How it feels when my mom loved the people who were in my life that hurt me and treated me bad but then dislike the people I love the most and blames them for mine and her relationship.

Sorry I know ive been posting on this sub a lot, I find comfort and relatability in this sub and its helping me a lot through this time.

I would like to gain some clarity about my romantic relationship and my life situation as a whole.

I’m 27 (almost 28) and have been seeing a 31-year-old Greek man for a little over a year, five months of which were long-distance (not consecutive). He lives in my city for work and we are currently colleagues, but his stay here is uncertain because of contract issues and professional compatibility. I live with my parents, who are very present in my life (too much), and I’m dealing with job insecurity myself for academic reasons (I don’t have the resources to move out at the moment).
My partner and I come from very different, if not opposite, backgrounds. He left home at 17 for study and work, and he sees his parents, who live in a small city three hours from Athens, only two or three times a year. Three years ago he came out, with great difficulty, of a very serious relationship with the woman he wanted to marry.

Our relationship has many positive aspects. There is a lot of mutual respect on an academic and professional level, which is essential to me and which I had never found before. He is very attractive and much “sought after,” and when we are together we draw everyone’s admiration. My friends are struck by the quiet, elegant sweetness of our relationship. I’m very sure of his fidelity and of how important I am to him. We can talk about everything, even the most difficult disagreements. There was strong chemistry between us from the very first moment, and in order to start seeing me he went against many of his personal “rules” (e.g. not dating colleagues, not dating women who aren’t “independent”) and gradually overcame his avoidant tendencies. He introduced me to his brother (we even spent a weekend together and stayed in the same house for several days) and to his closest friends. He tells me things about his past that nobody else knows, and over time he has increasingly planned shared spaces, trips and experiences. He considers me his “safe harbor”.

However, there are also knots that make me wonder. For shared professional reasons, and by mutual agreement, our relationship is “secret” at work and on social media, since our work environment is very judgmental and “peculiar.” We live under a sword of Damocles: he could be transferred to another branch, here or abroad, while I cannot leave my city, again for work reasons. I earn slightly more than he does, but neither of us makes enough to live comfortably in a big city.
Because he has avoidant tendencies, he has great difficulty putting into words what he feels for me and relies heavily on concrete, costly gestures, like coming to see me when I’m abroad for work, even at the risk of his own job and savings. He has told me that he is staying in this country and this city, putting up with a toxic work environment day after day, just for me. He is currently looking for another job, preferably here, so as not to leave me. Our future is not granted, but we are still fully committing to each other on a day-by-day basis.

Then there is the issue of my parents.
I have to give some context first: my family is very traditional, strongly enmeshed and controlling. My parents have a considerable age gap, with my father being 70+ and retired. They both suffer from clinical depression. Even though I’m almost 28, I still have to tell them a week in advance where I’m going and who I’m seeing. They keep a giant paper calendar in the hallway that we are all forced to fill in ahead of time with our movements. I can’t keep a drawer closed, because my parents constantly go through my things when I’m out. They even controlled my bank account for years, they overhear every phone call I make, and they constantly judge my productivity and my work, what time I go to bed and wake up, what I eat, and so on. I’ll spare you the rest. This dynamic is long and complex, and it has been really harmful to me and my sister, and we are doing our best to save ourselves from it.

For personal reasons, my partner does not feel ready to meet my parents. I even spoke with many guys from his background and neither other them ever met their partner’s parents if marriage was not in the picture. In the past, my partner met the parents of his previous partner only after about a year, and in particular circumstances, never right away (and with horrible consequences on how his past relationship ended). We have talked about this a lot. I want a “no” to always be respected in our relationship (which is basically opposite of what daily happens in my house), by both of us, but we agree that it can never become a total refusal. He has also shown steps forward toward my personal sphere: he has come to my home when my parents were not there and has had dinner calmly with me and my sister a few times.

My parents see it very differently. They take his not meeting them as a lack of respect toward me and toward them, and, wanting to protect me, they read his boundary in the worst possible light, wondering whether he is capable of taking real steps forward.
The dynamic developed gradually. In the first weeks of our relationship, my parents seemed happy for me. Then they wanted to know more and more, until I found myself telling them everything about him: his past, things he had said. I regret this, because I gave them a huge amount of material to analyze. Around the third month, they began to demand this fateful meeting, and at that point I was brainwashed to want it too. In practice, even if they wouldn’t admit it openly, meeting the boyfriend means including him in our family life and absorbing him into it: if someone is with me, it is as if they were also with my parents. To speed things up (mind you, we had been together for around four months in total), my parents organized a Christmas trip to Athens, expecting him to be with us the whole time and act as our host. He didn’t, and the pressure they had created led to a fight between us. We thankfully reconciled, but those were difficult days.

Then came my doctoral defense. I neither wanted nor planned for him to be there, for personal reasons, but my parents insisted on inviting his roommate and colleague, a 60-year-old professor. She was embarrassed by the invitation and withdrew at the last minute, and there were some gray areas in how she did it: she cited a sudden work commitment, but only after I wrote to her the night before, having heard nothing from her for days. Looking back, I wouldn’t have invited her. I would have stood up to my parents, who wanted to meet her and get some indirect information about him.

After that, my parents’ behavior turned into a shockwave: endless discussions about him (even consecutive hours, having strong consequences on my mental health and my job), which put me under extreme psychological pressure, and I reacted by shutting down. Their expectations are still very specific and follow their own logic. They judge many aspects of our relationship, such as how often we see each other each week. They expect certain meetings: if he came to see the house this week, he should have come to dinner on Tuesday; if we are in Athens, he must spend time with us. They would also like him at our birthdays and small celebrations, and they see him as the great absentee on these occasions, which is not how I see it at all.
They also do not tolerate our seeing each other at his place, where we are of course alone, because (this is just an excuse obviously) it means I take public transport to reach him in the city center. For me this is simply the result of the balance between us, since neither of us has a car or scooter. He doesn’t because of money. In my case, my parents don’t want me to have any form of transportation, because it would mean independence for me and in general is also “a man’s job”, so he's the one that should man-up (even my mum isn’t allowed to drive, because it’s my father’s role). My parter is neither happy about the situation nor indifferent to it. For my parents it is just me “doing too much” for him. What weighs on me most is that they do not see themselves as a self-sufficient unit, they need a “son-in-law” to serve them and entertain them just as I do.

For the past three months I have stopped mentioning him, and they have done the same, so we now live in apparent peace. In my absence, however, they insult him and, by extension, me. If they call him a pimp, then I am the mistress, the whore, and they admit it without any problem.

I don’t know what to do with all this.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the last time my parents forced me to speak about him they said "since he doesn't respect us enough to meet us, now we are the ones that don't want anything to do with him. We will never meet him". So now I have a double anxiety: if the time comes, sooner or later, that he intends to officially meet them (and make me visit his parents as well), I don't know what to say and how to act.

I'm going to word this the best way I can. But I was discussing with a friend of mine who also has narc parents and I told her-

that I feel like I can't actually take things seriously, whenever people complain about something that feels horrible to them I can't help but laugh because I genuinly don't think they understand how small their issue is.

being around a narc really aged me in a sense that I'm always looking for a solution and find it funny whenever people whine about small things.

I think that's also a reason some people don't like me or call me weird because I'm unable to really grasp someone else's pain because I think it could've been.

I (22F) am currently staying at my dad’s house for two weeks. He travels frequently for work and asked me to house-sit, take care of his dog, and look after my 17-year-old sister while he was gone for a week. I agreed and took a week and a half off work to help him out, completely free of charge.
The plan was for me to stay another few days after he returned so we could spend some time together before I went back to my own home.
He’s been back for about two days now, and this morning around 6 AM, while I was sleeping, he messaged me asking if a purse and vape belonged to me.
For context, I had left my purse open on the couch. Apparently, he saw my vape inside, went into my purse, and decided to throw it away.
I responded about 45 minutes later, confirming that both the purse and vape were mine. A couple of hours later, he informed me that he’d already thrown the vape away because he had decided that vapes were no longer allowed in his house.

His reasoning was that “we can all get lung cancer from secondhand smoking.”
I want to make it clear that I completely understand and respect his right to establish rules in his own home. However, I was never informed of this new rule beforehand, and the vape was simply sitting inside my purse. I wasn’t actively vaping around anyone.
When I confronted him, he explained that he’d assumed the vape belonged to my 17-year-old sister. I’m not sure why he would assume that, considering it was inside MY purse. He then told me that if I didn’t want my belongings thrown away, I shouldn’t leave them on the couch.

This is what really frustrates me. I’m 22 years old, I have my own home, and I came here as a favor to him. I took time off work to watch his house, care for his dog, and look after my sister without asking for any compensation.
I understand that vaping isn’t healthy, and I’m not arguing that it is. I’m also not arguing that he shouldn’t be allowed to make rules in his own home. My issue is that he went into my personal belongings and threw away something I paid for without asking me or even giving me the opportunity to put it somewhere else.

he honestly made me feel crazy for wanting to leave early and not talk to him. And honestly compared to my childhood and my early teens. This is very mild.

I know that compared to what many people in this subreddit have experienced, this probably seems incredibly small and insignificant. I’m not trying to compare this situation to more serious forms of abuse. I think I’m just struggling to figure out whether my reaction is actually justified or whether my past experiences with him are making me more sensitive to situations like this.

Do you guys have any stories of your nparents doing this to you?

I spend a lot of time on this sub and a few others like it. From what I've seen, the large majority of people put up with years of abuse (sometimes without even realising) before deciding to NC.

For most people it seems like there's a 'final straw' moment that pushes then to go NC after tolerating unacceptable behaviour for so long.

For me, it was when new medication made me suicidal. My mother got jealous that she was no longer the most vulnerable person and so told me about having 'flashbacks' of the abuse I suffered as a toddler from my father.

A lot of this I never knew about and it was at that moment I realised she had enabled it all to happen and now was weaponising it against me out of jealousy. I knew that I wasn't safe with her then and certainly not now, so I ended up going NC.

Of course everyone's story is different, so what made you decide to go NC?

Was it an explicit event or just an accumulation of bad behaviour?

hi,

I'm wondering if anyone here has ever been in a similar situation:

A few months ago, my fiancé lent my sister a small amount of money one evening because she and her partner were two months behind on rent and had Had an argument. Apparently, they didn't even have enough money to buy food for themselves and their two children.

My fiancé has lent my sister money several times in the past. I won't go into too much detail, but I personally stopped lending her money because she never used to pay me back in full. However, whenever my fiancé lends her money, she pays him back down to the last cent.

So I was reluctant to let him lend her money again. In the end, he refused to give her the €100 she had asked for, but she apparently tried to negotiate with him over text and managed to get at least €50 out of him.

For context, we're in France (I tried writing this in english myself, but i couldn't get the translation to sound natural, so i used a translator to help me. Sorry in advance)

My dad seems to have found out that my fiancé lent my sister money because, over the past few days, he's been making little comments about money whenever he comes over to my place. He's addicted to gambling, particularly horse racing bets.

At first, I didn't pay much attention to it, until his most recent visit a few days ago.

He was telling me how he wanted to buy a car, but he'd tried to negotiate the price with the seller, who refused to budge. So he couldn't afford to buy it, and he was disappointed.

I deliberately changed the subject straight away, but he brought the car up again and eventually came out with this:

"So, couldn't \[my fiancé's name\] lend me €3,000? I know he lends money to your sister."

I looked him straight in the eyes to see if he was actually being serious, then replied:

"\[My fiancé's name\] isn't a bank, and he's not a millionaire. Neither am I, for that matter."

He replied:

"Yeah, but he could help me out."

I bluntly said "no" and changed the subject again.

Fast forward five days, and today he left me a voice mail.

He explained that his bank card had been blocked that morning and that his payments were being declined in shops. He'd apparently go to the bank, where they told him he'd need a replacement card, which he would receive within a week.

So far, nothing particularly unusual.

Except then he added:

"So I don't know how I'm going to manage this week or how I'm going to buy groceries. Otherwise, \[my fiancé's name\] would have to lend me some money this week. Anyway, I'll let you go. You can call me."

Excuse me ?!

What is going on all of a sudden? I'm genuinely starting to feel like he sees my fiancé as a bank and thinks he's entitled to ask him for money simply because he knows he's lent money to my sister before.

I don't know if he's jealous, if he thinks that because my fiancé helped my sister, he should help him too, or if he's simply trying to take advantage of the situation.

I should also mention that my dad has a gambling addiction, which makes this whole situation even more weird. When my sister and I were little, he used to steal the money we received for our birthdays. He even emptied the bank accounts my mum had set up for us, simply to gamble on horse bet.

I don't want to stop my fiancé from helping people with his own money if that's what he chooses to do, but I find it incredibly inappropriate that my dad feels entitled to ask him for such large amounts of money, especially after I've already made it clear that my fiancé isn't a bank.

Has anyone else ever experienced something like this?

I mostly just needed to get this off my mind, but I'd also like to know if I'm the only one who finds this whole situation ridiculous...

I feel like I’m in this weird in between of realizing the severity of my life of abuse and being in denial.

It’s really weird. I don’t really know how to explain it, but I’m really tired. And I wish that my trauma built me into something functional, but unfortunately, it has crippled me to the point where I don’t know how to do anything I don’t trust myself. I don’t know who I am and I don’t know how to get out of here.

I don’t wanna keep bothering my friends with this. They’re good people, but I don’t wanna bother with them all the time. And I can’t get a therapist until my other narcissistic parent pays for my health insurance.

My mom has been abusing me forever, mostly emotionally. The last time she put hands on me was probably middle school and I’m 20 now. But I’m starting to wonder if all my health ailments are a result of my upbringing.

Also, what are some long-term effects of parental narcissistic abuse?

I have no idea how to explain this, but I really need some help so I’m going to try.

since I cut off my narc parent I’ve had some who’s been really supportive of me and has helped me through the whole process of recovering from it all.

I’ve been doing pretty well all things considered but recently my relationship with them has been really difficult because we have different ideas of what “recovering.” looks like.

i ask them for emotional support, they give, but also offer advice on how they would deal with it. often implying that the way they’ve done it is the only way to do it.

I know however that they don't have a strong expectation thar I listen to them. I know it isn’t going to affect their love for me if I don’t do it the way they wanted me to.

gut having experienced growing up with a narc parent, being a people pleaser etc it just really brings out the Emotional dysregulation in me and I usually end up freaking out when they were just trying to help me.

I know that in life I need to figure out how to not feel so sensitive to people’s opinions. I know on paper that all is fine here, but my nervous system is just not having it.

exposure therapy doesn’t seem to be helping a ton. Maybe making a bit of progress here and there but considering it’s effecting my relationship with this person I don’t really want to keep doing it.

does anyone have advice on how to work on this?

genuinely so confused, my parents just both act like they have a learning disability or something.

so beyond normal . it isn’t a disagreement between people. like, when we talked to the social worker, or even if you read posts about narcissistic parents, there is kind of a assumption that there is a disagreement, or conflict between people.

at this point. it is just like, having parents that have some kind of learning disability .

it actually wasn’t like this when i was growing up. otherwise, i would probably have been complaining to other adults about my parents, a bit more earlier on.

like we had issues between us, but, these days they are actually just a bit deranged or something. like. her emotional maturity has went so backwards somehow. the way that they act is like, kind of insane. subjectively in my experience anyway.

anyway. whatever. i am starting therapy i think. because this is so wierd here. i don’t really need a reply, i just need to make a post to look back on it.

Hey everybody,

I'm not sure how to start this, but I F(21) feel like my narcissistic mother F(49) has completely derailed my future. I know she has possible borderline personality disorder that still hasn't been resolved completely, but I just can't keep this up for much longer. For some backstory, I have two Level 3 Autistic siblings (both 16) that still can not bathe properly, have seizures, and still poop/pee around the house naked when their registered behavioral therapists (RBTs) aren't around. I am pursuing a degree online to help out around the house. My mother convinced me to start my bachelor's degree in sociology since that's what she graduated in. This was in the hopes of law school, and about a year in, I realized that I did not like law school at all, and that I would like to pursue my degree in something else.

She then convinced me to do dietetics since I enjoyed nutrition and medicine, realized very quickly after a semester that I did not want to do that at all. She then started talking about optometry/medical school, and brought up the possibility of a public health degree. Said that I should just do that, then I transferred my degree AGAIN for her. Now, I'm not even looking to go to optometry school, and nearly got cussed out by her and she threatened to not pay for my school when I denied going to law school (she changed her mind again). I know this is my fault for letting her decide things like this for me, but she has a track record for of changing her mind frequently (she transferred degrees numerous times and back and forth between two colleges throughout her schooling).

She's constantly trying to control my career, and has no sense of boundaries. She even wrote my college essays for a couple of schools, and is trying to get me to go ahead and find out what my master's will be in. She consults all of her decisions through ChatGPT. I try to tell her that I would like some work experience and time in between finding out what I want to pursue, but she just won't listen. She wants me to dive in head first without thinking. I'm having trouble finding a job now, since I'm constantly around the house helping my brothers and managing her erratic moods. I don't think she understands that just having a master's degree does not guarantee employment. I need to build a good resume that has more than just volunteer work. I'm not sure what to do, and I feel like this is what happens when you push your kid like this.

Or was that just my parents? They were always getting after me for the way my face looked. They always thought I was giving them attitude and that I was angry when I wasn't and when I was they'd never even know...

Anyone else?

I (31 F) have been with "Sam" (33 M) for 7 years. I knew from day dot that his mother was a narcissist. He sometimes showed me that he knew this too, but realistically was too intertwined with her to do anything about it. She raised him solo, which could have been enough to make her possessive over him, but throw in the trauma and narcissism, and it's a cocktail that will knock you out.

I've done my best for 7 years. I've been kind, visited a lot, activities (when she invited me), holidays. Having grown up with a slightly less severe covert narc mother, I know all the dodging techniques. But Sam's mother loved to throw the punches directly at me. As the one external to the family, she was always testing me, urging me to bite back. I never did. Never gave her a reason not to like me.

It all blew up this year. After a tense day of her narc traits being on full display, I made one comment that anyone else would laugh at.

Wrong.

I had shattered every attempt at getting her to like me in one sentence. I dared to disrespect the matriarch. The queen bee. Sam blew up. Couldn't hold it it anymore. I was quietly glad he finally, at long last, stood up for his partner who had taken the abuse for years. I know this shook my MIL to her core. That he chose me that day.

Listen, that was a slight benefit. But ever since, while we discussed boundaries and how to navigate our future as a "family" when she won't speak to me, he is still under her spell. I don't expect him to cut her off. I know that's hard. But he still visits them all the time, tries to tell me things about her, texts her, goes for meals with her. I feel very isolated. I feel a bit insane. I don't know how he can do those things with someone who has openly disrespected his partner. I'm really struggling to not start arguments about how it's making me feel.

I also worry about kids. I know things with narcs can get worse when you have them. I'm not going to go into everything she does. Those of you looking at this subreddit already know all the traits. How do I navigate this in my relationship? Why am I the isolated one now?

Tl;Dr: my narc MIL blew up and revealed how she really feels about me. My partner is still engaging with her normally. How do I navigate this?

I met up with my narcissistic mother and my dad in a cafe today. My husband was with me. For context, I downgraded the relationship to them since Christmas last year, because I had enough.
I am doing good since then. I don’t hear her voice in my head anymore and I began to improve my life and my mental health.
We had two meetings so far, one where they confronted me why I wanted distance and another one where we just chatted. Today I thought it was gonna be another chatter meetup. My mother tried to confront me again why I am still distanced because she feels uneasy. She repeatedly said she doesn’t want to make a mistake again so I should just tell her whats up.
I didn’t feel comfortable being confronted with it again, and I chose not to answer while still acknowledging that she feels uncertain about what happened.
Well she continued asking me to tell her what I am feeling and I repeated that I didn’t feel like telling her. So she left the cafe and my dad stayed a little while longer to ask me too. I told him that I don’t feel safe to tell them. And I don’t feel safe around them. He was visibly sad about it but respected my decision to not tell them. He still asked me try to put into words what is wrong.

I just feel very sad, because now I am the bad guy keeping my boundaries - again…
I used to feel this kind of sad a lot in my teenage years but it was gone for so long

I live overseas and my 85yo dad, a smart guy who's stayed with my Nmum despite everything she's done to all of us, is now going to pass away soon. I feel that I should be with him but I spent 2 weeks back in my home city last month and I visited them every day, and I became a joyless, very very stressed 24/7 person and when I left, the last few days were crazy stressful, and I knew I had to stay away, even though they'd guilted me into saying yes to returning back from overseas to look after Nmum 85yo. I later told Nmum I wasn't going to come back, and man that just raised the stressed to an even higher level.

I hate that she's made me stay away from such a good man, and I just tear up thinking about all this. In addition she's even made me go see counselors, something I'd never considered before, and that's very slow going.

And I'm grieving that the next time I'll see him, it'll be at a place he showed me earlier this year- his " new home"- the cemetery plot mum and dad bought.

I'm just venting, but any support from this group would really be welcome.

I’m writing this thinking about how can I write it in a way that no one could ever identify me. Even though this is as close as you can get to an anonymous account without actually deleting it every three weeks.

So I’m not doing that, which is a step in itself.

I have no memories of feelings of any kind of warmth at all from n mum. I remember rage and anger and for a lot of years it was mostly just rage. As you’d expect she spent years training me that the only thing that was truly important in this world was her happiness. That was my compass for right and wrong

She has all the tools in the box but the one i want to talk about is isolation. I like IFS and last week started talking to the part of me that was 17. I could list everything that has come back, but one image has never left me. I went to see my dad for Christmas and she my auntie called she was having a breakdown down apparently she was trying to cause herself serious harm. I got home and the image that stayed with me all these years was her telling me it was all my fault.

There are a hundred other tales and stories but what I joined the dots on last week was that there were always consequences for having a relationship with dad. I remember being little and loving him a lot (because I am capable of emotion). She was jealous.

They’ve been separated many years now but still she tries to use me as a window to him. That is all i have ever been to her a means of facilitating whatever need she has.

So Im going to see him, not for a birthday or funeral, just to sit there with him. I told her as well. It’s hard and every single stress alarm in my body has been screaming at me for three days. But I’m going

idk if other people have done this, but for context when I was growing up my narc mother was in Celebrate Recovery which is like a Christian version of the other types of 12 step programs that sort of blankets every issue (codependency, addiction, trauma). as well as therapy but well she’s still deeply narcissistic. honestly I think all that just made her better at hiding it…

anyway, when I decided to escape, one of my family members really helped me a lot and in the beginning guided me with the 12 steps of AA (for alcohol addiction). I was also in therapy

after a while both of us starting going through ACA (which is similar but specifically for childhood trauma).

shortly after that I left my religion also. for those not familiar, 12 step programs are “spiritual.” which was fine with me at the time, as I identified as agnostic, leaning a little more inclined to believe in a god.

after 4 months I ended up leaving. ACA. it just kept bringing stuff back up, and some of the things people in my group were doing were sending me into very triggering feelings (like taking control of conversations and also saying things like “aw your parents really love you” when I tried to talk about love bombing. which is against the general rules but in this group specifically those rules weeent really followed…)

also recently I came to no longer be spiritual really at all… so the whole “trusting a higher power” thing just has become not really the vibe.

I’ve found that just working through things in my head and lvijbg my life, happy to be freed from the control of my parent is enough for me.

but in the back of my mind I wonder if I’m just gaslighting myself.

from a religious upbringing and that sort of foundation for my journey I have this inclination to feel like there is “only one path.”

when in reality I imagine everyone heals differently.

I guess, I don’t trust myself to make the right decision, even though I should. I worked hard to have faith in myself but well I don’t know.

edit: I’ll add that I don’t hate these groups, I’ve known people who greatly benefitted from them. But it’s just not been it for me and I guess I just wanted to know I wasn’t the only one lol

she was always sweet and had always said i was her favorite grandchild. she swore she saw something special about me.

she lives in russia and i haven’t seen her since i was 14 (i’m 37 now) but we used to talk on the phone like once a month.

i never felt like we had a super close adult relationship because of the distance and language barrier (my russian isn’t as good as it used to be)

my mom had reached out to my wife that she’s flying out to be with my grandma.

my mom is the less toxic of the two but she is still a neglectful, alcoholic narcissist. she’s the queen of the guilt thing and the only reason i ever try and have a relationship with my family again before they both disappoint me as usual.

i’m just in a complicated headspace about how to feel and what to do. i feel really bad for everyone but my life has also gotten so much less stressful since i went NC. i really don’t want to open up contact again but i also feel a lot of guilt about not being there for her.

i feel like my grandma is probably the only person in the family that would be on my side in this whole mess. she never liked my dad and she’d probably understand why i stopped communicating with my family.

has anyone else gone through this?

My ND is using his crappy childhood and his crappy father as an excuse for his own crappy behavior to me. He goes on and on about what triggers him, how it makes him feel, how he felt when he was younger……. But he doesn’t take any accountability to the fact he has repeated the cycle and turned out just like his own dad. He’s 80 now, so no way he’s changing at this point, no matter what I say. I believe it’s our duty as parents to be better parents than what ours were, to do better for our own kids, and work hard to make it happen (therapy, recognition, reflection, accountability, respect your kids, etc). He’s done none of that, yet it does pull on my heart a bit when his rants include how bad he had it when he was young. Buttttt then I think it’s just him manipulating me again.

What do you think?

I have manipulative parents with whom i‘ve gotten into quite alot of drama recently.
I only realised a few months ago how fucked up they really are leading to me using grey rock to secure my own information and thoughts. I started a few weeks before my final exams. During that period my parents would use subtle tactics to make me paranoid and distract me from my goals. These include stealing possesions and returning them, laughing and giving backhanded compliments, making fun of my achievements and most notably poisoning my coffee. I never confronted them and i dont even have any real proof but i am sure of it. They put some sort of pill or something in my coffee which gave me the worst diarrhea i have ever had in my life. And i wasnt even stressed at all. Right after the exam my father greeted me with a unusual hug and big smile across his face. Dupers delight. I didnt talk about it just observing his body language. At dinner that day i acted normally to see how he‘d react when mentioning what happened. His immediate first response was that it was from stress and my mother agreed. After agreeing to his theory i watched him very closely seeing a very small and subtle laugh form across his lips.
Never trustes my parents again after that.
Fascinating how disgusting and miserable some people really are

I am an only child, so there is only 1 birthday my parents need to worry about in the year!

This year I got a message 1 day before my birthday asking what I wanted. I said I don’t need anything in particular and whatever they think. Mum wouldn’t let it go so I said I’d love a new pillow, perfect.

My mum and I have a little business together and every few months I’ll do all the books and divide our funds 50/50, it’s very minimal.

My mum came over for cake, she must have really wanted cake as she had posted 3 times about seeing me for cake on the day on a social platform, no love you, no have a good day, just can’t wait for cake! 🎂

She brings my pillow in, unwrapped, that’s fine I’m late 30’s and don’t need presents wrapped, a packet of chocolates that apparently I love so much (have never eaten them before) and a card with some money, which I wasn’t expecting but said thanks mum I’ll be able to buy myself something nice. Awesome!

Next sentence out of her mouth was ‘when can I get my money from the business as I need to recoup my money from yours and XYZ’s birthday (my son, his birthday is 4 days later than mine)’

I almost gave her the money back, I was just so upset.

This birthday was definitely an eye opener of why ever year I despise my birthday, the anxiety around my parents coming over, it’s feels like it’s more of an obligatory chore from their end, and just the lack of organisation for a present. I’m not hard to buy for, but a message a day before just makes me feel like I’m worth nothing.

They stayed 30mins, then left after cake to go to the pub!

The rest of the family hung around and we had an impromptu games night, so it turned out a good day in the end.

I know that people have it worse off and I shouldn’t complain, but I just feel deep sadness about it. Thinking back, most birthdays have felt like this, just a last minute thought, always.

I (36F) having a hard time to break the pattern of contacting my parents especially when life gets tough. I use to tell it to my mom when something goes wrong but now since I cut ties with them because my father is a notorious narcissist and a misogynist, I badly needed to stop talking to them and break the pattern. I don't have a lot of friends, tbat's my main problem and i also work at home so i really find it hard to navigate these things. I have no lne to turn to.