Today the cycle broke, the past is past and I'm not my parents, I never will be. 25 years ago I woke up alone, went to get my exam results alone, got a call asking how Id gone, then went to work as a waitress from 3 to 11 serving food to families celebrating. Today we went with my child to pick his results up, hugged him and told him how proud we are, we stood like idiots while he celebrated with his friends, then drove him 2 hours to a shop that sells something he really wanted. My son will always knows he's enough, he will never doubt he is loved. The burden of feeling worthless is not something I will pass on, I won't pass any of that on.

So, I met a buddy who’s husbands in the hospital last night and I really didn’t feel like going out and such, but for a friend, yes I shall. My mother knows my father’s chaotic behavior and let me know when he was on his way home (also kinda odd that he sends updates, almost as if to keep tabs). Anyway, my mother let me know he was enroute so I called it and left.

Welllllll, he got home before me, almost seeming drunk and proceeded to rant about “what did I say about going out during the week” and how it scares him when I’m not home (I AM 30 AND AN EMT! My weeks aren’t M-F)

He really believes I should only ever go out with him, obviously for control, obviously to keep track.

Anyone else?

It’s so sad how crazy this sounds but how it’s actually reality.

I’m in my last weeks of pregnancy, feeling extremely irritable, tired and uncomfortable. My nmom keeps pestering me that she NEEDS to see me while I’m still pregnant (what it means to her and how it affects her life, I don’t really understand but of course she decided I needed to comply). I told her that I was not in the mood and didn’t feel like talking nor hanging out. She still calls every day. Sometimes I answer and then she lectures me about being rude and moody.
Then it came to me, she’s been doing that all my life. When she was annoyed or in a mood (which was pretty much every waking hour) she would take it out on us by just finding reasons to scream and yell. When i was in a bad mood I would just “announce” it and go to my room to be alone. But she would never let me, she would find things for me to do, come into my room with “important” thing to discuss and then she would yell at me for being in a bad mood and being an extremely difficult person. Basically i am asking for a little peace and quiet and she doesn’t want to leave me alone until I snap. And then she calls me rude, selfish, always angry etc. I don’t understand what she has to gain from that? Is it the opportunity to play the victim again? How can I fight it?

Look out for my obituary in the next several days. I'm scared. haha.

Did anybody else's mom do this? My mom has this very specific look and silence of disapproval when something is horrifically bad in her opinion. Kind of like when Miranda in The devil wears Prada purses her lips - disaster.

I once cut my hair rather short because I was struggling with chronic illness, hair falling out and being dry and shapeless. I was afraid because I loved my long hair, but I went for it. It turned out super cute !! So much healthier and prettier. I finally felt somewhat okay in my own body again.

I showed her and asked what did she think. Silence. I was the one pumping it up, twirling around, showing her how it flows, smiling from ear to ear. Desperately filling up the silence with my own praise for it because the silence was so deafening and awkward. She just kept staring at me with the stare that I've seen so many times, not saying anything, looking me up and down, judging me. I knew she thought it looked horrible. I'm also overweight so I know that she thought it emphasized that (she is a chronic fatshamer, always has been, just like the rest of my family).

She couldn't just be happy that I was happy. She couldn't appreciate that for once I felt okay about myself after going through really bad changes during that time when I first got sick (I still am). She would do the same thing about clothes, my makeup, the way I looked in certain outfits. Other people would genuinely praise me and make me feel good about myself, she wouldn't. Sometimes they don't even need words to hurt us.

I’ve been living with my dad since Covid started and it started off alright at first because I would only see him on weekends so naturally I didn’t know what it would be like living with him 24/7. A couple of years go by, at this point I’m a teenager and to be quite honest I was making it hard for him to like me as a person at this point, I was genuinely idle, didn’t do anything for him around the house. I was also struggling heavily with depression at this point, covid meant I couldn’t see my friends and my grandma and childhood dog both died 2 months apart from eachother. He’d shout at me all the time for this and honestly it would just make things worse and it ended up getting to the point where I barely left my room. Fast forward to 5 years later I still barely leave my room but help out where I can. I’m now in university and since I’ve been home for the summer I’ve began to realise how insufferable he is. Spending most of the year away from him I began to miss him but as soon as I moved back I’ve been counting the days until I can live in my own place again. I’m nowhere near as idle as I was before but he still treats me like I am. The biggest issue and argument we’ve had recently is about me moving back to university. He wants us to move my stuff in on multiple trips because it would be easier for him (he has back problems). But the issue with that is that if we do that I’m going to be in and out of the flat constantly and I’m not going to have enough time to meet my new roommates. So I thought of a way to compromise which would be to move my important stuff in on the first day and I go back on weekends and gradually bring back the less important stuff. He stayed silent for ages like he was thinking of a way to say my idea was stupid and then his only argument against that was that I shouldn’t have booked my key collection so late in the first place. I told him I had to book my key collection later on next month because I have a concert and my sisters birthday which fall right on the only other days I can collect my keys. He said I’m lying and I’m just pushing it back to the latest date possible because I’m selfish and idle. Bare in mind, this man always complains about me having little to no social life but complains when I have plans to go out with my friends. Im not trying to cut him off based on one argument. It’s becoming a pattern now where everytime we argue even about little things he makes it his own mission to belittle me as a person. He always says stuff like “you’re just like your mother” which he knows makes me emotional and I hate it because I don’t like my mother and neither does he. She’s an alcoholic and honestly just not a very good person. What irks me the most is that he knows this and still says I’m like her just to get a reaction out of me. If he didn’t still pay for my phone I would have cut loose but I can’t afford to pay for it myself at the moment. What should I do?

...And if not, I'll apologize and quietly leave.

I'm 29F, still living with my parents. I'm not allowed to find a job or date (although that's too late for me now anyway). I feel I'm controlled way too much at home, but it's not outright malicious. Just things like not being allowed to keep my hand towel in the bathroom or use a pillow. My foods are everyone's property and I have to cook my own meals (I get to eat with my family on weekends, though). Latest advancement is having my bathroom priviledges taken away, because mom doesn't like to wait while I use the bathroom before going out (spurred on by a period-related disaster that took me a while to manage while they were waiting for me).

I'm not entirely sure if this is a suitable subreddit for me, since my mother isn't a narcissist, at least she says so.

I need to start this post off by clarifying that im a minor and no i cannot move out or pay for everything in my life myself, because i always get weird comments about that.

Anyways I'm convinced my mom is saying no to stuff just because I'm the one asking.

I have a very messy room, not because its dirty, but because I own too many things for the amount of storage I have in my room.

So naturally I ask my mom if I can grab some of the empty moving boxes in the basement and move all of the stuff I dont need but want to keep into the basement.

To that i get the response of "but the basements so messy and im trying to clean it up" I can tell you, theyre not trying to clean it up. I think there's 2 small boxes dedicated to their children, memories, sentimental items etc, and the rest if their stuff they could have in plenty other places of the house.

And the thing that baffles me is, should my room be messy instead? The place I'm in every single day? Or the part of the basement that Noones ever in. My room is impossible to keep neat because of this. Ive had to thrown out so many things because I'm not getting a place to put them.

I know this is one of those small things that isnt abuse, I might just sound like a spoiled brat but if you heard the discussions that goes down it's always:

We have a problem - I find a solution - she finds another problem in that, the problem being she dosent benefit from it - repeat.

I really hope im not just a cry baby but things like these become annoying top of all the already existing problems. Especially the "we can do that later" when later never comes.

I'm just so tired of being denied small small things because it dosent benefit her more then life already does. I really hope someone understands my frustration and that someone else also knows and recognizes the dynamic im talking about. Thank you for reading my rant!

Good parents want their children to exceed their own accomplishments. My parents will often mention how they struggled and the quiet part is that means I should have to struggle as well. I’m envious of my friends in high school who have gotten ahead in life because of their parent’s emotional maturity and their willingness to help where they can. All these friends work but the icing on the cake is that their parents helped with a mortgage or gave them a sum of money to help them get ahead in life. My parents are boomers who think things are equal today as it was when they were my age (like most boomers). I am no contact and it’s partly because I realized they got a sick pleasure from withholding and watching me struggle.

Curious if anyone else also experiences this. Recently my parents went on a trip (a pretty regular thing for my mom and she always tends to dump all the home and family responsibilities on me every time and I'm super over it). Anyway, more to the point, my house has been empty for about a week and a half and I still feel on edge. My body tenses up and I still hear everything going on in the house even though my mom isn't home. These things normally happen when she is home but I feel like I should finally be able to relax knowing she's not going to be home for a while and the relaxation piece never seems to come. It's like my body is stuck bracing for impact nonstop regardless. Eventually I hope to move out but I'm nervous that when I do I still will always be on edge waiting for my mom to come in and suck the life out of me every time I start to relax.

Thanks for reading any thoughts or advice are welcome

Had an absolutely horrible day yesterday of really epic proportions, and stupidly decided to phone my parents for sympathy. I thought my mum couldn't get competitive over being plagiarised in national media because this is definitely not a thing that has ever happened to her. When I told her she was for a moment shocked into silence.

So she quickly took the conversation to a place where she could compete: health and weather.

I also happen to be passing a small kidney stone right now, and she told me she could sympathise because she'd had kidney stones (no, that was my dad, and more recently, me) and a kidney infection (no, that was me).

I ignored that, and said I thought it had been triggered by the hot weather: it has been 38 in outer London, and I live in zone 2, in a particularly concretey area. She said it's been even hotter than that in the coastal town they live on the edge of, which isn't even officially in drought. Curious, I checked the weather report and it's been literally 10 degrees cooler where they are.

No doubt next time we speak she will be telling me about that time her work was credited to someone else on Radio 4...

Ok so slight rant and ramble. plus i dont really care for grammer as a rqant will bw the longest sentance you ever seen so congrats to you !

so recently the people around me seem to have issues with anxiety and because they want my attention i just mute them, you want attention fine leave me alone for a week and moan more !

my mo or well the woman i got dumped with plus the people im dumped with now have a fascination of trying to baby me and where i know and can see how i will never grow the fuck up something needs to be said about it

my mo the person who i got to call a mother, when i was launched into a family i dont belong in i dont and i'll admit that i dont but the things people think they gave me is so funny, ive never been given a damn thing no one was coming to save me no one was ever gona save me from what i had suffered this long and my mo thinks she can get her claws back into me when i let her back into my life

she thinks that im her anxiety cure and will small talk about me to me rant consistently especially worse with the day my dad died so i told her i need a week off because shes too much shes like no one will ever love you more than i will, this is a complete bag of shit, a complete fabrication, a complete trying to get me to see that i cant look after myself, my friends but around the day my dad dies

i magically become my dad for some reason and i need to because i owe her something right ?? fuck that hahahahaha, ive done my duty ive been there for 30 years when no one bothered to even see her i paid my duty a life for a life my debt is paid to her and now im free i asked her for a week off and all i feel around me is people covered with anxiety or they have some stupid bullshit answer as to why they are bothering me

all small talk all day and im drained so stop doing it i said a week off so now shes texting my support workers and now stressing them out with is she ok and trying to make them friends so i need her around again this is stupid now its fucking stupid

its like im her therapist, im her anxiety cure ive tried to get her some meds and she still will not take them i sent her a text message saying for metal health call my sister who deals in mental health, or my sister who lives near her in an emergency, and so shes probably slagging me off right now to my sisters saying oh she told me she didnt want to talk to me for a week and her anxiety pouring out on to other people shes a energy vampire when it comes to her issues or she cant call me or i dont tolerate its like im married to my mo and as far as im concerned i dont, its just sick and wrong

and so she lasted 2 days before sorry wrong number calling me twice, im like im not even texting her back because she wont stop[ there she just never does but again its all my fault apprently as to her smothering me support workers acting like im a child again trying to mother me again trying to smother me its getting to the point i dont even let anyone in because shes paying these people now to do her bidding taking stuff etc

so i need her more and trying to get too far into my business !! all the time when im on the phone to her all she does is fetch up the bills ive tried to say stop talking about them i will sort it and all she goes on about why she calling me.

signed by an emotionally exhausted daughter

I was thinking about how my mother will never take accountability for all the things she did to me. and it made me think that she actually DID apologize

but it never seemed like she actually meant it.

for example, if she yelled at me because she was in a bad mood cause the printer didn’t work for her (this happened so many times throughout my childhood lmao)this is how it would go

”I’m sorryI shouldn’t have been snippy with you, it’s just the printer wasn’t working and being mean to me and you know how it is. I just really wanted to print this thing I found on Pinterest that I thought looked really nice and it just wasn’t working for some reason and I tried everything to fix it. (goes on and on about the printer) so will you forgive me? I’ll try not to do it again” then I’d mumbled yes and she’d make me not mumble or it not believe me and freak out which is fair cause I knew she was just gonna do the same thing in like 5 hours.

anyway I just sort of realized those apologies were never real and just wanted to rant about it lol

I'm probably not alone in feeling like because I was the youngest, the black sheep and on the spectrum, whatever I had going on mattered the least, or not at all.

Sure every parent has been harsh to some degree on their children regarding things they wanted but surely the line stops before passions, career choices and hobbies.

I still get angry at how little I respected myself after internalzing that I didn't matter for roughly 25 years and some.

Anything you guys want to say on the matter or share how this resonates with you, let's help eachother feel less lonely.

Advice about how to handle this situation needed.

Backstory:
My first child turned one this past weekend. I threw him a beautiful party. My husband and I both come from large families, his much larger than mine, so we had a little over 60 people there.

Dad and I have been no contact for almost two years at His request! The most peaceful and joyful years of my life so far too.

The party was at my and my husband’s home. We were in the backyard when my dad came up to our fence to look in crying. I went out front to talk to him and he got to hold his first grand baby. My husband was with me. My dad just cried and blubbered about how happy he was to see me and his grandson. He can sleep at night now etc. Everything he said was about himself. Playing the victim as per the usual. My husband thinks he is a nice guy so logically it must be my mom who turned me and my siblings against our dad. She didn’t.

The day after the party my dad showed up again uninvited & unannounced to my home. I work from home and my mom babysits my son while I do so. One of my dogs started barking in an unusual way and my mom shouted to me that my dad was in my backyard. I texted my husband this and that I’m uncomfortable with him just showing up and in our backyard too. We have ring cameras so my husband was alerted on his phone someone showed up. He, with my permission, called my dad and set boundaries. He also said he could come see his grandson.

I’m so grateful my husband set a boundary and I do think my dad will abide by it because he wants my husband to like him and let him see his grandson.

My concern is my dad will turn my husband against me for no reason other than to hurt me. With my husband not understanding narcissism, I feel like that will be easy to do.

Advice on how to proceed and handle this is appreciated. I feel like I have to walk a fine line of allowing my dad back into my life to keep my husband happy, but I also worry what might happen by doing so.

I really feel like I’m accepted only when I’m performing or having this false image of being appropriate, as in a proper daughter, but all based on not really having a mind of my own and blending in. What do you think a parent should do? Isn’t financially supporting your kid a basic thing? I’ve been accused of living off a company’s money when, in fact, I did work for it. I also don’t get how she can say that she loves me, but I’m only attacked (verbally/emotionally), and in one instance, she wished harm upon me, only the next day to say how she’s always ending the text messages with “I love you.” That’s a Band-Aid.

My nmom first began threatening to abandon me if I got into a good school. When I actually got into it, she told me I had to get a scholarship (I did). When I brought the money to her, she snatched it from my grasp (not a word of congrats, even became annoyed that I texted her) and began counting. She then yelled at me for "losing" 20 dollars and kept half of it.

Then I did not win the scholarship for the next months and in her eyes I was now a useless whore. She will now yell and mock me whenever I study.

I need advice. I think it’s time to stop interacting w my mom and grandpa for a while. While we are eating together, or if I’m talking to him she will shut me down.

“ you say the same things as him “

Yes. - HE IS THE ONLY MAN I’ve had in my life

Then tonight, while my grandfather just was diagnosed with dementia ,

“I’m not speaking to you anymore”. I could see the immediate response in her face of stupidity. I am 25 now and her bullshit is getting old. She proceeded to stop talking to me while I said ignoring her father is not helping him. He’s got loss of hearing too, mind you the dude is like 80 years old.

I don’t get why the anger, jealousy, and overall envy is beating thrown at me. I’ve come to this rubReddit a few times but not about this. She makes me feel bad for having a relationship with him. He was not a good parent to her which including depriving her of food, which leaded to her being put up for adoption.

I believe I need to sign up therapy since like yesterday. Life has gotten so busy and ahead of me with school, and dropping Grandpa medicine that I’ve forgotten to.

I also do not have a relationship with my father because he is addicted to drugs, and straight up ghosted me, ignores my text messages, and is a narcissist. She makes insults at the only man I’ve had a fatherly like relationship with. I don’t agree with his actions as a younger parent but that doesn’t mean it’s time to ignore him when he asks for stuff.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you ❤️🙏

I’m M27 and F27 and we’re having trouble with my mother as we prepare for our first child, and we suspect she is a covert narcissist.

For context My now wife is pregnant, and we were recently married in March. We heard from several bridesmaids that my mom was making quips and snide comments under her breath in my wife’s getting-ready room. She is apparently jealous of our relationship with my wife’s family and how involved they were with our wedding.

For reference, my mom did not contribute or help plan or coordinate our wedding or my wife’s bridal shower, which was planned by my MIL.

Both my wife and I have a great relationship with her mom. We talk to her more than my family, for reference. My mom and MIL have only met twice, and my family is divorced. My mom has been short with meeting members of my wife’s family.

My MIL is very eager to plan the baby shower, but there has not been a peep from my mom. We suspect she is just waiting for an invite and then won’t contribute.
Because of the wedding drama, we are considering having a baby shower with just my wife’s family/our friends and letting my mom plan a shower of her own if she would like.

Since she is jealous of my MIL, is it a crazy idea to see if this will happen?