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 just wonder why they do it. I don’t understand. The sulking, the passive aggressiveness, the silent lack of participation. The manipulation, the bigging themselves up. The golden child and the scapegoat. The criticism. What motivates it all?

my mother ranted at me for not showing sufficient interest in the wedding album of a distant relative who I have met twice in my life. I sat and looked through it all, expressed interest even though I knew no one in the album. My mother claimed to have told the person ‘ my daughter just isn’t interested’.

I really struggle to understand it.

@Walnutwhipsarenothesame for what I read, it seems that the cause of this behaviour is having huge insecurites. They convince themselves of being great by bringing others down.
What I personally struggle to understand is how they can do this to their own children. Having my own kids I can say I wouldn't be able to make them feel bad about themselves. It's so counterintuitive, if that's the right word.

While I was with her today listening to all the put downs and crazy talk I thought about this group, and felt calm and collected. This is the first time I can cope with it so huge thanks to this group. x

Yes I agree. How could you do that to your own children? I think a lot of it is jealousy.

Yes, I think there’s a huge amount of jealousy in the mix. Mine dislikes all other women (apart from her mother) and sees them as inferior.

Solidarity, sisters.

What a miserable old bat. She can’t see how lucky she is to have family. Bless you. I hope you have love and light in your life this coming year xx

I think so too.
My mother is a handmaiden of the patricrchy.
She berates women, especially if they are "stuck up", "proud" or take time to dress in pretty or colourful outfits "who does she think she is".
She doesn't think women should be paid the same for doing the same job as they will never "work as hard as men".
She won't see a female doctor "not clever enough" or even use a female hairdresser " they want to make you look bad because they are jealous".
She is a prime example of the motherwound, generational trauma.
Patriarchty needs women like this- their thinking keeps down other women.
If there is no sisterhood women are easier to control.

Ha! That’s intriguing. Mine berates other women for not making enough effort with their appearance, “why doesn’t she do something with her hair?” and so on. It’s hard to know where this comes from, as she adored her mother and often tells me what a wonderful mother she was. She’s also unwilling to question or challenge the patriarchy. Thinks the MeToo movement is a waste of time because men are just like that and, years ago, young women would have thought something was wrong with them if they didn’t get whistled at in the street.

I think these attitudes come from a time when women were judged solely on their appearance and nothing else. Being able to catch a man was the main game. To do that, being as thin as possible and as quiescent as possible was vital. Looking ‘pretty’ and well groomed, not having opinions, laughing at male jokes and flattering them was thought very desirable.
This was certainly the world in which my mother was brought up. Women became nurses or secretaries until they got married. The ideal outcome was to marry the boss or a doctor.

My mother is not from the UK . She wrote to her mother most of her adult life and I recently saw their correspondence. Most of the comments were about other women and how thin they are, what my mother was wearing, critical comments about other womens behaviour. There was no real in depth discussion about anything. My grandmother married late, so was considered ‘on the shelf’ , whilst her sister married a wealthy man. My grandmother wanted to see her daughter marry well and have the chances she didn’t feel she had.
In a world where women were pitted against each other to catch a prize, they very often saw each other as rivals and not as friends. It’s very sad. Along with that comes the ‘she dresses like a whore/ ‘ why doesn’t she make the most of herself’. At the same time men were seen as frightening, with their sexual urges that couldn’t be controlled , and their propensity to have sex with other women who weren’t chaste like themselves. My mother was terrified of me ‘being compromised’ . The fear of getting pregnant ruled everything. One of my mothers cousins got pregnant and had the baby adopted. This came out only after she had died. This was the ultimate shame and would ruin a woman’s chances of marriage .

My other grandmother came from a very poor background. I found out her mother had been pregnant with her when she married her father.
This grandmother was also obsessed with the fear of pregnancy and a fear of men in general. She was a servant for a while in a grand house and the son tried it on with her. She married a man she didn’t love to get away from that situation.

This historical context shaped their attitudes and their treatment of their daughters. It also warped them . All that keeping quiet and being compliant is damaging.

My mother's misogyny is breathtaking. I, of course, was brought up to view other women as nothing but competition and it has been very damaging to me.

@Walnutwhipsarenothesame makes very valid points. I think the problems are exacerbated hugely when women who have a disorder that makes them internally very insecure and inferior have been exposed to such attitudes. Rather than challenge them they go along with them because they don't have the inner strength to stand up for themselves in any way.

My mother was absolutely not chaste, though. She considered herself sexually attractive and made it her life's work to tell her daughters how to catch a man - which basically was that you had to make yourself alluring and leap into bed with him, be enthusiastic about sex and get married young enough that he doesn't think you're doing it only because your biological clock is ticking and you are trying to trap him into fatherhood. Once you have trapped the ideal man in marriage ("ideal" being the same as "wealthy") you then have as many affairs as you like, preferably with wealthy old men who will leave you all their money so you can finally become financially independent.

I used to believe her advertising puff but I now realise it was all born of deep insecurities and very low self-esteem. If she could nab a superior man she could ride on the coat tails of that superiority. Everyone (even she) would believe she was something special if she could get a man like that.

I very much agree, WalnutWhips and Cranarc, although my mother’s disapproval of other women generally takes another form. She looks down on any woman who doesn’t match up to (as she sees them) her very strict moral standards. Another way in which she lets men off the hook is by finding a woman to blame for their misdeeds, a Mata Hari who has led them astray with her moral laxity.

@WaggledMyAerialAndWolfedMyCustardCreams yes I also believe there's a generous helping of jealousy involved for me.

I realise now my mother was jealous of the relationship I share with my adult daughter. We do so much together, and she was always disapproving of the things we did. She once told me she couldn't understand why I'd want to holiday/go out with my daughter, and that I needed to start doing these things with women my own age.

Mine is not dissimilar, but tends to turn it round by wondering why I don’t want to do these same things with her.

How does yours relate to grandchildren or other young children? Mine professes to be a doting granny, but at family events when the grandchildren were younger, if she felt the children were getting too much attention there would be an incident or commotion of some sort (knocked over drink, dish being sent back to restaurant kitchen etc) that meant the attention moved back to her.

My mother is the same.
I have a great relationship with my own daughter ( 22 years old).
We chat a lot, go for lunch a lot, go beach holidays- just the two of us. We love similar things and laugh until our cheeks hurt.

My mother would love to tag along, but it's up to her to make her own arrangements with her grandaughter.
Recently my mother said to me " I hope you know how lucky you are to have a decent daughter. I wasn't so lucky"
So many implications about that comment.

Yes, yes, yes! You are all so right.

I think the narcissism does come from insecurity and viewing other women as rivals - clearly quite often, their own daughters. My mother was all about ‘shame’, what others would think etc yet she was probably the most unfairly judgemental of all.

When I became pregnant before I was married - I was 27 and in a secure long term relationship! - I got the full cat’s arse puckered lips. My now DH announced it and she actually asked him (hopefully) if we might be mistaken! She kept the whole thing very quiet and wouldn’t even tell her best friend that she was always competing with.

Because our second child was born ‘in wedlock’ she was straight down to tell this friend. I actually asked her why the contrast and why she was so low key with my first pregnancy? She reply was her friends daughter had also announced a pregnancy at the same time, “And I didn’t want to steal her thunder”

It gives me some strange comfort to know that however much they try to hurt us they are deeply unhappy individuals themselves however they try to dress it up.They have no peace of mind ,very little dignity and it must be such a soulless existance to know the only way you can survive life is by being truly hateful..I hope these awful humans we are stuck with find peace one day...

I haven't seen my narc mother for 4 years and will not be going back there ever. She's been running rings round the entire family with her supposed "mental breakdowns" for all my life. Basically one whiff of responsibility and she just goes into a victorian faint and everyone rushes about her prone form twittering in a panic.
There is nothing wrong with the woman apart from an amazing ability to manipulate everyone.

My mother was the same.
My DCs were pretty good in public and particularly restaurants when they were little, but she used to love to tease them and wind them up until they eventually reacted. She was very subtle and could be very cruel. She would tell them that I was going to put a favourite toy of theirs in the bin, that we were going somewhere afterwards she knew they didn’t like or even worse, that we were thinking of getting rid of them! She wasn’t above a sly pinch either and then looking outraged and shocked when a tearful DC complained that she’d done it. As she had similar form when I was a child, I was more inclined to believe them!

Then she would make a big drama or show about either ‘dealing’ with the aftermath or tutting about how a good smack would soon sort things out.

My mother highly rates women for their beauty and grooming, in fact that's the only thing for her. I think this is linked to how well they can marry as someone's mentioned here.
I do wear little make up, enjoying being outdoors and I'm a sporty type. I do not spend a lot of time grooming and she feels really dissappointed by that. She comments on my appearance all the time, including when I was pregnant, that apparently I wasn't thin enough.
I enjoy life, my kids, my husband and friends. I enjoy my job, and being outdoors, nature, and travelling. Love reading too.
So much more to life than being in the shops looking for a new outfit and doing your make up to perfection. Or maybe I feel this way as a reaction to my mother's obsession for appearance, I don't know.

@WaggledMyAerialAndWolfedMyCustardCreams and @JohnPrescottsPyjamas I can relate to this too!

Oh yes! This too, with bells on.

Exactly the same with the pregnancy. I was pregnant at 27 too, also in a long term relationship. I was getting married anyway. My mother was most concerned I should tell everyone the baby was premature. She didn't delight in the pregnancy, she was ashamed of me.

I still don’t know whether it is was deliberate or from some misplaced intention, but when my DD was going through the very self conscious teenage years, my mother said to her, “How about I take you to a hairdresser, spa and a personal stylist to get your hair done properly, your skin sorted out and lessons on dressing appropriately for your shape?” She used to comment endlessly on DDs teenage spots saying, “I don’t know why she has such bad skin. Does she eat properly?” “I never had spots and neither did your mother.” (I most definitely did!)

It was almost like she wanted to groom my DD into a perceived physical image rather than letting her experiment and find her own style. And yes, she always had aspirations for me to marry a doctor and when I failed in that department, she transferred her ambition to DD - who didn’t either! 😂

Argh. We’ve had a lot of this over the holidays - endless critiques of the granddaughters’ outfits and personal presentation.

I can relate- on hot days when my DD was wearing shorts or a bikini to sit in the garden my mother would wolf whistle at her.
It was beyond creepy.

Horrible! makes me shudder thinking about it.
My mother used to tell my DD she was getting very “busty” and regularly ask me whether she had started her periods yet despite DD being within earshot. I now wish I’d pointedly and repeatedly asked my DF, ignoring her presence, whether she had finished her menopause yet?

She died in 2020 but every Christmas I think about how stressful the holiday period used to be with her. She always gave me a £20 cheque, “So you can buy what you like” but always expected a very big gesture in return. Unfortunately, her birthday was January 1st too so it was always a double whammy. Whatever I got was treated with either disdain, “You KNOW I don’t like xyz” or not even commented on, and the silence when she received her gift was almost worse as she just opened it ,put it to one side and didn’t even look at it. I used to tie myself up in knots trying to get something she might genuinely appreciate. Looking back, I don’t know why I just didn’t say, “Look mum, neither of us need anything so let’s just call it quits“

Christmas also wasn’t Christmas without her causing a row and her ending up in tears being a ‘victim’ too. She would deliberately say something she knew was contentious and keep pushing until she got a reaction. Quite often it would be something political and as much as we’d try and ignore her, her would keep on and on to keep herself as the centre of attention. She would then start sobbing and saying she had been made feel unwelcome and wanted to go home - usually late at night - and as she didn’t drive, knowing one of us would be expected to take her. We’d then get the, “I’m sorry I’m such a burden to you. When I’m dead you’ll regret treating me this way.”
All the rest of us wanted was a happy, relaxed family get together with everyone content to chill anyway they wanted to.