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eSporks posted:
I have this response without the ADHD. I haven’t had a relationship with my dad for nigh on 30 years after deciding (and thank god my mum fought this for me legally) that I wasn’t going to go around at weekends anymore post divorce when the physical abuse went from frequent beatings to feet held to gas fires, kicked down stairs etc etc etc. But it was always framed as a response to something I’d done wrong, and so my major response to being asked to do something in some arenas, like cleaning, is a sickening dread. Who could expect a seven year old to clean a house? Who could expect it done perfectly - and it never was. There was always something I’d done wrong, and this was explained to me fairly reasonably - you did this wrong and this wrong, and then I would be cowering as a grown man beat the poo poo out of me. There is no success. You can never, ever, get it right, and the punishment for disobeying is the same as the punishment for working hard. So you do the task and you dread the end because the end is when you get hurt, when the broom or whatever is taken out of your hands and used as a weapon. So I get no dopamine from cleaning tasks. I eat anything put in front of me even if I hate it or it makes me sick. I cannot, just absolutely cannot, be in potentially confrontational situations with adult men - which cost me my academic career when it was going pretty well, and has been something that I’ve only just become consciously aware of due to a succession of builders and tradesmen in the house my wife and I have moved in to. I’ve had six months of feeling deeply afraid of the strange guys in my house that I’m supposed to be talking to about money and the quality of work. It’s taken me years to realise all this, and years of therapy to be able to pinpoint it, identify it and work towards coping with it. I still can’t, but I’ll get there before the bastard dies. Otherwise what’s the point, in all honesty. Just generally, thank you all for the thread. I’ve read every page over the last couple of months. It has been really helpful. You’re all so brave, and my solidarity goes to you in your fights and struggles. We are and will continue to be better than them. Edit: loving hell what a sad 
lenoon fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jan 4, 2022 |
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Jan 4, 2022 18:21
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This is so stupid and long but I know without a doubt y'all will understand. I'm 30, no contact with my mother. She's violently narcissistic, no boundaries, one of those people who when she's upset needs to make everyone around her also upset. Constant guilt trips and blame, like she resents that she had to perform her parental caretaking duties for me when I was a baby, constant loud/screamed verbal abuse, constant neglect, and physical abuse in the form of sleep deprivation wherein she would keep me awake for 18-20 hours at a time as a kid scream-ranting at me about her life. Often. Anything she did for me was held against me, any gift she ever gave me was held against me. She holds me personally responsible for the fact that the court found the living conditions unfit where we were staying--hoarder hell, no running water, no electricity--and granted my father custody for a few years, and then placed me in foster care rather than back with her when my father just up and left the country. She holds me personally responsible for most of the failings in her life, including the ones before I was born, because she is one of those "I was destined to have you" woowoo new age twin flame soulmate indigo child fate believers. [She has thrown away upwards of eight thousand dollars on internet romance scams, and that's just the amount I know about.] She takes it as the greatest possible offense that I have a spine and went no contact with her. I changed my numbers to avoid her calls, I deactivated the email accounts she had the addresses to. She's an ocean away, so thankfully there's not much mail, but any mail/package that arrives, I return to sender/refuse delivery. She is quite literally the boogeyman of the call center--that caller who keeps you on the line for over an hour telling you frankly inappropriate poo poo about her life, and if you try to keep the call focused on whatever actual business she has, she either demands your supervisor or calls back to complain about you being rude. So, several months back, she managed to wear down an employee at one of my utility companies, and they gave her my new number--which I in turn lodged a complaint about but no idea if anything was actually done lmao. After failing to get ahold of me--calling four times in a row and then texting "name, it's mommy, answer your phone"--she got angry and decided she was going to try to doxx me. She made posts on twitter and instagram, for her roughly 400... conservative dad chud, I guess? followers? With my "crimes against her", high school photos of me, my address, the phone number she had, and info that I'm an adult performer. [Special note: She has, until this point, acted as though she was cool with my job because 1. I'm more stable and successful than either of my parents have ever been and 2. my first year, I paid about $50k for her to get her mouth fixed and new teeth implanted. It was the first thing I saved for and did, because her getting her mouth fixed leading directly to her getting a job outside the country and leaving like she always talked about was a gamble I was willing to make.] She was ordered to desist, and I was granted an order of protection for a duration of six months. It was quiet for a while. Nothing came of the doxxing, aside from several panic attacks for me and a prolonged sense of being unsafe in my own home, but today she has taken it to another level and called the cops, prompting them to do a wellness check on me at 8 in the goddamn morning, when I am normally working. I had to spend all this extra time talking to a cop to explain no, I do not in fact have a kid, no I haven't hidden a kid or a family from my mother, no I'm not in danger of harming myself or anyone else, no I'm not a prostitute, etc etc. The cop, meanwhile, is annoyed and aggressive with me because that's how they are and apparently my mother has been calling their department on a nigh daily basis, and now she has succeeded in getting the cops to harass me since she isn't here to just come to my house and stand there beating on the door, doing it herself. He turned an incredible shade of purple when I explained that the order of protection had just run out a couple of weeks ago. I don't think homie liked realizing he'd been used. So now I have to talk to my lawyer, who's still on winter break for another few days, to see if there's anything to be done about my mother making calls like this and wasting government resources. I am planning to move but that isn't going to be for a while. I am at my limit and it's starting to make me feel like a lovely person because honest to god I wish she would get the rona and just die already. It's affecting my sleep, it's affecting my productivity, it's affecting my appetite and I already struggle with AN, it's affecting my relationships with my friends, it's affecting my enjoyment of my hobbies. It's just continually shocking to me that the entire atlantic ocean is not enough distance to keep me safe from this woman.
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Jan 4, 2022 18:50
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comforthawk posted:This is so stupid and long but I know without a doubt y'all will understand. This reminded me of an incident with my mother. After a lifetime of being a very heavy drinker with no regard for DUI laws, she finally got nailed driving home drunk one night. She didn't care one iota that she got a DUI, or the people she imperiled or personal responsibility or any of that. Her rage was focused on the police report, because there were one or two sentences of something like 'suspect was very flirtatious, suspect was extremely eager to engage with police officers' or something like that. She wanted the world to know that she was NOT trying to flirt her way out of a DUI (which, obviously, she was and it didn't work  )Re: your mother being across the ocean - I dont really know how laws like this work in other countries, but wouldn't other (sane) countries consider a woman who manufactured a police visit (I'm assuming you're the one in the US? so double risk with any police interaction) with information she social engineered from the utility company, to be fundamentally unwell and worth of a checkin herself? Also, assuming you're in the US, you absolutely have a tort against the utility company. All that stuff about HIPAA and SOX is very much applicable to you, and they violated that. I'm pretty sure any personal lawyer will start salivating when you tell them this story lenoon posted:So I get no dopamine from cleaning tasks. I eat anything put in front of me even if I hate it or it makes me sick. I cannot, just absolutely cannot, be in potentially confrontational situations with adult men - which cost me my academic career when it was going pretty well, and has been something that I’ve only just become consciously aware of due to a succession of builders and tradesmen in the house my wife and I have moved in to. I’ve had six months of feeling deeply afraid of the strange guys in my house that I’m supposed to be talking to about money and the quality of work.  I used to choke up and cry whenever I would confront any boss about anything. I got pulled over once at 17 and went into a full panic attack - afterword I forgot the location of my friends house and spent an hour driving in circles. It took forever to work through that.
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Jan 4, 2022 19:16
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Vampire Panties posted:This reminded me of an incident with my mother. After a lifetime of being a very heavy drinker with no regard for DUI laws, she finally got nailed driving home drunk one night. She didn't care one iota that she got a DUI, or the people she imperiled or personal responsibility or any of that. Her rage was focused on the police report, because there were one or two sentences of something like 'suspect was very flirtatious, suspect was extremely eager to engage with police officers' or something like that. She wanted the world to know that she was NOT trying to flirt her way out of a DUI (which, obviously, she was and it didn't work My mother's the same way with trying to flirt her way out of problems, while at the same time being loudly misogynistic to any other women doing the same thing lmao. Gotta love that double standard. Yeah, I'm in the US, in the rural south; she's in Europe, and currently she's a State Department employee. I do have the option of creating a problem for her there, but if she's dismissed, she'll just come back here, and frankly I fear for my life if she's present on this continent. She is fundamentally unwell. She's violent--she does that thing where she gets in your face screaming and if you try to push her away, suddenly she's playing the victim claiming you assaulted her--and she often destroys other people's property. I'm working on getting a new protection order right now. I don't know if the employee who gave her my phone number was warned or disciplined; I honestly don't want anyone losing their job, facing criminal charges, or being jailed over this, because frankly being talked at by my mother is torture, and I don't blame this person for breaking under torture, y'know? But I did call and insist on some kind of "hey, don't give out this person's number under any circumstances, they're being stalked and harassed" note or mark or just SOMETHING, being placed in all my customer files. I don't even know for certain which company it was--the only info my mother revealed in a voicemail was that she got my number from "a utility company". And of course no one admitted they were the source when I called. I cannot imagine compensation that would be equal to or exceed the stress of pursuing legal action though, on top of all of the other stress.
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Jan 4, 2022 19:42
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Vampire Panties posted:All that stuff about HIPAA and SOX is very much applicable to you, and they violated that. I'm pretty sure any personal lawyer will start salivating when you tell them this story I don't know what SOX is but HIPAA has nothing to do with utility companies. It's for healthcare providers only. (Now, it may be worth notifying your medical providers that you're being stalked and harassed so they can put an alert on your chart not to discuss anything with anyone.)
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Jan 4, 2022 20:36
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Feeling all these cleaning posts. Mine liked to follow me around my room with a flashlight while I was cleaning to point out where dust was, but never actually you know, did any work. Yell for me to stop doing the dishes from the living room, and then bitch and complain about how I don't do them enough. Trashed my room when I was in middle school twice because it was messy, just to make sure I couldn't escape from bullying at home or anything. Also loved randomly assigned me cleaning my car which always parked outside, and having a full time job is just an "excuse". Cleaning is a great thing to get people on because it's never 100% completely done, there is always something that got missed or wasn't worked on. I just assume anybody telling me to clean is just flexing. lenoon posted:I have this response without the ADHD. I haven’t had a relationship with my dad for nigh on 30 years after deciding (and thank god my mum fought this for me legally) that I wasn’t going to go around at weekends anymore post divorce when the physical abuse went from frequent beatings to feet held to gas fires, kicked down stairs etc etc etc. But it was always framed as a response to something I’d done wrong, and so my major response to being asked to do something in some arenas, like cleaning, is a sickening dread. Who could expect a seven year old to clean a house? Who could expect it done perfectly - and it never was. There was always something I’d done wrong, and this was explained to me fairly reasonably - you did this wrong and this wrong, and then I would be cowering as a grown man beat the poo poo out of me. There is no success. You can never, ever, get it right, and the punishment for disobeying is the same as the punishment for working hard. So you do the task and you dread the end because the end is when you get hurt, when the broom or whatever is taken out of your hands and used as a weapon. I never liked hanging out with other guys or male energies in general. I always feared they would just become hostile to me for no reason. Considering my preteen attempts at making friends outside of school usually led to me getting punched, it wasn't the worst idea to have. Never put two and two together and thought it was just school, but nope it was my dad who did that poo poo. To this day I much prefer being around women, if anyone at all.
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Jan 4, 2022 20:58
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skooma512 posted:Cleaning is a great thing to get people on because it's never 100% completely done, there is always something that got missed or wasn't worked on. I just assume anybody telling me to clean is just flexing. I am enough of a perfectionist. I am too much of a perfectionist, in a way that keeps me from getting stuff done.
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Jan 4, 2022 21:23
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What's always interesting to me is seeing how these family interactions end up playing out in other spaces like work. That's where the real growth happens, understanding your childhood traumas helps you understand your reactions to other situations. I worked as a busser, and there was a 1 hour gap when the AM dish washer went home, and the PM dishwasher hadn't come in yet. The dishes would like up and there was no where to put them. No problem, I took the initiative and did dishes. Well, you can't do that, it requires *special training*. Manager told me to ask one of the cooks. So I ask the cooks, they all nod and say yes, but no one actually does anything. And now I'm getting yelled at cuz theirs dirty dishes out on the tables. I ask the manager what to do, and he says to let him know someone when someone needs to do the dishes. Still, no one does the dishes. Still I'm getting yelled at. I just kept doing the dishes myself until I got an official write up for it. After that I started just leaving dishes on the tables and would just help servers with their side work instead. I was definitely set up to fail, but at no point did it occur to me that I had the ability to call that out. Looking back on it, I should have asked my manager to sit down for a talk, pointed out that none of his solutions are working and that I'm not allowed to implement mine. Told him squarely it's his responsibility to fix this issue and I'm willing to help, but only if he is too. It just never occurred to me that sticking up for yourself and disagreeing with a boss is something you are allowed to do. Years of bad parenting taught me that the best response was to wallow in negative feelings and anger until I become bitter about the job and develop poor work ethic. Didn't help things that trying to talk about this with family was met with "well, that's just how the world works, shut up and do your job" There have already been so many situations in the last couple of years that I've handled so much better after unpacking this.
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Jan 4, 2022 21:39
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Got time to lean? Got time to clean.
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Jan 4, 2022 21:40
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skooma512 posted:
This hits me in regard to "cleaning" issues. For my mum it was there was always something that wasn't clean enough, or wasn't cleaned right. And there was no rhyme or reason to it. For example, imagine she has just browbeat me and my brother into cleaning our rooms. Which we would spend an hour or more making sure everything was spotless and shiny. There was always some thing we forgot, or missed. Some tiny thing that she didn't care about last time we cleaned, and wouldn't care about next time we cleaned. It was some tiny thing, (like forgot to vacuum under the bed, or forgot to use windex on the door knobs or whatever), that she could use to say we were dirty lazy boys and why does she bother, and nobody cares about the house being clean but her etc. and so on. Which leads into my grown up life that I dread doing any cleaning at all, and unfortunately let the filth build up until I am forced to waste a day just scrubbing everything down. I know I should feel relief when I am finished and everything is clean, but all I feel is tired, and the knowledge in the back of my head that I missed something.
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Jan 5, 2022 08:53
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Yeah. OnChristmas I got a nice dose of "You did this wrong and this wrong, but thanks for doing the dishes."
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Jan 5, 2022 09:43
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For me it was always that I was "making more work" for her than if I had just done it "right" the first time. And like many of you, it didn't matter that I'd done 20 dishes perfectly; leaving a tiny spot on 1 meant the whole exercise was useless. The other big thing was forced participation in her hobbies. I remember one summer that felt like the end of the loving world. We had just moved to a new place, and mom decided that she wanted to garden. This, of course, lead to be being dragged outside for hours in the obnoxious New England summer, at first because "You don't have a job", then on my days off as "Well, you want to help your mom" or "It'll be good quality time" or something like that. Come to think of it, impositions on my time where very much her bailiwick when it came to control; to this day, years after having moved out of her place, I still have this odd worry about starting something I can't interrupt easily because she trained me that when she wanted something, it had to be done right now, no matter how minor the thing. Always couched in condescending terms about my ADHD and how "Later never happens". Also, I feel like this is probably common but she would often go off on how she didn't just want things done, but she wanted them done with gratitude. Nothing she asked could ever just be an obligation; she wanted everyone to fall over themselves with how happy they were to take out the trash or do the dishes or pick up some stupid thing at the store
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Jan 5, 2022 16:40
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Neito posted:Also, I feel like this is probably common but she would often go off on how she didn't just want things done, but she wanted them done with gratitude. Nothing she asked could ever just be an obligation; she wanted everyone to fall over themselves with how happy they were to take out the trash or do the dishes or pick up some stupid thing at the store My mother has this utterly enraging habit of not asking you to do something in a normal manner: she doesn't say please, she doesn't even phrase it as a question: she tell me or my dad "You could do X"*. "You could set the table." "You could get me my phone", etc. When I call her out on this she will act indignant and ask "why are my own children asking me for formalities? Do you want to be more distant from us?" I freaking hate it. * Admittedly, in Portuguese this also happens to be how you would phrase the question "Would you do X?" but she clearly voices it as a statement. Which makes me wonder if she is doing this on purpose. She is also capable of addressing strangers normally. AceOfFlames fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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Jan 5, 2022 16:47
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"Do you want to be more distant from us?"
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Jan 5, 2022 16:51
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AceOfFlames posted:My mother has this utterly enraging habit of not asking you to do something in a normal manner: she doesn't say please, she doesn't even phrase it as a question: she tell me or my dad "You could do X"*. "You could set the table." "You could get me my phone", etc. When I call her out on this she will act indignant and ask "why are my own children asking me for formalities? Do you want to be more distant from us?" I freaking hate it. It's in the same vein as "you should do what I want before I ask you to, because you love me so much that you'd want to jump at the chance to do $obnoxious_task". Reframing it not as them asking you for a favor, or you doing them a favor, but as them getting something their owed or, even more, you getting a favor from them.
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Jan 5, 2022 16:59
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Dirt Road Junglist posted:I have very disordered thinking around cleaning because of this. My mom all but sanitizes everything in sight, and when I was a kid she’d have me doing chores that didn’t make logical sense. We just vacuumed a couple days ago, you can still see the carpet lines, why am I vacuuming again so soon? Now I let things get to the point of being at the edge of “actively gross” before I’m compelled to clean. I used to have absolutely no ability to clean until everything was horrifyingly filthy and then go on a manic cleaning rampage. I have a better relationship with cleaning now thanks to more than a decade in therapy but it still stresses me out if I’m too far on either side of the clean/messy spectrum. And forget people outside of my absolute tightest inner circle seeing my house dirty. That still triggers panic attacks to this day. It made my MIL inviting random people over with no notice while our house was a dust covered construction zone last month even harder for me.
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Jan 5, 2022 17:11
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Zoesdare posted:And forget people outside of my absolute tightest inner circle seeing my house dirty. fuuuuuuuuuuuuck, I still have this
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Jan 5, 2022 17:31
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AceOfFlames posted:My mother has this utterly enraging habit of not asking you to do something in a normal manner: she doesn't say please, she doesn't even phrase it as a question: she tell me or my dad "You could do X"*. "You could set the table." "You could get me my phone", etc. When I call her out on this she will act indignant and ask "why are my own children asking me for formalities? Do you want to be more distant from us?" I freaking hate it. When she says "hey, I have a DR. Appointment and my husband is out if town and I could really use a baby sitter" the answer is almost always yes. Too often it's, "the kids really miss you and want you to come over today" Uhg, no, sorry "You can't come over and watch them? They really miss you and you haven't even seen them in X amount of time. They want to spend time with their uncle" Not today, can we schedule something? "Well I have a doctor's appointment and need someone to watch them" And now I'm pissed off because I feel manipulated and used instead of wanted and valued.
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Jan 5, 2022 18:01
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AceOfFlames posted:My mother has this utterly enraging habit of not asking you to do something in a normal manner: Mine was "would you do me a favour and...?" which of course just meant "Do it now and I'm not asking". It was a way of demanding something without officially doing so, such that it would be rude to refuse. There are other examples but it led to me having weird behaviours where I've been conditioned that I can't just ask simply for what I want/need because it would sound rude and thus other people (who are real human beings unlike me) would immediately fly into a justified rage at having been asked to do something for me - such a transgression it would be. I've gotten a bit better but I've had to ban people close from me from saying it to me because hearing it makes my skin crawl.
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Jan 5, 2022 18:11
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eSporks posted:Not quite the same, but I hate the way my sister will often ask for help. but don't you see, you made her ask, and owe a favor, instead of it just being out of goodness of your heart to drop everything you were doing and run on down to babysit the kids cause you just missed them so much clearly, you don't really love them like she really loves them
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Jan 5, 2022 18:14
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OMFG FURRY posted:but don't you see, you made her ask, and owe a favor, instead of it just being out of goodness of your heart to drop everything you were doing and run on down to babysit the kids cause you just missed them so much The other good one is: "Are you free on Thursday?" Maybe, why? "What do you mean maybe? You're free or your not?" Well, it's my only day off, I don't really have plans, but I want do a few things. "So you're free?" Possibly, but it depends. "Depends on what?" I DON'T KNOW, maybe I want to go for a hike, maybe I want to take a bubble bath, maybe I want to binge TV, JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT The second I do admit to being free, my time now belongs to her, or I'm being selfish for not helping her when I'm free.
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Jan 5, 2022 19:26
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The implication that any unplanned time needs to be structured still haunts me. Sometimes I just want to do whatever. I dunno what that is, I’ll figure it out when I get up. (This makes being self directed at work, or explaining what precisely I’m doing from moment to moment, extremely difficult.) I know my dad doesn’t mean anything by it* except to have an excuse to say hi, but, “got any plans for the weekend?” is a lot to process some days. * he crack-pinged shortly after retirement and is cool with just doing whatever whenever nowadays
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Jan 5, 2022 19:53
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eSporks posted:It's like you know her! I mean, I feel like that's the same with a ton of people. "What are you doing this weekend?" "Nothing" "Oh so you're free to-" "NO. I'm doing NOTHING."
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Jan 5, 2022 19:58
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Uughhhh gently caress. My mum would do this poo poo and it was infuriating. "Are you at home today?" = Expect her to visit at some unknown point in the day for an unknown length of time "It would be nice to X" = She wants you to invite her to participate in whatever X is Etc etc. Also when my Dad was alive if I failed to call her often enough for her liking she'd bitch and moan to Dad or my brother about it until they got sick of it and would pressure me to call her. Dad's approach to this would be a version of "ffs please ring your mother so she shuts up" and my brother's would be "do me a favour and call mum" which I loving hated. Once I told my brother that maybe he could he could do me a favour and the next time mum bitches about me he could tell her to pick up the loving phone and quit whining, and my brother just about lost his mind. My god, dealing with her was exhausting
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Jan 5, 2022 20:06
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Neito posted:I mean, I feel like that's the same with a ton of people. Same with the "are you home?" I'll sometimes ask friends that, with the follow up of "cool, I'm out running errands can I stop by?" Or whatever. I'm fully going to respect any sort of no I get and would never use the fact someone is home as permission to drop by. I might ask a friend if they have plans before asking them to plan something, but again I'm accepting no. These kind of questions take on a whole new meaning when they are used to back someone into a corner or make them feel obligated, and I wouldn't tolerate that from "friends" either.
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Jan 5, 2022 20:39
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eSporks posted:Except friends respect the boundary instead of blow up when you say no. For me the "are you home" bullshit reached peak ridiculous when I was at home all day with a newborn baby. Yes, of course I'm at home but no I don't want visitors because I'm trying to breastfeed at random times through the day and I'm all hosed up from having recently given birth. One day I was just so exhausted that I locked the door, turned off my phone and went to bed with babby. I woke up hours later to about five missed calls on my phone from both my mum and brother worried that something had happened to me because I didn't answer the door. When I replied that I was just asleep, the response I got was "well you knew I was coming over and assumed you would answer" so clearly I'm the villain for daring to sleep whenever I chose in my own house :eyeroll:
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Jan 5, 2022 21:20
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The fact that I don't have a work obligation on the day means I'm just available to be assigned things and have to drive places to make other people happy, or rather, not mad. Family is wonderful 
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Jan 5, 2022 21:43
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eSporks posted:Except friends respect the boundary instead of blow up when you say no. Yeah, no, I worded my response poorly; I didn't mean to imply that any sort of boundry was going to be respected in any way, shape, or form. skooma512 posted:The fact that I don't have a work obligation on the day means I'm just available to be assigned things and have to drive places to make other people happy, or rather, not mad. Family is wonderful For me it was if I didn't have a work obligation that very second. I once got home from work (at the time I was walking several miles to do this for various life reasons) and the second I open the door I'm told I need to go out right now and get some Milk, or cigarettes, or bafmodads or whatever bullshit she needed at the moment. The fact that I had just walked a few miles, and the trip to the store and back would add at least one more when I just wanted to get some rest, was met with apathy at best and anger at worst. And, of course, I gave in, which is always a mistake, because that just establishes a new precident that I'd be expected to live up to.
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Jan 5, 2022 22:03
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And let me guess, if you refuse, you're lazy. But of course she can't go out and get it herself, but no, you're the lazy one Mr. Worked-All-Day.
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Jan 5, 2022 22:47
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skooma512 posted:And let me guess, if you refuse, you're lazy. I can count the number of times she leaves the house in a year on my left hand. But don't worry, she doesn't have agoraphobia, she just doesn't feel like going outside.
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Jan 5, 2022 23:08
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My mom just straight up refused to ask me to get together and socialize, and expected me to do the asking, but never communicated that until we had our big fight just before our family implosion. It was a test. She wanted to prove to herself that I was the bad person and she was the victim. It took years for her to admit to doing that, that she believed it was literally my job and she shouldn't have to ever ask. I'm glad she did eventually let me know, because I have zero interest in playing that game and enabling that sort of behavior. I believe in equal and honest relationships, and intentionally sabotaging things so you can wallow in your self-pity is ridiculous and kind of evil. gently caress that poo poo. I'm not playing along. Go manipulate someone else, I'm not interested.
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Jan 5, 2022 23:17
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Neito posted:I can count the number of times she leaves the house in a year on my left hand. oh word? My mother doesn't have driving anxiety, she just doesn't feel like driving. She also lives in LA and this doesn't impact her life to any meaningful degree. And medication wouldn't help because anxiety has no biological basis. In completely unrelated news I made the decision to ghost her and I can feel the existential relief in every cell of my body. Would recommend.
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Jan 6, 2022 00:03
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On the linguistic gymnastics people use to ask you to do stuff: My mum would do the "Do you want to get me a coffee?" thing instead of asking "Hey BrigadierSensible, can you get me a coffee?" No mum, I don't want to get you a coffee. I am comfortable sitting here. I will happily get you a coffee because you are my mother, and I love you, and it is not a big deal. But I don't particularly want to do it. This is an entirely petty semantic linguistic quibble. And I don't think she means much by it, it is just the way she phrases things. But it annoys me. If you want me to do X, then ask me to do X. So I can decide, using my own agency, whether to say yes or no. Don't frame it in such a way that I am the bad person if I don't want to do it, thus making me feel resentful when I do it or guilty of not loving my mother enough when I don't. Again, a small thing, especially when the request is for something as simple as getting up and getting my mum a coffee. But when applied to bigger things, and more important requests, it does get to me, and I feel like I am being guilted into doing stuff I would have happily done if asked normally.
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Jan 6, 2022 00:17
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Picnic Princess posted:My mom just straight up refused to ask me to get together and socialize, and expected me to do the asking Ah, this is my mother-in-law, and why my husband only sees her at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and events like weddings and funerals where they're both invited separately by third parties.
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Jan 6, 2022 04:18
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I have this habit, apparently. Not the passive-aggressive demanding behind it, but being roundabout in asking questions, i.e 'can I get you a bowl' instead of 'what do you want for breakfast, ('cause I'm on my feet and can get what's needed)'. To be sure that's a very minor example, but it is strange how hard it is for me to simply ask directly, and I don't know why.
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Jan 6, 2022 07:48
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The infuriating roundabout questions seem familiar. I think I weaponised my autistic literalism from pretty early on and just said no. Malicious compliance is fun, though I'm probably lucky my mother tends to give up pretty quickly if something might actually require effort.
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Jan 6, 2022 09:38
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Picnic Princess posted:My mom just straight up refused to ask me to get together and socialize, and expected me to do the asking, but never communicated that until we had our big fight just before our family implosion. It was a test. She wanted to prove to herself that I was the bad person and she was the victim. It took years for her to admit to doing that, that she believed it was literally my job and she shouldn't have to ever ask. I'm glad she did eventually let me know, because I have zero interest in playing that game and enabling that sort of behavior. I believe in equal and honest relationships, and intentionally sabotaging things so you can wallow in your self-pity is ridiculous and kind of evil. gently caress that poo poo. I'm not playing along. Go manipulate someone else, I'm not interested.  My mum said something similar once, that she shouldn't have to ask me to do things, I should just be doing the things she wants. But even when I did make an effort to do these things she'd sabotage them. Like the time I spent what little money I had on a bus fare to go out to see her on mother's day, I get to the house and Dad said that she got up early (which she never does) and went into town. And when I tried to call her she gave me the silent treatment. I've never been able to articulate very well why the way she behaves is so upsetting for me but I think you nailed it here.. It's self-pitying and manipulative and I just don't want to play those games anymore.
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Jan 6, 2022 12:31
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bee posted:
They are made actively uncomfortable by the idea of you having even the most modest kind of success, because you are supposed to be their punching bag. They will put incredible amounts of effort into engineering situations so that you always fail and must be reprimanded, because that is your role, to them.
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Jan 6, 2022 13:51
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BrigadierSensible posted:
The funniest part about this is that one of my mom's big lessons in life I've really taken to heart is "It's not what you say, but how you say it." Of course that doesn't apply to her. When I came out the first time her response was "are you sure? I don't want you to make your life harder." I yelled back "Yes I'm sure" and she got pissed and said, "well, just don't make decisions until you know". We didn't talk about it for years until it came up again. She claims she was just worried about me. I told her, it's "Not what you say, but how you say it." Mentioned she could have expressed that with a show of support "I know this is going to be hard for you esporks, I'm here to support you and I think it's really important you find what this means for you" And she just got all huffy, "well that's what I meant, you only see the worst, I don't know why you think I'm a terrible mother, etc etc" She's not homophobic though, she had a gay roommate in college. As I type this, maybe it's the homophobia that's worse than the manipulative questions, I dunno it's a toss up. I do for once in my life want my mom to admit to being wrong about something. She flew off on a tangent a few months ago about they/them not being singular, then acted like it never happened and got upset with me like it was my problem that I was scared to tell her my new roommates are non-binary and use they/them or that I love wearing dresses. Now it's all "that's great, I think people should call themselves whatever they want and dress however they want, why do you always think I'm such a monster?" It's like the past doesn't exist and has no bearing on current conversations, and in this moment she is the perfect infailible paragon of empathy and understanding, to suggest otherwise is the deepest cut you could give to her. Yea, it's the homophobia, that's worse.
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Jan 6, 2022 17:12
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poor communication doesnt have to do with npd but i agree that boomers are very bad with it. my mom will do something similar, where for instance "the garbage can is starting to get a bit full" somehow translates to "i am directly asking you to take the garbage out right now" in her mind. despite decades of understanding this problem and me complaining about it to her since i was a small child, she refuses to take the hint and learn. we work together professionally and even in the office it is still an issue, not just with me but with other people too.
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Jan 6, 2022 17:55
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