To be succinct and private… My incubator worked me for weeks to build rapport and trust with me in my younger days, to get me to tell her a something that she would ultimately, and immediately use and weaponize against me and others.
This wasnt the first time I tried to have a relationship with her, but it did finally open my eyes and become the last. In the many many decades since, I’ve not so much as acknowledge her existence when crossing paths.
My mom told me that she heard my soon-to-be-wife say some really horrible things about her and my kids behind my back.
Whatever she thought that would accomplish didn’t work, because I had already told my wife to start recording her interactions with my mom. (Clearly not my first rodeo)
Mom wasn’t real happy when I told her I’d listen to the audio.
That is utterly evil (ok the everyday sense). Glad you were prepped for that, but I’m very sorry that you’ve had life experiences that taught you it was necessary.
I still don’t know what Mom’s problem was with her, not that I even care. Before that point, they would each text me “You won’t believe what she said to me!”. I was stick on the middle trying to figure out what really happened, but something my mom said didn’t match with a major detail that she didn’t know about my wife’s past, so I had a feeling she was the one causing the shenanigans. That’s when I suggested the recordings.
You’re her property and another woman is encroaching on you.
That theory was definitely on my list of possibilities.
what Mom’s problem was with her
She competed for your attention
I wouldn’t doubt it.
could be she saw your wife as a threat to her controlling nature, or your wife saw through her bs, and the mom is projecting. i had a former co-worker that had an extremely controlling mother, due to having trauma with thier first child(an accident) so she kept the former coworker close to her, to the point of “suffocation”.
I have to ask.
If your moms such a piece of shit, why is your solution to your wife “make sure to record every interaction” instead of “Lets just stop dealing with this bitch”
Definitely a fair question.
We all lived in the same house at the time, and Mom’s name was on the deed, so up until that point we were walking on eggshells to keep things civil until other arrangements were in place.
Ah, thats fair then. Sometimes you do have to make sacrifices like that, as you make your preparations for the future.
Like, there might be a decent answer, but it is worth the ask.
God that would fuck me upppp, I’m so sorry your mom is such a mess. :(
manipulation tactics, shes probably wants her to be the only "woman " in your life.
Used the fact that he named me after himself to commit fraud using my name.
Mine didn’t do that, he just forged my signature.
Thats disgusting levels of premeditation.
Sounds like he only had a child, to give it his name, to run its credit into the ground like he’d run his own.
Hope you managed to right those wrongs once you came of age
Not just you but anyone, if you’re in the US freeze your credit and just in freeze it when you need it. People suck.
Wow.
Told my friend that he’s like the son he never had, in front of me.
I assume that was absolutely calculated for maximum pain. I’m so sorry.
Thanks. It really fucked me up for a long time. ;-;
I know the feeling. I was lucky that my first therapist was solid as a rock and spotted things I wasn’t even aware of. But working through it was damn tough.
You deserve a good life now and I hope you get it.
o7
He’s like the father you never wanted.
Being a parent myself now I still can’t understand how you can intentionally inflict pain on your own children. I’ve been trying to understand my whole life.
I think the part of their humanity that feels empathy, bonds, compassion and so on are completely absent in some people. But more than that, not only are they incapable of feeling or reciprocating love and empathy, they also have a sadistic appetite for other people’s suffering and little else can satiate them.
a narcissistic parents does, they do it in 2 ways, either coddle you so you never launch and become dependant on them forever, or manipulate people around you so are dependant on them.
going into my backpack and stealing my HRT while i was in the shower, and refusing to give it back
My mom did that with my psych meds. The kind of meds that break your brain if you stop abruptly and don’t taper off. I’m lucky I found them because I hate the brain zaps.
Thats one of two things you just dont fuck with, no matter what, and thats medications and food.
it’s funny you should mention food because they did also fuck with that! from the time i was zero until i was twenty i believed my parents when they said i was allergic to MSG and that it would give me asthma and that it was in basically everything besides what they cooked. but eventually i realized it was just another batshit method of control
For context: I had an uncle who was an alcoholic/addict, with his addiction being the result of immense trauma he suffered as a kid. He was fired from his job in the medical field after writing himself scripts, and made a genuine effort to turn his life around. He went to AA and other therapy, brought his sponsor/buddy to events where there would be alcohol, and generally took it seriously and worked to improve.
A few years later, we got a call in the early morning. He had overdosed and died after an argument with my aunt. It’s unclear whether it was a relapse or if the overdose was intentional, and to be honest it didn’t matter. My aunt was distraught, he was dead, and their kids now had no father. It was a horrific tragedy.
When I got up to ask what the phone call was for, my mother had a huge smile on her face. She thought his addiction was a moral failing that automatically made him a bad person, but she also judged him badly for needing AA and the buddy syatem to stay on track. She told us, with glee in her voice, that he had “finally killed himself”.
It took everything in my power to not lay into her, which I didn’t do only because I knew she would never change her mind. It was just the latest and worst example of her horrid behavior. I never told my aunt, but I did tell other members of my extended family when they asked why I didn’t talk to them anymore.
Jesus. That doesn’t sound like a momentary lapse in judgment the way you describe it, but a trait. Must have been horrendous. Well done for not turning out like that.
Yeah, it was not the first time I saw that kind of emotional sadism from her, but it was the one that made me realize that she literally thought some people deserved to die for things they ultimately had little to no control over.
Thankfully my dad is a bit more levelheaded (though he still enabled her) and I have a lot of extended family who also can’t stand her. I credit them as being the main reason I didn’t end up continuing the abuse cycle.
Those anchor points (stable people) are essential. It’s why I try to be less of an introvert these days. You never know who you’re helping just by being explicitly decent.
Was your mom a right wing christian? cause that sounds like the kind of sadistic glee you only get from a right wing christian.
Extremely. She and my dad were Catholic, and she was so right wing that she forced us to find a new church because our pastor said that we should treat non-Catholics and non-christians with respect because good works, not belief, is the key to salvation and the best form of worship.
Sounds about right. No hate like christian love.
I’m reading this at the moment. It sounds like you might have active abuse rather than detached neglect (which I believe is also abuse).
This stuff impacts us and those around us in the future. From personal experience it’s well worth talking to a pro about it.
Glad to hear that. I’m only a few chapters in but it’s excellent so far and there is no filler. It can bring up memories, but it’s like the gym: worth it.
Yeah, this book resonated with me and my experiences so profoundly that I could only read a chapter or two at a time before needing to put it down for a few days to process all the eureka moments. I recommend it to everyone I can.
my dad basically told me how disappointed he was in me when he died.
because i didn’t play high school football.
i was 30.
he was a weird bitter dude, really hung up on sports and a lot of trivial nonsense. only thing he ever seemed to enjoy in life was cruises and gambling.
Look at it this way.
You did so well in life, the only thing he had to spew venom about was a utterly harmless choice you made as a child.
according to the rest of entire family I’ve done shit with my life because I’m not a multi-millionaire.
sounds like the rest of your family are pathetic, jealous assholes too.
you mean they are totally normal human beings? yes, they are very very normal.
Shoulda fucked with him and told him you played but never told him because you were disappointed in him.
He was just trying to live your life, fuuuck him.
My father was pretty draconic. No time for friends, no time for extra curriculars, no time for homework (he didn’t believe in public education, which caused its own problems), because there was always something to do: my chores, my siblings’ chores, home improvement projects, random “educational” outings that were mostly just me sitting in the car. Not to mention the verbal and physical abuse, leaving me on the side of the road to “scare me straight”, making me live in a tent in the backyard for a while.
I tried to be the bigger person after I moved out and practice hippy-dippy radical forgiveness. Unfortunately, he’s a malignant narcissist and even when he realized he had no leverage anymore and had to behave, he was still a really really bad influence. The more time I spent with him, the more his traits rubbed off on me. I had to cut him off entirely because it became too much.
This one may seem silly compared to the things I’ve read.
My parents gave me a strange eating disorder that it took a while to get over.
Mom refused to accept that there were foods or perhaps ingredients that I was either unwilling or unable to eat. As an example, Onions are horrible and they literally make me sick, whether its whole chunks of onion or powdered onion. But she kept sneaking onion into stuff she made because she just knew I’d like them if I just tried them! It wasn’t a matter of “like” it was the fact that if I ate some I’d end up doing a technicolor yodel over the toilet while she told me I was being dramatic. Sometimes if I was really unlucky I wouldn’t make it to the toilet which would make her even madder. So Id get spanked after puking.
This caused me to be really mistrustful of food that I didn’t prepare myself. I also had problems eating in front of other people, because mom (both parents really) would get upset over how I was eating, and it took me until I was in my 30’s before I was comfortable eating with other people around. Which did wonders for my social life in my 20’s.
Your mother feeding you food that makes you vomit, then beating you for vomiting, isnt silly my dude…
Yeah that occoured to me after I typed it all out. ☹️
That’s incredibly fucked up and I’m sorry you had to deal with that.
My father controlling me up to the age of 18, and preventing me from doing anything I wanted at home or at school (it was a prison, not the regular “school is boring”). The result is that I did nothing at school because I had anxiety 24 hours a day.
When I became an adult, I didn’t knew what money or taxes were, I didn’t knew that I had to take showers (because homework is more important), and I didn’t knew how to use toilet paper. I used to take a bath once every two weeks because why not instead of taking daily showers. It took me 10 years to learn basic stuff like cooking or washing my ass.
Now that he’s old and dying, he wants me to listen to his advice and help him with his phone and computer. I don’t answer to such demands. And I’m pretty sure that when he dies, I’ll only be sad for my mother, not him.
I’m glad you’re maintaining a boundary that sounds right for you. I won’t be attending my father’s funeral at all.
I adopted a baby from a different race and my father only talks about the white one, refused to meet the other kid.
father in law posted KKK shit on his Facebook page.
we’ll just prune those two branches now…
I’m sorry and good riddance to them.
Well, that’s unfortunate. But at least you know the correct response.
Remembering all the times growing up when teachers suggested I get tested for ADHD and my mom would refuse because she “wanted me to be me, not a zombie” but was wildly disastrous for my future. Now she claims she has it too.
Then she voted for trump 3X.
Sounds familiar, my 3rd grade teacher flagged me for ADD, but my parents were anti-psychology and in the “he’s just being a typical energetic kid. The lack of supports left me an awkward kid, who developed an unhealthy eating habit to get enough dopamine, which they then mocked me for and belittled my struggle to manage my weight. My wife witnessed it firsthand when I first brought her and my 2 year old son to visit, I broke down from embarrassment but she stood up and yelled at them for like 30 minutes about their wretched behavior. She definitely was the best choice in my life.
Your wife sounds wonderful ❤️
Hell yeah, she’s also like a brown belt in karate and kicked a dude trying to break into our house down our outside stairs(was only like 5 steps worth), she is a lady I never had to worry about.
Man I wanna be her friend lol. I just love too when people stand up for their partners and build them up. You guys keep enjoying each other ❤️
Yup! I got called a “lump” a lot by my mother and step dad at the time. Not because I was fat, but because they said I was lazy. I’m sorry you had to grow up that way.
Buying a brand new car when I didn’t have a bed to sleep on
That’s fucked. Cared more about themselves than their child. Some people shouldn’t have kids.
Choosing to invite my Jan 6er uncle to family events knowing I would never break break with an insurrectionist traitor.
First, I stopped attending family events. Eventually went no contact. Now my happiest recent memory of my mom is when my daughter couldn’t remember her name.
Called my partner a gold digging whore (hilarious, considering she was earning 3x as much as I was at the time) and outright said I should marry the woman (daughter of a family friend) that they liked for me and keep my partner around as a side piece because “a real man knows how to make everyone happy”.
I don’t speak to them any more.
“The girl you like is a whore, you’d be much better marrying this girl instead, and fucking other women, you know, like a whore, but a good one”
What stellar logic they have.
