Regale me with hilarious/ridiculous things that a narcissist or enabler has said to you....

[Herrena]

I'll go first.

My DF acts as enabler for my narcissist M, although I doubt he's fully aware of this. We were discussing her and my god-awful childhood yesterday over skype when he dropped in this little gem:

'Well, you were so quiet. You didn't really defend yourself properly.'

What the actual fuck?!

I didn't really process the remark at the time but now I'm bloody fuming.

Go on, tell me yours. Let's laugh at the bastards and then maybe I won't spend the next week dwelling on my wrath

I love the narc reception - the prize should be "for the most offended" or something. With the prize that they can't change! Fabulous!

It's my mother in my case. And two ex-friends and an ex-boyfriend. Guess it just felt familiar to be controlled and put down. This thread has been cathartic to read even though some of the stories are hideous and hurtful

My exBF was the worst of the narcs though. Would always argue the toss about anything just to prove he was right, even though he was so obviously wrong eg using the word 'scale' to talk about a growing business: he didn't know the word in that context so it was wrong of course. Googled it, I was right. He then said that everyone else was ignorant to use that word like that because in his industry it didn't mean that and it would just confuse everybody. This went on for about 10 mins, told him I was tired of this conversation and was going to bed, and he said, "You've never been very good at dealing with things". Oh do fuck off. I see you for what you are now.

I stood up to my dm once years ago and this thread reminded me. I was driving her and she was complaining at me how I never did anything right, always made wrong decisions, etc etc etc.

I suddenly burst out " I've had enough of this!" And I started listing all the main things - like getting top in maths and me rushing home to tell her and being told to shut up as she was watching the telly, telling me at 8 I was too old for a kiss goodnight ( never had any physical contact since) having to go to hospital at 18 with unexplained stomach pains, turmed out to be stress- and her being worried people would think I was having an abortion ( wtf?) not having a bf/ not keeping a bf/ not being married/ etc etc.

She started holding her hands over her ears and shouting to stop the car she didn't have to listen. I refused and carried on. She got out at the lights and walked off. I stopped the car and shouted " get back in, it's miles home" and she just stomped along the verge. So I drove off, went home, told my df where she was and went out.

If anything went wrong in my life I never told her. What's the point? It's just, in her words " attention seeking"

Nothing changed:(

Incognitoisthehardestword - My M "why should you get to go out when I can't"

SNAP! My M would look more and more sullen if I was invited out by our neighbour's kids (this was in summer holidays in another country - she didn't know anyone other than family) until I would ask what was wrong. "Well maybe I would like to go out too!"

I honestly wondered if I was meant to invite her along.... :)

This thread has had me laughing in a very nervous laughter sort of way rather than a funny-laughter. How these people can think this is acceptable/normal/appropriate is beyond me. The number of times I've been looking at the screen thinking 'But, but, really they think they can say that?!' Seriously, hats off to all of you for getting to the stage of identifying the sheer wrongness of it all.

My ex was minor league in comparison and thankfully I could escape easier as he was a boyfriend and not family, however I was with him from 15-20 so at a very impressionable time. Some stand-out moments/comments from him:

1. Have you brushed your teeth? Said in front of my whole family when we were on our way to a wedding. I was 19 and had managed to do that all by myself for about 17 years

1. If you don't stop your whining, I'll tell her you left him out as bait. Regarding me being devastated to find my sister's pet rabbit half-eaten by a fox whilst she was away.

1. Convincing me that I was out of order when I suggested we move into our house a day later than planned. The reason I wanted to wait a day? It was my grandmother's funeral that day and I thought it might be better to be near my mum. Cue him: 'But you're leaving home - you can't be controlled by your mother's feelings forever'.

1. Upon dumping me 'You've got so fat, no man will ever want to shag you'. I was a 12-14 at the time. Now I have a lovely husband who still rather enjoys shagging me at a 16-18.

1. We had a housephone at mums which recorded the last 20 missed calls. I was out (at 6th form!) and my mobile battery had died. He constantly called the house phone so that his number was all 20 missed calls so I knew how pissed off he was that he couldn't contact me.

1. I dared suggest I might go out on a Friday night with my sister and some of her friends. 'That's fine, no problem, but you'd best make sure the house is clean before I get home'. Every Friday he went and did his chosen sport's training session and got home at 10:30. Every Friday, he got home and the house was spotless. I never dared go anywhere.

1. He wasn't happy when I got my first job because I would come home talking about blokes I'd met at work. Guess what he did. He got a job there too. He dumped me about 3 months after I left the company for a much better job and it wasn't somewhere he could follow me to.

I've been reading through all this looking to see if I recognise ex's younger sister in all of this because their parents were very much like this. He was aggressive - I always suspected DV but never knew as a fact but have since had those suspicions aired by independents too - and she was very enabling. Nobody was allowed to talk to him for an hour when he got in from work. If he was on nights, nobody was allowed in the house in the day so they all went out before he got home at 9am on weekends. They invited my parents round for dinner and he was so vile to her all evening because she had got the posh dinner service out, that my parents refused to go round again ever. When ex and his siblings were 19,16 and 14, they would eat fish fingers, oven chips and sweetcorn at the breakfast bar in the kitchen for dinner and the parents would have a home-cooked from scratch fancy meal with a bottle of wine an hour later every night, and the 'children' only ate in the dining room at Christmas, Easter and birthdays even as older teenagers. Nobody - even visitors - was allowed to use the downstairs toilet as it would need cleaning. There was no lock on the bathroom door because 'it would encourage spending more time than necessary in there'. They accepted this as normal at the time. Not that I'm letting Ex off, but I suppose he didn't stand a chance of becoming a normal bloke when he had his father as a role model.

*Lavender" Snap!

I can remember driving my mother into town to go shopping for dresses at Richard Shops - Easter 92. I should have been revising for an exam on the Monday, so obviously on the Saturday morning off we went. She tried on every bloody dress they had in her size - especially the ones I had at the time. In the end, after what felt like several hours, she left without buying anything.

Anyway, I digress! On the way there, we were coming to a roundabout, and the 20 mins of the journey had been a constant diatribe of sentences beginning "Your father ......". I don't know where it came from, but I suddenly plucked up the courage to say that she seemed to forget he was my father. Without missing a beat I got the question "Well, what did he ever do for you? I paid your school fees, I bought your clothes."

For a start, he was a decent, honest and honourable man - so he passed those things on to me, and without which we would have never sold our home to go and live with the bitch.

Sadly, I didn't have the nerve to say that bit.

I've since found out that when they got engaged, there was some talk of a shot-gun wedding. My cousin - 10 years older than me was only about 8 at the time and he can remember some hushed wispers. The ring was duly bought - df had a budget of £100 - the only one she liked cost £110 - bearing in mind this was 1954 it was a hell of a lot of money. Once the ring was on her finger, I bet she told him it was a false alarm - and she'd have sued him for breach of promise if he'd broken it off. Poor bugger.

When I told mother about the family GP abusing me as a child:

"Such a shame you let these little things from the past worry you"

toomany

Not quite in the same league as some of the others but still left me speechless ..... phoned DM after my first scan for DS2 to say all was ok and he was due the end of November. Her first words in response... "oh, you won't want me for Christmas dinner then?"

Don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but sometimes I get a glimpse of the person I could have been, if I hadn't had my 'd'm as a mother. The person I will never be, who could have achieved something.

It almost seems a bit like a head injury causing brain damage - I'm not meaning to cause offence if anyone has someone close who's suffered something like that. It's almost as if, just occasionally, and only very briefly, the fog clears and I get an infinitely small glimpse of what I could have done.

My 'd'm's sole comment on my 14 years at school came when I was 15 or 16. We were having lunch, and it was the last day of term, so I'd come home with my school report. My df asked my 'd'm if there was anything interesting in it and she told him my maths had gone down by 5%. I'm not boasting, but I'd got 88%. Oh well, stopped me getting ideas above my station, didn't it.

I'm paraphrasing to get the info across, but:

My mum: "Don't prosecute my brother for having sexually abused you, he'll never cope in prison"

fuzzpig why not report the bastard now, if he's still alive?

Blimey, fuzzpig You could press charges now.

I can't see your username as on tablet, but I also had a similar reaction to getting a B once in maths, instead of the usual As. My mum then reminded my dad that I had been put a year ahead for maths.

She did, however, make me apologise to him for making him so angry he attacked me and I ran away barefoot through the village. My crime? Using the word 'bollocks' at the dinner table.

Don't know if anyone remember the peanuts cartoon where he had a chainsaw and was attacking a computer screen with the words "compute that!". While we were living with 'd'm, I failed some important work exams.

I'd gone out at 6am to try and find a copy of the paper with the results in, and due to a tapas evening that had begun with about 1/4 pt of sherry and continued with rioja, wasn't feeling too well. Trying to read the very small print, looking for my name with a crushing headache wasn't too good. When I realised I'd failed, I had this sudden vision of going into her bedroom and cleaving her skull neatly - mustn't be untidy - between the ears with a good sharp axe. Would have been very satisfying Didn't do it, though.

While we were there, she left a copy of Woman+Home out open at a competition to win a conservatory. It was one of those where you have to put things in order and then say in 10 words why you want a conservatory. She'd drafted several 10 word slogans, and although it's a very slight exaggeration, her tie-breaking phrase was along the lines of "I'd sit in my conservatory attached to my house and look at my garden".

Far too many

When I left home, the cat became the scapegoat. She would scream and shout at him all day long for existing. Eventually all his hair fell out and he died of a nervous breakdown, poor thing.

She then cried for month about how devastated she was. She even bought a statue of him to put in the garden.

Yes, tb I expect that would have been a jolly satisfying revenge fantasy.

Starting a separate revenge fantasy thread might end up a little disturbing...?

... but I used to have vivid dreams about strangling my father when he'd come home with a new computer and we "couldn't afford" various other things. His gadgets obviously came out of a separate pot of magical money. If anyone ever called him on it you could see the confusion and bewilderment in his eyes..it simply did not register as a real, valid point. I sometimes pity him.

Completely at random when my son was about 4 weeks old:
"Never peel an orange near his eyes."

I wasn't eating an Orange at the time. That was the only Parenting advice i ever got.

"Oh. I knew it would happen sooner or later and he'd get fed up." after my bf dumped me and i travelled over 200 miles back with one suitcase and had to sit in the back garden and wait for her to return, heartbroken.

"The only way you'll ever get a man is if you take your knickers off" when i was 14 and she'd read my Diary. Never forgotten that cracker!

"You should have married someone with a better job then you wouldn't have to go back to work." to me on my first day leaving my DS with her. I work jobshare.

"Where are all your friends? You're not very popular are you? Not that i'm surprised." on the day of my Graduation when i specifically booked a meal for her and didn't go to the pub and have fun with my friends like i should have.

What kind of childhoods did they all have? What makes them this way do you think? Are they just born like that

I don't think my mother is a narcissist but she does lack empathy and doesn't always appreciate the impact her words or actions might have on others. I think she 'projects' a lot of her own experiences on to a situation.

So, for example, I was sexually assaulted by a stranger who attacked me without warning in the street when I was 11. She reassured me by telling me that something similar had nearly happened to her and her twin sister when they were 13, but they had 'spoken to him' and shamed him into leaving them alone. Leaving me feeling like I should have been able to stop him...

She assured me recently that she doesn't need to have a close relationship with me (her only daughter) because she comes from a large family - this is when I was upset at being left out of a meal which involved the wider family. It doesn't seem to occur to her that they are also my family, so I don't really know them very well.

When I split from my ex- she said, "Well, I always got on very well with him". Thoughtless! He charmed her (as he did me) but turned out to be a rat. However, she liked being charmed. He was very selfish and after many, many disappointments I once said to her that I just wanted to be put first occasionally, like when I was ill, or on my birthday, and she responded, "well, you can't ALWAYS be first!" and went on and on about it as if I was the most selfish person in the world. I think she was one of those old school women who thought their job was to please their men. She is exactly the same with my SiL who she expects to support my brother unconditionally - any hint of my SiL wanting things to be different or even spending time with her own family is 'being demanding'.

I did one of those involuntary shocked laughs at the statue of the cat .

Seriously I can't believe a cat died of a nervous breakdown because of your mum!

I mean, I can. But WTF?

I find that (and the fact that all its hair fell out) so so shocking. Almost like it is physical proof that these people are that bad, if that makes sense? I mean, I know they are bad. I know the psychological problems they create ruin lives or at least take enormous effort to mitigate.

But she killed a cat by shouting at it. No wonder some of us are so fucked up (or whatever you want to call it) - we've had to adopt such extreme tactics just to survive. I think I'm having a bad day today as this has suddenly all got to me.

Okay, sorry, back to the funnies please. Bring it on. I can take it. Fuckers.

"Don't prosecute my brother for having sexually abused you, he'll never cope in prison"
Well, result! (?)

As someone else asked, could you still report?
Or have you?

Seriously the year after we'd spent 6 months living with my 'd'm our cat was diagnosed with the equivalent of AIDS. The vet said that they'd never seen a cat develop it at the age of 7. Coco scratched up little bits of fluff from the edge of a carpet and dm collected them and left them on the sideboard for weeks....

....along with 3 oranges we'd bought and that had started to go mouldy. When that happened she carefully put cling-film between 'our' oranges and her fruit so that it didn't get contaminated. The weekend before we moved out, when she came back from 8am Communion, we kept hearing a pitter patter. Eventually we got up, and (we were confined to the servants' quarters on the second floor) and found our things on each of the treads - including the mouldy oranges, my guide handbook, my bush-hat from guide camp (some 20 years before) etc etc. Can't remember if she remembered the little pile of carpet fluff.

The weekend we moved, we went back after work to collect the cat, and when she got to the new house, she was so relaxed she stretched out on the carpet with her paws crossed in front of her - just like a Maine Coon. When she died about 2 years later, we got a Maine Coon who looked just like her.

I've never forgiven her for killing the cat

The same year she told my my aunt thought I was despicable and never wanted to talk to me again as long as she lived. She told my aunt the same thing. In 2006 I made contact with my aunt and to punish her for talking to me, my dm made a will, left where it could be found, and it caused my aunt to have the final stroke that killed her. All because she dared to disobey my dm and speak to me. We all (me, dh, dd and my uncle) think my mother killed her sister. Don't know if 'dm' will need heating where she is now - not judging - but I would imagine it's rather warm

Either that, or sitting on a soggy cloud for the last year or so has given her horrendous piles (fingers crossed)

No lueji - I was 13 when she said it, I had recently revealed the abuse that had happened throughout early childhood. Far too late now. He was arrested and questioned as my teacher had called the police/SS but I had no support to take it further. He'd denied it obviously although later admitted it to their mum (my grandma). My mum still sees him sometimes, she doesn't know I know

My narc Farther likes to centre everything around his eventual death, he has told his wife that no one is to know when he finally pops his clogs and to just bury him, fine by mine, I won't have the hassle of dealing with his funeral.

All contact with him always involves 'i'll be dead soon', he's 63 years old, had a major stroke that has failed to finish him off, and have lost any hope in that he will leave this mortal coil any time soon.

After many years I have learnt not to engage with him when he starts, sometimes choosing to ignore his comments, other times telling what he does not want to hear.

One christmas day, when the kids were enjoying themselves playing with their new toys and i was enjoying watching them, he phoned, not to wish us a merry xmas or to talk to his GC, but to point out that i was a bad DD, the usual 'I'll be dead soon' was uttered, this time instead of making him the centre of my world as he wanted, I replied 'Thats okay, if you do, I'll prop you up in a corner and carry on with what I'm doing'.

Knowing that my reactions are not what he wants to hear he tries it with my daughter, but she has been well trained by me and is pretty good at coming out with the (what he calls) the smart arse comments.

When he had his stroke, i spent a lot of time crying, for what I couldn't work out, I felt guilty but i understood it wasn't because i wanted to see him and make amends, i finally realised my guilt was because I didn't care, he meant nothing, I believed that because i was his daughter that i should have felt something, but i didn't. Once i had worked out that the guilt was unneccesary, i quite happily moved on.

Binky hopefully your father has written his own eulogy, as mine has.

Oh no, wait, your father doesn't want a funeral

He might not want a funeral but I'm sure his ego wouldn't allow him to die without an eulogy, but if he wants one he can write it his bloody self!

Is it wrong of me to think that instead of keep talking about it he should just get on and do it?

(this is proving to be quite theraputic, DH left last night so I'm not having a good day but writing the last post has put me in a slightly better mood)