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I'm absolutely best friends with my wife, but I don't have any other friends, so I guess that checks out. We were tight friends beforehand, and we've never really been very social people. Frankly having found a single human being I can not only tolerate, but actively want to be around 100% of the time is so unbelievable to me I don't want to push it by looking for others.
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Feb 23, 2020 17:25
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Well generally you're not around your friends 100% of the time. That's more a polycule situation.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:24
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You know, my mother (who I do get along with) has been mumbling a little about how her adult daughters don't talk to her. I was talking to one of my sisters about it and yeah, mom is stuck on this Gilmore Girls vision of a relationship but she's raised four extremely independent women, ages from 23 to 36, who are all extremely busy with their lives and/or young children. I'll happily spend time with her but she's still working and she lives twenty minutes out of town now so you can't just drop in unannounced anymore. Sending her memes might be a good solution.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:47
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Why the gently caress would anyone want a Gilmore Girls type relationship?
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Feb 23, 2020 18:52
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Who What Now posted:Why the gently caress would anyone want a Gilmore Girls type relationship? I don't know, but I never liked the show, and she did!
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Feb 23, 2020 20:44
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Gilmore Girls fans are bugfuck crazy a large majority of the time so that tracks
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Feb 23, 2020 20:48
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:Gilmore Girls fans are bugfuck crazy a large majority of the time so that tracks My mother is not bugfuck crazy but she was never really close with her family and she kind of wants a romanticized codependent relationship as seen on television, while also having raised us in such a way that we are self sufficient adults who are not codependent with her. It doesn't make sense, but humans rarely do.
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Feb 23, 2020 20:59
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:Gilmore Girls fans are bugfuck crazy a large majority of the time so that tracks My sister, currently in her mid 40's, unmarried with no children or boyfriend or even pets, loves the Gilmore Girls, and is essentially my mother's loving shadow. Ironically my sister once told me she hates dogs because she can't respect a creature that indulges in blind loyalty. If I'd have held a mirror right in front of her face as she said it she wouldn't have realised how loving stupid she sounded.
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Feb 23, 2020 21:33
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Picnic Princess posted:My mother told me she refused to like or comment on any of my facebook stuff because she doesn't want that kind of relationship with her child. All while she was liking literally everything my sister posted. Not jealous or anything, just annoyed at the hypocrisy and how blatant the whole golden child/scapegoat thing really is. I can't help but think that one reason parents play favorites isn't just because they favor one kid, but they enjoy having their kids compete for their attention. This sounds like an example of that.
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Feb 23, 2020 22:42
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Parents wanting to be friends with their kids is so screwy because of the uneven power dynamic over their formative years. Did you bring children into the world because you couldn't make your own friends and you think they're stuck with you no matter what? Spouses make a lot more sense as friends since that dynamic is based more on equality and actively choosing that person to be with. Hell, each of my previous partners started out as friends initially (and still are).
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Feb 23, 2020 22:55
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It's a status thing for the narcissists. They see other people who have healthy relationships with their adult children, and they want to be seen as having the same thing or better, but without doing any of the work. I'm no/low contact with my stepmother. I try to be polite to her when I bump into the bitch in public, and she will put on this big act and pretend like we've been friends for years, but only if someone else is watching that she wants to impress. I'm just trying not to air dirty laundry and get out of the situation as gracefully as possible. "Friend" and "parent" are just fundamentally different relationships. Props to people who can pull off both.
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Feb 24, 2020 00:39
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AuntBuck posted:It's a status thing for the narcissists. They see other people who have healthy relationships with their adult children, and they want to be seen as having the same thing or better, but without doing any of the work.
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Feb 24, 2020 01:07
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I brought children into the world because I wanted to make and raise new people. It worked. My children have their own strengths and passions, which aren't my husband's and mine, but we overlap enough to talk. I like talking to them because they know things I don't, they are funny, they are kind, and they are smart. That's exactly what I hoped for when I had kids. Now that they're adults, I don't do much parenting, and I certainly don't retain any authority. Most of the time I just hang out with them, and they are great people to hang out with.
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Feb 24, 2020 02:22
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To clarify, I don't think it's impossible or unhealthy to develop a friendship with your kids. It's a parents imposition and expectation of a friendship that makes it screwy. The forced nature of it automatically makes it not a real friendship.
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Feb 24, 2020 02:47
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Tin Can Hit Man posted:To clarify, I don't think it's impossible or unhealthy to develop a friendship with your kids. It's not a friendship, it's a hostage situation.
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Feb 24, 2020 02:52
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It's also not the sort of thing you just decide you're going to have. You can love and care for someone -- deeply even -- without necessarily being best buds. But a friendship has to be something that comes naturally due to similar interests, values and wanting to have that person in your life.
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Feb 24, 2020 02:57
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Who What Now posted:Why the gently caress would anyone want a Gilmore Girls type relationship? To be fair Betty White seems like a nice person.
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Feb 24, 2020 04:21
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I also think it has a lot to do with the fact they have to ask. "Why aren't we friends?" is an accusatory question. It implies that I want to be friends with you and am taking steps to make this so, but there is something else that is getting in the way of our beautiful friendship. (It is you! You are being a bad friend, and therefore a bad son/daughter! Why are you always like this? I try so hard only to be let down by you yet again over this thing that could have been so beautiful for us both but you had to ruin it! etc.). If they actually wanted to be friends, it could very easily be phrased as "We should be friends.", or maybe even "It would be nice if we were friends." and secondly "Why aren't we friends like X?", where X is one of their friends or a show on TV, adds the extra dimension of "I want this thing that I see other people having. But YOU are denying it of me! This makes me look/feel like a bad parent, and it is YOUR fault!" Neither question says that they want to be friends, neither question says that they want to hang out and enjoy each others company, or be close, or have a hman connection, which is what real friends have. Both questions are ways of punishing/accusing the Estranged Son/Daughter for being a disappointment and less than in the eyes of the parent
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Feb 24, 2020 04:54
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Jeff the Mediocre posted:To be fair Betty White seems like a nice person. That's the Golden Girls. Gilmore Girls is about a piece of poo poo hotel owner and her dipshit daughter as they mooch off the woman's ultra-rich parents.
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Feb 24, 2020 05:05
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It's night and I'm going to be maudlin. I am so lucky in my children. They are better than me, and they like me, and the endgame is everything I could have hoped for. That is all.
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Feb 24, 2020 05:17
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Feb 24, 2020 09:20
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Arsenic Lupin posted:It's night and I'm going to be maudlin. I am so lucky in my children. They are better than me, and they like me, and the endgame is everything I could have hoped for. That is all. I was floored when I saw that in a goddamn Star Wars movie coming out of a muppet. Some serious truth bombs there.
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Feb 24, 2020 15:59
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Pick posted:*boss who will flip his lid if the ice in his ice water is "too cold" and won't sign off on any document with pink highlighting and will dump long stories revealing huge personal problems on you* : i do all the work around here!! This is me with my boss as and I feeling extremely attacked lol. As the adult child of a narcissist I'm desperate to paper over the cracks in any relationship. Rockbear posted:One of the best lessons about people I learned from an engineering mentor: those who resist simple solutions have ulterior motives. Holy poo poo, this is some spot on stuff. My mother comes up with complex narratives which centre her as the victim/matyr and rejects any push towards objective reality as me being part of the vast conspiracy against her  Ebola Roulette posted:Also, to anyone else with lovely parents, do they ever act like you're not supposed to be "better" than them? Like they have "crabs in a bucket" syndrome? My mother enrolled in uni a year before I did, and completed one subject. She then used that to undermine me by saying she was a university student and she *understood*. She also took credit for my writing ability by saying that as a child I "took all her words". There's never been as aspect of my personality or life story that she hasn't attempted to absorb as her own. "That's what we're like" "we're not good at that" - she doesn't know me at all, and I tell her nothing. I just let her project and then return to my life. Holidays are a loving nightmare. I've been reading this thread in abject horror. bell jar posted:and it seems to me, that you lived your life, in a foster home in kiev This made me snort laugh so that's something 
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Feb 24, 2020 20:12
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quote:Hi, everyone. I’m introducing myself, as I just joined. I assume my user name will show up next to my post, but it’s Warbler. I decided to join because I was looking for some relief, support really, during a terrible time. My brother died recently, and my 37-year-old daughter (only child) cut off communication with me a little before Thanksgiving of 2018, except for a couple of emails and a phone call when she heard about my brother. She also came to his memorial service, where we saw each other for the first time in about a year and a half. I thought that this death in the family and reconnecting over it might mean the end of this estrangement, but things quickly reverted to the way they were before. This feels like double the grief for me. So I’ve been kind of a mess since returning home last Friday from NYC where the service was – depressed actually (I have clinical depression anyway), crying uncontrollably every day. I’m so deeply hurt, and – probably like many of you – never dreamed my daughter could treat me this way, that this could happen to us. I’ve been very restrained through this, wanting to respect her wish for ‘time and space’ and not wanting to risk driving her further away. But I emailed her after getting back from this trip, trying to tell her what I couldn’t say when I saw her – that nothing’s ever hurt me more deeply than being cut out of her life and that I loved her and appreciated her coming to the service. And a little more. I didn’t expect an answer, and didn’t get one. So I’m feeling helpless with her controlling the whole situation, and pretty hopeless. I know I need to focus more on things I CAN control, but that’s so much easier said than done. At this point, anyway. I won’t try right now to describe the relationship we had, or to explain why this happened, because it’s late and this is already too long. But I’m glad to have found this group – it makes me feel a little less alone. I’m so sorry, though, about all the suffering I’ve come across here, reading so many sad stories. Hope I can make a little difference here. My daughter asked for time and space and I didn't give it to her because ~my feelings~ and now she won't talk to me!!!!!!!! Can't she see how much she's hurting me I'm sad I have depression me me me me meeeeee. these people are addicted to being victims quote:Hello. Well I’m finally posting. Brokenhearted. My son says no contact. My daughter is in and out of the picture. She wants to ‘be in touch’ and we finally got together for lunch and that was it. She obviously didn’t have a good time, because she didn’t want to see me again after that, altho she will text and we did have a long phone conversation for 45 mins while she was driving home. She texted me not to push getting together and my two close friends and husband all say leave her alone for awhile and it’s SOO hard. I was crushed that she reached out to me to get together, we did 4 therapy sessions during which time she told me basically that she didn’t like me. But she wants something because she did contact me and seems to want to stay in touch. SHe wants to be connected, and doesn’t seem to want anything else from me. I have read in the posts that there is a pattern of the kids coming in and out. Getting in touch, then I’ll say something they don’t like and they disappear. It’s really scary because I’m so afraid of saying something that will piss them off and they’ll go. I can’t believe that things have turned out this way. I should have done better, but I do believe I did the best I could. i'm editing this post to add this one too because i'm fascinated by that small glimmer of self-awareness and apparent responsibility-taking. there might be hope for this one? Sisal Two-Step fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Feb 27, 2020 |
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Feb 27, 2020 17:52
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Sisal Two-Step posted:My daughter asked for time and space and I didn't give it to her because ~my feelings~ and now she won't talk to me!!!!!!!! Can't she see how much she's hurting me I'm sad I have depression me me me me meeeeee. It's par for the course for lovely parents to use an event to elicit sympathy from others who aren't familiar with the situation with their kids. This type of poo poo will get worse as the parent gets older as well: if they start getting sick as they age, they'll use it as a tool to gain sympathy from people, telling others how their evil heartless child won't even talk to them when they're (probably not actually) dying. This parent is most likely telling anyone who'll listen how horrible their daughter is for doing the bare minimum expected of them by showing up to her uncle's memorial service and not talking to her father/mother.
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Feb 27, 2020 18:12
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Popping out of lurking to say this thread finally got me into therapy for my own narcissist parents. Hearing all these crazy rear end horrible women speak in my mother's voice finally made it click for me that this stuff isn't normal, and most parents actually love and support their kids. Thanks thread, but also 
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Feb 27, 2020 18:46
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"WHAT DO I TELL PEOPLE?" When I first cut contact from my family I got versions of "What are we supposed to tell friends/coworkers/etc?" from several people, as thought it's my responsibility to give them an excuse that sounds good. Apparently my father eventually decided to tell people I'm dead, which is fine by me.
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Feb 27, 2020 19:08
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Pope Corky the IX posted:"WHAT DO I TELL PEOPLE?" quote:I went over and visited a few other sites that are dedicated to the children of estrangement. I noticed a whole lot of finger pointing and accusations of Narcissism especially among mothers. Some brought up this website as if a narcissistic parent would spend time looking to resolve their grief online. No kiddos. Let me tell you what a narcissistic parent looks like. A mother that neglects her children to go out to bars, feeds her kids the same meals day in and day out to buy cigarettes and beer for her man. A mother that tells you that you should have died instead of your sister. That’s just the very teeny tip of the iceberg of my relationship with my mother. I could post things here that would make most people’s heads explode. The point is that as screwed up as my mother was all my life, as immature as she still is, I stand by her and help her when she is sick today. I don’t turn my back on her because I came to realize as I got older that we all tend to reflect our own upbringing. My mother was raised by an undiagnosed paranoid bipolar parent. She was physically abused herself and emotionally terrorized. Perhaps that kept her in a perpetual state of adolescence. I don’t know for sure but what I do know is that there was nothing I did as a child to deserve maltreatment. I could walk away from my mother but I do the right thing by letting both of my parents off the hook. I don’t wish for them to die knowing that they were hated by me. Now if I can forgive my parents who I promise you were absolute monsters to me growing up, maybe you can stop feeling sorry for yourselves and do the same. When they are gone you will never have the chance to clear that up. Now I don’t recommend reconciliation in the case of sexual abuse but if you are keeping yourself away for things such as your mom was too nosy or she embarrassed you a few times, get over it. It happens to all children and guess what, if you have kids you’re bound to screw up without even intending to. Lord knows I had that first time my daughter told me I was stupid and that she hated me for being mean. It will happen to you! Furthermore, you say that you have gone no contact but what have you done in return that is actually quite dangerous. You’re putting the strangers online own personal biases as support for your complaints about parents. You’re relegating yourselves to impersonal support chats instead of trying to mend the relationships with the people that kept you alive and kept your tushies clean for the first few years of your existence. Children, adult children and parents will always have friction. Lower your expectations and see your parents as the people they are and not just as solely your parents. It is disappointing when you first realize your parents are not the idealized versions we see on television but you owe it to yourself to at least try to have compassion and understanding for them just as you would any other person on the internet. quote:I have seriously contemplated having an actual private (between my husband and I) memorial to say goodbye to the son we used to know that no longer exists. What started this hideous estrangement? quote:I honestly don’t even know where to begin, as my estrangement from my son has been in progress for the past 2 years. I am to the point now that I will be the one walking away for my own sanity, health, and emotional healing. I’m tired of the lies, the deceit, the double standards, being blamed for everything and the constant excuses. My ES is someone I no longer recognize and has become cold and callous. He stands in constant judgement of not only my husband and I, but other people as well. After meeting his wife (our DIL), he has gone from a caring and family-oriented person to a complete stranger. His wife is a devious and manipulative liar who has hated me and my husband since meeting us for the first time.
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Feb 27, 2020 21:47
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Pope Corky the IX posted:Apparently my father eventually decided to tell people I'm dead, which is fine by me. Mine did much the same for a while. As I hear it they've toned it down from "my kid is dead!" to "for all I know my kid might be dead!" Pretty sure nobody bought it before, or buys it now.
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Feb 27, 2020 21:58
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I've heard parents of friends call their children junkies when actually they just don't like their parents. I guess calling them junkies makes it more socially acceptable that they don't talk, after all they're just loving junkies the scum of the earth right
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Feb 27, 2020 22:01
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It's easier than saying "My child completely cut contact for no reason!" and then having the other person ask questions or assume they're full of poo poo.
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Feb 27, 2020 22:31
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"I didn't get the kind of attention I expected and didn't say anything about and that makes them a bad person" is the story of my goddamn life and apparently many other people's too. Being told over and over for years that you suck and are awful and do everything wrong tends to make us withdraw, who knew?
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Feb 27, 2020 23:19
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I'm pretty sure the old man has framed it as me turning away from god. The last time he ambushed me at work, and I literally told him to his face he doesn't respect any of my wishes or any boundaries I set, and he was walking talking poison to me, he later sent me a sanctimonious text novel telling me I was really mad at god. I wanted to tell him god never beat my rear end so bad he was afraid to let me go to school the next day, but he would just take any response as a victory over me not making contact for 5 years. That got me to finally block his last line of communication to me.
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Feb 28, 2020 00:29
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Pope Corky the IX posted:"WHAT DO I TELL PEOPLE?" aka, "I can't handle the potential judgement from everyone around me for something YOU'RE doing to make ME look less perfect." Okay, Mom? I don't care what your friends think about me having a girlfriend. I already posted about it on social media, and not only did Conservative Megachurch Cousin congratulate me on the relationship and ask if she could meet my GF sometime next holiday, the kids of all your friends also wished me well, so basically everyone already knows and also thinks you're being a bitch about this whole thing that's not even about you.
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Feb 28, 2020 01:01
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My parents would just make poo poo up to make it look like we were friends long before I cut off contact. Narcissist parents' focus is on how they look and not on how they hosed up or fixing their horrible behavior.
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Feb 28, 2020 01:06
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AuntBuck posted:Narcissist parents' focus is on how they look and not on how they hosed up or fixing their horrible behavior.
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Feb 28, 2020 01:13
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My father, on what turned out to be his deathbed, and my mother, still alive with dementia, made it really clear to me, in the last couple of years, that I was their favorite child. "We loved [brother] but you were special." I was and am so grossed out. I'm surprised that I have any relationship with my brother at all, let alone being cordially distant. What the actual gently caress? Like. It isn't even as if I lie to my children. They are both treasures. I went to them separately to be sure that I hadn't pulled any of this nonsense on them, and they assured me no. But how can you even allow yourself to think these things, far less say them?
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Feb 28, 2020 06:25
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PooInAnAlleyway posted:
Maybe it's just a way to justify their "if I want something then I deserve it" attitude. Engaging with it doesn't necessarily work because it might not address the real issue, which is their feelings of entitlement.
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Feb 28, 2020 15:41
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Arsenic Lupin posted:My father, on what turned out to be his deathbed, and my mother, still alive with dementia, made it really clear to me, in the last couple of years, that I was their favorite child. "We loved [brother] but you were special." I was and am so grossed out. I'm surprised that I have any relationship with my brother at all, let alone being cordially distant. What the actual gently caress? The GC/Goat thing is super real. I was the demon seed, until my little sister got teen pregnant out of wedlock, and then it was all hugs and kisses. As soon as she married a tradesman, moved into a big house, and birthed a non-bastard, I could feel the magnetic field shift as the poles reversed again. I do feel bad for my little sister. She was in high school when she found out her fav cousin was actually her half-brother (her dad banged her aunt). That aunt then went on to keep my sister's deadbeat baby daddy updated on their son behind my sister's back, knowing she wanted him to have no contact. The guy fled the whole damned state of Texas when he found out she was pregnant. I grew up in the worst Tennessee Williams play.
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Feb 28, 2020 16:41
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AuntBuck posted:Narcissist parents' focus is on how they look and not on how they hosed up or fixing their horrible behavior. It can be so painful to bring up past neglect or failings from your parents. Even when handled gently and with tact, my mother had a "I consider the past to be in the past" mindset of not dwelling what happened and focusing on moving forward. Which sounds like a good thing, but at the same time no particular fault is ever directly addressed. It's all generalized with a roundabout statement of hoping that I can forgive her. My father tries to change the subject or make it all about him and his terrible childhood. Which he has told me over and over again growing up as a child riding with my dad, listening to him talk all about himself and his struggles while never being a part of my life or my interest or struggles.
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Feb 28, 2020 22:37
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