospital. She bitched about me in the kitchen whilst my husband was cooking. She did nothing to help. I didn’t speak to her for months afterwards when she went home in a huff.

Oh and the food issue. She loves puddings but is indifferent to food otherwise and can’t cook. If I cooked a meal she would always complain about ‘all this food’ and then her nose up. ‘I just want a boiled egg’.

@MidnightConstellation

’she went home in a huff’ - story of my adult life.
Followed by weeks of radio silence.
Depressing.

I’m so sorry. What a appalling person she is. You’ve had a terrible, terrible time.
You are a strong woman.
You can vent here.

You have worked hard to get on with your life, you deserve to be happy. She is clearly a vile piece of work. I’m glad to have a partner & support.

shed only have my kids if someone (the neighbours) where watching-she wouldn’t babysit if nobody could see her playing the loving granny

That rings a bell too.Playing the loving granny when there was an audience. The minute the audience disappeared she would just walk out or switch off.

Im so sorry too that your mother is such an appalling person I would not be bothering with her at all if I were you.

And me. My mother isn’t a sulker but she has violent mood swings. Can’t count the times she’s stormed out of my house in a strop (door slam obvs…) because of some imagined slight. Me and OH now have a jokey phrase “poor Xx” (not using her name) when she’s kicked off, then starts playing the victim. Been NC 6 months now never felt so peaceful (though still hurt)

Sorry above post was in reply to @MidnightConstellation 🙄

@RhannionKPSS thank you
i remember her and my father having a row-a real barney-she’d started it and my father had an evil temper (he never once hit her-that was for us-with her encouragement)
somehow,in the screaming and us diving for cover,I ended up in the lounge with one angry father and my brothers with her in the kitchen
she half heartily screamed at me to come out but I was too scared and my father too angry to allow it-he wouldn’t open the door
she gave up and comforted my brothers in the kitchen
sounds silly but it hurts she didn’t fight for me-she did scream a few times ‘don’t you keep me from my children,you bastard!’
And gave up-I’m convinced she only did that for the neighbours benefit

still hurts to this day that she didn’t fight for me

This thread is really upsetting, but also enlightening. I thought I was the unfortunate one to have a 'one of a kind mother', but apparently not. It's scary to think there are so many women out there like this.

@speakout oh how do you put up with her?"

My mother says this to my OH

This is exactly what my mother has done all my married life.
Further back in the thread I wrote about how she wrote to me after I'd said I needed some nc time.
My dh had a drink problem which almost ended our marriage, (he's been sober for three years now) and we're so much happier. Anyway one of the topics covered in her letter was how I'd driven dh to drink, how I must be awful to live with, and how sorry she felt for him having to put up with me all these years.

My mother physically pushed me out of her home telling me to F off some years ago when I tried to broach the subject of my childhood. We were talking again within a few weeks. I tell her I need some space and she sends me a toxic letter disowning me. She even included pictures of me and cards I'd sent her all cut into tiny pieces... surely that's not normal?

IclimbedSnowdon I don't think it is "normal", unfortunately common.
It is sad because many of us think we are to blame, and reach adulthood with poor self esteem, co-dependancy issues, low self worth.
Well done to you and your OH for coming through difficult times.
I was married quite young to a violent man( my own self esteem was very poor- I hadn't yet started my healing journey)
He was physically violent towards me, and reaching out to my mother ( one time with a bruised face and a split lip) for help she said " You have always been a very irritating person- perhaps if you didn't annoy your OH so much this wouldn't happen".

We went through a rough patch where OH did something pretty awful. No sympathy. She didn’t even come and see me . My father told me to ‘get a good solicitor’. Other than that they didn’t want to know. The bottom line being I had brought it on myself as I am such a pain .

Until a couple of days ago I found this thread I genuinely thought my mother was unique. I am sorry and at the same time relived to see she is not. Because all this time I felt so alone. People will never grasp the extent of the damage done by someone like her.
@IclimbedSnowdon no, that's not normal at all. It's actually very disturbing.
I am shocked at blaming you for your DH issues. Can't believe your mother could blame you either in any shape of form after being abused@speakout

I was once diagnosed with cancer just after having a baby. It was my darkest time and I dreaded having my mother visiting at the time. I braced myself for her reaction on my way back from the hospital, with my DH.
She said she hoped everything would be OK as she couldn't possibly cope to mind such young children if I passed away if she was needed. Who would talk about dead with someone just diagnosed with cancer? It's always all about her, even in someone's darkest moments, she is always worse than you. This was 10 years ago and I completely recovered which I am so grateful for. She never ever once asked me during operations, treatment etc how I was.
This is very bad to say but I don't think when she is gone ill be able to find anything I miss.

Thanks for all the posts, they are so hard to read. Sending everyone love x

Oh, girlswillbegirls, that is so awful. Welcome to the club that nobody wants to be in.

Mine used to denigrate me in front of my partner (usually about my shortcomings as a domestic goddess) but recently she’s changed tack and now attacks him. If he voices any opinion that differs from hers, even on an innocuous topic, she’ll fly off the handle and tell him he knows nothing. She thinks of herself as terribly refined, but she’s become rather uncouth.

My mother - who ruined mine and my father’s life - was apparently the star turn at the Parish marriage preparation course - I knew nothing about the role she’d taken on til a neighbour told me - I was absolutely shocked and so saddened - definitely had undiagnosed and untreated MH problems and caused irreparable damage 😡🙏🏽👍🏿

That is mind-boggling! Mine is a great proponent of marriage, even though her own marriage (to an observer) was horrific, and can’t understand why her children were put off the institution and either married late or not at all.

My DM was so difficult with food. The food she ate was so limiting. Only battered fish, sausages but not bacon, beef (burnt to a crisp), chicken, very few vegetables.

So, whenever we went out to eat or even if we ate at home, it would be problematic to find something she could "cope" with. I think she used this to make others think she had a disorder and get the attention. She didn't. She too would sulk. And she ate weirdly, kind of like chomping at the front.

But for all the pandering that she expected from others, one Christmas when my ex and I were staying with her, she cooked 3 chicken dinners on Christmas Eve so I fully expected (and was sadly pleased) that she had made a meal for the 3 of us. Oh no. The meals were only for her for the three days of Christmas. She then sulked because we went out to eat.

My DMs treatment of me left gaps that abuse could creep in because no matter what happened I couldn't go to her, talk to her, get help. She just crowed about it. She could barely contain her glee when my ex left or when something bad happened to me.

I cannot understand how she could be like that to her own child. I wouldn't act like that with a stranger. But then again, these DMs of ours treat strangers much better than they do their own.

I hate her so much.

@WaggledMyAerialAndWolfedMyCustardCreams Thank you very much for welcoming to the club!
I feel your pain. Mine can denigrate me in front of anyone, and my father is an enabler. Their marriage is also shit.
I have a good relationship with DH and children and always great friends. They saved me. I don't do therapy as there is too much hurt, I am not ready to let everything out. But my relationship with others has helped me a lot.

@user1471538283 regarding food my mother only likes the food she mades. And only would eat at a restaurant if was picked by her. We had multiple family celebrations where she doesn't touch what is on her plate (homemade or at a restaurant) because it is not up to her standard. I am dreading the upcomingChristmas because that is one occasion we need to seat down for a meal. Conversation is all about her or nothing at all.

We need a support group only for the upcoming Christmas day 😂