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Justapartofmylife
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PathStep 9 Compassion hearts8 Forum posts16 Forum upvotes11 Current upvotes11 Age GroupAdult Last activeSeptember, 2021 Member sinceFebruary 28, 2014
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My mom is inflexible. I'm tired.
Family & Caregivers / by Justapartofmylife
Last post
 September 21st, 2021
...See more My mother criticises my boyfriend for everything and anything. He's a really great man who makes me immensely happy, helps me grow, is hardworking, nice, kind, honest and thoughtful. He's an architect, he's 35 and I'm 25. Yes, I have tried to talk to her and asked her why she doesn't like him. She just said 'he's not good enough for you because he doesn't have a stable job, he's ugly and I think he's rude'. Now let's break it down. I explained to her and I let you all know that my country is going through a hard time regarding employment and economy and it's incredibly difficult to find a stable job with growth opportunities. All you can find is contracts for a few months that last as long as the project does. Even though I explained with evidence and examples (nor me or my friends, all architects, have stable jobs either), she doesn't believe me. He was born into a poor environment with a single mother, so the money he has made since he started working has barely been enough to pay for the food he and his mom eat (she lives on a minimum wage of my country that's the equivalent to around 200 usd/month) , the bills of the house they live in, maintenance of his bike which is his main hobby and means of transportation, and try and save some money. As for the 'ugly' argument, he lost a tooth in an accident one year ago but hasn't had money to fix it. It was painful and he feels sad for not being able to smile. He hasn't been able to do it because he hasn't been working, but because orthodontic treatments in my country are super expensive -around 5 000 USD/year- and, as you can tell from the minimum wage mentioned above, jobs, even professional jobs, are not well paid. My mom keeps ranting about how he hasn't got a tooth and she finds it disgusting to look at him and is super offended about how he hasn't got a treatment. Why does she think he's rude? She says it's because he doesn't greet her with 'good morning, Mrs. HerName' but with a smile and a friendly 'hello, how are you?'. Now, I know many people are formal and like being treated that way. Well, my mom is not one of those people, she has always been one to criticise the replies 'yes, Sir' or 'no, Sir' because she finds it submissive and humiliating and she was never offended by my exes greeting her that way (even though she also criticised them but now that we're no longer together, she sees them as saints). My boyfriend knows she doesn't like him and he's tried to be super cute and bring some gifts home (specially food), he talks to her to start conversations (but she thinks it's him showing off and trying to be the typical charismatic guy), he asks her things about her (but she sees it as him trespassing her personal life). He's never said a single bad thing about her and always encourages me to talk to her and fix things, he wants us to have a good relationship. So you see, this attitude of hers is not only shown towards my boyfriend but also towards me, my friends and my father and his friends. It's tiring and even though my dad and I have tried to talk to her about this and how harmful it is, she won't admit that she's overly critical. If we don't do what she wants us to do, she will withdraw her affection and approval and start acting like we offended her. I have only heard her say 'I'm sorry' once and that is when my aunt died because she feels she was too harsh towards her. And even though she recognised it in this case, she doesn't recognise if she keeps doing this with her living loved ones, she'll feel the same once they're gone. I'm just plain tired. I don't want to live with her anymore because the boundaries I've set are not enough but I don't have the stable job or savings needed to live on my own. It's frustrating and I feel it contributes a lot with my already existing depression (due to financial instability and academic stress). I really can't talk to her and expect a negotiation. She constantly feels I'm 'against her' if I express a different opinion to hers. I reslly can't see a way out.
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Just want to feel understood
Family & Caregivers / by Justapartofmylife
Last post
 May 19th, 2021
...See more So, I'm a 24 year old woman, I live with my narcissistic parents. Their abuse is nothing compared to many stories about narcissistic parents I have read on here but it still hurts. I told my mom yesterday that I was having my cytology today and this morning she offered to come with me but I told her not to worry because I had told my boyfriend to come with me. She immediately got super mad and started yelling at me, saying we needed to have a serious talk, questioning how I even thought of telling my boyfriend to come with me (we're in a stable relationship and he cares a lot about my health), that this wasn't the right thing to do. I calmly told her that I didn't share her point of view although I respect it but she went on with a series of insults toward my boyfriend. He prefers to move on his bike through the city since it's faster and you don't have any contact with people like you would in public transport (you know, cor0nav1rus) but according to her, it's just because he has no money and she says he only keeps me company because he has nothing to do but ride his bike. Well, he's not rich but he does get jobs and constantly applies to different positions. He's an architect, like me, and with his humble earnings he's able to help at his home buying food and he affords to buy me a few expensive gifts like my bike helmet, a Lamy fountain pen and invite me to dinner at nice restaurants. Anyway, she doesn't believe he does have had jobs and swears he's after our house (which costs less than the house he lives in...) and our money. He bought himself a pair of new cycling tights and she was like 'yeah, sure, they're new. You believe everything he says to you'. I literally saw the amazon box arrive at his place and saw him unbox the tights out in front of me, I have gone with him to the places he works at and met his bosses, but she says I only say this to defend him. I'm so tired of living with someone who disapproves of everything I do. Not only my partner, she also disapproved my master's degree choice even though it's an accredited program and it's at the same university I graduated from (number one uni of my country, one of the 20 best in the region and within the top 260 of the world). She disapproves of the jobs I have (most of them in the research field) even though I have tried to explain calmly to her why these jobs are important and useful. So all in all, right now I don't have a stable job, I keep looking but right now the situation in the country is not easy so when we do find jobs they only last two or three months and I don't get paid enough as to move out and live on my own. With this in mind, I have to say I don't know how to detach myself even more from what she says or thinks about my life. I love her but I can't allow her to shape my way of living or thinking and I really don't know what else to do but have patience and save money. Thank you for reading me, I just don't want to feel like I'm the only one this happens to.
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Is my mother a narcissist?
Family & Caregivers / by Justapartofmylife
Last post
 February 15th, 2021
...See more Hey there! I'm a 24 year old woman who recently came back from studying abroad and since I've grown as a person, I realise many things that are not quite right. I'm not really sure my mother is a narcissist or not and maybe I need some help figuring out because I come from a place where people will put their parents first no matter what but I still feel hurt and things feel off. So, here it goes: she won't apologise when she makes a mistake, when I don't do what she wants me to do, she will get mad at me and just ignore me completely for days if I do what I wanted in the first place (what I wanted do being leaving my bike at my boyfriends house because it was too late to come back home biking, having lunch at his house once a week, taking on a job related to my architecture career, buying a present for someone dear to me...). She will also do this when I don't think the same way she does or see things the way she does. Although she has expressed once or twice that she admires me for some of my abilities, I have also felt very pressured to succeed in everything and more and it has brought me depression and anxiety problems, since I've become an overachiever and I usually felt like a failure when I didn't achieve my goals all the time. I've had to teach myself how to deal with this and to be okay when I don't perform as well as I thought I should have. She will make mean remarks disguised in jokes like saying 'you're so stupid' 'you're too fat, I can't believe you fit in that dress' 'you eat too much/too little' 'you look sick/bad'. Another thing she does very often is telling me she knows better, that I don't know anything about life, that I'm just a kid and I should do as she says (I'm 24 btw). I try not to argue with her. Like... I state my opinion but try not to get into an argument. So yeah, I often feel belittled by her, as if I wasn't an intelligent human being capable of making her own decisions. Another thing she does is, whenever I'm doing something, she'll come and say 'what are you doing that for?' 'you're crazy' if I do something she's not familiar with, or 'you're doing it wrong /you don't know how to do this' if she is familiar with what I'm doing. She'll say that I'm always picking fights when just trying to express my feelings and when I tell her that something she did hurt me, she will say I'm being dramatic, that she never said or did that, which hurt me. She will say I never do chores when I clearly do and my father acknowledges it. On the other hand, she has no real friends (willingly) and will speak ill of all the people she comes in contact with, be it family or "friends". No matter how good they are, she will always have something bad to say about them. Can anyone relate to this? I'm not sure that she's a narcissist but she does have these attitudes that make me feel bad and that she will just dismiss as me being dramatic when I try to address the subject.
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