Tell me your narc dm's most outrageous stunts.

[oooz]

I'm in therapy decades after an abusive upbringing and the penny's only just dropped that my dm was a narc! Watching videos on narcissism I'm going 'Yes, yes, yes!' - it's all my experience. Playing the guilt card. Taking your successes for their own. Gaslighting. The control. It's SO refreshing finally learning my own truth. Now I've found this I want to learn as much as possible. Please share your experiences.

He wants to fix things, desperate for her to prove she gives a shit.

I won’t leave the baby here if I go, that’s the problem. It’s not an environment I want baby in without me- last time she was drunk and wailing and dp had to ask her to leave.

He won’t cancel.

She text me last night saying ‘can’t wait to see you all xxxx’ now I’ll be the hitch for not replying

Bitch not hitch

@TrippingTheVe
Vet, Jesus h Christ how bloody awful.

In fact, shock horror all round to those of you whose mother's are so blatant.

My mother always did things one to one, so there was no proof other than me saying it happened, and I could be easily dismissed of course.

We are nc now, and my lovely dc are well away from her toxic influence, but I boil with rage for them sometimes. She is in a long term ignoring huff with me (which she thinks is a punishment, naturally), but as innocent bystanders they have been cut off too. She sends them a thousand pounds each May for their savings (it's for her own tax reasons), and since the nc she hasn't sent it to them. They are totally unaware of course, but who does that? Who falls out with their daughter and punishes the grandchildren?

Oh yes, the narc mother, that's who 🙄

• I know that's ultimately the money is irrelevant, but it still leaves me gob smacked sometimes when I ponder it.

Oops, fail, @TrippingTheVelvet

The thread's been revelatory for me too. It is really clarifying so many things that puzzled me during my narc mother's life.

YY to the competitiveness!

Competitiveness around men - and your NM seeing herself as a better partner for your husband than you. When my mum visited us she always made a huge deal of ironing my exh's shirts, praising the quality, his taste etc and getting in digs about me not doing it. And how extraordinary to see in your post gravy mentioned MistressDeeCee. My mother used to collude with this horrible ex narc h by at the last minute adding packet gravy to special meals I'd cooked. It sounds like nothing, I know but it ensured they both got one over on me and I got no credit for the meal as then the packet gravy had to be complimented and mentioned 50 times...'Just teasing' !!

Competitiveness re appearance -- I see now that's why she so grimly and inappropriately held back on complimenting others.

Being out with her was awful - she used to nudge me viciously as she commented on every passing woman's body 'See those thighs?' 'Surprised that one can walk on those short legs'

Competitiveness re weight: My sister was on a diet as the same time as my mother was losing weight with her terminal cancer. My mother would ask her what weight she was and then gloat that she herself weighed less.

Competitiveness round other grandparents : to other mild mannered elderly family members at family gatherings she was unbelievably rude: in the name of vivacious lively conversation she was so combative, dismissed and contradicted flatly other people's views, then openly preened if she felt she gained any minor victory or advantage. It was mortifying!

YY to preferring some grandchildren to others. As I said in an earlier post, my daughter made perfect narcissistic fodder so was golden. Another lucky grand daughter was perceived to be the very reincarnation of the matriarch herself so she was golden too. Then there were a few pitiable plump ones that didn't get A stars in everything, let's not mention them ..

YY to the narc will and entitlement to choose the names for other women's children!

My mother insisted on calling my daughter by her middle name for the first YEAR because she didn't like the first name we had given her.

Funnily enough my narc ex h had a child by a previous relationship and told me her name was X. Gradually I found out that he was the only person who called her X. It was the name HE had wanted her to have , not the name she was given.

So many of you have been able to give your own kids a different experience.

I was still completely empty and cut off from my emotions when I had my first child. I loved him and did my best but I was soon on my own with him with no support. It is clear he has not got the confidence and emotional resilience of my daughter who came along years later after I'd been away from home for 15 years.

As many of you are saying - you just don't know what this is when this is your life. It's only with distance that you can see it for what it is.

Thank you for the thread OP and to all of you

My mother is not as bad as some on here but she is definitely a narc.

• made it clear her love is conditional on me being obedient
• enjoys shutting me out of her culture and when we visit family in the country where she's from, she laughs at me for being an outsider/foreigner and 'introduces' me to my own family as if I don't know who they are. She also always expresses surprise when she tells me her side of the family ask after me, as if they couldn't possibly know who I am or like me.
• has told me she doesn't understand why people like me and it's because I pretend to be nice and I'm my true, awful self to her.
• ruined my chance at an Oxbridge interview when I was 17. I was recently bereaved (my beloved DGM, her MIL, they had a strained relationship). I said I wanted to go to the interview alone. She insisted this was 'her thing too' and followed me on the train and all the way to the college and didn't leave me alone until she'd made me so upset I was crying hysterically on a bench. Then she left. I did not get in.
• my parents didn't believe depression was an illness and my mother stopped contact when I didn't reply to a couple of texts because I was rude and ungrateful. I had to deal with severe depression alone.
• generally screams and shouts whenever I do any minor thing she dislikes ie wearing the wrong shoe. I brought it up with my dad once and he said he hadn't heard anything. He is useless.
• brother is the golden child who can do literally no wrong
• any time I try to stand up for myself I'm laughed off as ridiculously over sensitive. I apparently never have a legitimate point
• no boundaries. Opened my post, especially anything from the NHS because she 'had a right to know' but also pretended it was by accident. She's not very bright. Would go into my room when I lived at home and move things around knowing that it would upset me. And when I got upset, she would be more upset and my dad and brother would yell at me for being difficult and upsetting her.

I went NC for a while and while that blew up in my face quite horribly, these days she's better behaved. Getting married and having my own family has helped. Plus I think she knows if she pushes it, I'll cut contact with DC and she is a decent GM. For now.

There is so many things she did its hard to list them all but despite being diagnosed with bipolar she refuses to accept it and won't take medication
She tells people she only had kids so we could look after her
telling everyone anything I wanted kept private and then wondering why I don't tell her anything
destroying anything I owned that I really liked 'accidently'
breaking into the bathroom anytime I was having a bath/ shower to use the toilet, usually without any clothes on, despite us having two bathrooms.
All my achievements and my sisters achievements were down to her
Ignoring my chronic pain as a teenager because it made her look bad. Turns out I had arthritis from the age of 13 but she still insists I am making it up.
Breaking into the bathroom to gleefully tell me my beloved grandad had cancer and then wondering why I was upset. Then saying I had no right to be upset cause she knew him better, this was my fathers father.
Going round his funeral telling everyone who would listen that he loved her the best, despite having been divorced from my father for years and hardly seeing him in that time.
Chucking my twin sister out of the house because she didn't believe she was ill - after she had spent the night at A&E with her. Mum then expected me to side with her and when I stood up for my sister she chucked me out too.
She tells people that we left voluntarily and she has no idea why.
Attacking me when I came back to get my belongings and then calling the police on my dad who was stood outside waiting for us.
Spoiling every occasion that was not about her with some drama
Finally telling me that everything wrong in her life was my fault and I was jealous of her happiness. I was supposed to submit and be her slave as penance .

Me again. Literally having revelation after revelation. Ds has been in hospital, mother always loved people being in hospital because she could say “they all mistook me for a consultant you know”. Maybe because she would dress in a suit and sweep through the doors not at visiting time and stand in front of the nurse and ask for an update on patient x. You get a long way with brass neck and attitude. When challenged she would say she was sooo worried and sooo busy and sooo important and soooo many people were relying on her she couldn’t possible wait till visiting time. Which if you’re not used to dealing with a narc seems reasonable.
Anyway they were having none of that on ds’s ward. Hoorah for electronic locks on doors, no sweeping. Then when I said I couldn’t leave because ds was frightened and he was my priority she gave me the speech on how children manipulate adults by being scared etc. Only now I realise what she was saying. She felt mothering me was manipulative, she had to change what she wanted to do to meet my needs. Honestly it had never occurred to me that being alert for children manipulating you meant ignoring a sad and scared child cause it didn’t suit you.
Posters on my thread, I am sure you are reading this, thank you for pointing out the bloody obvious.

Mine has a thing about massively ramping up her own maladies and ignoring everyone else’s. Her attitude to medicine is that it’s for emergencies, so would only take us to the doc if we were actively vomiting etc. Anything else was minimised. It had a profound effect on the health of one of my sisters who still suffers for the things which were dismissed as a child. My nephew has a thing going on with the joints in his ankles and wears special boots but my mother hates them, and makes him take them off if she can, she would rather not look at them and thinks if only he did more exercise he wouldn’t need them.

Re; diagnosis. Several psychologists / therapists / counselors have done this through discussing incidents like these. This happened following the birth of DC when I realised that I loved them and how could my mother treat me so unkindly. I was diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety and PND. I think diagnosis just helps with research and healing for the victim rather than the narcissist.

My thoughts are with all of you lovely people who have gone through or are going through awful things at the hands of mothers/fathers who were supposed to love and cherish their children. My mother, certainly not a "DM" was a terrible "narc". I cant post on here as it will be very outing. Her final shot at me would rock DD's to the core if they knew. It was the last straw for me and I have been NC for 13 years.

@SnowyAlps

I wonder if your mother really burnt the money or whether she burnt e.g. newspaper and kept your money for herself?

After my FIL didn't reply to texts or calls for a day, we were worried and went round to his flat, where we found he had unexpectedly died. Obviously it was very traumatising etc - he was only early 50s.

Since then, when my mum wanted to "punish" me or when she wanted attention, she refused to answer her phone, or her door. The first time was within weeks of his death. I panicked and thought she'd died too, but nope. The second time, I panicked again, but she was fine of course. The third time, it went on for days. I was beside myself, we had to get the police to break into her house. She was fine. She knew what she was doing, making me relive finding FIL.

She never did this before, until FIL died. In the end, she did it again and I went NC for a year as I couldn't cope.

There's way more, but that's one of the cruelest things she's done for attention/to punish me.

Just remembered another one.

After ExH walked out on me and DC, she cried like a baby. For weeks. She said she was "grieving" for him and "can't believe I'll never see him again". No concern for me and DC whatsoever.

Happened just yesterday but she was supported by my "D"F.

My sister recently stopped talking to me and my husband, didn't call for my child's first birthday, refused to come and visit when we told we would pay her plane ticket. Seems like I'm a horrible person right?

Except that a couple of times I spend money on her plane tickets, presents, and she came here to complain about my house ("It's a dumpyard, eww!"), my in-laws, my clothes and lifestyle. And never left her room. I drove her shopping and she complained she wanted to go somewhere fancier.

Anyway, she told my mom and dad that DH and I had behaved really badly, and that she wasn't keep into enough consideration.

My mom and dad didn't say anything until I asked why she wasn't picking up our calls, and then lashed out on me saying it's my fault as usual, that I'm horrible, stubborn, and I have hurt her feelings and should apologise.

She asked to see the airline tickets as she said we had made everything up and the phone conversations. After that, she said everything that happened it's my fault, as I'm ungrateful, unpolite, spoilt etc...

Let's just say the worste thing I knew what her reaction would be as she's been doing it for a lifetime. I'm starting therapy in 3 weeks.

I will also add, they are perfectly fine to other people, and don't miss a chance to let everyone know that my DSis has a brilliant job and lovely hobbies, whilst I'm just a mom.

My husband was really shocked to see their behaviour yesterday and all the insults they told me. MIL and FIL are the polar opposite, they are lovely and kind, and above all else treat me like a daughter.

Controlling my food, haircut, clothes and other things; blaming me for my sister being overweight (apparently I was disgustingly thin), blaming me for her tantrums.

I coould write a book with it OP.

Imissgin

re your comments in quote marks that I have separated out:-

"He wants to fix things, desperate for her to prove she gives a shit"

You know as well as I do this is not going to happen and I would remind him that the definition of insanity is repeating the same old over and over and expecting different result. He is still very much in his own fear, obligation and guilt state re his mother and he is very afraid of her. Her love for him is absolutely conditional; infact such people hate themselves so have no idea at all of what love is. He has and continues to be trained by her to serve her at his expense. Cancelling her visit is indeed the best option here.

"I won’t leave the baby here if I go, that’s the problem. It’s not an environment I want baby in without me- last time she was drunk and wailing and dp had to ask her to leave".

Can baby travel and or otherwise leave with you?. The same scenario will likely play out again when she does visit. She was not a good parent to your man when he was growing up and narcissists in particular make for being deplorably bad as grandparent figures as well. Ultimately he may decide that he wants to continue seeing his mother but that does not mean that you or your child have to do so.

He won’t cancel.

I would challenge this position of his because he needs to realise that his own inertia here when it come to his mother hurts him as well as you. He absolutely needs to address his FOG here, its already blighted his whole life and relationships for too long.

She text me last night saying ‘can’t wait to see you all xxxx’ now I’ll be the hitch for not replying"

You still do not have to reply and when she does arrive you need to be out as much as possible.

Another thing that always fascinates me in a morbid sense is wondering where the narc comes from - were their own mothers/fathers narcs too?

I know some of you have mentioned narc sisters and even children, so I know it's not a given - but sometimes I do wonder if it's learnt behaviour that they haven't had the strength of character to move away from.

My mum's mum was a lovely grandmother, she really was. But I'm not sure she was so lovely to my mum. Mum was a proper "daddy's girl" - but mum was also the reason my nanna had to marry my grandad, and I have reason to believe that he wasn't Nanna's first choice. Plus she had to move into Grandad's family home with his bitch of a mother and double bitch of a sister, so that must have been fucking hard.

So maybe my mum was "created" by her upbringing, rather than being a born narc, I don't know.

He says he’ll leave me if I take the baby and if I don’t give it a shot it’ll be all my fault

@dragongirlx that sounds so similar to my narc mum, right down to the bipolar diagnosis.

Breaking things "accidentally" or throwing things away - she once threw away my retainer after I'd just had my train tracks removed (after two years of braces when I was 16) because she "didn't believe" in retainers. My teeth have never been straight since :(

When I started to go out, she'd force herself on me and come out with me and my friends, lording it over me and saying things like, "Yes I'm Tinkerbell's mum, but I'm more like an older sister", and get cringingly drunk which was incredibly embarrassing for 18 year old me. Luckily my friends were pretty understanding, and they just thought it was funny.

She always had to be the centre of attention, regardless of whose day it was - birthday, funeral, weddings etc.

If I go more than 24 hours without contacting her, I get a flurry of phone calls saying how lonely she's been.

Too much parental idealization may lead to an unbalanced view of the self. When this happens, the child then perceives any flaws as unacceptable and strives to be seen as perfect. It is a short hop, skip, and a jump from this to full blown Narcissism.

I think my MIL was put on a pedestool by both parents and hero worshipped accordingly. She was born long after her other sibling and was probably an unexpected happy arrival to her parents particularly her dad. Her sibling remembers she often saying to her dad, "I'm a good girl aren't I daddy?". They between them created this narcissist in my midst. She hates women too, all of them and I am certainly not at all valued by her, am just a mum in her eyes whilst DH works so hard at "brain work".

I did nod in acknowledgement when other respondents have written about the person overstating their own health conditions whilst ignoring or minimising others and making it all about them.

My late FIL's upbringing was also very dysfunctional so he being a narcissist was no surprise at all to me. I note that such disordered people really do have no friends and simply use people for their own ends.

IMissGin

He is no man at all noir partner to you really because he cannot and will not stand up for his own self here when it comes to his mother. This stance of his will further kill your relationship if it has not already done so.

He is being grossly unfair here and you are not responsible for the actions of another person. He is using you to blame because he cannot and will not accept that his mother is the root cause of all his issues. I would walk away from him because he is not likely to change

Your relationship with your man going forward is full of problems anyway mainly because of his codependent and otherwise emotionally unhealthy relationship with his mother.

My mother struggles to see where she ends and I begin. It’s hard to explain. She assumes I will like what she likes and then is astonished that I don’t. She’s taken over all sorts of aspects of my life which are absolutely none of her business and i think genuinely can’t see that she doesn’t have a right to be involved.

I know Attila but sadly the thought of her having unsupervised access to my ds if we were to split is enough to keep me here