Narcissists Say the Darndest Things: Great Quotes by Narcissists
Posted in writing on November 25th, 2009 by Merrill MarkoeTags: assholes, egomania, narcissism, Narcissists, quotes
This is a page on which I hope you, the person who knows an annoying narcissist, will contribute a little something. I am seeking a collection of great memorable quotes by the narcissist in your life. I want the quote that makes your head spin and your mouth hang open with its egomaniacal cluelessness; The quote that you fish out to tell your uncomprehending friends at dinner parties in order to better describe the problem you have had with this person.
To get the ball rolling I will give a few examples. The first is from my own mother whose comment, after reading the first professional piece of writing that I finished, was “Well, I don’t happen to care for it but I pray I’m wrong.” A close second goes to her follow up reply, after a request that she hold any more criticism for now if she wanted to read anything else; “No more criticism? If I can’t criticize you, what am I supposed to talk about? The weather?”
Another good example comes from a mother of someone I know who commented, after being told that her daughter was molested, “Oh my God! Do you think I was?”
Okay: Your turn.
Due to spam, sometimes I turn off the comments. If you find them turned off and have something to add, please write to me via the contact link and I will add your story to the list.
November 25, 2009 at 8:04 am
As the eldest of three children I foolishly tended to take it personally when my mother told me (repeatedly and from age 3 on !) that “having children ruined” her and my father’s lives.
Eventually I learned to respond with, “Yeah, mine too.”
But probably the crowning example would be on my sixteenth birthday: Her dinner table toast: “Having you children ruined our marriage. We had such fun before you were born. But Happy Birthday anyway, hon.”
And then my father “gifted” me with an unwrapped, pre-read (by him), oops-I-forgot “present” of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.” Seriously.
That’s a hard one to beat!
I’m sending this link to friends who may have something to contribute.
When I was 10, my mother sought my wise advise about the man She was dating. She asked me if I thought she should marry him. I asked, “Do you love him?” She said, staring at me in surprise, “I didn’t think about that. I just thought I Should be married, not single, you know.” My mom in a nutshell….. and I Could go on, and on, but it kind of feels like bad karma. You know?
ouchhh — that’s really awful.
I once dated a girl who regularly bombarded me with casual cruelties, like “I can’t believe how bad your hair looks”, and “I always thought I’d date someone smarter than me”. When I eventually told her how often she hurt my feelings, she broke down crying, and said “I guess I never imagined that you have feelings, too!” Can’t believe I didn’t marry her.
That’s a great one. I love her weeping remark. Outstanding.
1. My mother, upon the occasion of my finding my first gray hair: “Do you know how it makes me feel to have a daughter with gray hair???”
2. An early date with my ex. He walked out of the room after I finished telling him about my day. When called on it, he said “Oh, I didn’t know you required a response.”
3. My ex, immediately after we talked about a sexual miscommunication: “It’s important to me that we talk about these things so that I can improve, whether for you or for other women in the future.”
A nice assortment. You are to be specially commended for the work you did to help the women of the future.
No, no. NOT bad karma. Definitely not. It’s you putting your life in to the proper perspective. Also there is no chance she is going to find this page. I would put money on it. But if she did…she’d probably like the attention.
1. “The main issue was that the article was sadly influenced by a poisoned source. ”
A tweet made by an author/speaker marketing himself to the cool Christian crowd in response to an article that raised some valid questions pertaining to his work. I am the poisoned source even though I had no hand in writing the article and the author isn’t the type of person who is easily influenced anyway. I had a falling out with this person when I began to question some changes in his ministry – rather than meet with me so we can talk things out, I’ve been the victim of a smear campaign.
2. “I don’t know how to respond to your email because I’m seething with venom. ”
This was conveyed to me via email by a priest who contacted me about doing some reporting on his post 9/11 ministry. Given his role in the recovery effort, seemed like a story worth pursuing. Our problems began when I started questioning why he was promoting to his funders that he was building a forgiveness garden at Ground Zero when there were no permits in place. I was trying to caution him not to make statements that could get him into trouble with the IRS. This forgiveness expert refuses to meet with me so we can talk things over.
3. (I don’t remember the exact email here but this is the gist) “I am sorry to inform you that my appearance on CNN today had to be canceled due to their coverage of a plane crash. But not to worry, I’ll be on tomorrow.”
At the time a plane had crashed in Miami and people were known to have been dead but the exact details were still coming in. This was a Christian promoting his book and didn’t bother to say anything like “our prayers are with these people.” I unsubscribed from his email that instant – I was on his list as I interviewed him re: a previous book.
I have other examples but I think I’ll stop at this unholy Trinity.
My father told me the only reason he hadn’t killed himself yet (after I ruined his life by writing an anonymous essay about him for a magazine), is because of how it would make my mother look–and “she’s built a nice reputation at the school.”
My grandmother, disappointed that the boy I brought home was neither Jewish nor a doctor, said, “All I ask is that you make me happy.”
I’ll try to think of more …
That’s all she asks of you and yet you let her down. Very funny.
BTW: Laurie has a great new graphic novel about her issues with her completely wacked father. Its called The Imposter’s Daughter. You can see excerpts from it on her website: Lauriesandell.com
You want your own sister to hang out with a guy who isn’t as good looking as she is? What is wrong with you!!
While it may more insensitive than narcissistic, I’ll offer the following, said by my mom-in-law in front of her son, my husband (who was president of his high school class, 7th in same class, went to a near ivy league college and earns a great living at a high pressure job):
“This is my daughter-in-law, the reason my grandchildren are going to be brilliant.”
She has said this many times while introducing me. I am complimented and chagrined for him all at once. He’s used to it.
Well, I’ll tell you one thing that quote reveals. She’s tactless, disrespectful and has a mean streak.
My brother lost his job of 25 years. My sister and I went to lunch and her comment on the subject was, “I wouldn’t mind seeing him in a job he enjoys next time.” Yeah, forget how he’ll pay bills and otherwise support his family. Let’s be sure Sis is happy. Then there’s my niece who was bummed when her sister split with her boyfriend of many years. Her comment? “This means I have to get use to the next guy she decides to date. Bummer!”
From the comments you’re racking up on the subject, it’s clear: Many of us live with and among narzis.
Believe me, I have contributions. I’ll submit a quick one before I put the turkey in.
I live in an area that is frequently visited by hurricanes and threats of hurricanes. I won’t mention the state, but it’s a peninsula with a panhandle and I apologize for what happened in the 2000 election.
Through the years, there has been no shortage of people who have prayed or have asked others to pray that God will shift the direction of an advancing hurricane so they’ll be spared. The concept is startling enough, but when the wording is spoken by someone fluent in Sanctimonese, it is really something.
I feel so damn lucky. My family was as disfunctional as 99.9% of families, but there was no narcissism.
It’s too bad there isn’t a genetic test for it before anyone is allowed to reproduce—but– then there would be no wonderful writers, teachers, therapists , etc like those who’ve shared their experiences on this blog. I guess it does make you stronger.
Thank you, Merril.
Now, along with thinking of all the things I’m grateful for, I also seem to be dwelling on memories of fun examples of narcissism.
At the elementary school bus stop, another mom was telling me about the unexpected death of a dear friend of hers:
“I haven’t been able to stop crying. I feel so bad because her children are still teenagers and it’s hard enough to be a teenager without losing your mom…I’m just so sad…it’s still sinking in…I’ve been so stressed and sad that I’ve had a migraine since the night we got the news. I just can’t believe it happened. And the worst part? The funeral is on my birthday.”
A general recap is not good enough, Miss Margaret. I want QUOTES.
Said to my husband by his ex before they were officially divorced: “Do you realize that if you died right now, I would be a WIDOWER?? I mean, think about that, Michael…I WOULD BE A WIDOWER!!”.
Funny on two levels!
That’s hilarious.
My father was textbook NPD, but I think I’ve blanked out most of his remarks over the years. I don’t talk to him anymore because life is too short, but he’s pretty sure I’m still angry, 21 years later, that he divorced my mother. This is a point from which he cannot be dissuaded, even though it’s been pretty nice to see my mother become a real person during that time apart.
There are some classics, such as when, as a very little girl, I asked what happened while he was in Vietnam (as an air traffic controller for a hospital base): “They were trying to KILL ME!” (Most textbooks entirely missed that particular part of the war, btw.)
There’s also the fact that any time I brought home less than straight As, I was exasperatedly asked what he was supposed to brag about at work now. Right–I forgot that was why I was supposed to ace algebra.
Merrill,
I feel woefully inadequate–my mother and grandmother are/were queens of passive-aggressiveness, not narcissism. So I have nothing to contribute to this round. Can I request a passive-aggressive follow-up sometime? ; )
But I’ve posted a link to this on my Facebook page, because I’m willing to bet some of my friends gathered some quotable gems at the Thanksgiving table today.
May I please have the honor of a great passive aggressive quote?
Let’s see…how about a Thanksgiving quote? Thanksgiving dinner, circa 1987, table full of relatives. My grandmother to my mother (her daughter), “Oh Gertrude,” she sighs with what sounds like overwhelming love, “You look so pretty, but… (one more loving sigh) I _wish_ you’d find a more flattering hairstyle.”
My mother’s taken the passive-aggressiveness to a whole new level–she doesn’t tend to stoop to anything as trivial as one-liners. She goes conceptual–for example, every major holiday, without fail, no one in the family knows when she will arrive at our house.
We never know when she’ll leave her house (which is a 6 1/2 hour drive from us). She simply refuses to let us know her plans in advance OR to call when she departs OR to call en route. (I’d like to point out that my mother does NOT work for the CIA, so the secrecy is really unnecessary).
Sometimes we think we know when she’s coming–only to find out hours after her “expected” arrival time, when we call her convinced she’s had a car accident and is in a hospital somewhere, that she’s having an omelet in a diner and has decided to stop at a motel and drive the rest of the way the next day. When confronted about this, she’s always vaguely apologetic. The best part? After 15 years of this, my husband STILL asks me, “So, when’s your mom coming for (fill in name of major holiday here)?” And he’s always surprised at my response!
Btw, I haven’t done this myself, but I’m pretty sure you can record video & audio from Skype calls–maybe you could set up Skype interviews with folks who have great narcissist stories? I think there are some online tutorials out there.
Happy Thanksgiving!
p.s. my mom got here 20 minutes before Thanksgiving dinner this year. This was a good year!
When my former partner and I separated, this is what his mother (who lives on the other side of the ocean) said: You’re ruining my life! How can you do this to me?
My former partner has a somewhat arrogant streak when it comes to fashion, and he commented: It’s too bad you never learned how to be a real female, you really need to listen to my advice! If you would just wear what I tell you to, you’d be presentable and I could walk around with you.
Congratulations, Katherine.Not only is that story pretty hilarious but I think it contains many elements of real narcissism. Your mother’s behavior is so self absorbed and inconsiderate that I don’t think the passive aggressiveness she no doubt exhibits disqualifies her in the least.
Yikes. How could you let a catch like that get away? Tomorrow, buy yourself a nice new dress and go chase after him.
Oh – I thought of a few that weren’t work related …
1) When I was 18, I was spending the summer with my grandparents at their chi-chi country club. One night like many teens I went to a party and had too much to drink. I was a mellow drunk – all I did was go home and throw up. As I was nursing the hangover from hell, my grandmother said, “Honey, if you ever do that again, I’ll have to move cause my reputation will be ruined.”
1a) Same grandmother also said “your mother killed your father by divorcing him.” (Both parents died of alcoholism.)
2) I was talking with an aunt about how I was working on staying healthy and lost some weight. Her response “Yeah but your ass is still big.” (She is easily two sizes larger than me).
3) An uncle I hadn’t seen for two years told me over dinner “When I saw you the first thing I noticed was your double chin” (I was not overweight and he is.)
Wow, Merrill–thanks! You’re right–how could I have missed the narcissism inherent in my mother’s behavior? I’ve spent years thinking of her exclusively in passive-aggressive terms, but this whole narcissism angle really opens things up to exciting new interpretations. And just in time for the holiday season!
As far as I know, passive aggressiveness and narcissism are not mutually exclusive. Happy Holidays!
Upon the occasion of my 40th birthday, my mom told this sentimental story: “When I was pregnant with you, I stayed so thin that nobody even knew I was pregnant until the 8th month!”
I was in a comedy group, waiting backstage to enter and do an improv. It said my name in the program, so my parents, who were there, knew I was going to be in this one. When the director asked the audience to give a suggestion of a family problem, my father shouted out, “What do you do when you want your daughter to be a doctor and she wants to be an actor?”
I had co-created a TV show and my mom informed me that she was having a party and inviting all of her friends to watch the premiere with her. When I told her that I had already committed to go to a party to watch the show with the cast and the other writers, my mom said, “Oh, that’s ok. We’ll be fine.”
I have a friend who’s much much more successful than I am in the business. I was directing a TV movie and had had a great day. My friend called to talk to me, forgetting entirely that I was directing the movie. I reminded him and told him what I blast I was having. His response was, “I can’t believe you’re getting to direct a movie before I am.”
I could go on and on. I am a narcissist magnet. But that will do for now.
If I resubmitted it, will it affect my overall grade or is there some grace because it’s Thanksgiving week?
“You know, I really think times like this are harder on the spouse than the patient.” -Mom at the hospital while Dad was recovering from surgery where an organ had been removed from his digestive system.
Now THAT’S a good narcissism quote. Your grade is no longer is any jeopardy.
In addition to supplying four fantastic quotes, Robin is the woman from whom I took the beet salad recipe that is posted under a blog whose title contains the words “beet salad recipe.”
I don’t really have quotes because my family is much more about the gestures. I’m the person whose mom’s gift of a subscription to Better Homes & Gardens caused a friend to ask, “has your mother met you?” This year’s gift subscription’s even better — it’s Outdoor Photography. Which is not really a big hobby of mine.
I was mystified until I found out she got the same subscription for my brother, too.
I have another brother from whom I am mostly estranged, not because we’ve had a falling out but mostly because he’s generally too busy to keep in touch. In fact, he was so busy that he opted out of attending my wedding. But he did send a very generous and thoughtful wedding gift: over 4 hours of videotape of himself. A tour of his apartment, a tour of his workplace, a tour of his city. I don’t think I managed to watch all of it.
It probably says something about the effect of all this behavior that posting these comments even semi-anonymously makes me feel ungrateful and bad about myself.
Here’s a passive-agressive npd quote from dear mom. I’d won a book as a prize at high school. My mother asked if she could read it. I told her that I’d like to read it first, but (silly me), I’d let her read it. When I got it back, she’d underlined the Whole book (in pencil, so I could erase it….). I asked her if she’d at least liked the book, and she said, “Oh, it was a bit boring. Don’t even ask me to tell you what it was about.”
Also, before she returned the same book, she returned it with coctail glass rings all over the cover-as-coaster — she’d lent it to a friend, unbeknowst to me. And mom knew how much I prized books in general and wanted to keep them looking fresh, being one of those types who hated to crease the book spine back then (which I’ve stopped obsessing about now). When I complained about the coctail rings, she said “I’ll bet you’ll never read that book now.” And she’s right to this day. No big quote here, but perhaps the scenario’s worth something.
Co-worker: “I love your sweater! I had one just like it when it was in style!”
Mom is a gem!
“Has your mother met you?” is really funny. But I love the four hours of video tape. He was afraid that attending your wedding wouldn’t provide him with enough time. Do NOT feel bad about discussing this stuff. In my opinion, it is what needs to be done to put things in to a workable perspective.
There are many great comments in this list, but this one is a real favorite. It almost feels like the co-worker who spoke deserves an award.
I don’t know if this is helpful at all, but Albert Brooks’ film, Mother (1996), keeps coming to mind. He plays a writer facing a major block and goes to live with his bigtime NPD mother, played by Debbie Reynolds — spot on — knowing that she’s the cause of his block. And the tagline on IMDB is “No Actual Mothers Were Harmed During The Making Of This Motion Picture.” (go to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117091/) That tagline just “kills” me!
And that reminds me of a decent line that I’ve given my mother (repeated by A. Brooks) — when my mother tells me (with utter sincerity) that she loves me, I have been known to reply, “I know you Think you do.” She then looks at me in complete contempt and says something like, “What do you mean, of Course I do.” And the latest Mom line is, “The only thing that keeps me from being happy is when you’re not happy. I’d be completely happy if you were.” To this day, those words are creepy to me.
On a family trip to Europe, my then 15 year old nephew was physically violent towards my sister, and her (now ex-) husband did nothing to intercede or punish their son for his actions. About 6 months later (in marriage counseling) my former brother-in-law was asked why he had done nothing to defend his wife. His response, which actually rendered the counselor speechless, was “It was my first vacation in years and I didn’t want to ruin it.”
Wow. Congratulations. That is a truly spectacular contribution. I love it.
when i was born my aunt (by marriage) (we’ll call her “Pearly”) came to pay a visit to my mom and dad in the hospital. the conversation turned, as it always does, to which parent I resembled. Pearly looked my mom right in her post-partum eyes and said, “well you wouldn’t want her to look like you, would you?” (I am, by the way, a genetic clone of my mother.)
Years ago, when complaining (again) to my now-Ex about his inability to pay attention to my part of the “conversation” (if you could call it that), he said, “But you’re not saying anything that interests me.” Me: “Sorry, I didn’t realize I was here to entertain you.” He did not even hear the sarcasm.
I’m actually still in touch with him. He’s married (but currently divorcing) and has since said to me, “You know, I didn’t understand a lot about relationships when I was with you.” Can’t help but chuckle a bit.
Another example (although this was high school and who isn’t a bit narcissistic then): on telling one of my closest friends that I had finally lost my virginity (to my first boyfriend, we’d been dating over a year at this point) she responded (very hurt and accusatory), “I can’t believe you didn’t wait for me!” I think it might have been a little thoughtless of me to respond, “But you don’t even have a boyfriend!” Birds of a feather.
“You’re not saying anything that interests me” is a great one. It reminds me of the time a friend of mine brought her four year old over to my house. He walked in to the living room, looked around and then said “Where are the things that I like?”
Nice. This reminds me of the comment my mother made upon seeing a photograph of her one day old grandchild. “Well, he’s not what you’d call a beautiful child.”. (And then a few days later, when the cuteness really caught up to him, she said “Do you think he will be held back by being so pretty?”)
When our first child was born my wife had a very tough labor that lasted about 36 hours. For the last several hours she was delirious but finally gave birth to a beautiful little boy.
A few hours later she was still extremely weak. My wife’s younger sister arrived for a visit. When she came in the room my wife nicely asked her to close the door. My sister in law responded, “Don’t be so snotty!” I managed to contain myself so as not to upset my wife.
That was 24 years ago and I’ve always regretted not throwing my sister in law out the hospital window.
I’d probably have been out of prison by now.
A jury of women would have acquitted you, and perhaps awarded you damages. You reminded me of a passage in Deborah Curtis’s autobiography “Touching From a Distance: Ian Curtis & Joy Division.” After delivering their first and only child, “Ian said that if anything had gone wrong it would have been my fault as I had ‘done it all wrong.’” (p.79 of 1995 edition).
I believe that was his first suicide attempt.
When I was 22 I developed some significant disabilities, had to have spinal surgery and spent about a month in the hospital recovering from it all. I was then transferred from the hospital in NYC to a rehab facility closer to my mom’s in PA. All of this was incredibly hard for me to deal with, adjusting to this sudden change in my body and way of life. On the drive to the rehab hospital, we stopped at a gas station to fill up and some jackass at the pump blocked us in. My mother beeped her horn to get his attention to move. The guy apparently didn’t like that, flipped us the bird and ignored us. My mother became hysterical and started screaming at the top of her lungs out her window, “HOW DARE YOU! DON’T YOU DO THAT TO ME! I HAVE A HANDICAPPED SON IN THE CAR!!!”
Now I can understand the whole situation being somewhat overwhelming for her and maybe give her a slight pass on this one, but behavior subsequent to that would convict her as a 1st degree narcissist . I recovered from the surgery well, but still have disabilities and obtained a handicap-parking sticker to use when I need it. I don’t really have a NEED to use it ever, as I can walk from a normal parking space distance fine, and think that the spaces should be saved for those that do. However, there were dozens of times where my mom was driving us and would ignore my request to not park in the handicap space. She’d smile and giggle and comment how “she didn’t feel like walking” and “it was just easier for us this way.”
What I did need from her however was to do something about her kitchen floor, which causes problems for those even with no physical problems whatsoever. It is a white linoleum floor that becomes like a sheet of ice when even one drop of water gets on it. I’ve wiped out on it numerous times, as have her and numerous guests to her home. She’s refused to do anything about it to the dismay of everyone. Finally I gave up asking when she said, after I brought her an estimate to have it redone that I even offered to pay for, “Christopher, I like my floor the way it is. You’ll just have to be more careful.”
There was also the time where we were out during a rainstorm and I banged my knee. I couldn’t walk and needed to sit down and rest for a moment. The only place anywhere close was the front steps of an apartment building. She literally grabbed me, as I’m hobbling in pain, to prevent me from sitting because my pants would get damp and told me “You’ll get the seat of my car wet!”
Thanks to my sister for alerting me to this posting (and who has also posted here. I’ll let you guess which one she is).
“I am NOT studying nursing because I care about people. I’m in it for the prestige.” is one of the most astonishingly unconscious remarks ever. Congratulations. That’s a finalist. And this isn’t even a contest!
You had momentarily forgotten how impossibly hard it is to dry a car seat. Hopefully this incident taught you to remember to always carry a sack of towels with you when it looks like rain. Its the very least you can do.
There’s an emergency sham-wow in the trunk for such occasions.
My mom is a true narcissist. Her name is Mildred; she goes by Midge. My favorite Midge-ism: “Control the guilt; control the child.” She thinks it’s hilarious and repeats it often.
My other favorite Midge-ism, though this speaks to her negativity and not to her narcissism: “I hate butterflies.” (You would have to hear her say this in her Iowa-Jew-flat-nasal-drawn-out way.) This comment came on the heels of an Elder Hostel trip she took to the Ozarks a few years ago. The group visited some area teeming with butterflies. To quote a friend of mine, a super-sunny fellow who is her psychic antipode, when he overheard her: “Wow. I’ve never met anyone before who hates butterflies!”
I’m sure Midge is a first class narcissist, and I thank you for your contribution to the narcissism hall of fame but I must confess: My favorite thing about your entry is the phrase “Psychic antipode.” Whew. Great phrase! I gotta remember that one! Thanks!
Smart boy!
I have more borderline quotes than narcissist, but under stress she sometimes forgets to hide it and it basically works out the same as a narcissist.
In an argument during our divorce where we had been arguing about our child’s needs. Actually I was arguing about our child’s needs and she was seeing how she could put a spin on the child’s needs to satisfy her own. ME: You think only about yourself! HER (with extreme hostility): OF COURSE!!!
Further in the discussion after stressing how important our child’s needs are and having her say she wanted several times my net worth, plus the house, plus, plus, plus. After several times of trying to steer the conversation back to what would benefit our child I gave up. ME: It’s just “Me, me, me, me.” HER: “That’s right, it’s me first, [our child] second, you not at all.” This is funnier in the context of a discussion about putting our child first. Later. ME: I don’t know where you think all this money is going to come from. HER (angry and threatening): “Well your Dad’s not going to live very long you know!!!!” Did she stop to consider, she’d already spent everything I would have inherited, and there are others the money would go to, like my mom, if I weren’t already deeply in debt to them anyway? This is what I get for marrying someone who told me repeatedly she wouldn’t even be able to put her own child’s needs in front of her own. I didn’t believe there actually could be such a person, and I just thought with enough love she’d get over it.
I have a narcissistic request, or whine if you prefer. You promise us 68 responses to the topic, but I can’t find, pull up, pull down, access, or whatever you call it, that many. I’ve been fascinated by the ones I have read, and commend those who’ve survived narcissistic parenting.
PLEASE tell us how to get to all of the requests unless it requires tech skills I don’t possess.
The way this number-counter thing works is that it counts the responses I give in to the total. Sorry.
I have a friend who has lost a lot of her N tendencies since she married and had a wonder child.
She called one Sunday, said she was bored and asked if I had the Sunday paper. She didn’t like buying the paper because the newsprint got all over her hands.
I told her I did, and she said she’d be over to visit and read the paper, and “kill two birds with one stone”.
Hmmm . I couldn’t figure out whether the paper or visiting with me was the first bird.
Another request was “I’m bored and depressed. Cheer me up.”
Wow. Well, first of all… from my shallow on-line google research it seems that ” many Borderline Personality Disorders have been co-morbidly diagnosed as also having Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” Looking back, seems like my mother had both. Or maybe its just the overlap in symptoms. They certainly seem to have many delightful traits in common.
Another article says that “Those close to Borderline or Narcissist will find ways to deal with them are very much the same. Also the effect they have on others close to them are strikingly similar. Manipulating, lies, deception, self centeredness. and most of all a complete lack of concern for anyone but themselves. They just chose to cover it up in different ways.”
So congratulations! I think your ex wife fits in just fine here!
But what really got my attention was your last sentence:”This is what I get for marrying someone who told me repeatedly she wouldn’t even be able to put her own child’s needs in front of her own. I didn’t believe there actually could be such a person, and I just thought with enough love she’d get over it.” If I have learned only one thing in life, (and a good argument can be made that one may be an overstatement), it is that when someone tells you something dark and bizarre about themselves, BELIEVE THEM. And it almost goes without saying that it is pure folly to think that you are going to be the instrument of change. Ha!
Hi Merrill
I turned in an article to an editor — a long piece I had obsessed over and worked on for a couple months. I waited… and waited… at least a week.. for the editor to read it and give me some sort of response. He took his time. When he finally got around to it, he seemed lukewarm. He gave me very few comments, pro or con. Then he “edited” the piece — meaning he changed the order of the paragraphs — and he e-mailed me this new version. I read it over, baffled. It was one of those edits that’s neither here nor there. He had gotten his hand in, and that was about it.
Next day he called and asked, in a voice seeking approval: “What did you think of the edit?”
B-WAP
I’m sorry. I should have realized that!
As long as he left plenty of fingerprints, it was a job well done.
But boy oh boy, I have had SO many bizarre experiences with rewrites at magazines and in television that its hard to know if you’re dealing with a single narcissist, a team of narcissists or just the occupational hazards of being hired to do that job. I am thinking right now of a POV piece I wrote for a woman’s magazine that first made a huge point of going on and on about how eager they were to add my voice to their publication. Next thing I knew, they had changed every single word I wrote so that the end result sounded like something that might have been written by Paris Hilton. Usually Paris and I are not thought of as interchangeable, so when I suggested to the editor(s) they should just remove my name from the “written by” credits and add their own names instead, since they had really written every word of it and it no longer reflected my POV, they were deeply insulted. They didn’t understand what my problem was since this was just their standard editorial policy.
Sometimes it seems like everything in the writing for hire arena conspires against simple logic and sanity.
I thought my mother was a narcissist but I’m on the fence. Like Katherine, I think my mom was more in the passive-aggressive camp. I recall mom telling her sister (a lovely woman who never married and who saved my family’s butts financially time and again) to not go getting another cat when her beloved critter of 23 years died. Mom told my aunt when her time was up, it would be inconvenient enough without having to figure out how get rid of the “furry thing.”
And I’m not completely sure on this one, but mom asked me once if I was sorry I never had kids because I wouldn’t have anyone to take care of me in my old age. I heard that’s the classic narcissist’s reason to reproduce, not to duplicate themselves (they don’t want competition, just adulation).
Love you and your blog! One nicely narcissistic friend always brings a camera to parties to take pictures of… only herself. She will stop, pose, and snap herself, look at the result and say “cute’ or “my hair looks so shiny tonight.”
I’m reminded good ole Narcissus acquired his curse of eternal reflection by Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, because he broke Echo’s heart, till she pined away leaving only her voice. Maybe that’s why my self absorbed friends need to hear complements twice… ” I do look great, don’t I? Huh?”
One shining example in the mom category still makes me really sad. After 10 years of nursing my mom, my dad got lung cancer. During his last difficult months, instead of now taking care of him, my mom tried to kill herself. So my sick dad rushed her to the hospital in the middle of the night to save her. She said “How can he get sick and do this to me? He knows I can’t take it” Then two weeks before he died, he was so weak and vulnerable, yet still caring for her, she said bitterly “When I think of all the times you picked on me……” I still remember the hurt and disbelief in his eyes.
The sad Mom/Dad story is a really perfect example. But “My hair looks so shiny tonight” made me laugh out loud.
All from my mother:
1) I was twelve and sitting alone in the car with her. My younger sister had just been diagnosed with an autoimmunine disease which was considered fatal at the time:
“Well, you wished your little sister
was dead. And your wish came true.
Are you happy now?”
2) To my older sister when she
made plans to fly to Europe:
“I can’t believe you’re doing this.
You know how nervous it makes me
when you fly.”
3) To me, one of many comments about my hair: “Your hair looks so terrible
it made my blood pressure go up. I had
to take a pill!”
Both parents — my father who didn’t come back from Europe when my only brother died, but who did come visit 6 months later. We’re at the bar, before dinner, on the first night of a 3 day visit (when I’ve seen him once in 15 years). “Why did your brother change his surname?” Dad asks. Dad had stolen P’s social security number and had taken out and defaulted on many loans. I really don’t want a tense 3 days. “Um,” I say, “You were all over his credit report?” Dad, swigging gimlet, “Why would he be angry about that?”
Mom — at same brother’s funeral — “Would you stop that crying! You’re embarassing me.” Also, 2 days later, “Well, I guess I’m not going to kill myself after all.” (Gee, thanks for worrying about leaving me all alone Mom). And then she disowned me for 3 years. Which was kind of restful actually. Having her back in my life … a mixed blessing shall we say.
That story about your Dad is frightening. And when you add in the fact that at some point he joined forces with your Mom…well, in a way its too bad Shakespeare wasn’t alive so he could write them a play.
What a thing to say to your twelve year old daughter! I only hope you at least had the foresight to comb your hair first.
All through my 20s, before I had even THOUGHT about having children, my mother loved to prod me about having babies. When I told her that I just wasn’t ready, her reply was “Oh, but I’m going to be so old when they’re born!” I hadn’t realized until that moment that I was being so selfish.
Cut to: I’m seven months pregnant. My mother was just here for a week long visit and her new favorite pastime is prodding me about having subsequent children. Two months before my first child is born, as I’m dealing with backaches and heartburn and various other unpleasantries, she wants to know when I’m going to do it all over again and give her another grandchild. So I told the truth (usually a mistake with her) which is that we really only want one child. Her response? “That child is going to hate you!” But mom, I had older brothers and I still hate… oh, never mind.
To top it all off, she told me no fewer than 15 times that she only ever gained 20 pounds in pregnancy and that I am gaining too much weight despite the fact according to my doctor, I have gained the perfect amount of weight. I asked if I was supposed to be on a diet right now and she just looked at me and said in a tone I can only describe as preachy, “When I was pregnant with you I paid your brother John to make sure I didn’t eat too much. Like, if I wanted a banana, and John would stop me from eating it, I would give him 50 cents!” It begs the question, what in the world was the woman doing with junk food like BANANAS around the house in the first place!?!
I don’t have the time to go into the narcissism that a woman with textbook Muchausen-by-proxy exhibits on a daily basis, but let’s just say, she will not have any alone time with my daughter!
MY FAMILY
- – - – - – -
My parents got in a fight with the Hebrew school, so they did a 180 and explained to my brother and me that were were athiests. We got the hang of it. Then my parents took a vacation and dad’s mom, my grandmother stayed with us. She asked if we believed in god and we said no. She became very upset . “You’ve got to believe in god. You’ve got to!” She sobbed more. “How can you do this to me now that I’m an old lady?” she screamed. She wept and rocked and held herself and wept.
“Do what, Grandma, what’s the matter?” I’d never seen her cry before and I couldnt understand why theology was such a big deal. We’d switched from casual Jews to atheist and except for one weird conversation never noticed.
“How can say such things to me? How dare you! Don’t you dare tell me my own grandchildren don’t believe in god?” she wailed. “What will god think of me?!”
“JACKSONS premieres with back-to-back episodes. The high point of the first 2 hours comes when Jermaine Jackson cries. Tearfully he recalls dark days of 1976: the others leaped to CBS;he stayed at Motown,‘loyal to where we started’’Do you know what it is to be alone? Just to be alone?’ Jermaine chokes up.’I’m out in the streets and kids say, ‘You broke up the group. We don’t want your autograph.’”
“That child is going to hate you” is a great one. She forgot to add that child is her. Congratulations on the new baby. And on keeping her away from Madame Munchausen..
Finally! He had to wait so long for this vindication. I don’t know whether to write and ask for his autograph, or send him some hankies.
An old boss of mine (whose narcissism was her least bad quality) once reacted to the news that an employee would be out a few days because of a sudden, life-threatening illness, responded with an agonized wail that rivaled Charlton Heston’s more extreme scenery chewing by saying, “Why do these things always happen to ME?!”
That’s about as perfect a summation of it all as there will ever be. If this were a recipe, I believe it would be referred to as “a reduction.”
As a grammar school student I was trying to learn to play piano. I found little joy in practicing. I was learning, “March of the Wee Folk.” Perhaps you remember this gray tune? I was diligently picking it out, sight reading. My mother sat down beside me on the piano bench. “THIS is what it’s supposed to sound like!” And she played the entire piece perfectly with great drama. I fled in tears. Later I made a point to study things she knew nothing about. Cello, Russian (she knew French and Spanish), and filmmaking.
Me: “Oh, look, I think I broke my toe! ”
Mother-in-law: “I’ve had a headache all day.”
Me: “Remember our wedding?”
Mother-in-law-: “Yes, I thought I’d be sad, but I wasn’t.”
Mother-in-law: “Here’s your present, a purse. Now, if it’s not your taste, just tell me, because it really is more my taste, and I could really use a purse like this, so just tell me if you want it or not. Merry Christmas.”
I hope this Mother-in-Law’s quivering twitching son alternates gasping for air with some comprehension of whats going on. All three are great but that last one really won my heart. It doesn’t get much better than that.
My mother used to tell me “I live through you.” I would say, “Well stop it!” That was a lot of pressure to put on a kid, especially since she didn’t seem to be enjoying life at the time.
Not sure if this will count but I’ll write it anyway.
My friend was in a nightclub one night (one known to be full of Leisure Suit Larry’s). He complimented a girl on her hair but wasn’t hitting on her. Her boyfriend’s buddy walked over and said:
“F*ck you dude. I’ll kick your ass. I’m a cage fighter!”
I’m a cage fighter is now the running joke with all our friends.
I hope I don’t get scolded…I have a story rather than a great quote:
During a visit to my husband’s family Holiday gathering, my father-in-law became annoyed with his 16-year-old granddaughter, after she had made a remark to her father about something, which her father was doing, which annoyed her. So, my father-in-law, in his normal narcissistic fashion turned the incident into something about him and asked his granddaughter if she found him to be obnoxious too. She responded by saying, “I’d rather not answer that question”
He became so enraged, that he came into the kitchen where my husband, sister-in-law and I were standing and talking…he stormed in, passed in between the three of us, picked up a utensil on the kitchen counter, slammed it on the counter, turned to my sister and told her that she had raised the most inconsiderate, rude and despicable child that he had ever met, grabbed his coat, climbed into the back seat of our car and sat there until my husband and I were ready to leave. Leaving my niece in the living room in tears, my sister-in-law insisting that she apologize, my husband trying to get us ready to leave and my brother-in-law and me speachless.
On the way to the car, I told my husband that I would not spend the following hour and a half, listening to my father-in-law grousing about the preceding events. So, after being told that we would not discuss what had just happened, he sat in the back seat pouting the entire way home. It was the nicest car ride that we have ever had with him in tow. Ever!
Wow. That’s got so many complex layers of the holiday joy that just one good narcissist can bring to a family gathering. I love him baiting his granddaughter in to fight while at the same time retaining the sense that he is the victim, then pouting all the way home. It would be a great short film. Learning to live with (and not interrupt) someone’s showboat pouting since it is one of the best most desirable outcomes, all things considered, is one of the most complicated things about learning to cope with narcissism (in my opinion)
I live in California, and told a friend I would be flying back to my original home in the Midwest to receive an award and give a short speech at a banquet because I was to be inducted into a Sports Hall of Fame in honor of an athletic achievement of my youth. The friend replied “well, are they sending you a free airline ticket? Because if they’re not, then you shouldn’t go, they’re just using you to provide free entertainment”. Upon reflection, and upon reading some of these other instances, I can’t help but think they are uttered by people who maybe have achieved very little and are acutely conscious of it, and any sort of thing such as being a person who doesn’t need to rip down others is just very provocative to such folk, who strongly feel their lackings at all times, and that be the cause of these bizarre self-absorbed outbursts. Comedy does come from tragedy. Thanks to everyone for sharing, I do feel healed by you all.
My younger sister was the maid of honor in my wedding (I chose her just to avoid the fight that would insue if I had chosen my best friend instead). Here is a list of ways in which she attempted to make my wedding all about her:
-She threw a tantrum because I “wasn’t grateful enough” to her for planning my bachelorette party, even though I made a toast specifically to thank her. She texted me all night afterwards trying to make me feel guilty and say sorry.
-She bitched at me everytime I did something wedding related without her because she is the maid of honor and has to help plan the wedding, even though she lives in a different state.
-She called me and told me I don’t give a shit about her being in the wedding because we decided to open gifts with my inlaws the day after the wedding, but she had to fly out that morning and couldn’t come.
-She wore a revealing bridesmaid dress, fake eyelashes, and red lipstick on the wedding day, made “model-like” faces in all our pictures, instead of smiling, and wore ugg boots after the ceremony. I was too busy to notice any of this the day of, and only found out when I got our pictures back, lol.
-She has harrased me to email her all the photos of HER from our wedding so she doesn’t have to buy them off of the website our photog used. She has sent texts with phrases like: “why is this so hard for you? It’s like pulling teeth.” “Please send me the picture of me getting my makeup done, it’s not that hard.”
Thanks for being the best MOH ever sis! Man I am glad the wedding is over and I can just hang out with my husband
One of my N mom’s favvvvvvorites is the silent treatment. Check out cartoon #2 out of the 10 here on this link:
http://offthemark.com/search-results/key/silent/
Also #3 and #10 are pretty spot on – these are kinds of things that brighten my holidays
OK – one more – just for you Merrill:
So, many years ago, I travel back home to bring what I think is “the perfect guy” to meet my parents in California. He’s got a lot of degrees & is a: east coaster – scientific – yet sporty – (& snarky) – type guy. I’m dressed up, he’s prepped, and we’re coming for lunch & “sparkling getting-to-know-you conversation”.
Within 2 minutes of when I walk in the door, my N mom hands me a tray full of Comet and Windex & sponges for me to clean 2 powder-room bathrooms, because some of her friends are coming over later that afternoon for coffee.
Even my semi-N now Ex said “wow, that takes balls”
Good one, Mary! i want to say more about my family, but i’d rather quote the news.
This is anAP article at from http://3.ly/mansonSpeaks
NEW YORK — Marilyn Manson says he was devastated over the breakup of his marriage to model and burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese.
“I was completely destroyed. I had no soul left,” the glitzy goth rocker, 38, says in Spin magazine’s June issue. “I define myself as a person, a human, an artist, as someone who makes things — writing, painting, music — and I couldn’t do anything.”
Manson, [born Brian Warner]married Von Teese in November 2005. She filed for divorce in December. “She said she had tolerated the lifestyle because she hoped I would change and threatened to leave if I didn’t,” Manson says.
“I was sleeping on the couch in my own home. I was no longer supposed to be a rock star. … I came out of this naked, a featherless bird.”
His outlook changed when his friendship with actress Evan Rachel Wood, 19, turned romantic. He tells the magazine he was impressed when she said she would die for him.
“It might sound strange, but this made me want to live,” he says.
Summations from the Empty World: oddly, even during anti-ego critiques only egos are seen, floating forlornly…
“My performances have finally caught up with my ego.” -Ato Boldon
“The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.”
- Niccolo Machiavelli 1469-1527)
“The whole business is built on ego, vanity, self-satisfaction, and it’s total crap to pretend it’s not.”
– George Michael
“I’ve given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can’t divorce a book.”
-Gloria Swanson
“Real love is when you become selfless and you are more concerned about your mate’s or children’s egos than your own. You’re now a giver instead of a taker.” -Sylvester Stallone
“An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment – his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego.” -Alec Guinness
“Effeminate men intrigue me more than anything in the world. I see them as my alter egos. I feel very drawn to them. I think like a guy, but I’m feminine. So I relate to feminine men.”-Madonna
I do like what Ellen has to say
““Our egos tells us we’re the only ones that have any kind of feelings. We’re the only ones with a relationship. We’re the only ones with family. You know, I think that if you kill a spider, there is a relationship that you’re ruining. There’s a conversation going on outside with the other spiders. ‘Did you hear about Chris?….Killed yeah….Sneaker. And now Stephanie has nine hundred babies to raise all alone. Well, she’s got her legs full I’ll tell you that right now. Chris was so kind, wouldn’t hurt a fly. It’s just been tough for them lately. They just lost their web last week. Those humans think they’re so smart. Let them try shooting silk out of their butt and see what they can make.’”
- Ellen DeGeneres
Here’s more quotes while we await more great storytelling.
“Because that’s what narcissism is all about; looking in the mirror everyday and thinking ‘Damn, I’d like to shag myself.’”- Eddie Izzard
“Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms”- Elizabeth Bowen
“I always thought I should be treated like a star.”-Madonna
“I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity” -Diana Vreeland
“It astounds us to come upon other egoists, as though we alone had the right to be selfish, and to be filled with eagerness to live”-Jules Renard quotes (French Writer, 1864-1910)
“The spotlight will always be on me, but it’s something I’m learning to live with as the years go by.”
-David Beckham
“My mother wanted me to become a doctor. But I became… Picasso!”
What a great sick example. Amazing.
I’m coming to this one late, but it’s a topic dear to my heart!
My mother, at all three funerals I’ve attended where she’s spoken (great-aunt, grandmother, and my father, who – just a note – she had been divorced from for many years at the time of his death), began her eulogy by saying:
“I’d like to thank you all for coming out to support me.”
Congratulations! That’s a great one!!!
agreed! a keeper! that’s beautiful.
at a reception for my cousin’s wedding, my stepmom took her assigned seat. saying “at least there’s some good news this year” she passed around an article about her exhusband whod shed been divorced from for 30 years. it was his death notice
WHO’S THE BRAT?
from the nypost
“Ivana Trump’s meltdown on a Delta-Northwest flight from West Palm Beach, Fla., to La Guardia wasn’t the first time the divorcée ran afoul of fellow passengers. Just months before she was taken off Saturday’s flight pre-takeoff after calling nearby children “little [bleep]ers” and berating flight attendants, Ivana acted “miserable that she was put in coach and not first class” and spent her time “complaining the nearby children were acting like monsters,” Page Six reported in September. Fellow passenger Andrew Frank said she called his two kids “barbarians” and told him to “shut them up.” Muttered one jaded jet-setter, “I guess there’s no point in inviting Ivana to the New Yorkers for Children ball this year.” Plus, sources say, two summers ago — on a stopover in Athens en route from Nice to Mykonos for a party — Ivana was so abusive to airline personnel, they wouldn’t allow her to board, and she had to take a later flight.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/ivana_no_fun_to_fly_with_Ina8mXRal6BdfSGdoFOhQP#ixzz0b23w6qKs“
EINE KLEINE “ME TIME”
there’s a common narcissistic component to depression- only what YOU feel counts. this feeling can kill you. check out this craigslist “rants and raves” post.
and next time you jump off a cliff, could you feed the kids first?
Visit the posting at http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/rnr/1524075390.html to contact the person who posted this.
My kids aren’t having XMAS
Date: 2009-12-24, 6:27PM
I’m a single father of 2 kids (6 & 9). My ex-wife doesn’t care for us anymore because she has a new family.
At 33, I feel as though I am 60 or something. I just don’t have energy to do anything because I’m very depressed. Last night I took 3 vicodins and drank Goose. I passed out until 4 pm today. I awoke to my son shaking me and screaming at me to wake up. I feel ashamed of myself. I don’t know if they had breakfast or lunch even. I’m such a failure, I swear. I told them to leave me alone, and to go play on their Xbox.
I feel depressed today, so I plan on taking an Ambien and going back to sleep.
I hope my sons understand that their father is not in a good place right now, and needs “me” time to get better.
Thank you for listening.
Original URL: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/rnr/1524075390.html
Mom, at my dad’s funeral:
“It’s pretty good that he never married Loretta (his common-law wife), because that means I’ll get the Social Security checks.”
Said with no bitterness whatsoever – they’d been divorced for 25 years and were completely out of touch, so she didn’t know or care about Loretta. She actually figured that people would be cheered by this happy news about the SS checks. Loretta was also at the funeral.
A close second isn’t really a quote, but for Christmas one year not too long ago, she gave me Al-Anon pamphlets. Free pamphlets. As a gift. (I won’t get into the subtext about the problem being my response to her alcoholism, and not the, you know, like, alcoholism). My girlfriend was kind of horrified that I found this funny.
That is amazing. And so sad.
Your mother is a great specimen. And your girlfriend was wrong, though I understand her horror. But the al-anon pamphlet gift IS funny. Too bad they didn’t come with a card that said “Merry Christmas. I am going to assume that these make me look like someone who got you a gift!”
A young male colleague was explaining why he wasn’t taken seriously at company meetings: “I’m too good looking. As soon as I walk in the door everyone stares at me and assumes I’m too good looking to be smart. The worst part is, I’m usually the smartest person in the room.”
Now isn’t THAT someone you’re just dying to work with?!
We’re in California visiting my mother in law for Thanksgiving. The night before she explains that she’s doing the right things to help her gambling addiction… we feel a little hopeful. Our flight was the next day and we were thinking that this trip was finally somewhat okay. Our flight is crazy early the next morning… she storms in and wakes us up 10 minutes early–odd. Then at 3:15 am in the morning she asks for money from my husband! Mind you we HAVE to leave at 3:30 am in order to get to the airport in time. When we tell her how inconsiderate it was to ask at such an awkward time when we had been with her for 3 days, she goes silent and pouts. Then proceeds to tell us both that it’s our fault we didn’t catch her “cues” that she needed money. WHAT?! She just told us the night before that she was getting better! Now she won’t speak to us until she’s “over being hurt by us.” She’s NPD plus has a spending/gambling addiction. My mother is NPD too… my husband and I are both in therapy. But, we can’t help but laugh at some of our mother’s behavior. It helps us survive as we get through recovery!
I just read a great quote from a review on Amazon about a person who goes way beyond narcissism.
This book and author
Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend (Paperback)
~ Barbara Oakley (Author)
I Googled into this site only because I had a similar idea–to start a blog or maybe write a book on bizarre quotes from Narcissists and wanted to see if it had already been done—and it has!
So, here’s my addition to your list:
A former (heavy emphasis on ‘former’) married male N friend of mine once said to me, “I don’t want to have anything to do with your life, I just want to have sex with you.”
While my mouth was hanging open in shock, he went on to elaborate on how this personal realization showed how mature he had become in his relationships. He seemed so proud of himself.
Ya ok, buddy. And women are just clamoring to jump into bed with you. What a joke. I’ve had no contact with him for 6 months now and feel very free.
Anyway, love your blogs!
To Canadian: This sounds suspiciously like the Narcissist I describe in comment 65…yours isn’t from New Jersey is he?! If not, perhaps a relative, or someone from the same frat house.
I had a very close friend named Earl in college who was the nephew of my neighbor Quida. I would talk to him on the phone from time to time but we now lived in different states and I hadn’t heard from him in a while.
My mother called me one day. It was one of those calls she made every month or so because someone told her mother’s were supposed to call their children. She rattled on about her bridge club and what we were going to do for Thanksgiving. As she was about to hang up she said,
“Oh, Quida told me to tell you that silly Earl killed himself.”
To Laura…no not the same guy. This person I knew was not good looking and not that bright either. He would be considered a low-functioning somatic narcissist I would think. There are so many different types out there!
My then married brother had an extramarital affair with a married woman for around 10 years. Both marriages finally failed and after a time, they got married. At first, I thought we were going to be friends, but as time has gone by, I have found her to be extremely competitive and jealous. An example: I brought a dip to a family gathering and my brother made a fuss about how great it was, and the next thing I know, she is scolding me about how I don’t need to bring food to everything. About six months into knowing her, she began shooting passive-aggressive arrows at me just about every time I encountered her. My brother invited me to go with them and my nephews and their wives to their lake cabin for the fourth of July weekend. Initially, my brother and I were to ride together and she was to come later with some of the kids. My brother called and asked me to run some errands him that morning, which I was happy to do. Suddnely, everything changed, and she was riding with us. It was as though she was jealous that he had asked me to do the errands, and couldn’t stand for him and me to have any time together. Once we got to the lake, she embarked on a campaign of getting up and moving away from me any time I sat next to her in the boat, on the beach, and even once at the kitchen table, going so far as to pick up her plate, silverware, and drink to move to the other side of the table. After about the fifth time, I knew it was intentional. It was a miserably long weekend. As her children and my brother’s children have begun having children, she has become very obsessive about, possessive of, and territorial about of “her” grandchildren and has begun excluding me, my sister, my dad, and my step-mom from gatherings where the babies will be. Recently, my nephew, one of my brother’s sons, was in the hospital emergency room, so we all converged on the hospital in the ER waiting room. My other nephew’s wife was there with their new baby, and my brother’s wife was holding him and bouncing him very vigorously in an attempt to get him to go to sleep, even though he did not seem sleepy. Finally, he went to sleep and all the other visitors had headed to my nephew’s room to visit him. As she and I were walking down the hallway toward his room, she looked at me and said, ‘I got K—– to go to sleep. That way, no one can take him away from me. I’m smart that way.”
Wow. She sounds absolutely frightening. I would stay away from her.
I dont know what is wrong with you and your husband that you tried to torture this lovely woman by completely ignoring all of her obvious “cues.”
But seriously, the good news is that you guys are both in therapy. It will be your only way to exit all the future indecipherable mazes she designs. And there will be more. So good luck to you both.
Where can I get a hold of this guys resume? I think I need to keep his name on file for any future job openings. Thank you for alerting me to such a superior talent.
I LOVE that remark. What a great one-two punch. Hilarious.
Yes, I will be staying away from her, but unfortunately, it is because this situation has escalated and alienated me and my brother, which I think was her plan. She has thrown elaborate birthday parties for all her relatives and I have gone to every one and taken a gift, but when my b-day rolled around, nothing, not even a call (and it is on a holiday, so it is easy to remember). Late this year, when several of my family members’ b-days rolled around, suddenly, there was an e-mail from her saying they wouldn’t be doing b-days for the rest of the year, but would re-group after the first of the year (when all her family members’ b-day occur). My dad’s 79th b-day is Monday, and because they did not do anything for him the last two years, my step mother and I organized a party for him and also for my nephew, whose b-day was last month. We did not invite the sister-in-law’s two sons who live in the state because my step-mom was paying for the meals and wanted to keep the count down and also because I barely know them and they are not close to my dad, and also, as I mentioned in my earlier post, they often have parties where the kids and babies are invited, but we are not, so I didn’t see this as being any different. Also, when you invite her sons, you can’t tell for sure how many people will be coming, as there is a girlfriend who could potentially come along, etc. We only invited my dad’s and step-mom’s immediate children, granchildren and great grandchildren (and spouses), a predictable and controllable number. The invite went out per an online invitation service and invitees could see the guest list (hindsight is 20-20). When she saw that her sons were not invited., she e-mailed and asked me if I wanted her to invite them. At first, I was so taken aback that she would challenge our guest list that I didn’t answer, but talked to my step mother again, and she still did not want to invite them, so I finally responded by telling her that on this particular event, we had made the decision to keep it at immediate children, etc A couple of hours later, I received an e-mail addressed to my step mom and me from my brother saying that he no longer wants to associate with us, as we had “drawn a line in the sand” and “deeply hurt” his wife and created a “family chasm”. It was obvious she had plead her case to him and he had taken up her cause. He also said that he would be printing off a copy of my answer to his wife and giving it to my dad when he dropped off his gift and explained why he wasn’t coming to the party. My “gut” on this is that it had nothing to do with her sons not being invited, and everything to do with someone else taking control of a party and being successful at it, but the fact that her sons were not invited gave her an avenue through which to manipulate and destroy. Because of the damper this put on the party, we made the decision to cancel it. I have since received very critical comments from both my nephews, who clearly had heard the “whole story” and had been incited prior to talking to me, and am now officially the “wicked witch” of the family. My dad, however, is not upset with me and says that we had the right to invite who we wanted to and that they should not have “taken on” our guest list. While I think we had the right to invite who we wanted, our decision proved to probably not be very wise, as a feud. has erupted My personal opinion is that they should have respected the guest list and either just accepted or declined our invite. .I am left feeling very, very bad, because now, the situation is that my dad and his wife will be going to dinner alone, when all he really wanted was the people he loves around him.
AN ISRAELI NARCISSIST TAKES THE LEAD!
Here’s a set of examples from an article in the N.Y. Times that are hard to beat:
“Police on Monday seized a book of rules written by a Tel Aviv man for his 17 ‘wives,’ hours after he was arrested on charges including enslavement and rape.Goel Ratzon, 60, allegedly subjected his family of 17 women and 38 children to strict disciplinary measures – but has claimed they lived with him of their own accord.
The code of conduct sets out fines to be levied for each infringement. Regulations include:
1. No women shall marry nor shall any woman attack another, either verbally or physically. Fine: 2,000, to be paid into the family kitty.
2. No woman shall question another about her whereabouts. Fine: 100
3. No conversation is permitted in rooms other than the living room. It is forbidden to talk nonsense. Fine: 200
4. No woman shall sit idle when there are dishes to be washed, cleaning to be done, children to look after etc. Fine: 2000
5. Any two women caught fighting will be punished equally. Fine: 2,000
6. It is absolutely forbidden to question Ratzon on his whereabouts or intention. Fine: 400
7. It is permissible to ask to accompany him; but refusal is to be accepted without appeal. Fine: 300
8. No woman shall interrupt Ratzon or intervene in matters not concerning her. Fine: 500
9. All orders are to be obeyed immediately. Fine: 300
My friend told this story about a couple he’s known who were having a big fight.
Guy : I can no longer stand you and your ego. Just so you know, your ego is as big as the universe!
Woman : Are you kidding me?! My ego is the universe!
Here’s one from my roomie for five years when she used to ramble when she’s extremely exhausted from work : “I need to temper my megalomania. I’m starting to override my Ops manager and I’m starting to think that nobody else has brains outside my direct reports. I need somebody to knock me off my pedestal. I think I’m starting to unravel and the world will not revolve if I’m not the one doing the spinning. I just found out that a friend is HIV positive and I kinda wished I’m infected as well so I have something else to think about other than what’s going on in my head.”
ive had a hard month. wondering how common my problem is, i googled both
“my mom” and “my mother” with
“broke up with me”
not much there, but check out the transcript of the taped conversation at http://www.mombu.com/medicine/psychology/t-sanity-or-family-2390531.html
I hope this is of interest. Also, if you learn much about “borderline personality disorder” you’ll see that a lot of moms have no good intentions toward daughters.
You all have my fond good wishes. Thank you so much Merrill for this forum.
I’ll give you good quotes when i’m a bit more healed.
xxx Jay
Jay:
Having your mother break up with you must be very upsetting. But it certainly is a great topic for a funny essay. I have read quite a bit about borderlines and borderline mothers . I recommend the book Borderline Mothers (http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Borderline-Mother-Unpredictable-Relationship/dp/0765702886) which breaks them down in to certain types. Despite the fact that at least three different chapters seemed to be a portrait of my mother, I still found the book really informative.
“What is wrong with you?”
“It’s for your own good.”
“I keep telling you what to do and you can’t follow simple instructions.”
“Why can’t you be like ME?”
“Look at this stupid, stupid, stupid computer.”
“Keep your mouth shut!”
A narcissist will persecute their own innocent children in front of the stranger that just lied to the narcissist without allowing their children to speak their side of the story.
“I don’t care about your feelings!”
“Do as you are told.”
Merrill: Understandable your mom would fit into different types. My reading on the topic suggests that the volatility continually makes em vacillate between goddess, cold bitch and witch.
here’s an online quickie from: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/455531/the_hysterical_mother_when_borderline.html?cat=72
The most common personality disorder is Borderline Personality Disorder, or BPD. Some Borderlines are called narcissists. Some are called addicts. Most are called “that crazy bitch.” All of them may be true at times, but mostly, Borderlines are just lonely, detached, hurt, and confused.
BPD originally got its name from its wide range of symptoms – it seemed to border on many different illnesses. Sometimes a Borderline will act like she has multiple personalities. He will be warm and loving one minute, then hateful and cold the next. She will have episodes where she appears to feel no emotion at all, like a psychopath, and may engage in self-destructive behaviors to try and bring herself back to reality, like a depressive. Also like a depressive, he might threaten or attempt suicide more than once. Like a schizophrenic, she may become paranoid. Like a narcissist, he seems to focus on his own feelings at the exclusion of everyone else’s.
All of this stems from a common source: an unstable image of self and others. Real connections are difficult or impossible to make. Peoples’ emotions, especially their own, are a mystery to Borderlines.
It’s bad enough to suffer from these symptoms alone. How could a Borderline woman raise a child?
Unfortunately, they often do. Lacking the important connection they should have made to their mothers when they were infants, they seek to repair that connection somehow by having children of their own. But they never learned how to make that connection. Somehow, whether physically or emotionally, they will make themselves unavailable to their children. Thus, the cycle continues.
Maybe it’s wrong, but I just joined a facebook group in order to make a comment undermining it.
The group has a long name. It’s called, no kidding:
“Mom, make me some food?” “Get it yourself.” “Nevermind, I’m not hungry.”
Is that funny? Many think so: theyre working up to 2 million members.
Having a mean selfish mom takes something out of the old funnybone.
Or maybe something about this group sucks.
I posted this:
it’s possible to be mean and selfish without even meaning to. Which is a shame.
There IS such a thing as emotional hunger. What are you waiting for,does the kid have to call your secretary to set an appointment for a heart to heart talk?? FEED THE KID! Or say, “cmon let’s make something _together_.” Or, “honey, I’d love to but I just cant right now. Could you be a hero and make snacks for us and your brother?” Or “Is there something you might be able to fix we could enjoy with the dog?” and/or:” Do you have the pizza number?”
Get it? If not, research it. Or stop calling yourself Mom
[On the other hand,my fellow Merrill Markoe Maniacs, the object of Buddhism has been said to be weaning yourself.
Wise words. I say we mother each a bit, too. Like Merrill is helping us do by having this forum xxx Jay]
deedee, well told. wow. if your brother hadnt been married, think she would have noticed him?
take your dad out and celebrate whenever you can.
The last time I had dinner with my mother, we were at the prophetically named “The Black Cow,” my favorite little restaurant in Montrose. Mid-bite, sitting across from me, she matter-of-factly saw fit to share (sans prompting): “If I could do it all over again, I never would’ve had children. What a waste of 20 years of my life.”
My thought: “Check, please.” That was 10 years ago. Haven’t seen her since.
My older brother has NPD. One of his younger stupider friends also has NPD. They conspired to kill me by suicide but i knew about NPD. i also know a stupid n in the town i live in. i have a ton of stories but you may like this one. The n lets his dog out and some lady brings it back to his house. The n says she chastised him for it but for sure he misinterrepted whatever she said as critisism. he has a border named Al who was sleeping in the basement. Al gets up and the n blames al. Al says “whose dog is it?” Al says Who let the dog out?” Al says “who is responsible for the dog?” the N’s reply was ” you let him out yesterday”. My brother’s first wife was jumping someone else. This is back in the 70’s. he says to me that there should be a law against somebody screwing another’s man’s wife. This simply means that their should be a law against somebody screwing ‘his’ wife. My brother is a buffoon and has attempted to kill me at least 4 x’s. i am at the point in my life that all you can do is laugh at these idiots and how incredibly stupid N’s think the rest of the world is, yet have massive feelings of inferiority. They actually think that they are God’s (can you imagine) and all we are are objects. this worm where i live in Ontario is a real piece of work. i am not kidding when i say that he actually pouts like a little kid when he doesn’t get his own way. When he does this i just want to punch him but if i do i will never stop. i got this one back but he is real stupid. the other goon is normal stupid and i can get him to. the real challenge is my brother. Everybody loves him but i am slowly exposing him by faxes to his office. i am probably responsible for his heart attack. He is a jealous, envious, coward,liar thief cheat braggart, slander, bully, and every other despicable trait humans hate. he has them all and plays his nice card beautifully. This is a big hammer for N’s especially NPD.
Good lord, Murray. Stay away from that brother. And with the money you save on gas (to say nothing of sedatives, aspirins and alcohol to recover from the time you spent with him,) invest in a therapist. You’ll never regret it.
this one is a classic. We were arguing on the phone. This was before i knew he was a narcissist but after i really found out what he was like and discovered what a coward N’s are. He is talking about something that happened when we were teenagers. He is talking about the past. I respond by talking about this topic in the past. “are you sitting down?” His reply was “sure bring up the past”. ha ha ha ha ha ha/ These N’s are true Buffoons. It is amazing and no wonder that they think they are so much smarter than us. I often wonder how stupid they think we are.
i am 61 my buffoon brother will be 65 or 66 in June. This happened about 15 yrs. ago. He said to one of his “rounder salesman acquaintenace” You’re lucky to know us. Us being me also. This guy is such a buffoon. on another page i mentioned how stupid N’s must think we humans are. i just watched oprah Feb. 1st. 2010 about appreciative bosses. i worked for or with my brother and to repay my genorosity (working for free) he wrote deals and didn’t pay me, wouldn’t allow me to go on sales calls and the list goes on. It is true that the more you do for an N the more they despise you. I am convinced that they are not from our planet. i am the guy that my brother tried to kill 4 times. i don’t really mind somebody trying to kill me but do it like a man. My brothers’ attempts were: at 3 yrs. old left me at the only deep end of a swimming area. encouraged me to touch a electric wire running from the barn to the chicken coop. Fired an arrow at me when i wasn’t looking at my back of course I just happened to turn around and ducked, I think he said oops, and the last attempt was by his goon N which really gives you an insight to how they can drive you to suicide. This stuff on the internet is not enough. That their are buffoons like this walking around on our planet imposing their wishes on us is wrong for 2 reasons. There are not many of them compared to us and allowing these buffoons to get away with what they feel is accecptable behavior has to stop. i think the minor N’s are just as bad as the major N’s.(Malignant) the little n’s pave the way for the big N’s to get away with their atrocities
I dated a man a couple of years ago who snored so loudly that I couldn’t sleep in the same bed with him, even if I wore earplugs. He broke up with me by sending me an email that included a list of many of my many faults, and of course one of them was that the snoring kept me from sleeping in the bed with him. Last year I heard that he got married.
He also accused me of wearing a T-shirt of his one night at his house without asking him. The first night I stayed there I asked him if I could wear one of his T-shirts (he had several drawers full) and he said I could keep it, but when I wore it several weeks later he had forgotten that he gave it to me. After that night I washed it and left it at his front door.
Another of my many faults was that he found me too negative, whereas he was an optimist, even though the topics of conversation he brought up, like dredging up past memories, were depressing to me and I tried to change the subject to more pleasant things. And since he had also experienced depression in the past I expected him to have some empathy when it came to emotional issues, but it seemed to elude him.
Apart from being a narcissist, he was also a recovering alcoholic and strip club addict who had substituted food for those addictions.
Well, those are some classics. Damn. He’s married. A usual, all the good ones are taken!
When in his presence I felt like I was a small satellite in orbit around a large planet.
This one’s simply “touching”: Barb(separated for over 7 years, divorced for 1.4 years) lives with her 21-year-old daughter Sammy, a college student, whom Barb has brainwashed into hating her father, Bob. Barb’s mother (Sammy’s grandmother) has recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and Barb sobs desperately to 21-year-old Sammy, “I feel so alone. I was there for Bob when his father died. It’s just not fair that I have to go through this all alone, by myself. I wish it was me that had the cancer.”
And Sammy didn’t go “Ahem. Mom. At the risk of seeming petty during a difficult time….You’re not entirely alone. I’m under the impression that I’m sitting right here.”
Unfortunately no. Later, Sammy sighed to a friend, “It’s so sad seeing mom cry & having to deal with this all alone. I feel so bad for her. I *HATE* Bob for doing this to us.”
I have a hunch though, that Sammy will one day wake up, realize the truth, and then have to deal with that…all alone.
Said by my husband’s ex-wife to their 15 year old son, in desperation at his decision to stay with my husband and I for a few extra days ‘without her permission’:
“The longer you stay there, the more you will be punished when you get home.”
When this didn’t work she tried
“I don’t want you to come home because I’m forcing you, I want you to come home because you want to – and if that means being punished somehow then so be it.”
When he still refused to return she criticised my husband for not supporting her, telling him that it’s her right as a parent to discipline their child for his ‘bad behaviour’, (seeing his Dad) and that he wasn’t helping the situation!!
Take note – the previous month she had sent him to stay with us for his usual weekend but secretly went on holiday abroad without telling us and without making any contact with any of us until her return 2 weeks later. Even then all she did was order their son’s immediate return.
Wow, that sounds like the worst combination of narcissistic, delusional and sadistic. Lately I have been thinking of little kids being raised in bad households as hostages. This certainly has that ring to it. That poor kid.
She is all of those things, yet we didn’t even realise she had npd until a year ago. Her behaviour has always made so little sense that until then we just had her down as thick (amongst other titles). Their poor child is still suffering now. Even though he was beginning to understand that she has a mental illness, she has now managed to convince him that we are only using him for financial gain (because we wouldn’t pay her child support when she went on holiday and left him behind) and has persuaded him to cut down the time that he spends here ‘to protect him from us’.
My dad had recently told my mom he wanted a divorce. She was devastated and could hardly eat or do anything. She was so depressed. When Mother’s Day came, he brought her nothing. She cried and asked why he didn’t get her a card or flowers. “You’re not my mother,” he said.
My former husband and I lived in married student housing and were full-time students in our mid to late twenties with a toddler son when this interchange occurred…
Him: “I think I’m going to take off my wedding ring because people (ie: young, female co-eds) treat me differently when they find out I’m married.
Me (after much thought and NOT blowing an emotional gasket): “You know, people treat ME differently when they find out I’M married, too. I think I’ll take mine off too.”
Him: “Oh, alright, I’ll wear it !!! “
Hilarious. But hard to believe a marriage like this didn’t stand the test of time!
Well, time to start figuring out just the right thing to get him for Father’s Day.
Yep, the same guy who came home from a business trip and wanted me to watch the video he had made of him oil wrestling with near naked women…all at the company’s expense, of course!
I’m thrilled to have come across your website! I have a million of the “darndest” things he said or did over the years. More to come!
Hold on a sec… Sounds like Jill’s mom might be manipulating Jill. Jill’s mom is *not* Jill’s dad’s mother. (Granted, his estranged wife *is* the mother of his daughter, but rarely do estranged or divorced people exchange Mother’s Day/Father’s Day cards & gifts.) Jill would be the one to celebrate Mother’s Day with her mom. Jill’s mom’s reaction to the divorce—”devastated, could hardly eat or do anything, depressed”—are not behaviors that Jill’s mom should be acting out in front of her daughter. If the mom’s mood disorder is that severe, she should see a therapist instead of dumping it all on her daughter. Parental Alienation is the weapon of choice for narcissists in high conflict divorces. Could be that Jill’s dad dumped a narcissist. I wouldn’t be to fast to jump to conclusions on who the real narcissist is in this situation. Jill deserves to keep her relationship with both parents. Jill’s father is not divorcing Jill, & her mother should want to support & nurture the relationship between father & daughter.
The ones that jump to mind immediately are:
1) One xmas eve my mother visited my cousin to deliver some presents. She couldn’t find a parking space, so she just left the car in the middle of the (one lane) road. No other cars could get past because she’d completely blocked the road with her car. After about an hour, the police knocked on the door, justifiably annoyed because they’d had to knock on doors up and down the road to find out whose car it was. The police officer who spoke to my mother said to her “How could you do such a thing? What if an ambulance had needed to get past? You could have killed someone!”. My mother’s response was to scream furiously “How dare the police talk to me? I’m not a criminal, I’m a RESPECTABLE MARRIED WOMAN!”.
2) She once said to me that, when my dad died (which was when I was little), she suddenly realised she had to make sure that my sister and I were safe. Up til that point, she said it wouldn’t have mattered if one of us children had died, because she could just have had another baby as a replacement. With no husband any more, this wasn’t an option, so, you see, she no choice but to get married again as quickly as possible.
3) One perfectly normal afternoon, with everyone messing about in the kitchen making cups of tea and chatting, she reached forward and gently tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear (I should have known by this utterly out-of-character act that something really vicious was coming). Then she looked into my eyes and said, in the sweetest and most loving voice, “You’ll die of cancer”. My jaw dropped and I just froze in place. I couldn’t move. She immediately got really annoyed and said “WHAT?? People like you ALWAYS die of cancer”. And then refused to elaborate. To this day, I have no idea what that was all about.
Wow. Those are three absolute stunners. Off hand, I would say there’s something else gone wrong here besides just simple narcissism. I’m glad you made it safely out of childhood and are alive and sane enough to be examining what happened. Because YIKES.
My ex-wife got very good at putting on a show for others. Staging arguments was her forte, but one of the best was her showing off the pile of presents to her friends she had gotten me for my birthday. She made sure we opened them after her friends had left and I found that a half full carton of oatmeal and whatever else she found in the pantry had been wrapped up for show because she thought “it would be fun for you to have something to open.”
There is no more festive and celebratory birthday gift than the gift of partially consumed oatmeal. Hard to believe this marriage didn’t work out!
My father missed his plane to my grandmothers funeral. He called to say he wouldn’t be in on the 7 PM flight, he would arrive at 8:45 on the next one. When asked what happened, his response was “They seem to think I was late.”
Good Lord, I love that. These airlines with their so-called “times of departure”.
So true. When I was dating my future husband, he constantly told me he loved me because “I made him nice.” I could never understand this statement. I had known him for years as a casual friend and, during our dating, he was mostly extremely nice–gallant even. I just thought he had been the victim of past relationships–women who could never love him as he was, a kind, lovable, quirky person. Granted, he went out with a few women friends late into the evening, but he convinced me that I was just being insecure and unreasonable. After our children were born, I discovered what he meant. He became a fairly violent person–while never hitting us, he did everything to perfect his emotional and verbal intimidation. Recently, our divorce was finalized. He refused mediation or even to talk with me about the kids. Since then, he has approached me saying I am the most wonderful woman he ever met. When I asked a few questions, I discovered that first, there is no remorse for driving his wife and two toddlers out of his home; and that he blames his “temporary” personality defects on a prior breakup.
My grandmother was a musician in the 1920s-1950s. She loved Big Band and Jazz style music, and family-friendly Hollywood musicals like the Astaire-Rogers flicks and Singin’ in the Rain. When she was dying and bedridden, I brought her four rented Hollywood musicals and sat with her for two days as we watched them together. It was a very special time to share with her. So where’s the narcissism come in? When my mother and aunt found out, they gave me dirty looks and said, “Why would anyone want to do that? How did you ever think of something like that?” Gee, I dunno, maybe to make her happy…
Last words from a college chum I finally gave up on after an incident where he threatened to send an email to my boss telling him what a rotten human being I was, because he was upset that I’d asked him not to contact me at work any more.
Him: “So, now that you’ve calmed down from last time, do you want to have lunch or something?”
Me: “No, I’d prefer no contact with you at all.”
Him: “Fine. Have it YOUR way. You always do!”
Well, i have to give her credit where credit is due: thats a very creative upbeat way to look at having a fatal illness.
This one was amazing. I was at a parent meeting at my child’s school. After the presentation was over the parents were discussing how little some of their children seem to share about their day at school. I shared that an early bedtime, and spending time with child in the quiet before she went to sleep, made it easy to gather the information of what was going on in her life.
OTHER DAD (interrupting loudly): Well, you’re not the KGB!
ME: No, but I’m interested to know what is going on in my daughter’s life. I care about her and want to know how she doing and what she is feeling. If she is…
OTHER DAD (interupting with the usual tone of disdain): Why would anyone want to know THAT?!
That’s pretty mind boggling. But what a portrait it also is of that other Dad’s own childhood!
When I graduated from high school, my aunts and uncles were kind enough to send me gifts. Of course, Thank You notes were in order, but my mother insisted on composing them herself, and then I was to re-do them in my handwriting.
My mother had no skill at all in this area, so I gave myself the poetic license to rework the notes so they would sound like a human being wrote them and not a machine.
Upon final inspection, she became enraged, tore the notes up, and snarled, “Why do you have to have a personality?”
My mother shouldn’t have had children, she should’ve just had a garden.
That is hilarious. I don’t know which line I like more…the one about the garden or the crazy one that came out of your mother.
This was from a person I should certainly NOT have dated for four years, but did. After it ended, I went through some health problems. There was one incident that was rather scary. I barely lived.
After I came home, I wrote to her describing what happened. She’d just moved to Boston to take a plum job working with an internationally famous poet. But she hadn’t found an apartment yet.
I made the mistake of asking why she hadn’t at least tried to call me. Her reply? “Maybe because I’m having to sleep on people’s floors right now, okay!? You just never think what other people might be going through, do you, Jeff?”
My father-in-law was describing his experience in the Korean War, “Of course, but that time I was a legend.”
Sorry, “Of course, by that time I was a legend.”
Another father in law story. When my husband and his sibs were small they lived in a series of foster homes in the Boston area. My father-in-law was living in NYC at the time dating a wealthy woman. He got a call from Boston saying that my brother-in-law (who was 4 years old at the time) had been badly burned. My father-in-law never let his son forget that if it hadn’t had to go back to Boston, he would have married the wealthy woman.
The Narcissist Mother says to her adult daughter (who, for 24 years after leaving “home” at age 16, lived within 15 minutes of her Narzi Mom & frequently saw her), “The main problem is [that] with you leaving home at 16, you don’t know me & I don’t know you and that is very sad.”
Oh, yeah…just how long does it take for a mother to know her daughter?
The daughter’s real crime was moving 1,000 miles away from the narcissist mom, being independent, speaking her mind, & not putting up with her mother’s BS.
Actual, honest-to-god true quote from Narcissist Mom’s email to her adult daughter: “The Best of times for me in recent years was when we bought the wide screen TV and your Dad knew he was dying.”
Same woman, 15 years earlier, became engaged in a heated argument with her adult daughter. The daughter was begging her mother to get her father into treatment for alcoholism since the father was drinking about 2 gallons of Scotch a week (no exaggeration) while downing Halcyon for insomnia. The daughter, frustrated beyond belief at her mother’s protestations finally screamed at her, “Mom! You’re killing him!” Narzi Mother screamed back, “It’s the only way I can live with him!”
The father died 2 years ago of esophageal cancer caused by acid reflux combined with excessive alcohol consumption.
A wild boar roamed into the garden of a narcissist I know. Admittedly it’s a pretty well kept garden with a pool. The boar wandered about a bit them ran off – as they do, They’re will animals for God sake. Reponse from the narcissist “Oh! our garden must be far too sophisticated for it and it felt out of place that’s why is ran off”. Hmmmm, you just have to question what’s going on up top with the narc to rationalise a situation like this in such a manner. I tell you, it was a real conversation killer – how do you respond to that!
Quote from when I told my mom I was pregnant:
Me: Mom, guess what… I’m pregnant!
Mom: Oh, I’m gonna be a grandma. Did I tell you that I lost my part time job?
Looking back on some things that happened when my ex and I were still together.
– I was about 6 months pregnant at the time. I was working full time (about 43 hours per week) plus a 2 hour commute to and from work each and every day. So by Friday night I was exhausted. He worked full time too. His job a 10 minute drive from home. I did all the house work most of the cooking, and the the nights when I was too tired to cook after a long 2 hour commute home from work and an aching back …. he’d simply say ” no problem” and a few minutes later I would hear the front door close, and his car pulling off. About 30 minutes later he’d be back with takeout from a restaurant. I’d join him at the table (this happened about 3 times) he would pull out a takeout box from the bag, open it and begin to eat. After noticing the bag had no other dinner and he only bought for himself I asked … “where’s mine”? He looked soo stunned and surprised and said “Oh, I didn’t know you wanted something too, you should have said something.” He proceeded to eat his dinner. The second time this happened I grabbed his dinner and took half of it. The third time this happened I grabbed his dinner and tossed it in the trash. He proceeded to call me crazy!
- I decided to hire a lady to come and clean the house once per week since I wasn’t getting any help from him. He made it clear that we didn’t need a maid and that if I wanted to hire one it would come out of MY pay not HIS. I hired her and she did a great job. He complained all the time about how it was a waste of money and if I managed my time better I wouldn’t need any help. Fast forward to a few years after the divorce. He’s still alone in the house (he threatened to kill me if I got HIS house after I had left him). Our daughter and I are living with my parents, I’m talking to my ex on the phone about visitation and what time he’ll be over to pick up our daughter. I hear a woman’s voice in the back ground.
Me: “who’s that?”
Ex: “Linda.”
Me: “who’s Linda?”
Ex: “hold on Deb.” (to Linda) “You can put those over there.” (to me) ” I’m back.”
Me: “Who’s Linda”?
Ex: “The cleaning lady.”
Me: “The cleaning lady ? I can’t believe you hired a cleaning lady after you gave me such a hard time when I hired one. Why can’t you do the cleaning by yourself like you told me remember? Why is it okay for you to hire a cleaning lady and not okay for me to hire one?”
Ex: “Cleaning the house was YOUR job Deb. It’s not MY fault that you couldn’t do your job.”
Me: I was so angry I hung up on him.
I can’t believe you broke up with a wonderful partner like this. I’m guessing he must have pointed out that apparently you don’t know a good thing when you see it!!
During a recent hospital stay, I told my N-husband of my (poor) progress: that I was still in a ton of pain… so the doctor came in, looked at my 12″ long incision and saw that I had developed tunneling wounds, fulled with pus… the stitches were actually coming apart from the pressure of the infection!! That they were giving me massive antibiotics, and think that they caught it just in the nick of time…
Without acknowledging anything I said to him, my N-husband went into his problems dealing with everything at home: taking care of the kids, making lunches, going to after school events, his job… when I pointed out that the doctor said I’d need to stay a few days longer than they thought because of the infection, he said “Well isn’t that just great… with everything I have to deal with, now you have to stay in here longer… great “.
I had a baby with an N, a big N. We did not live together. I brought the baby home from hospital 4 days after giving birth and he came to visit baby at my home and stay the night. Well, the midwives were there when he arrived, so he went out got himself dinner, none for me and without asking if I’d like anything. Complained once the midwives left that he wouldn’t have come over had he known I’d be so busy with the baby. Baby was having trouble nursing and had been in the special nursery so I was of course, exhausted. I fell asleep in the recliner with the baby. He went to bed and after I’d had a long night with baby, yelled at me that I hadn’t provided him with a blanket and pillow and he was just wasting his time sitting around with us when he had better things to do. Well, fool that I am the baby is now 9 months old and I have continued to see him on and off. I believe I have made a break for the last time a couple weeks ago, but I’ve said that a hundred times before.
Another fine example, I cut my hand with a knife and had five stitches in my finger a few weeks ago. I called him to ask if he could come by after work to help out. His response, help with WHAT? um, the baby, it’s difficult to bathe him when i can’t get my hand wet and I just got it stitched up yesterday. Him, Sorry I’ve got other plans, you’ll have to work through the pain. I thought you were maternal. Me, WTF?!?
He is off on a motorcycle trip now and before he left baby was sick with a chest cold, bad cough. I let him know he wasn’t well. He called the night before leaving and asked if it was “dire” because he didn’t want to look like an asshole by going a vacation when the baby was sick. Not because he was worried about baby, because he was worried about how he would look! He hasn’t called once to see how he is and it’s been almost two weeks. Blech! I hope I’ve broken the cycle this time.
Laurie: This is a really awful story. I don’t know what you think you like about this guy, but you really need to talk to a therapist to make sure you understand that there is nothing likable about him. There is a bigger reason to throw him out of your life, though. Your kid. It is just not fair of you to inflict a person like this on an innocent sweet well intended baby. Nothing good can come of it. Nothing. Get away from this guy. Seriously. Invest in a therapist. Get away from this guy and protect your kid.
I asked my Father to attend my college Graduation. He didn’t help with any of my upbringing past age fourteen so I worked my way through school and graduated with honors. Graduation Day came and went, no Dad. Then, months later I was summoned to his home. He’d NEVER think of contacting me but sent word via family to “come see me”. I told him I was hurt that he didn’t bother comming or supporting me. He replied that, “I wished you well in my own mind, sweetie. I had a nice few moments thinking that a part of me was graduating from college. I didn’t need to be there ’cause I had such great thoughts sitting right here at home. Oh, and by the way, I heard you planted a nice vegetable garden and are getting married. It’s about time you got your life together.”
One year later, my husband was overseas and I asked “Dad” to come and visit. I lived near the beach and knew he loved the ocean. He replied and said he’d love to come for a long weekend with just one catch; I had to leave so he and his girlfriend could have a romantic weekend.
Less than a year later, he told me I should have never been born, or if I had to be born, I could have at least been a boy so he could have enjoyed having a child. All while he was eating my food, driving my car and sleeping in my home. Yea, the home at the beach.
Needless to say, I banished him from my life and have never looked back. That was fifteen years ago.
Times aint easy whenever you are in or going through a relationship that has a partner with narcissistic personality disorder but sites like these help you to understand we are really not alone there is a whole wealth of sites like this one that will help you through and when your unsure what it all means try utilizing the narcissistic quiz found here narcissistic behavior
My son was in Iraq,fighting the war and he told his wife “the narcissist” over the phone (while in IRAQ) that he dreaded going out on his mission, (very danagerous). Her response to him was…Suck it up, Josh, that’s why you get a paycheck.
Two great quotes by narcissists in my life:
My mother, upon noticing when i was like 20 that i was “upset” about having been part of a child pornography ring when i was a toddler: “Don’t feel like you’re the only one – I know exactly how you feel. When I was pregnant with you, the doctor touched me.”
Christmastime, 8 months after a counselor I’d been seeing long term had passed away from cancer – I was going through a spell of grief, and two days after we lost our beloved family terrier. My supervisor at work, who I had unfortunately developed a close relationship with, knew that I was getting depressed and gave me all kinds of suggestions. When I said I didn’t think she understood, she said “Right. No one understands your pain and your trauma except for (my therapist). Too bad there’s no one who can help you.”
The idea of narcissism is something that i’ve only come across this past year, and I’m amazed to see the comments on this blog – I feel like there are really people out there who know what this is.
Sorry about your hideous childhood. And your therapist AND your dog checking out. That is all really awful. But yep…there are a lot of people who know what narcissism is. Since I haven’t mentioned it in a while, a great book to read is called “Why is it always about YOU” by Sandy Hotchkiss (and someone else.) It can be a confusing disorder and this book really sums it all up in a very comprehensible way. But there are a lot of good books on the subject. If you put the word Narcissism in to Amazon or any of the book sellers, you will see a TON of books. And a lot of them are helpful! And then their are the books on the Narcissism family of fun relatives: Borderline disorder, Sociopathy…its a big list. Reading this stuff is a great relief though. I recommend it!
My mother upon meeting my new beau.I am 39 years old at the time pulls out my VCE results.I did my high school diploma as an adult and got pretty good marks.She says to him”I keep this in my purse and show people because if they think Dee is smart they will think i am smart too.”He was astounded.
Yep. Your beau was right. THAT is astounding.