Narcissists Say the Darndest Things: Great Quotes by Narcissists
Posted in writing on November 25th, 2009 by Merrill MarkoeTags: assholes, egomania, narcissism, Narcissists, quotes
enter 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.
https://ragadamed.com.br/2024/09/18/uqrpf44199a 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 withhold any more criticism if she wanted me to show her anything else; “No more criticism? If I can’t criticize you, what am I supposed to talk about? The weather?”
https://trevabrandonscharf.com/eth1c3klno 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?”
follow site Okay: Your turn.
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https://traffordhistory.org/lookingback/go6nzeicf One of my favorites: When I graduated from college with two degrees – summa cum laude, valedictorian as well – and quite a bit to say about the experience, my friend, who was earning literally ten times what I was, invited me to celebrate the occasion at a pizza joint on Hollywood Boulevard. (Please forgive her, she was having financial problems: her teeth, her car, her cat, her . . . ) The tables were too small and greasy for me to exhibit my honors, but that didn’t matter: my friend spent the entire evening talking about herself. Then – this is cold! – she packed up the leftover pizza for her breakfast.
https://www.drcarolineedwards.com/2024/09/18/ras81c9id I saw you for the first time on Jon Stewart and immediately liked you and then slowly realized we have the same mother, which could explain the initial “like”. Basically, I can not wait to get your book!! I am the oldest of two brother’s and here are a couple of little vignettes:
https://www.thoughtleaderlife.com/k61ec4v31w I was very excited about a piece of music that I was learning and so I sang a bit (opera) to my Mother. Her reply? “Wasn’t that out of tune?” This from a woman who can not sing a note because she is, in fact, tone deaf and has said her whole life that she is tone deaf.
https://luisfernandocastro.com/0gzk6nc I told my little brother It wouldn’t matter if he were at the same time; Valedictorian of Harvard & Oxford, the Pope, the President or the guy who cures cancer because she will still find fault, so do what you want.
https://www.parolacce.org/2024/09/18/3evx42c On the eve of my brother’s heart surgery when he was 21 she actually said. “This bothers me more than it bothers you.” She said this to my brother, not to me. She was on her rotation of disliking a child that week and I was the child she was not talking to or looking at, which made the hospital visit really fun. (sarcasm)
https://www.thephysicaltherapyadvisor.com/2024/09/18/ltp5rzn6h There are just too many things… I did meet my mother in friend form 2 years ago and holy crap I learned a lot, I especially learned how to avoid both male and female jerks. The minute I feel a bit off about the person or if a cryptic word appears I now run. Bonus: I did get left with a wicked sense of humor though and my brother and I can really laugh it up which is probably why I love wit and great comedians.
follow url Yep. Very similar. You should read some of the billion narcissism books for sale. They are informative and so gratifying after growing up around this kind of stuff. “Why is it always about YOU” is one of my faves, but there are a TON of good ones. The more you know about how this stuff works, the safer you’ll be because you’ve been programmed to deal with people like this. You need to rewrite the software.
https://semnul.com/creative-mathematics/?p=fas59w10nl Bought your book and love your book! Such a breath of fresh air. It is so difficult to get people to realize that not all Mother’s deserve a Hallmark card with cutsie hearts and butterflies. When people find out that I have stopped speaking to mine (I simply could not take the complaining about people, both alive and dead and holidays on holidays anymore, not to mention the harsh critiques and lying; etc..) they stare at me like something is actually wrong with me. I then tell them to call an insane asylum and ask to speak to a patient: “Let me know how it goes because it is equivalent the to speaking with my Mother.” This explanation usually works.
Thank you for your book!
Here are a couple more goodies my Mother did that I usually repress.
Buy Valium From Canada My Grandmother, with whom I was close, died when I was in the 6th grade. My mother stood before me while hugging my brother and said. “Why would you care?”
https://everitte.org/kb6b82fr At 16 I was told that I couldn’t go to college. Why? I don’t know. Luckily I was good at ignoring the parentals.
https://vbmotorworld.com/ojrav01rr1t I got an almost full ride to college, my parents had to pay for my dorm. I took a job to pay for incidentals. My grandfather died my Senior year of high school and left my Mother some $. About every month while at college my Mother would say. “Good thing your Grandfather died so you could attend school.” I was close to him too. So, I finally went crying to my Dean every so often. About 2 weeks before my Sophomore year she called and said that she couldn’t pay for me to live anymore. As a result, I couldn’t move into the dorms, so luckily my boyfriend and his roommates let me stay with them. I was offered an opera role that fall but told the Director that I wasn’t sure I could come back to school. Luckily, everyone knew my Mother was pretty awful so I went to the President of the financial department and along with a witness to my Mother’s pyscho-ness & possibly my Director, I was emancipated and received a grant to continue at school. My 2 jobs helped as well. My mother apparently forgot she told me this and when I went home to get some things for my apartment, which she knew I was coming home to do, she pretended that she had said/done nothing and threatened me with the “You will no longer receive money from me if you do not behave.” line. I told her that I didn’t need her money anymore. Her reply? “You are not my daughter.” Disowning a daughter when she has her education paid for? Priceless.
Buy Valium Prescription Free Around my mid-twenties she began contact again. She was sending emails to me only it was to an email address that didn’t exist; therefore wasn’t me. Finally she got mad that I wasn’t responding and I told her that it wasn’t my email. She said “do not let it happen again!” (insert highly confused face)
https://technocretetrading.com/xk73k194p4j I flew from LA to St. Louis to work with my voice teacher. My mother insisted that I flew to Chicago and avoided visiting her during my layover, (which would be impossible unless I had a 12 hour layover) She even got my Father involved on that one. I told her that I in fact flew to St Louis direct. She refused to believe that the airline flew direct. THATS when I knew what a disillusioned complete nut job she was/is.
https://semnul.com/creative-mathematics/?p=a4cirblt0bv P.S. I have been studying narcissism for the better part of a year because I recently met my Mother in friend form, which caused me to crack open the books. I have been reading Sam Vaknin’s book, a narcissist, who wrote the Bible on narcissism and has many videos on the subject. I will check out your recommendation as well. Thanks again. 😉 Here is Sam’s site http://samvak.tripod.com/ which is searchable.
Also, love the Bugs Bunny escape door! So true. Your explanation of the N’s wanting conflict really opened my eyes to my friend and subsequently helped me to put the “friendship” into the correct perspective. Thank you for clearing up some things for me with your writings, I can now move forward. Grazie 😉
Great depiction of the eerily LA sky during fires.
https://www.drcarolineedwards.com/2024/09/18/wervmyg Well, everything about your story sounds awful except for your drive, your ability to transcend, your unstoppable talent and your spirit. Sounds like you are way on top of all this. That is exactly what you needed to do. Sorry you had to go through it all. It sounds crazy making as hell. But you did it. Congratulations! Keep up the good work!!
Buy Diazepam Next Day Delivery Uk I recently gave in to the inevitable and attended a birthday celebration for your humble narrator at a Chinese restaurant that my family likes. The food is good, the owners are quirky– when you are there for your birthday they make a big deal about it and even give you a little present, in my case a little gold statue of a poi dog (well, painted gold, anyway). So we’re enjoying a meal, my in-laws, my son, my wife and I, and my daughter finally makes an appearance with her theater friend and her mom. “Pushy Stage Mother” does not quite do the term justice for the lady in question– at least the legions of pushy stage moms have a bar they can jump over now. Of course, SOMEONE had to invite the newcomers to join us and so the conversation went from an obligatory happy birthday to a never-ending discussion about her attempt to get a small theater company going, her machinations as the producer of a local show, her daughter’s wonderful second career as a cosmetology student now that the progression of time had moved her from child actor to ingenue and they suddenly realized they might need a plan b, the gossip from the theater company she volunteers for, her health, her daughter’s prospects in acting, all the much superior Chinese restaurants she enjoys, and dance shoes. My wife’s brave sally into changing the subject was met with an icy glare, and when that conversational bon mot died down, she jumped right back into an anecdote about herself that had been cutoff midstream. The only highlight of the evening for me was surreptitiously pantomiming Seppuku with my butter knife to my daughter sitting to my left and trying to crack her up. My sense of relief when the fortune cookies showed up was palpable.
https://www.thephysicaltherapyadvisor.com/2024/09/18/za5jwvh Hi
https://www.fandangotrading.com/ouhn338 great stories. So many of them ring true with me. My wife seems to exhibit “narcissistic” characteristics. Here are a few traits.
go here 1. About every other week, my wife flies into fits of rage. During these periods of intense anger, my wife will scream at me, crying, calling me names, accusing me of being a horrible husband, telling me that there is something wrong with me, demanding that I go to a psychiatrist. I have tried to talk to her about them many times. At first, it would be during them — I would try to “fight back” by saying: “don’t talk to me that way” or “that’s not fair”. This would lead to an ever-escalating state of warfare and aggression by her part, usually in the form of stomping around, screaming at me from other rooms, locking the door and threatening suicide, and /or her spitting in my face, hitting me, and threatening suicide. During these fights, everything is on the table. The fact that she makes more money than me, that her family is better than mine, that my apartment was smaller than her four bedroom house when we met, that I don’t “understand” what it’s like to own a home — these and more have all repeatedly been said to me during her rages. Threats are also often made: that she will take the children away and that I will never se them; that she will divorce me; that she will hire people to kill me because her family has “ties” to organized crime. These rages will usually only dissipate after she leaves the room or home, sending me text messages and phone calls calling me the worst husband int he world and how horrible I make her life or crying and screaming at me through a locked door. During this time, I will repeatedly tell her that I am sorry. “WHY are you sorry?” “Sorry isn’t good enough.” “I’m so tired of this.” “You don’t care about me.” “Love isn’t enough.” This is followed by hours of her telling me why what I said was wrong, how it hurt her, and how I have hurt her before, and thorough questioning as to what I was thinking, what I was saying, and how I will make it all better so that it never happens again. During these talks, she never apologizes for spitting on me, or yelling at me, or telling me that I am a horrible husband. When I have suggested that she do so (at the beginning of this relationship) she would grow outraged, and the anger and bile would return. she repeatedly brings up the fact that I am just waiting for an apology from her and that she has nothing to be sorry for, and that I am psychotic because I believe that after fights in which someone calls someone the names that she calls me or does the things that she does an apology to the other person is in order.
https://livingpraying.com/lxt5ng7 I have repeatedly attempted to I try to talk to her about this, she tells me that I am responsible for her actions because I make her do those things because I make her so mad and hurt by my insensitive and horrible remarks.
Buy Diazepam Next Day Delivery 2. Any developments in my life, anything that happens to me, any reports by me of what I am feeling, inevitably and very quickly come down to how it affects her and what this *really* reveals about my *true* feelings for her. All relationships and time commitments that I have are subjected to a near immediate comparison to my relationship and commitment to her. She requires constant assurances of my love and commitment and constant acts of service to show her that I am on her side. Any questioning of this of any kind is met with fury and outrage that I would dare question why she needs what she needs. Oftentimes, baby voices are used. She reverts to a childlike state and baby talk, a state which is perfect for her: it prevents any real communication between us as equals or adults but allows her to continue to communicate her needs and demands.
https://everitte.org/2nmwhdl OK, I’ve written enough. It’s so hard to write these words, because I am constantly racked by self-doubt — maybe I am the one who is at fault for this. Maybe I deserve to be treated like this. Maybe I (not her) am the narcicistic one. She constantly tells me that I am a horrible person and that I am in need of therapy. Yet, the criticisms that she levels at me, in my mind, I’m constantly thinking — that’s YOU! Yet I say nothing, just nod my head, and tell her that I am going to get help, that I will be a better husband and partner.
Buy Diazepam Online With Mastercard And I’m not perfect. I see that I have made mistakes in the past and that my family isn’t perfect. My father is kind of an attention-hound himself and I think as selfless as he is in a lot of ways, he can be narcicistic as well. And I guess I can be too. I just don’t know what to do.
get link Oh yeah — one more thing. She’s pregnant. she did all of this stuff (a lot more of it) before the pregnancy but it has continued into the pregnancy with her becoming unhinged on a number of occassions and even at one point threatening to abort the baby before the cut-off time (now the threats have been to take the baby from me and move across the country and/or have me killed).
see url I am so fucking fucked.
click Okay…what you really have to do is get in to therapy. You can’t live like this without understanding what is going on. The personality you are describing certainly sounds like either malignant narcissism or borderline. But I’m not a shrink. I’m a comedy writer. I’m not the one to diagnose her. Therapy will explain to you exactly how much of what you’re experiencing is cause and effect . Also what you can and can not do to change things. Your life will be so much better once you understand how you wound up with someone like this. You need to know that so it doesn’t happen again. You will also need to know to offer help and supportto your kid who is, after all, going to grow up with this woman and have her/his entire personality shaped by interactions with her. As soon as the kid develops a personality of his or her own, this same behavior will repeat with him or her. So ask around. Find a therapist. Whatever it costs is worth it. You really need to do this. For once your wife is right (tho I think she will be surprised by what the therapist tells you.) If you have health insurance, it may pay for some of it. Meanwhile, go to Amazon or somewhere and type in the word Narcissism. Then buy some books and start reading. Most of the books are for sale used for mere pennies a serving. Information is your friend now. You need to know exactly how much of this you are provoking, and exactly how much you can effect. My guess is not much. But even knowing that will change how you react to it. Now that a baby is coming, you are in a very difficult position. You don’t want to abandon that kid. You may even want to get custody at some point. Get in to therapy. Go. Hurry. I am sitting here jiggling my leg and drumming my fingers on the table. Go. RIght now. Go.
watch Well, you’ll be happy — I went today, hours before I typed this. So I got THAT going for me . . .
https://boxfanexpo.com/imh7jqt But seriously — you totally keyed in on what it is that I am struggling with — is it me? Am I the narcissist and am I the selfish one? Is this some kind of Sixth Sense thing where at the end of the relationship, I realize that it’s me who has been fucked up all along and am causing all the drama? I think I know the answer — HELL NO. I think it’s just that I’m a fucking COWARD and stayed with her (and got deeper and deeper into this) because of that. But thanks so much. I fucking am so happy I read your site.
You must, must get some kind of camera/recording device installed…this way you have proof to get your child full custody later, that psychopath will fuck it up..I lived through this and you are in a cycle of abuse that is so hard to leave. NO you do not deserve this! These freaks will suck your soul and burn your bones…..get out of there as soon as you have secured proof, it’s very economical to do this these days with all the technology on our very phones….do this because you will watch it later from a 3rd person point of view and really be shocked…upload at work computer, burn on a disc and give a copy to a friend to hold on to. This is so much mental torture of course you start to believe it:(( talk to a lawyer asap..you must leave this marraige with your child…it’s only a matter of time til she strikes you unless you just forgot to tell us that already….ugh, so sorry, been there…there is help out there…
John,
WOW. I’m so sorry you are dealing with this. I am no expert on the field of narcissism but I do feel like I now possess a PhD in dealing with a severly narcissistic spouse. First, let me say that you questioning whether it is you or her is very, very common. I think we all asked ourselves that. Secondly, if you are wondering if you are the narcissist that is a sure sign that you AREN’T. They have absolutely no ability to look at themselves, evaluate their own behavior and take responsibility for what they do. I was you two years ago. I wondered what I did to provoke my ex N husband. He made me crazy. Toward the end (of my 20 + year marriage) I WAS crazy. The gaslighting, the blame shifting, twisting/distorting everything you say, turning everyone on you to make it YOUR fault… all of it. I lived that. I was just like you two years ago. I said and did things at the end that I’m not proud of but I can tell you that he was making me nuts. I was ques;tioning my sanity and my therapist told me in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t me. It’s called “reactive abuse” look it up. Everything your wife is doing and saying (what you described) is TEXTBOOK NARCISSISM. Like Merrill said, I can’t diagnose because I’m not qualified but I know what I lived with. I know it and it was narcissism. Your situation mirrors mine so very much – down to the last detail.
So glad you’re in therapy. Do what merrill said and read up on NPD and BPD. You will be shocked by how your wife’s behavior fits the profile. It’s like they all read the NPD manual and act out the script perfectcly.
Good luck and keep us updated here.
Actually I should have clarified it wasn’t even a trained therapist in narcissism that told me about reactive abuse. It was a christian counselor with an advanced degree in family counseling who told me that. My point is…he wasn’t a expert on narcissism but even he called the reactive abuse accurately and he was right. Look into it. Trust me, it’ll make you feel better knowing it isn’t you. Thanks.
I’m sitting here nearly two years later reading this, and I’m so glad you got into therapy. I could have easily been you, but my friends helped me see sense, and I got out before he got a ring on my finger.
I hope you’re well. I hope you and your child got away from her.
Setup: I worked full-time, supported us both, and paid his tuition.
Me: I do all the housework, grocery shopping, and cooking. I need you to pitch in. Maybe some vacuuming?
Husband: I don’t want to give up my privileges.
*Ba-boom ching!*
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine has a car wreck that wasn’t her fault. She received insurance money and had enough to buy a used car. So, she has her dad help her choose the car. And like a good father, he finds something that is practical and within budget.
So, a few months later, I can’t remember what it was, but the car has a problem and needs to be fixed. Brakes or radiator or something. Not anything that’s going to be noticed when you are buying a used car but certainly statistically probable that this problem would arise. Cars with a lot of miles on them will have have to be repaired from time to time. She comes over and is complaining about the problem with the car and how much it’s going to cost and that she can’t afford it. And she can’t with the job she has. The economy sucks even for those with college degrees. She says she tried to get her dad to help her and for whatever reason he was resistant. Then, she tells us (my girlfriend and me) that it’s his fault for advising her to buy that car. Because she took his advice to buy the car, and now it needs to be repaired, he should at least have the decency of helping her get it fixed. It’s one of those “Really?! Really?!” moments.
Her father did end up helping her.
I made a mental note that I should withhold any free advice to her or be subject to potential monetary liability. Or at the least, the shame and guilt that might be pressed upon me if my advice was taken and negative outcomes resulted. It’s rare that you are rewarded when advice works out in their favor.
Here’s what’s funny. My sister is studying for her doctorate in psychology and forwards an article out to my family about narcissists. This is several months after the car problem. That evening, having a good time drinking chardonnay, we (same woman, girlfriend, me) were discussing the narcissist article and we’re relating it to the behavior of my girlfriend’s mom. We all agree narcissists are hard to deal with and there’s rarely a solution. Even trying not to engage with one, like the girlfriend’s mom, can result in escalation.
In the conversation, I bring up an example of the type of person that is narcissistic is one who might accept the advice of someone on the purchase of a car and then when there’s a problem with it, blame the adviser and feel monetary consideration is justified. There was no disagreement from her. She didn’t notice that I had just related an instance from her own life.
Later, I asked my girlfriend if she had picked up on what I had done. She smiled and we laughed. A true narcissist will never remember or won’t ever reflect on their own bad behavior but can always spot it in others. Especially when they are on the receiving end of the offense, whether it’s real or perceived.
Another example, and I’m picking just one from my marriage: gave my wife diamond earrings one year for Christmas. And it was a paycheck purchase that the credit card companies will have to swallow when I declare bankruptcy eventually (fuck the banks, but that’s a rant for another thread). She was so disappointed in me for getting her such an inconsiderate gift because I knew she already had diamond earrings and what the hell was my problem for not being more conscientious of her feelings. I was made to feel I was an inconsiderate ass. She started berating me at the beginning of a 2 hour drive home, so I was her captive. And, I was driving so I couldn’t jump out of the car. Yes, I could have pulled over but then this whole thing would be public and might drag out longer. I’d prefer my dramas to take place privately.
Our marriage lasted 22 months. I decided that no amount of guilt or sense of failure was going to keep both us unhappy. I recognized early (but not soon enough) I was powerless over her lack of sense of well-being. Even if I did everything that she requested I do in order to bring satisfaction and joy to her life, it wouldn’t be enough and there would be another demand to be met. Thank God I didn’t get her pregnant. I got that knot untied. My prediction was correct. Four years later, I am happier on a day-to-day basis being out of her life and from what I understand (I run into her brother from time to time), she is still unhappy with hers and all of the bad things that continue to happen to her.
It’s tragic because she will probably continue to be miserable in a blessed life thousands of others would be envious of.
(trigger warning: discussion of suicide and self-harm)
are you guys ready for a traumatic, serious, “real life” example of narcissm?
when i was a teenager, i was very depressed and troubled. after a fight with my mom, i downed a bottle of aspirin and prednisone and washed it down with rum. i was scared and called my dad (he’s a physician and was working out of state at the time) and told him what i’d done, and he demanded that i have my mom take me the hospital.
my mom rolled her eyes and huffed and puffed in the car about how my “little situation” was ruining her plans for the night. tapped her fingers, sighed loudly, all of the fun passive-aggressive mannerisms. she couldn’t have been more annoyed that her daughter just overdosed! when we arrived at the ER, she was embarrased to discover that the attending physician who was um, saving my life, was a colleauge of my dad’s. i’ll never forget this. she told me, as i lie in the ER having my stomach pumped, “i can’t belive you did this on a night that dr. so-and-so was working. of all nights. thanks for making our family look bad.”
That’s a very sad story. I hope your folks put you in to therapy because it would be great for you to get some smart advice about how to better deal with your mother. She is always going to be that person. She’ll never change but you should. It’s totally up to you to learn how to be the one who is on your own side. Once you know a lot more about what is really going on with your family, you can lead yourself to a better life. Do it.
I check this thread every few months, and always think I must have something to share, but my father tended toward subtle undermining that requires a lot of backstory.
But I think I have a good candidate.
When my sister was 3, my father took her and my grandmother (mom’s mom) out shopping. My sister made the mistake of behaving like a child (he haaaaaaated that), and he kicked her. kicked. A 3-year-old child. In public. But that’s not even the point.
My grandma quit speaking to him at that moment. Never said another word to him as long as she lived, which was a good long while.
HE NEVER NOTICED.
That’s hilarious. It was worth waiting for!! What a great guy. Your mother really knew how to pick em. By the way….he sure doesn’t sound so subtle in THIS story.
Yeah – he didn’t throw temper tantrums often, but when he did, someone was getting kicked. I once asked my mom why she married him and she said “nobody else asked me,” which of course is a totally excellent reason.
When my infant niece was diagnosed with leukemia, I came home from the hospital in tears, convinced that my brother’s child would never have the chance to grow up. My (ex) husband, seeing how upset I was, said “So, how will this affect my schedule?” [note: she’s 22 years old now, going to college, and he’s someone else’s douchebag now]
Great stories. Me, was a typical teenage boy. Contact sports, bad hair, loud music.
One day I come home from a rugby game with a badly separated shoulder. I approach Mom with the news I need to go to the hospital.
Her: “Jesus Christ, William. I told you not to play that sport. Get yourself to the hospital.”
Me: …
Yeah. It just so happened that a friend was passing by in his car. Not a good friend, mind you, but a solid guy. I flagged him down and *he* drove me to the hospital, sat around with me, even notified the Dr. that I was going into shock. Sometime later, now medicated and lying on a gurney, dear old Mom walks into the Emerg to do her thing.
Second: we’ve got a fabulous extended family and have recently lost the matriarch. These people are wealthy, worldly and have had a huge impact on a great number of people in their profession and public/philanthropic lives. They are lions with golden hearts and not one single air about them. You want something, a trip, advice, a contact name, just ask… Just *ask*. And I have. Never one string attached. So we have a yearly reunion, and at various times my finances have not been the most stable, so a plane ticket has been forthcoming. Or tickets for my wife and kids. Now we are good, and get there ourselves. Mom? Not in the same spot. However, she refers to having to let the family know her interest in attending as “bending at the emperors knee.” Or begging. Or “he has so much money, he *should* know what I want.” Yeah, because wealth bestows telepathy upon you, among other things, like X-Ray vision and super strength.
My bro, my sis and I are simply flummoxed.
Merrill, I could fill your comments section with tales of serious madness.
Your Mom’s behavior is pretty typical of this personality disorder, I guess. Which doesn’t make it less shocking. And by now you understand that your mother is totally hopeless. But how great is it that you have this wonderful extended family? That is really wonderful to hear. So at least you weren’t totally and only stranded with Mom.
Oh yea. Seriously typical. Also, you have lay on a thick coating of martyr syndrome. It’s like wandering around blindfolded with unexploded ordinance all over the place.
Can’t hange her – heck, can’t even reason with her – just have to limit the amount of exposure to noxious behaviour. One of my oldest friends calls this method of parental handling “relationship management…” Love it.
Looking forward to reading your book.
…and thank you for the reply!
My mother is famous for this one, “I don’t want to fight with you about politics, but…” and then she will proceed to spew something deliberately inflammatory. When I begin to rebut, she quickly interrupts, hand raised in the “stop” position, and says “I told you I don’t want to argue about this.” Translation: “Here’s my opinion designed to piss you off, but I categorically deny you the opportunity to respond.” Infuriating, though I no longer bite.
A classic: Thirty or so years ago while my siblings and I were in high school/college, my dad took a business trip to Spain, and she dispatched him to the Lladro factory to buy one of those bride and groom wedding cake toppers for my sister and me to use at our future (ultimately imaginary) weddings. When my brother announced his engagement in 2003, she quickly volunteered that they should have the special Lladro wedding cake topper for their cake (insert public digs about my sister and me being unmarried in our late 30s/early 40s). The next year was spent planning the wedding with Mother focusing on all the ways that she would be featured in the festivities (groom walks her down the aisle, her lighting a candle on the altar in remembrance of deceased husband, her table in proximity to the bridal table, number of pictures taken of groom’s family, mother of the groom dance, etc.). So once the wedding is over and we are now all partying at the reception, she got bored (because there was nothing else planned where she would have an audience focused on her) and left early, yes before the wedding cake was cut. It was pretty damned rude, but here’s the unbelievable kicker. She took the goddamned Lladro wedding cake topper with her! So when the bride and groom approached the cake table to cut their cake in front of their 200 guests, there is a GIANT HOLE where Mama made sure she got her final “appearance” in.
WOW. That is a good one. LJ, seems like you have some healthy perspective on her and the situation, but damn, taking the cake topper? Just wow.
That is fantastic. It does my heart good to hear a completely perfect story like this. Congratulations. Your mother didn’t miss a single opportunity for self aggrandizement. She’s kind of a narcissism story genius.
Hi Merrill. This is cool what you’re doing. Here’s my weigh-in, and yes, I just recently got back into therapy:
There’s the kid stuff: the I-sprained-my-ankle story in which my mother walked into the house to find me icing said ankle (which was HURTING) and said get that ice bag off my rug! OR the full-on anxiety attacks I had in my mother’s presence while a young adult, during which she went off on me for ruining her time at __________Ristorante and _________’s Joynt and attributed those attacks solely to my having done LSD one time in the past (flashbacks, duh), when it was just her actual presence that was freaking me the fuck out, OR the fact that one time, 25 years after I took it upon myself as a 13 year old to walk into the living room and stand between my mother and her crazed, 357 Magnum-wielding then-boyfriend, my mom says (in response to me asking for some acknowledgement that the event was a bit traumatizing back then), “Oh. Yes. That. Now, that was Fred for you. You should just be pleased that…you showed such strength. He was afraid of you (said with pride).
Flash forward to a month ago. I make the trip to her house to tell her my father, aka the creep that ruined her life, had died, she looks away wistfully and says I knew it, with an upsettingly mild delivery.
In the aftermath of that visit, I was surprised I had still expected her to have a “human” interaction with me over this. Neither of us liked the old bastard, and I don’t know, I’d hoped for some kind of connection- or full-circle emotional release or SOMETHING. As per usual, she was simply taking the credit for knowing.
Yeah, I survived all the hitting, rage, and threats, guilt, and shame–even the no-apologies (not ever, not once), as well as the no-hugs, and the no I-love-yous. And now, after living almost my entire life in that shadow, my understanding of her has shifted just enough to get out from under it. I survived with humor. When I got the old bitch to laugh, I was golden for a second. What a sweet second that was. Check the website link above for a sample of my humor, which I think you’ll enjoy, based on your commentary about character makers like Wiig and Hader.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=rvFUKf-wUcQ
If you have only one minute to watch this video, please start at 2:14.
THANKS FOR BEING SO RAD
Woah! Just dug out this one from 2005. Phone call with mom. Our Water (broke). Sick like Wiig.
http://youtu.be/TuqZLuZWYcU
Please watch! It addresses the topic at hand.
In the late 1970s, a woman I had met in church told me that her ex-husband had sexually abused their children. “When I found out that he was having sex with the kids, the first thing I felt was a huge sense of relief,” she said. “He was always putting me down for not having been a virgin when we got married. He made me feel so rotten about myself. It was a big relief to find out that he was doing far worse things than I ever did!”
Several years later, I turned on a tv talk show and was shocked to see that same woman, with one of her now-adult daughers. The program was about the horror of child sexual abuse. “What did you feel, when you found out that your husband was sexually abusing your children?” the talk show hostess asked.
“Well, the first thing I felt was a huge sense of relief…..”
Well, that’s certainly as twisted and insane as anything that appears in this thread. But its a perfect 360 degree bit of narcissistic thinking.
Twisted and insane, yes, that’s what it is. I was in my early 20s when I met that woman, and after she told me that, I could not bear to be around her. I wish now that I had at least had the courage to say something to her children, to let them know how sick that was, but honestly, when she told me how she was so relieved to find out that her husband was regularly having sex with their young children, because, YAY, that made him a worse person than she was… I couldn’t even speak. As I recall, the talk show hostess.. I believe it was Vicky Lawrence… had the same, dumbfounded reaction to that crazy woman, as I had. She stood there with her mouth open for a second, and then, for the rest of the show, she directed her questions to the lovely young woman who was the unlucky daughter of TWO psychos.
I found this site yesterday. I am 58 years old and didn’t know a thing about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, until a few months ago. My own mother fits at least 90% of the characteristics of NPD. She has some Sociopathic traits, as well. So I guess it’s a bit odd that my first post here, was about someone else’s mother.
My mother is a mixed bag: she’s not ALL bad, ALL the time. I understand that Hitler had his good qualities, too. But overall… my mother is a NIGHTMARE.
Here’s just one, of many, of the twisted and insane things that my own mother has done:
When I was 12, and the eldest of 5 children, my parents’ marriage came to a violent end. My mother’s solution to the dissolution of her 13-year marriage was to try to gas us all to death as we slept in our beds. She tried this several times, she later told me, but was unable to find a way to override the safety shut-off valve on the gas furnace. So then she was going to drive us all off a cliff. Here is what my mother said: “SInce I brought you kids into the world, I have the right to take you out of the world. I would be doing you all a favor, too, by killing you, because life is so hard.”
Today my mother is 76. She was widowed in March of last year, aftrer more than 40 years of marriage to a wonderful, kind, enabling man. Unbelievably, she seems to have gotten even crazier with age.
That is too evil and nuts to be standard NPD. I think maybe your Mom is psychotic too. Congratulations. Sounds like you hit the trifecta.
I will share one more, which isn’t nearly so horrible. Since you are a writer, you may appreciate this one.
I have dreamed of being a published author ever since I fell in love with the written word, way back when I was in elementary school. About 28 years ago I had enough of a novel written to send some sample chapters, a synopsis, and an outline to all the big publishing houses. I received a lot of rejection letters, most of them form letters, but a handful were personally written and very encouraging. THEN…. one day I received a letter from an editor with Zondervon, a large reputable publishing house, expressing interest in my book. The editor asked me to send her my entire manuscript as soon as possible.
After I scraped myself down off the ceiling, the first thing I did was call my mother. More than anything, I wanted to Win Mother’s Approval. Nearly everything I did in those days was with the hope in the back of my mind that my mother might finalloy approve of me, be proud of me, and genuinely LOVE me.
I was bubbling over like a babbling brook, as I excitedly told my mother my fantastic news. She didn’t say much. At one point I thought I heard her whisper, “Oh Dear,” but I wasn’t sure~ and I was far too excited to trust my own ears, so I let it go. My mother listened for just a few minutes, and then she said, “OK, well, I have to get off the phone now, I have something on the stove.”
I was a bit disappointed that my mother had not congratulated me or told me she was proud of me. But then, I reasoned that she was probably in shock. And, once I had my published book to place in her hands, with a dedication on the fly leaf to my mother, SURELY THEN she would be thrilled, the way any normal, loving mother would be! Without wasting any time, I got straight to work on finishing my manuscript.
About 2 weeks later, a fifty page letter came in the mail, addressed to me, from my mother. That’s right, it was 50 pages long… Big, Yellow, Legal-sized pages, filled with her tiny, neat handwriting. The letter started with “I wish I could write a book to tell the whole world what a terrible daughter you have been. But since I don’t have a publisher, I will have to write it all in a letter.”
Then my mother went on to tell me, for fifty/50 pages, everything that was ever “WRONG” about me, going back almost to the day I was born. In that entire letter, there was only ONE SENTENCE that wasn’t a total putdown. That singular sentence said: “I know your father does love you.” But it was followed by this sentence: “However, he just doesn’t LIKE you.”
My mother told me that, several times as I was growing up: “I love you, of course, because you are my daughter. But I just don’t LIKE you!” She invariably said this with a big smile on her face, as though she were feeling particularly SAINTLY and PROUD of her ability to “love” someone as UNlikable as me.
When I was about 10 or 11, I finally got up the nerve to ask my mother WHY she didn’t like me. I hoped she would tell me the problem, so I could fix it. “IT’S JUST YOU, IT’S JUST THE WAY YOU ARE,” she snapped. “It’s the way you THINK!”
How does a little girl fix that?
My father had a lot of serious shortcomings as a parent, but he never told me that he loved me only because he had to, but didn’t like me. So, my mother said it for him, in her 50 page hate letter.
After raising 3 children of my own, plus doing a lot of babysitting for other people’s children over the years (including being almost a second mother to my much-younger sisters and brothers), I can truthfully say that I was far better behaved as a little girl, than most children I’ve known. I would have LOVED to have had a little girl like me! Of course I wasn’t perfect, as no human being is, but I truly tried my very best to please, I was obedient and subserviant and I lived to make my parents happy.
My mother managed to fill up 50 big legal-sized pages of putdowns and complaints against me, by making gigantic mountains out of the tiniest of anthills, twisting things completely out of context, and never, not once, giving me the benefit of the doubt about ANYTHING. My mother also did a lot of presumptive “mind-reading” in those 50 pages, chewing me out for “looking like” I was thinking, or feeling, some obnoxious, hateful, deviant emotion.
I could give you some examples of her ludicrous always-thinking-the-worst-of-Lynda complaints against me, but I’m ready to stop now, and do something happy, like read a nice novel. I still love books!
Well, that’s all hideous. I hope that someplace along the way you got in to therapy. I also hope you continued with your writing. I thought I’d recommend a book for you to read (AFTER you read all the books on narcissism, sociopathy,etc. AND get in to therapy.Thats first.) But THIS book(http://www.amazon.com/Bill-My-Father-Memoir/dp/0743249623) is called A Bill From My Father and is the story of someone with such a narcissistic parent that Dad sent him a bill for his upbringing. Thought you might find it inspiring since it sounds like maybe your mother may be something you will want to write about at some point. Meanwhile, please get in to therapy so you can be as sane as possible for the years your Mom is still around. Sorry you got such a horrible mother. But you did. She is horrible.
Aww… thank you. I feel so touched by your words. Yes, she is horrible. She was my normal, for most of my life, but she was, she IS, horrible. I am still in that process of coming out of the fog and seeing just how truly horrible she is. I feel so stupid at times, because I didn’t see this reality decades ago. I mean, I did, but I didn’t see it, if you know what I mean. My mother is so confusing! She lies, she puts on acts that are very convincing, and she is SO SURE OF HERSELF, that she can make almost aniyone buy into her version of reality.
Yes, I am in therapy, thanks for that suggestion. I am 3 or 4 weeks into a 12 week Cognitive Processing Therapy program, which I am doing with my husband, a Vietnam Combat Veteran with PTSD. We both have severe PTSD, which is good for us, because we understand each other’s limitations and quirks. Our triggers are very different though, which is also good, because when one of us is having a flashback or whatever, the other one is almost always able to stay grounded in the NOW, and temporarily take over the responsibilities and care of the other. We take turns taking care of each other. We met when I was 50 and he was 54, and we’ve been married for 7 years. I feel so BLESSED and GRATEFUL, every single day, for my best-friend-husband! Being loved unconditionally, faults and all, accepted and respected totally, just the way I am, is a wonderful, healing thing.
The year I turned 50, a few months before I met my wonderful husband, I went through my last miserable divorce. I took my divorce settlement money and checked myself in to a renowned psychiatric clinic. I paid cash, having lost my health insurance, along with my monthly support, in the divorce. I had enough money to pay cash for a modest but nice home for my old age, but I chose to use the money to save my sanity and my life, instead. I didn’t know WHAT was wrong with me, I only knew that I had to be crazy, because nothing in my life was working, and I was so miserable that I truly wanted to die.
After a battery of tests, Paul Meier, MD, author/co-author of 80+ books and founder of the nationwide chain of Meier (formerly Minirth-Meier) Clinics, told me: “YOU ARE NOT CRAZY! You have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that is NOT a mental illness, it is a psychological injury. It is NORMAL to have PTSD after extreme trauma, just as it is normal to bleed if you are stabbed. You are not WEAK, on the contrary, you are incredibly strong. I have had patients with less than 1/10th of your trauma history, who could not function at all!”
I had been in therapy many years in the past, with “professionals” who clearly did not believe my true life story. Not being believed was almost as painful as the pain of living through it, in the first place. But now, to have a therapist who BELIEVES me, and a best-friend-husband who accepts, loves, respects, and understands me, is wonderful beyond words ~ for me, life began at age 50.
I’m still an emotional mess in a lot of ways, and I get VERY frustrated with myself because I’m not improving a lot faster. I want to be perfectly WELL, and I want it right NOW! But, I am able to have compassion for myself, and accept that it’s really ok for me to be where I am. I am moving forward, to the best of my ability, and I’m doing that, as fast as I can, without overdoing it and harming myself. Reading about Narcissism and Sociopathic Personalities, as you suggested, is helping me a lot, because Finally, my whole crazy life makes SENSE.
Thank you for being here, reaching out to people like me. I hope my comments, hard as I know they are to read, will help someone else who has been through similar traumas, to feel less alone, and to know there is hope for a brighter, happier day..
Lynda
I was in the hospital with a serious infection in my spine, which was painful/traumatic enough but it had also caused my liver to malfunction which led to a procedure that triggered pancreatitis. I was seriously sick and it wasn’t at all clear that I’d live.
My husband at the time would come and see me for about an hour after work, which annoyed him. He’d sit in a chair and read magazines. It must have been the end of the second week, of the 3-month ordeal, he was there after work, reading Cycle World magazine and says, “you know, it would be a lot easier to come here if I had a motorcycle to ride…you know, it’s just so depressing coming here.”
I got better, but it still took some therapy to realize what a complete selfish ass he was. I did, eventually, take my dogs and divorce him. When you’re in one of these relationships, you lose sight of what’s acceptable. Thankfully I got help and got out.
I’ve got a million of these, btw.
Yay, you left. And YAY, you took the dogs with you! Hope you’ve recovered from your illness and are doing even better now that you have your sanity.
thank you! i did get mostly better.
the thing about my dogs is very important, and worth sharing with folks who’re dealing with these issues.
I’d originally brought the dogs into my life b/c i recognized that i was having anxiety stemming from a lack of closeness with the narcissistic partner. never having dogs, and b/c the ex was very allergic to, i did months of research to find a breed that would 1) be less allergenic and 2) be a good companion pet. i landed on Italian Greyhounds, which are single-coat (good for allergies), but more importantly, they have been bred for companionship characteristics — literally born to snuggle. Also they’re incredibly attuned to humans and human emotion. All dogs have a sense of when their person is sad or if there’s high anxiety in the house. But the Iggies takes it a step farther, like it really matters to them, that you’re “okay.”
So, I’d been with my ex since we were 20, and I was just turning 40 when i realized i knew i had to get out of the relationship; 20 years creates quite a bit of inertia. My whole social network was intertwined with his, and I knew that leaving him, meant leaving my tribe for good — musicians, btw. there’s no way his bandmates or their wives, who’d been my only family for 20 years were going to “side” with me in a break-up b/c…that’s just the way it is. I’d seen it play out many times over. and, there’s no amicable break-up in this scenario, b/c no matter how little drama i wanted, the narcissist was going to have his time in the spotlight.
I’d struggled with this for years, actually. That, leaving him meant leaving my whole life, every bit of it. And, I had no idea how to do it.
So, I did something I’d wanted to do for all those 20 years: I threw a couple of bags in the car, grabbed one of my dogs, and drove across the country for a month camping in national parks and visiting friends on the west coast. thought i’d “write myself” back into or out of the relationship. you know, just be alone, journaling. Spent lots of time in west Texas and central New Mexico. Seems odd, but i found those harsh and spectacular landscapes much more inspiring that coastal California. it was a complete surprise to me, that i’d connect with the desert, but i found it to be a perfect place to write and think and regain strength. Plus, long desert highways are great for hours-long crying jags. As is any road in Arkansas. In fact, you might as well cry the entire way thru Arkansas b/c there’s no reason not to.
i couldn’t have done this without my dog with me. he kept me company, and i never felt alone. plus, i never felt unsafe car camping, b/c he’d alert to anything approaching us.
i might have lost my tribe, but as long as i have my dogs, i’m never alone.
Yep. Perfect. That’s the best outcome under the circumstances. Just remember to check back in to therapy when you start dating because it wouldn’t be unusual for you to find yourself with another narcissist or two before you are truly cured. It just works that way. Its a deeply ingrained bad instinct.
from my own mother regarding a Christmas gift that she gave to me after previously asking me if I would like to receive it to which I answered “No, I wouldn’t like to receive it.”:
“Well, I gave all you children one. If you don’t like it, that’s tough.” I have three siblings; however, I have always been the designated Black Sheep of the Family (BSoF).
That is fantastic. I LOVE that.
My cousin just told me I was neglecting her feelings (and those of my other cousins plus two of my aunts) by ending a bad relationship with my mother a year ago. It was harder on her and more about her than I realized.
Our friendship was coming to an end and he was aware of it. He had begun to realize that he was not in control of the situation and became irate and verbally abusive. He told me to go f*ck with someone else’s brain, (talk about projection!). I was thinking that he just wanted to be done as he showed no signs of remorse. I *had* to not respond to any emails due to extenuating factors. Tthis had been the case for five days. I think he was trying to kill two birds with one stone, hoping to defend his reputation to a mutual friend who I had said NOTHING to, and to excuse his behavior. He emailed this friend and myself and said that his brain cancer had returned. He said the resulting affects were that he had lost all motor control where it pertained to emotions. I read that and thought.. “Huh?”
Quotes from my husband whom I’ve recently separated from due to his Narcissistic rages and verbal/emotional abuse towards my seven year old son and I:
“I could never be involved with a woman who calls me her abuser.” (Yes, this is the closest I’ll ever get to an admission of the abuse or an apology, lol. Basically, I will only be involved with you if you don’t complain about me torturing you. A bit)
“Look in the mirror!” (SAID EVERYTIME I nicely try to tell him that his abuse is hurting me.)
“Well, I wasn’t getting my needs met! You were not a domestic goddess!” (When I asked where I failed domestically all he could come up with was that I didn’t was the bedsheets enough and I should have just ‘known’ that he wanted them washed at a certain interval instead of actually using his words to tell me what interval he wanted. I was always viciously accused of being bad and ‘not having his back’ because I couldn’t read his mind. When a therapist told him that of course I could not read his mind and he would have to actually communicate, he got up and raged at her screaming, “All you women are all alike and think you are perfect and never take the blame for anything.”, tossed the check at her and stormed out the door and peeled out of the parking lot like a big shot in his BMW. Yep, it happened. As a side note about bad therapists, when we saw this woman a month later, she recalled it that I was the one who stormed out. Even HE had to set her straight. How’s that for a mind f-ck? Of course it’s hard to maintain your sanity when even the narcissist defends you against the bad therapist who actually said a good thing when she told him I couldn’t read minds. Yikes, who do you trust?
I have sooo many more….from the N exes (didn’t know what this disease was til a month ago when my new therapist told me about it), from my N sister and her N husband (yikes, lots from them) and from many sick thereapists – sad there are so many bad ones out there. But, I’m happy I finally found a good one who deals in trauma and has diagnosed my Complex PTSD and is helping me heal and pointing out the Ns in my life. FINALLY. Finally I know it’s not me. I’ve worked way too hard to be conscious, authentic, and choose to respond kindly. When I fail I immediately admit it so I can heal the other person and keep my conscience clear. I want, and finally accept that I deserve, the same in return. Not so much to ask, is it? And not so much to get, I’m sure, if you PICK a healthy person to match you. 🙂
Blessings and best to all of us that we will make GREAT choices in people in our lives going forward. As for the Ns, as Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their own.” These folks, after all, are dead and without souls, n’est-ce pas? 😉 Seriously, I pray for them still – loving the sinner but hating the sin – but I pray FROM AFAR!! 🙂
Thats a very weird story about the therapist. But sounds like you got a better one now. And that at least this guy is an EX. So congrats on moving on from them both!
Man, do I have anecdotes – some from family and some from acquaintances and boyfriends.
One that sticks out is a guy I dated who was an actor, director and producer. He paid for his theatre habit by playing Bad Guy #3 or Cop #2 in straight-to-video movies (this was a while ago). One day, he explained to me he wanted an open relationship because “Every week, I meet dozens of beautiful women and get lots of opportunities and I don’t want to give that up.” I guess I could give him points for honesty, but I felt like something left in the rain outside a locked door.
Well, you got that great quote.And its hilarious. So…I’d say quit while you’re ahead. At least you got out with a funny story!
You were wonderful on Jon Stewart tonight. Very funny and insightful. And he loved you! Congratulations. I will buy your book. Very best wishes.
Thank you Mary!
Oh, here’s one from my mom and one from my brother;
My mom is notoriously late everywhere. It’s something people expect and often plan around. When she wanted to give me a ride to my wedding, I told her that it was bad idea because punctuality was pretty important. My mom was hurt that I didn’t trust her to get me there on time, and she convinced me that she could handle it.
My wedding was supposed to be at seven o’clock. I called my mom at 6:55, and her phone was off. I called my brother who answered and told me that they were all waiting for their entrees at a restaurant. He said that they didn’t expect to be leaving any time soon and that, if I went about getting married at our original scheduled time, I would be “MAKING A BIG MISTAKE” .
I asked to speak to my mom who explained that it really couldn’t be helped. The in-laws got into town late, and the restaurant they chose was having terrible service. They had been there for two hours. – my parents, my husband’s parents and our siblings. They ALL expected our wedding time to be flexible and never even asked for to-go boxes.
I took a cab to my wedding, where the rest of my family and friends were waiting. It was really just an exchange of vows on a ferry. That was the kind of wedding my husband and I wanted to throw ourselves. It was beautiful. My mother still maintains that she gave us the wedding of our dreams and is smiling proudly in all the pictures.
I left out my mom’s direct quote from when I asked her when she was picking me up; “Well, I don’t know. I’m going to sit here, relax, and enjoy my dinner.”
That cracks me up–so much like my mother! Even when I’ve literally BEGGED her to please be on time b/c it’s crucial that we not be late, she’s late. Like HOURS late. Even days late, as when she missed my college graduation. Of course, there’s always some unavoidable reason for it, so it’s really not her fault, and she’s not late all THAT often, and can’t I see how much I’m hurting her feelings with my constant harping on the subject? LOL
When you think about it, that’s got to be the right ansewr.
I have tons of these, but I’ll just share this one…this time.
My very narcissistic mom wanted me to promise her that
when she dies that I won’t put her birthdate in the obit because
“It’s nobody’s business how old I am.” and “Make sure I have
a closed casket funeral, I probably won’t be looking my best
that day.”
Is that true? Because if it is, this makes a very short list of most amazing entries on this thread. And there are some AMAZING entries on this thread.
Oh, yeah, my late MIL gave us the same instructions. She had those 1940’s eyebrows drawn across her forehead for the last 50 years and KNEW that no mortician would get them right, so she wanted a closed casket!
When I was 10 I fell while I was roller skating and broke my arm. When I came inside, holding my forearm bent at a 90 degree angle, Mom said “Look at the state of your clothes! I can’t take you to the hospital like that! Go wash up and put on clean clothes.” I did. Then she had me wait until Dad got home from work so that she wouldn’t have to “bother” the neighbors by asking them to watch my siblings while she took me to the ER. When I cried in the hospital waiting room, she said “Hush! Everyone’s looking at me!”
Okay,…that is a winner. So all your hideous pain at least gave you this distinction: Your mother was a world class horrible narcissist.
So many actions and words to choose from. So many. I am currently estranged from my mother, mostly her choice, but partially mine, since her rejection of me stems from me setting boundaries with her. I want her to tell me who my father is, and she refuses. I mean, literally she will not name him nor tell me anything about him. When I tell her that this information is something that I need (a very vulnerable place to be in the company of a NPD/BPD) she locks herself in the bathroom to cry for several hours.
Then there are the lesser injuries. As a smaller kid, I could never join a team/be in a play/meet a friend somewhere because my mom could not reliably take me to practices/rehearsals/drop me off at a mall. This is difficult to explain to people who have not been raised by Narcissist/Borderline mothers. They say things like, “What do you mean she wouldn’t take you?” Believe me the day I bought my own car at 16 it felt like the key to freedom.
I became used to things like her not showing up to my college or graduate school graduation ceremonies, and threatening to not show up at my wedding. Me personally, I would crawl over glass to see my child graduate. You couldn’t keep me away.
Even writing these examples down, it feels a little whiny on my part, especially considering some of the more horrific examples of terrible childhoods. It’s sometimes hard to articulate to people who just love their lovely and loving mothers, because in and of themselves, these “little” transgressions don’t seem to rise to the level of justifying estrangement. Well no, she didn’t keep me in a physical dungeon, but there are ways of doing so mentally.
As for a quote, I will leave you with one of my and my husband’s favorites. Twenty years ago we went to her house for Thanksgiving where we planned to announce our engagement. When we did, she never turned from the sink where she was rinsing something and said flatly, “I didn’t know this was going to be an engagement turkey.”
Well, those are a series of horrible incidents. So, in terms of this page: CONGRATULATIONS! Just this part alone sinks her:”When I tell her that this information is something that I need (a very vulnerable place to be in the company of a NPD/BPD) she locks herself in the bathroom to cry for several hours.” If she never did a single thing besides that, you’d be a high achiever on this page. But the other stuff: I totally relate to that feeling whiny thing. But that is why you need to read a LOT of narcissism books. And there are a lot. And you can get them for mere pennies a serving on Amazon. So get started. It takes years for this stuff to really sink it. Its very counterintuitive. “Why is it always about YOU?” (by Hotchkiss and someone else) is a good start point. But read ALOT. It takes a lot to counteract the emotional software you downloaded by being raised with someone like this. You need to take in the stuff about grandiosity vs. humiliation/rage. Its big. And it explains everything. Good luck. Hope you dont spend too much time around her. (PS: And get in to therapy. It will really help you.)
Aww thanks for your kind words. I do read a whole bunch, thank god. One book that was particularly helpful to me was Understanding the Borderline Mother by Lawson. It was like reading a manual of my mother.
Even so, the decision for how much contact to have is a tough one, and one that has to be constantly evaluated. One mitigating factor is that I do understand and have compassion for her terrible early childhood. I feel very strong most of the time, but sometimes I have to remind myself about the reasons for my decisions. Every now and then (i.e. around holidays, her birthday, ha! go figure) I poke around the internet looking for what’s new online in the world of NPD/BPD. However, It’s amazing how theraputic it is to have a little support from people who know in their bones what it means to have a mother like this. You people really get me!
If I think about it, I guess I am surprised there are not more internet resources or blogs on this topic, other than a smattering of creaky, ancient, deadlink ones.
I am thankful for sites like yours, and your willingness to share your experience which helps validate those of us with these types of people in our lives. I last visited your site a couple of years ago, and was reminded about it after your Daily Show appearance. Yay for you! (Congrats on your book BTW!)
I just want to say that you are doing a hard and rewarding thing by setting boundaries with your mom. The things you mentioned are big things. They just seem nit-picky to you, because they were probably downplayed constantly. Your mom not driving you places (if she was able to) says something about her priorities, and how could you not have picked up on that as a kid? I’m sure you did, and I bet it hurt. I don’t know you, but, when I saw your story, I felt like you could stand some encouragement. I get it about your mom. Good luck. Keep your boundaries solid, and good for you that you have them in place.
I lived with a N for a little over ten years, before I finally wised up and escaped. I have about a million stories, but this is probably the worst example of his narcissism. A few years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and had to have a mastectomy. On the day of my surgery, he basically just dropped me off at the hospital. He didn’t come visit, or call to see how surgery went. The next day, once I was cleared to go home, I called him to come and get me. He said, “Ok, but I’m not sure when I’ll get there. I have a doctor’s appointment today.” As soon as he said that, I had a vision of our kitchen calendar, which clearly marked the date of his appointment as the same day as my surgery! So I said, “No, your appointment was yesterday.” He said, “WHAT?!! YOU MADE ME MISS MY APPOINTMENT?!!!” Then, Click…He hung up on me!! When I called back, he refused to come to the phone. I lost it then, and started crying, and the nurses did their best to console me. 30 minutes later, (the normal amount of time it took to get from our house to the hospital), he came strolling in, acting as if nothing had happened!!
I’m so glad to be free of him, and now have a NEW Independence Day to celebrate…2/2/10…the day I left him!!! I’m now cancer free, and in therapy, getting emotionally healthy as well!!
1.Yikes.
2.Yay!
I’m the 40 year old mother of a 12 year old daughter and the daughter of a pathological narcissist. I’ve known this for years. This lovely reality is best illustrated by the following:
My 12 y.o. daughter got her first period recently. I told my mother and was vainly trying to engage her in a discussion about how different it felt to have my kid growing up and all that stuff— her reaction? Shesuggested that she should plan a “celebration”, “something special for just us, the THREE of us!!” when I explained that this was an insane idea for an adolescent girl who was very ambivalent about even telling me she got her period my mother tantrumed and claimed “it was her experience too!” ” She DESERVED to be a part of it” I practically had to physically hold her back from discussing it with my kid. It’s borderline scary how out of touch a person can be.
thanks and I LOVE your work. You nailed this.
That’s a great one. Very insane yet hilarious. Sheesh.
Growing up and into adulthood I always knew that something was a little different about my relationship with my mother. Chalked it up to being the only child/daughter of a mother who divorced my father when I was an infant and did not remarry until I was 17—way too much togetherness!! But as long as I behaved in a manner that met her high expectations (basically being her very own Mini Me…), everything was mostly smooth until I got into my mid-20’s (now 44) and started to “have a mind of my own”. Since then it’s been pretty rough seas, lots of ups and downs in the relationship.
I found that things were best when I lived in another state, and after returning home, better when I maintained what I now know is Low Contact. Unfortunately, I didn’t put all of the clues together to come up with Narcissism until this last June when my stepfather was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. Over the years she has gotten increasingly difficult, more demanding, nothing is ever right or enough even when you are doing what she said she wanted, I am a difficult/selfish/mean/(insert negative adjective of your choice) daughter whenever I behave in a manner she finds offensive (translation: when I think and/or stand up for myself in a way that goes against her belief of what is “right”. Unfortunately, in an effort to keep the peace at home and having a genuine love for her, my stepfather of 20 years has stepped into the role of enabler by not calling her on her bad behavior towards himself, his five children, and me.
My aha moment came as we were sitting in the hospital room after he had been admitted with the symptoms of what we now know is a Stage 4 Glioblastoma (very grim diagnosis for those not knowing too much about brain tumors—such a diagnosis is certainly an education in things you really wish you didn’t have to know!). The pressure of the soon to be removed tumor was causing partial blindness in one eye which was going to cause him to not be able to drive. As we tried to make light of the situation (nothing like a little gallows humor!) by commenting that my mother would now have to drive him everywhere (she is not the best of drivers), I heard the weak and pitiful utterance from my mother of “but what about me!?!”. We let it slide, she was extremely worried like the rest of us. However, she will not be ignored! She then proceeded to proclaim the same thing not once, but twice more, each time a little louder and more emphatically. Somehow the tumor in my stepfather’s brain had become all about her, how SHE was going to be inconvenienced by this whole thing!
I was so appalled by this whole scene that the next day I decided to do a little research into her behavior. What did we do before Google?! Enter the correct combination of words in a search engine and voilà! The answer to the inconsistencies that had been puzzling me for the last 25+ years: Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Usually a crisis such as this serves to bring a family closer. Not in this case. She has pitted sibling against sibling, made claims of people lying to her about the diagnosis, and somehow managed to bring her own multiple medical issues to the forefront. Understandably, the threat of losing her husband has greatly upset her. Unfortunately it seems to also have pushed her into full-fledged NPD mode.
I have been keeping my contact with her to a minimum, mostly because I know that things are going to get much worse over the next several months and I ultimately will be required to spend a lot of time around her as my stepfather’s cancer progresses. I am conserving my energy for the battle ahead… She is not too happy about my distance as I’m not fulfilling my assigned role as the dutiful and doting daughter in her great time of need (what will she tell her friends!?!). She is making sure that my stepfather also knows this. So much so that my poor dying stepfather (following the recent news that the tumor has returned) ended up calling me twice over the last week to ask me to please phone my mother more often as she is currently, get this, “very fragile”…
I have many stories of my crazed mother’s NPD, but the one that really “says it all” is her reaction to the movie Mommie Dearest. “Can you believe what an awful child she was after everything that Joan Crawford did for her?”
Is this true? It is so perfect, it sounds like it was written in to a script….a script which, by the way, I would think was too over the top. Its an amazing line.
I never heard of NPD until I starting seeing a new therapist last year. My husband had moved out of the house after 5 weeks of marriage because I took my daughter to her doctor appointment instead of staying home and comforting him after they had a fight. (He was the stepfather from hell.) I got home and everything he owned was gone, with not even a note. I begged him to come home so we could work on things, and he did. We went to couples counseling and he brought a 5 page list of everything I did that proved that he was an innocent victim in our relationship. Meanwhile my individual therapist was advising me to get away from him. I finally let Denis go, but more for the sake of my daughter than myself.
Now it’s a year later and I just turned 50. I remember Denis (who was 33) telling me “William, you are almost 50. You will never have it this good again!” (meaning I should be thankful such a young hot guy wants to be with me and I should stop complaining about how he treated me). It made me wonder why this younger hotter guy who always criticized me and cut me down wanted to be with me in the first place, then I read that narcissists like to be in a relationship where they feel superior. So now I am 50, alone, and remembering him telling me I will never have it that good and that I will be 50 and alone. Guess what? Being alone is better. But I still miss the good times, and the sex. I’m only human.
Being better really is better than being browbeaten. Its far worse to let someone get away with treating you badly. You don’t even want to have it that good again, since that wasn’t good.
My father in law, a shallow & pompous man, was out to dinner with us (my 3 children, my husband and a family he had NEVER met before). He was carrying on about what a loser his daughter’s husband was. At last, I turned to him and asked,”Is that what you say about me when I’m not around?”.” No,” he replied, “You COULD be a winner.”
Well, where to begin?! I think my favourite most recent N moment was when my mother was caught reading my (37 yr old) sisters diary when they went on a trip overseas together (what was my sister thinking?). She dug that diary out from the bottom of a backpack, and after being caught out and confronted Mother’s response was “I am your mother I can look at anything of yours I want”. Boundaries anyone?
I don’t think I will ever be forgiven by my mother because my twin sister and I were extremely inconsiderate in-utero and we stretched her pelvic floor and gave her bladder problems. It was downhill from there – we’ve just been one disappointment after another. I did particularly enjoy the situation where I offered to pick her up from the airport after a long trip overseas was refused 3 times – only to be told by another sister (in the age old tradition of triangulation) that Mother was so SAD when no one was there to pick her up after her trip when EVERY OTHER person on the plane had family there with flowers and balloons to greet them.
I also had a narcissistic staff member I employed who refused to take instruction and whose massive ego became increasingly difficult to manage. When I asked her to do something she did not want to she exploded and said to me “I don’t ask you about what YOU do, so don’t ask ME about what I do”. Little problem with that was that I own the business and pay her wages! Fortunately she proceeded to vent in a narcissistic rage, going on to call me a “f….ing slag” among other choice expressions so the business of saying goodbye was cut mercifully short as she was shown the door.
I also have a few favourites from my (ex) N partner…I can so relate to some of what has been described by others with the crazy making! When asking him to be considerate and not drink to the extent of becoming paralytic when we were going to a party I was accused of having no friends of my own and therefore having a primary motivation of ruining his good time. One time he had some of his family staying with us and I needed to go out for a pre-arranged function. He wanted to go out drinking with his friends at the same time. So he turned to me in a rage and said “how dare you go out when we have guests – you should be here to entertain them”. Hypocrisy much? Anyone who has lived with a narcissistic personality could tell you we are meant to be the satellites with them in their rightful places in the centre of the universe. Any infringement to this arrangement unleashes a tsunami of narcissistic rage. They don’t want a partner – they want a doormat. An adoring, enabling, sycophantic doormat they can wipe their feet on whenever they feel like it. Thank goodness for the enlightment of discovering NPD.
I am submitting a third. This one is from my mother-in-law. She has made some interesting suicide threats. One was a direct result of my husband refusing her help as we were fleeing Hurricane Katrina. Her: I just feel so bad. Please, let me help you.
Him: No.
Her: Well, I am going to hang up and kill myself, then.
Click.
This was preceded by a more veiled and flowery letter in which she stated her case by comparing my husband to Plato and herself to Socrates. She wrote, “I suppose it is time for me to drink the virtual hemlock.” The hemlock letter was a response to my husband’s decision to get married. She is still alive.
This thread was a great idea, by the way. Thank you.
Wow – my mom (who is not the issue here!) keeps telling me to check out your website and I finally sat down. I was expecting some hilarity but this one actually freaked me out because it sounds so much like my husband’s ex-wife. They had two daughters before he divorced her for multiple issues – abuse, financially disastrous, sleeping around – and he has been paying emotionally for that ever since. I had kind of pop-psyched her as undiagnosed bipolar or manic depressive, but then we got the girls this September (both teenagers now) and it is becoming terrifyingly obvious how well she has trained the girls to lie to their father about what their life with her was really like. She blows all her money and can’t keep a place to live, and blames everyone but herself for it (including my husband). She apparently left the kids alone for 3 weeks while she took a trip to Rome and we find out now the kids ran out of food. She does what she wants and then gets horribly angry and abusive when someone calls her on something.
We also have their older sister, whom my husband raised for a few years. They are all suffering from varying degrees of insecurity and low self-esteem – the oldest one, as it turns out, has been the whipping girl all these years and is so used to it that we have not been able to change her behavior toward herself yet. She has a built-in self-destruct mechanism that the therapists have all attributed directly to her mother I never wanted children, but even I am absolutely horrified by how this woman treats her own kids. She uses them as weapons against my husband but does not give a rip about them unless they are doing something for her. My husband and I put them in therapy right away but it’s going to take literally years to sort out. We don’t even know many details, but the ones we do know mean those girls are never going back. And she is already talking about getting them back – hell no! I didn’t want kids, but I couldn’t send these kids back and live with myself.
One example regarding the oldest, who thought she knew for years who her biological father was and just recently worked up the nerve to contact him. He was willing to do the paternity test and it unfortunately looks like it is not him.
The Bitch to him (when he asked her if kid was really his): It’s been so long. Does it really matter who her father is? I don’t remember, so I guess it doesn’t matter.
The Bitch to kid (when kid originally asked about her father):
1) Why do you care? He was a jerk anyway.
2) (after the question had been asked multiple times): Listen, there are 3 or 4 options. I don’t remember who it was, but it’s probably this guy. It really isn’t any of your business anyway so quit bothering me.
She made the youngest cry on the phone because the kid said she was doing good, and she replied, “oh. well. it’s so nice that you’re doing well when i am not, that hardly seems fair.”
Also, a text to my husband when he asked her if she was going to bring the oldest one home for the holidays – “I don’t care what you do with her or where she ends up. I just know she’s not coming here.” And guess what? Said kid was playing Angry Birds on that phone when that text came in.
I could go on forever. All I need to make a lot of this go away is 5 minutes alone in a room with her. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make that happen.
Well, that all sounds absolutely hideous. I’m glad you put the girls in therapy. They will need it. Its a very painful situation for them. But heading back to the lighter side…I LOVE this line: “”oh. well. it’s so nice that you’re doing well when i am not, that hardly seems fair.” That would get a big laugh in a scene in a movie.
Good morning Merrill and friends,
I stayed in last night with my Yellow Lab, Boozer, and read your book. I’m past the “Assholes”. I was going to let you in on some of the pleasures of the narccisistic father and was lucky enough to have had him call me first thing this morning.
Me: “Hi Dad”
Dad: “Its Saturday so I’m going to church to thank God that I didn’t die young like my parents. They both died young so I figured it was in my blood and I was going to die young too. That is why I put everything in your mother’s name. That was the biggest mistake of my life.”
(It may have also been that this is most doctors did to get the assets out of their name but let’s listen further.)
Dad, continuing without a breath: “I never should have married her. I don’t think she ever worked a day in her life. Her father was an alcoholic that owned a bar and grill. I should have ran the other way. But I was taught to respect women.”
(Except for every action you have ever taken in your personal life towards your wife and daughters including physical and non-stop verbal abuse. Still, tell me more.)
Dad: “She never worked. All she did was have kids and lay on the ground.”
(You put here there.)
(Is it possible she didn’t work because it was the 70s and she had five children with the chief of anesthesia and one of the wealthiest men in our Long Island town? But, who am I to question…keep going please. I love the ending.)
Dad: “Then she divorced me without telling me. I remember what she said – I GOT YOU NOW!”
(Ummm…I think you’re confused. I pretty sure she meant to stop holding her down on the front steps. Women prefer a gentler form of expression than the half-nelson. But go on.)
Dad: “When I die, you’re going to be rich.”
(Don’t tempt me.)
Dad: “You father is a penny-pincher. He only shops a dollar stores. Today I bought fish sticks because they were on sale. I bought twelve packages. I don’t waste money. I gave money to my children and they robbed me including you.”
(Uhhh, you wanted me to invest it in real estate when the market was hot….and I worked so hard to reposition your investments after the crash, but I guess robbery is another way of describing it.)
Dad: “You father’s going to go dancing tonight. Some of the women, they told me they don’t want to dance with me but your father is not chasing anyone. He’s not getting married again. They’re just after his money.”
(Are you sure? You’re such a romantic.)
Dad: “So I’m going to now church to thank God for keeping me alive. That’s what I called to tell you.”
(CLICK) – phone call ended.
Me – aloud to God: “Thanks for keeping such a superb example of manhood and fatherhood alive. Uhhh…are you laughing at me?”
Anyway, Merrill, there’s tons more where that came from if you’re in the mood. Always uplifting.
Love and hugs from Noreen and Boozer in Santa Monica
I think the all-time hit from my childhood is “Don’t cry so loudly: the neighbors will think we beat you.”
The day I left for college, she announced that my father had said I looked like a lesbian. (He swears he didn’t say it, though in retrospect, so what if he did?) She ordered me to change my outfit, then delayed our departure by reorganizing my trunk of clothes with pinned notes explaining which items should be worn together.
That was a long time ago.
A recent jealousy-and-guiltmongering letter demanded more affectionate visits and phone calls by claim of entitlement. Because we will not be spending Christmas with her this year, she accused us of disliking Christmas itself. Phrases include the following: “To me and to many other thoughtful people…,” “Are you waiting for me to invite myself to visit you?” “I certainly understand that you have other family members with whom you want to vacation. I expect to take my turn – BUT – I’d like to get my turn, too!!! The days and years that I have left to spend with you and [your husband], and with my other family members are rapidly growing fewer by the day, by the year. I don’t have time to waste!” and, regarding her current sidekick, “She is bright, as I am.”
But it’s the little things sometimes.
Last spring, we had been traveling for a few days with my mother, and then we hosted her in our home as our guest. Unasked, she began to wash dishes at our sink. She began to stack soapy dishes on the bare counter before rinsing them — a thing that we never do. We had not fully unpacked from the trip, so a camping kettle with a cloth cover was on the counter. She told me I would have to move my own kettle off of my own counter “because it’s going to get wet.”
The next morning, thinking out loud while preparing for work, I said I was thinking of taking some leftovers out of a metal container because it might be nice to warm them up in the office microwave at lunchtime. She told me not to put metal in a microwave oven.
And that is when I lost it.
I was switching jobs and moving to another city after working for a start-up for almost two years. My coworkers threw together a little goodbye party for me. As the party was coming to close, I went to my coworkers one by one to say my goodbyes to them. I eventually approached one woman, who I suspected had some NPD, gave her a hug, and told her how I enjoyed working with her (Which I did. She was charming. Plus I was raised by a narcissistic father and borderline mother so was used to coddling others.)
Anyway, after we hugged and I told her I enjoyed working her, there was an awkward moment of silence as she smiled and drew her breathe in. I expected her to say something like, “nice working with you, too”, or “good luck”, or something, but instead, she tells me that, after careful deliberation, she has “decided you are one of my people.”
Ah ha! As soon as she said it, I knew. I was one of her people b/c I had pandered to her for 6 months! It also sealed the deal when she then proceeded to go on a tangent about herself and her dog’s recent fever and trip to the vet. In that moment, I was so sick of listening to her talk about herself, and more sick of making myself listen to her, I didn’t even care how rude I was; I just cut her off, politely said goodbye and goodluck. I felt so proud! Similar to the excerpt you posted about walking away from the narcissistic artist guy at the party. Such a great feeling!
Thanks for writing about this topic. Can’t wait to read your book!
When I called to tell my narcissistic parents my husband had died, my mother’s comment was, “Good, now you can come and see us more often.” They did not come to my home to offer any help or comfort, even though they’re wealthy they made no donation in his memory, and after two months my mother told me to get over it and stop talking about my husband because it upset HER!
My parents were never happy that I married the man I loved. The fact that we had a child and had been together for over 30 years when he died, if anything, annoyed the hell out of them!
Wow. That’s a perfect little vision of narcissistic insanity. I’d congratulate you but its too sad. I love the line ,”Good, now you can come see us more often.”
I am the art teacher at a school with 500 students. The job is overwhelming and the extra hours I put in, extreme. I am always trying to tell my N mother about all my responsibilities at work, in the hopes she might understand that I can’t see her every week. She recently said to me, ” You use your job as an excuse not to help me.” She doesn’t even know the name of the school! She’s that self-centered.
In a confusing combination of self-awareness and narcissism, the following statement was uttered just as a game of Scrabble was about to begin: “you can’t let me win…but, you can’t let me lose.”
After my uncle got married, he sent the video of his wedding round to each of his siblings and their families so we could all watch. (All his siblings and their families were at the wedding). While my mother, my stepfather, my sister and I were watching the video, my mother started to complain about how various things were not done right and how they should have been done. I said to her “And I suppose at your wedding everything was done right!” She answered “Yes, of course. And everything will be done right at your wedding as well because I will be there to organise it.” I was speechless. I wanted to ask if she would pick my husband for me as well. Wonder what she would have answered if I had.
My mother, the narcissist, had stage 0 DCIS breast cancer. It was caught in the earliest stage and successfully treated and eliminated. My mother-in-law (my mother’s nemesis) also had breast cancer several years earlier. After my mother’s treatment was over she asked “what stage was Audrey’s cancer?” I replied “it was stage 3 and she had a mastectomy”. My mother’s reply……” Well she didn’t have much to begin with”.
That’s a great one. In the theatre of hideous narcissism remarks, I would definitely give her a standing ovation. Good luck with her over the holidays!
awesome thread! check out some of my mom’s many highlights:
-dismissed repeated pleas to slow down when pulling into driveway to avoid hitting my dog with “he always gets out of the way,” and then one day, pulling into driveway without slowing down, hits my dog, killing him
-when asked how she accepts that Barack Obama (who she supports) proposed Social Security benefit cuts (which she opposes) she says Obama only did so because he doesn’t understand as well as she does how Social Security works
-without asking for my permission, repeatedly asks a website to publish articles I’ve written, and when I meet website editor myself, he says “oh, you’re the guy whose mom keeps contacting me”
-implies that her brother-in-law who no longer wishes to speak with her is losing his mind, and when someone points out that she can’t diagnose because “you’re not a doctor,” she responds “yes I am!” — and then when everyone else’s mouth drops open (because she is by no means a doctor) she adjusts her statement to “I’m a doctor of life”
-asks me to accompany her to book signing event featuring Al Franken, and when we get to table, shocks me by asking Franken to help me market some humorous political t-shirts I’ve designed, causing Franken to look at us like we’re crass idiots
Well, congratulations Shane. She’s a nightmare. The dog thing is, of course, beyond the pale. But the Franken thing sounds a little like my mother, who used to give my name for me if someone asked me and she was there. Whew. If you haven’t read all the narcissism books, get em and keep reading. She is going to take a lot of energy and sanity to survive. Good luck with the holidays!!
It wasn’t until I had a narcissistic husband and started reading about it that I realized my mother was also N. I was a super-overachiever because who I was or what I did was never enough. She would say that if your mother didn’t tell you what was wrong with you, who would? Except she never told me what was right. I never stuck up for myself, but I always stuck up for my kids.
Once she was buying my daughter a shirt for her 10th birthday and at the checkout she lied and said it was from the 60% off rack, even though it wasn’t marked. My daughter (trying to be helpful) spoke up and said that she had gotten it from the non-sale rack. My mother took my daughter aside and told her not to contradict her and then said that she HAD to lie about the sale because she was on a fixed income and couldn’t afford to pay the full price or she wouldn’t be able to afford food. My daughter was in tears and didn’t want the shirt because grandma couldn’t eat. (In reality, I gave my mother $1000/month on top of her social security so she could live a better life.) I told her not to ever try to get my children to lie again or tell them they were wrong for telling the truth, and I just told my daughter that my mother was crazy and had plenty to eat.
I always agonized over gifts for mom because nothing was ever right. I stopped giving her flowers 30 years ago because she said she’d rather have the money than the flowers. I told her the next time I got her flowers would be her funeral. (Then every time someone ELSE gave her flowers she’d call me to tell me how beautiful and thoughtful they were.)
When I went to Ireland a few years back, I agonized over what to buy her. I looked at Irish lace, crystal, trinkets. I finally settled on her family crest (her grandparents were from Mayo) and a small plaque with a pressed shamrock and a poem about a loving mother. (I know it was hypocritical to buy it, but I thought she might like it.) Well, she told me that SHE wasn’t upset at what I had bought her, but she was embarrassed FOR ME about what the ladies at bingo would say when they asked what her son had brought her back from Ireland and all she had to show them were the two plaques. She said that she knew I was generous but they would judge me based on the gifts. What could I say to that? I didn’t care what the ladies at bingo said and I knew it was mom who hated the gifts but wouldn’t come out and say it, but she would deny it, so I didn’t say anything. Ironically, the bingo ladies LOVED the gift with the shamrock and one of them (from Ireland!) said she wished she had a son who would give her such a thoughtful gift. That made mom feel great, but it didn’t make me feel better. It just made me hate her a little bit more and I vowed never to buy her another gift. And I didn’t. I gave her money.
I did finally buy her flowers for her funeral in October. She left instructions for how she wanted to be buried, including what number hair dye she used, and said there should be no viewing and left a list of FIVE people she wanted to come to her funeral service. We have a HUGE family and my mother held a lot of grudges and wanted those who didn’t make the list to know how much they had let her down. I refused to let her hatred reach from the grave and we had a viewing with several hundred attendees. In spite of (because of?) her narcissism, so many people thought she was funny and charming. And she could be. I kept her at arm’s length for so many years. I mourn the mother I didn’t have rather than the one I did. On the other hand, she left me a note thanking me for making her life easier by supporting her and told me I was a wonderful son and father. What do I do with that?
It slowly dawned on me that my wife suffers from this. The following event confirmed my suspicion.
I was recently hospitalized with a nasty and painful infection. One afternoon my wife called to say she is on her way out to the hospital (about 20 miles away), and is there anything I’d like her to bring. I was actually touched, because she’s not one to be very thoughtful. I said I was kinda craving a milkshake. Not from anywhere specific, just a milkshake sounded really good. She said she’d get one on her way over.
When she arrived, there was no milkshake. She said she didn’t see anywhere to get one on the way over. Like, there wasn’t a McDonald’s or a Wendy’s or a Burger King within a 20 mile radius. This was merely funny, and par for the course.
What took it over the top was when she called that night from home, very distressed. She said she’d been reflecting on all she had done for me over the last couple of days, and it upset her to think that she couldn’t ever count on me to do the same for her. “I just don’t think you could ever handle this as well as I have, and that just makes me really sad.”
That was it for me. I moved out two weeks later.
I was tagging along with my narcissist mother at the grocery store when I was about twelve. We were coming closer to the frozen food section and it was time for desperate measures. I asked her if she would buy some ice cream.
If I buy you ice cream you’ll just eat it!
Oh no ma I promise I won’t eat……….
How am I supposed to…….
If you…..
Why would……….
I’ll go wait for you in the car.
While I don’t pretend to be a qualified therapist, I truly believe that my wife’s parents (entire family actually) are narcissists. I could fill a blog of my own with their demeaning comments, but instead I offer the first example of narcissistic rage that I witnessed. It was 14 years ago, I had just met my wife. At the time, I knew nothing of the disorder and was naiive and trying to gain acceptance from my girlfriend’s family.
My wife (gf at the time) and I were having dinner with her family. I had finished eating and my wife offered me more. At first I didn’t want any, and had said so but since it was good I said, “You know, on second thought, maybe I will.” To this day, I have no idea what set my father in law off, but I hadn’t even gotten the words out when he slammed his hands on the table stood up and started digging into me about my personality. (I tend to be more quiet around people that I don’t know, however, I do pride myself on being polite.) Several cruel things were said to me over the next 5 minutes. I was completely dumbfounded by the treatment I was receiving that I can’t even remember everything that was said. I do remember the last thing he said to me, in fact I will never forget it (nor forgive it). He actually had the audacity to tell (scream at) me….
“You can’t be like that. This family don’t like it.”
That should have been my first clue of what I was getting myself into, but I was trying to be respectful. 14 years and several demeaning comments later, I don’t try any more.
Thanks for your website, Merrill… it’s brilliant. Like many, I’m sure I found it due to a heavy holiday dose of mommy narcissism, and all of the huffing and puffing and woe-is-me that it brought. Where to begin…
-When I was young, I was playing a neighborhood game of “pickle” (two-based baseball) in my bare feet, and as a result had my toe almost completely torn off, attached only by a bit of skin. As my father was driving me to the hospital, my mother was exasperated and told me to “Stop screaming.”
-Using the money my father earned while working hard his entire career (she did not, but instead berated him to us as kids for working long hours), my mother is a world-traveler (with her friends, not my father), and loves to talk to try to impress people by speaking phrases in different languages. She prefers conversations that center around her travels (do NOT try to interject some your own travel experiences; she will only interrupt you and/or walk away). One day I made mention of a local Greek restaurant, and she responded by curling her lip as though she had just eaten dog poo, saying it was “soooo ordinary,” because, after all, “When you’ve eaten the REAL food while IN Greece, nothing else can compare.”
-My mother was diagnosed with a meningioma a few years ago, which is a benign growth in the outer lining of the brain. She had surgery to have it removed, which was successful. Like another reader on your website, my brother and I take turns falling in and out of favor with her. It’s currently my brother’s turn. Regardless, my brother, father and I took turns at the hospital with her so that she wouldn’t have to be alone and so that she’d get the best care. I missed work events so that I could meet with Drs. during her recovery. Shortly after she had recovered, she threw a dinner party for her friends to “thank them for everything they did for her.” Her comment for us? “I just felt so all alone at the hospital.”
-After my mother’s surgery, I was facing one of my own. Albiet not “brain surgery”… as she loves to tell every person she meets… but a 3-hour surgery to remove a uterine mass that I was trying to cope with. The night before, we were double-checking arrangements for our 9-year-old son with my dad. When I confirmed this with my mother, she replied, “Oh, I won’t be in town. So-and-so & I are going shopping for the day.” When she saw my hurt response, she defended herself. “Well, we’ve had this trip planned for about a month.”
-My father was recently sent to the hospital by ambulance with atrial fibrillation, and we were all a little scared. I immediately left work to be with him. She doesn’t drive, so she didn’t bother to do much and stayed at home. My husband finally insisted that she needed to go to the hospital, and that he would pick her up to take her. Upon her arrival, she began telling all of the medical staff (who were trying to care for my dad) about her brain surgery. I was waiting for her to say it all with a touch of Spanish thrown in.
-My mother’s parents were good financial planners and had a sizable amount of money. After her father died, her mother required expensive nursing care. My mother remarked on a regular basis that her mother was eating up all of the money (and there would be nothing left for her). On one of my mother’s “trips,” my grandmother passed away. When I asked my father about how to get ahold of my mother, he said that she left instructions before she left: “If she dies while I’m away, don’t call me. There’s nothing I can do anyway, so no sense in ruining my vacation.”
…Yes, I am in therapy. I’m finding ways to limit my exposure to her. And I’m learning, little by little, how to have a healthier attitude. She’s limited. It’s funny though, the people who truly do not understand that all mothers are not Gingerbread Moms.
Narcissistic mother buys her daughter two new shirts for Christmas.
Daughter goes to try them on, then comes out happily wearing one of them.
Mother says, “What, so you don’t like the other shirt?”
Oh, and here’s another one from the (ex) narcissistic husband:
HUSBAND: “I can’t take it anymore! You’re always coming up to talk to me when I’m flirting with a pretty woman.”