narcissistic relations bc we are too sweet

Oh yes. After decades of dealing with my difficult mother, someone online suggested I look at Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers and boom! There was my mother, described on the page. Competitive, angry, manipulative, unpredictable, I've got a diary of all the weird and cruel things she's done. But luckily she moved away a couple of years ago and I have only see her once since then due to the pandemic.

Looking back at my life I've realised a lot of my friends and ex boyfriends were narcissists, because that is all I knew and thought that was what love and friendship were like. I'm verrrrrrry choosy about who I have as friends now.

Oh yes. After decades of dealing with my difficult mother, someone online suggested I look at Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers and boom! There was my mother, described on the page. Competitive, angry, manipulative, unpredictable, I've got a diary of all the weird and cruel things she's done. But luckily she moved away a couple of years ago and I have only see her once since then due to the pandemic.

Looking back at my life I've realised a lot of my friends and ex boyfriends were narcissists, because that is all I knew and thought that was what love and friendship were like. I'm verrrrrrry choosy about who I have as friends now.

I feel this. My mother had a traumatic childhood which made it difficult to stand up to her. Both her and her brother are these intense, presumptuous, arrogant humans who need symbolism and epic chaos in their life, who demand truth at all costs but can't properly think critically, so their 'truth' is skewed. My uncle fully believes we were planted here by aliens.

She slapped us into conforming, demanding respect (eye contact), demanding one thing after the next. Most of the time I couldn't 'read the room' or my 'timing was bad' though it was always like walking on eggshells around her until I was so withdrawn in my late teens I could barely notice. Once people know her, she isn't well liked (and this does make me sad) but married  (I'm going to use this term very loosely) a psychopath and they sort of have this creepy symbiotic relationship. He's SO manipulative ugh. I just try and avoid him. I haven't seen them in years. I moved out at 17 and was in survival mode till about 27 when I started getting help learning how to simply exist. 

There's always only been room for her emotions in the room. And while she has some autistic traits, she's also so incredibly manipulative - is this something they learned in the 70's? She never really saw me as a child, yet demanded she 'knew' me. I used to journal as I got older and redirect my rage on to these notebook pages. I couldn't identify at the time what it was from so it would just be incredibly dark and raw. In high school she had read something and was shocked, overbearing... angry? As a young adult she needed to compete with bloody everything. I hadn't realised in my 20's she had stopped talking to me at some point. I didn't realise this was a thing or a tactic until several years ago when I put together the trauma with an ex not speaking to me for a month and worked out this how this manipulation tactic worked. I also didn't realise just how abusive she was psychologically and physically, though I started gaining clarity in my late 30's. I lacked proper education, proper tools, someone to recognise my autistic traits. My half sister's father eventually got her the help she needed but here I am in my mid 40s just realising I didn't continually get 'let go' from admin heavy positions half my adult life for any other reason than I should've been given the right education. 

These humans who are easily offended and so selfish! She's lived far enough away from me over the last 20 years now that I hardly had to see her though we'd have phone conversations which always left me far more stressed... she would think we were having 'deep' conversations but I would just be frustrated with her inability to critically engage, trying to tie up loose ends, sort out the logic and apparently she'd FORGET everything. I finally broke 3 years ago when she demanded we should be 'friends'. I'd had enough and ended up sending an email too quickly, which I didn't regret but the way it was worded wasn't the best. She's stopped talking to me since and I want to feel bad but I don't. The longer her silence, the more I recall how she's humiliated and betrayed me, how she had no right to treat me the ways she did. How out of order her expectations are - she's the bloody parent! Grow up! Ugh. I vacillate between being content at not having to deal with her ever again, she can pass into the next life and I will wish her bon voyage from afar - after all, I've done my fair share of tolerating intolerable and unethical behaviour... and wishing it wasn't this way. I too, had found Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers and wished it were not so. Narcissists are created, like monsters. It's a shame. But the work I've had to do to become someone trustworthy and valuable to the humans I'm invested in, the work I've had to do to become someone responsible. 

All of us could use support groups for this. There's a book by a Christian counsellor from the states called the Mother Factor. It's actually quite enlightening. If you're not religious, it's still quite enlightening as the author uses basic principles which apply to most everyone. This book really helped me!