I hope it is okay for me to be here... I don't believe my mom is a true narcissist, but she is exhibiting some signs and has a serious enmeshment problem that has affected me for most of my life.
This may be part venting and part need for validation, so if you actually make it through all of this, thanks!
I was actually quite close to my mom up until 5-6 years ago. I am the youngest of two daughters, and my parents divorced when I was 12, but separated when I was 5. My mom never remarried and had several relationships, but never lasting beyond 2 years, and always with men that used her - for sex, money, etc...but she had done her share of using in each of these relationships as well. I truely think she has never actually been in a love relationship, and has no idea how to be in one. I question her ability to even love another person. I also am questioning her ability to love her own children.
She has never made any lasting friendships. She has had friends over the years, but she does not work at maintaining the relationships, and she has a pretty strong social phobia that unfortunately I also have.
My mom was the middle child of 5, and grew up in an emotionally and physically abusive home, raised by uneducated country people. She coped by being the "invisible child" and out of all of her siblings, she is actually the most well-adjusted (two serial marry-ers -over 7 marriages each - that also were abusive alcoholics; one narcisstic abusive control freak and one narcisstic dependant who abused drugs and stole from family and has been arrested several times). She got her bachelors and later her masters degree, and just in the last two years retired from a 20-something year teaching career with a great salary and decent pension. She is comfortably well off, not rich, but will never need to worry about finances too much. She is of average intellegence, but she thinks that she is extremely smart and also fancies herself an amateur psycologist, which gets pretty old quick!
When I was still young, my mom moved several states away to get a better teaching position (in the 80's, the starting salary for a teacher was much better in this state than the areas around where we lived). My sister and I remained with our dad and periodically lived with our mom, but never for long periods of time. About 12 years ago, I moved several states away from "home" to live with her in this state. I was going to live with her and go to college for about a 2 year period, (better school than around my area) and then return to our home state, where I had a fiancee (spelling?) and would find a job and get married.
I ended up breaking up with fiancee during this 2 year period, and I decided to remain in the area instead of moving home. My mom and I were very (too!) close at this time, and we were more like best friends, or even a weird husband/wife role, where my mom brought home the paycheck, and I did the housework and errands and went to school. I had no friends and neither did she, and since we had each other, we never made any friends either.
I grew depressed and gained weight, and we joked (so I thought!) about how we would be two little old ladies living together with a housefull of cats... I though about how wonderful it would be to go to sleep at night and just not wake up. I remember thinking how unfair it was that I continued to wake up every morning.
I graduated, went through a few jobs and floundered around for several years. I know that during this time, I regressed back to acting like a teenager (in my mid 20s) and unfortunately my mom decided that she was going to treat me like one forever. She bought a bigger house, which I had little input in, and we moved in. I had to do all of the moving except for the furniture, and it took dozens of trips with a loaded SUV and one person unloading and loading hundreds of boxes. My mom has a severe OCD that involves collecting junk - nothing can be thrown out - and all of it filled the 2,600 sq ft house and the two car garage pretty completely. She was also recovering from having breast cancer and going through menopause during this time. I had to deal with the severe mood swings, the screaming fits and the sickness. I did the best I could, but in the end my sister also came down for a month to help out.
Around my late 20s, I realized how bad off I was, got counseling, got an interesting new job and met a group of people that I really clicked with. I also met a wonderful man that is now my husband. The more I went out and dated, the less happy my mother was.
She and I had huge fights during the time that I was dating. Even though I was doing housework, errands and paying rent to her, she started trying to give me curfews, tell me who could visit and even demanded that I not ever have sex "under her roof." I had not progressed to that level in my relationship, but she apparently wanted to make sure I understood HER RULES. I was never disrespectful of her or her feelings, never stayed out late or came home drunk or anything to make her try to impose these kind of rules and I was in my late 20's and contributing at least half of the mortgage and doing other things besides, so her treating me like a child finally boiled over and I decided that I needed to move out.
My mom would tell me that I would fail if I left her. She screamed at me, cursed me out, called me names, and told me how I was too stupid to survive without her. I discovered that she had gone through my things and searched my room when I wasn't home. She told me that there were things wrong with my boyfriend (now DH) and try to imply that he was using me. I was not perfect through all of this - I screamed back at her, called her things like childish and nasty, but I never cursed her out or told her that I didn't love her. I would tell her that she was being hateful and that she was pushing me further away with her actions, but she would just increase the volume or get even nastier in her cursing.
Even with all of her nastiness, I rented an apartment close to her, so I could still be there for her. I realized after moving out how unhealthy our relationship had grown over the years, with the two of us depending to heavily on each other and it warped both of us. I also realized that my mom's extreme reaction to her ADULT daughter moving out was fueled by a fear of abandonment and loss.
I was terrified to move out, but I felt that it was the only thing I could do to save my sanity and get back my sense of self and self-respect. I have NEVER regretted it.
My mom and I eventually reached a better place, but I was still horrified at some of the things she had said to me, and I felt differently towards her. There was now a strained quality to our relationship. I still continued to visit her several times a week and call her almost every day. She hardly ever visited me or called me herself, that was still my responsibility. I took her out places, did her errands that she couldn't do, etc...
So my DH and I got married. My MIL and FIL were total textbook narcissists and controllers with serious issues and my DH had some soul-searching and spiritual growth to go through as well. In the end, he made the decision to cut them both out of his life. I am still ambivilent, but after going through the crap with my mom, I totally understand DH not wanting to deal with daily doses of crap. I did not like his parents, but I tried to get along for his sake, and I am okay with his decision.
During this cutoff, we both saw a counselor to deal with the feelings and come to terms with them.
Also, during this time, my mom started becoming more restive about how our relationship wasn't the same. She got angry with me if I spent too much time with my DH. She was jealous of my relationship with him, and continued to try to point out flaws and give relationship advice. I had to flat out tell her that I did not want her advice in that department, as she had never had a successful relationship, so she had no idea what she was talking about.
She grew more demanding of my time and more intrusive in telling me how I should be doing things and what was wrong with me, my DH , my life. She and I started having serious fights.
I had it out with her and asked her just what the he!! she wanted from me - did she want me to divorce my DH, quit my job and move back in with her? She actually was silent for quite some time and when she finally said "no" and couldn't really tell me what she wanted from me, I knew in my heart that she had wanted exactly that - and was realizing that she COULDN'T say yes without admitting how insane the idea was.
I finally told her that I loved her, but I couldn't keep going through all of the drama, and that if she wanted to try to save our relationship, that we should go to joint counselling. She agreed.
The counselor helped a bit. My mom cried and wailed about how I had mistreated her, but admitted that she did things to punish me - she wanted to hurt me like I was hurting her. She also told the counselor that I had PROMISED to live with her forever and we would be crazy cat ladies (remember when i said we joked about that?) My mom actually tried to make the counselor tell me that I broke a promise and I should have kept it! The counselor did tell my mom that she was too dependant on me, that she was hurting our relationship and that she seemed very depressed. My mom and I had a breakthrough (so I thought) and my mom continued to see the counselor for individual therapy and got on antidepressants.
Unfortunately, it didn't last. She decided that she knew more than the counselor did, and wasn't getting anything from seeing her, so she stopped. She started having health problems. She grew even angrier at me for not being there or spending time with her. I started withdrawing and reading more on narcissism and other personality disorders. I read about toxic parents. I read about emotional blackmail. All of them struck a cord with me. I have worked to put emotional distance into my relationship with her, and at setting boundaries. I have not reached the point where I want to cut her completely out of my life, but it is so very close right now.
I have a wonderful marriage and love my DH more than I thought possible. He is a kind, sweet and good person, who loves me and takes my breath away with how lucky I am to have found him. We talk out our problems and are true partners in decisions that affect our lives. We are coming up on our 4 year anniversary this year, and it still constantly amazes me (and my DH too!) how well we are doing in our marriage considering the horrible examples we both had of relationships. I guess we both used our parents as negative rolemodels and just got lucky!
This past month, my mother went in to have a knee replaced. I had asked her several months ago what measures she had taken for her aftercare and therapy and how she would get around, sleep and bathe with her only bathrooms and bedrooms on the second floor of her house. How would she take care of her 8 cats (yep, she adoped 8 cats, soon after I had moved out, in an attempt to fill the emptyness in her life) if she was incapacitated. She screamed at me and said I was trying to scare her and discourage her from having the surgery and that she wouldn't need any extra help; she would be fine. She specifically said that she would scoot on the floor on her rear before asking me for my help... yeah, sure.
She made no arrangements for anyone to take her to and from the hospital. I had to do it. I was okay with that, and I wanted to be at the hospital for her surgery in case she needed me. I decided that maybe she was right, and she would be kept at the hospital until she was able to care for herself. She constantly repeated to me and my sister whenever we raised any concerns that she had and exceptionally high tolerance for pain and that she was much younger than most of the knee replacements and that she would be taught how to go up stairs and everything she needed and would NOT NEED EXTRA HELP! I told her that I would check in on her a few times a week, and do all of her errands until she was able to drive again.
I picked her up from the hospital a week later. She was barely able to walk with the aid of a walker. She fell when she took one hand off of the walker to shut the door (instead of letting me do it). She had no balance, was in extreme pain and had very little upper body strength. I called her nurse, who told me that my mom actually was told to stay with someone or have someone stay with her for the first week or two - THAT SHE WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ALONE. Also, that she was under no circumstances to attempt to climb stairs, or carry anything while using a walker. I realized that I could not leave her alone and only check on her a few times a week - she couldn't even fix food, and had no place to sleep! She refused to get home health care, and expected me to just shrug my sholders and pat her on the head and say "Oh, no mommy! I'll move in with you and take care of you for the next 2 weeks!" Never mind that I have a 45 hour a week job plus hours of commuting time. Never mind that I have a DH, a house and other things going on in my life, no just let me put all of that on hold because you refused to make plans for your own care! Never mind that you have treated me like crap for the last few years and critized me and my DH and my life... I'll just toss all of that out and become your slave because you were too stubborn and short-sighted to make arrangements.
I was angry. I felt bad about being angry - she is alone and in pain - but that didn't make the anger go away. I have never felt so angry and used and screwed over. I told her that I would come by every day for the first week and do all of her chores, and bathe her, clean up after her cats, etc... but after that, she needed to make arrangements with the home health care to do additional work. I did laundry, made up a bed on her couch, brought down toiletries and such to make it easier on her to get around and bought her easy to get foods and did many MANY other things to try to make her recovery as easy as possible. Through this past week, we still fought, because I apparently wasn't helping her with the right kind of attitude. I was supposed to be smiling and happy and treating her as if this was a privilige to wait on her. I was even told that she had done some soul-searching and that she had decided that I did NOT have the right to feel angry with her, as she didn't PLAN on this happening, so I needed to be treating her better.
She is much better now, going into the 2nd week home from the hospital (3 weeks from the surgery) and is able to go up and down stairs. I told her that I would still do her errands and such and stop by twice a week to do the awkward things she still wasn't able to do, but she would have to do the rest of her stuff now. She is quite able to get around, fix food and go up to sleep or bathe.
I don't think she realized how badly she has hurt our relationship by forcing me to be her caretaker. I am numb or very angry all of the time now. It has even affected how I feel about my other relationships, since it is like my capacity to feel anything is broken. I am planning on getting back into counseling because I know this is wrong, but I don't think that I can ever feel even remotely affectionate or loving towards her again...
I am so sorry this is so long, but I haven't started counseling yet!
I believe that my mom has serious problems; she is selfish, has an inflated ego , is passive/agressive and believes that she is entitled to treat my sister and myself as she wants because that is her right as our mother; has undiagnosed depression and OCD behavior (this runs in my family - I have an OCD) and has a social phobia and is actually socially inept. She is also scared, alone and having serious health problems and is facing the idea of growing old with much anger and fear. I don't believe she is a narcissist, but I could be wrong. She can be very compassionate and was a fantastic teacher and used to be a much nicer and independant woman. She has changed for the worse in the last 10 years.
I am at a loss at how to deal with her - I believe she is going to inadvertantly force me to a cut-off, even though she was fearful of me doing that exact thing. Trying to talk to her is becoming impossible, because she is sure that she is the one that is behaving rationally and cannot see she is causing the drama every time.
I guess I just need to get to counseling, but it feels great to get all of that garbage out!!
I have no idea if anyone will make it to this point, but if you did - wow!!! THANKS!!!
