Adult Children of Narcissists

I am wondering how your N parents treated your romantic partners, and how they behaved when it came to your romantic relationships in general.

My dad seems pretty much entirely unaware that I have a romantic or sexual side at all. It's not that he's in denial about it; he's just completely uninterested in it, as with most things I do that don't directly involve him. He'd be angry if I did something to shame the family, and he's irritated when I let romantic feelings upset me too much, but otherwise he's just oblivious.

I was with the same guy for like 12 years, and when that ended I was in a lot of pain. The only "comforting" thing my dad said to me that month was "I didn't realize you two were so close." I was honestly too surprised and confused to be hurt by this.

Are other N parents similar?

My mother has always either been completely indifferent or sabotaged my relationships. Since they see us only as an extension of themselves they can't acknowledge anything that isn't directly related to serving or supporting them.

An earlier poster asked about N family dynamics with respect to scapegoat, golden child, ignored. A couple links:
https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=ch ... %20ignored

http://parrishmiller.com/narcissists.html

The second link blew my mind when I read it, that was the moment of discovery for me.

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With respect to relationships, my aNM sabotaged them with cold calculating ferocity that I have never understood.

When I got engaged, she took it upon herself to call my fiancee's mother and went off about how I was such an "angry child".

I brought a girlfriend over who had just moved in with me she told her to reconsider moving in with me because, she had to "think of the safety of her daughter"

She has always wanted to get my girlfriends alone and has planted seeds in their heads that I am off my rocker somehow.

Keep them away from your partners, and if your partners are going to interact with them be sure to forewarn them of the situation. The "oh I'm their mother and I am just concerned" ploy works remarkably well if your partner/spouse is not pre-innoculated.

computerology wrote:An earlier poster asked about N family dynamics with respect to scapegoat, golden child, ignored. A couple links:
https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=ch ... %20ignored

http://parrishmiller.com/narcissists.html

The second link blew my mind when I read it, that was the moment of discovery for me.

Thank you for the links. They speak a lot of scapegoat and golden child and very little about ignored child. Ignoring him

There are lots of interesting things in the second link.

Some selfishness sounds very little compared to what the article describes, which is really invasive and destructive behaviour towards children.

No problem, glad to help.

I have avoided my mother as much as possible these last few years. Today I received a parcel from her in the post, and it contained christmas presents. One of them was a book titled "Mommy". I read the text on the back of the book, which started with the sentence "Our mother is one of the most important people in our life". I laughed when I read that, her self righteousness never ceaces to surprise me.

malfif wrote:I read the text on the back of the book, which started with the sentence "Our mother is one of the most important people in our life". I laughed when I read that, her self righteousness never ceaces to surprise me.

I really don't comprehend why they expect to be treated as so important by those they abuse.

My NM spent most of her time proving how "invaluable" she was to outside groups and strangers at the expense of her own children. She was gone 10-12 hours a day and many days we went to a neighbors for food. Yet she raged when we didn't have food prepared for HER---when there was nothing to make.

Being No Contact is the best thing I've ever done for myself. A few years ago, she got my Godmother to email me a poem about mothers on Mother's Day. It was a last-minute attempt to guilt trip me into contact. Once you see them for who they really are, their stunts will become pathetic reminders of why we need to stay away.

My mother has full blown NPD and me and my sister were raised in a very toxic environment. As the person with NPD gets older, it gets worse. She's full of drama. We try to stay out of her way but every time she feels she's not getting attention she will create drama and will enlist any and everyone to join in the fiasco right up to the community social workers. It's a neverending story with her. How we deal with her is using the law. You can't talk sense with her, she will twist everything in her favor. She will manipulate anyone who is within her perimeters and who will allow her to do so. She always plays the victim and it gets easier and more convincing as she ages. In essense she will make herself overwhelmingly pathetic and we always end up being the bad people. She will milk us of every penny we've got but she will toss money away like water. Her philosophy is, you must provide for me, it is your duty. I don't care how you come up with the money even if you have to beg, borrow, steal or rob. But once I have the money it's mine...I can do whatever I want with it...even if it is to toss it down the drain. She doesn't care if we are suffering or we go bankrupt to feed her greed, nothing is enough for her. In her world, she is always right and everyone else is wrong and the list goes on.

As to how has she affected us emotionally, I have never formed a healthy relationship with anyone simply because, I never knew what is the "norm". When I meet a good man, I will always find a reason to somehow push him away because I feel unwholesome and inadequate to provide any good emotional support to him. I cannot feel comfortable with a good person. I am only used to people treating me like my mom would treat me. In a twisted way, it is comforting because it is "familiar". A good relationship scares me endlessly. I worry, I get depressed, I self analyze excessively, etc. A normal man just cannot handle that kind of stress.

Socially I am categorized as antisocial. I have no friends and most people find that really odd but I feel comfortable going home to my four walls everyday after work. If I didn't have to work, I will stock up my larder and leave the house as little as possible. I feel comfort with my doors bolted, windows shut and curtains closed. When the doorbell or phone rings, I won't answer. I only talk to people online that I've never met and I never let anyone know who I was or get close to me. I am perfectly happy this way and have no desire to change my situation despite folks telling me that it is abnormal to live this way.

That's what life is like raised in the home of a narcissist and to me, this is my standard of normalcy. I never understood why I was different until a couple of years ago when I stumble upon an article on NPD. Somehow my NPD mom was able to condition me into thinking everything that happened in her home was normal and ideal. By the way, I'm past 50. It is a bit late to change things. I have believed and still feel this is how it is going to be till the day I die. By the way, don't get me wrong. I learned to be happy and kept myself happy all these years. I am pretty self sufficient and have no desire to change. I am just providing just an additional perspective.

This might turn into a long rant but last night I felt suicidal for the first time in my life. I'm OK now I snapped out of it but I've been doing a lot of thinking since and the whole situation has its roots in being an ACON.

I've realized that for a huge portion of my life, I have attracted "users". I recall, like most ACONs do, having a difficult time socially or growing up or whatever normal teenager stuff and going to my aNPDmom and having her take the other person's side, even if she didn't know them or what they did was vile. I guess this sets us (or me) up for these kind of relationships in the future. My aNPDmom even took the time to call my former fiancee's mother to say I was always such an angry child. She told one of my former girlfriends she should "seriously reconsider" moving in with me because I was "a difficult person to live with".

This has effected my "picker" I guess, well forever.

I have come to this dark chapter in my life because as it turns out I am now almost six grand in the hole with my landlord. I got this "girlfriend" who actually used to know my aNPDmom as a neighbor. She presented herself as having two jobs, owning two homes and renting an apartment with a car. Eventually she ran out of money, stating her son had her bank card and that he'd drop it off. I advised her I was behind on my rent and couldn't support her, we had discussed not moving in together early on in. She said she'd help me out with my landlord once she got her bank card. Well one day turned into a week and a week turned into a month and each time I started to get cheap she would wave the money in my face. It eventually got so bad that I absolutely needed the money and I was trapped and felt manipulated. All the while she was staying at my house. When she started trying to skim money off my bank account was when I had enough. I realized there was no apartment, no job, no houses, no car, nothing. A total user, she was simply kiting me for all I was worth. Then she showed my tenants how far behind I was on my rent, which infuriated them, and when I kicked her out of my house because I had had enough, she stole my mothers sentimental rings and jewelery from one of my tenants.

While this was an extreme example of having bad radar, I've realized it's not the first time and not the only person who I've had a relationship of some dynamic.

Another fine example is a "friend" I will call him J. I have bailed this guy out countless times with a place to stay. When he was living with me he took it upon himself to eat 9 packs of my ramen noodles and all six of my corns on the cob. Having roommates is give and take, and its not about the money. Its about literally eating EVERYTHING, then denying that he even took them. Painfully obvious when you go from having 9 packs of noodles to zero, they dont just up and walk off on their own. That was years ago. Well going through this very dark time I have needed a friend, seeing as I am living with two people who are outright hostile to me (tenants) and in a rough financial bind. I spent like 15 hours at his house over the holidays, and his girlfriend doesn't much like me and has all these restrictions on what we can talk about and whatever, so I asked him to come over. He was on his way downtown on the train which is a hundred yards from my house. Said he'd come stop by on his way back in 45 to an hour. After a few hours I called him to follow up and he said he couldn't stop by because he had to buy Saran Wrap. I was like well stop by man and he was like if you want to hang out with me you can jump on the train and come with me when I buy Saran Wrap. I was floored. I didnt want money or anything just some time to hang out. And to be blessed with his presence I had to tag along while he bought Saran Wrap, how insulting. I have Saran Wrap, I would have just given him the box whatever.

Yet another "friend" who I've known for nearly 30 years. I was happy to help him out because he wanted to move to my city and I thought it would be nice to have a good old friend in town. He stayed with me for 7 months, only paid rent for 2.5. He was skeefing things from me (stealing just a little bit hoping I wouldnt notice) and eventually it got so blatant it was out of control. I bought a bottle of vodka because I was having a few drinks and thought that I might want one more before I hit the hay. I fell asleep on the couch and awoke to practically the whole bottle empty five hours later. Angry, I grilled him and he tried to make me think I had drank it, because I was "on a tear". Well if I had drank fifty ounces of vodka I think I'd have known about it. The guy even drank my vanilla extract. When I was fed up and kicked him out because he wasnt paying rent, he took five weeks to leave, despite me being very crystal clear that he had to go. I told him I wasnt about to throw him on the street but he had to get a plan quick and get moving. To add insult to injury he also tried to kiss two different women I was seeing over the year and tried to mangle a third relationship - all while he was living on my charity.

Back to romantic relationships, I also seem to attract "users" in that regard. There's of course the fraud artist ex girlfriend I mentioned before. Prior to that I was with a girl for almost 4 years, she had a cute little daughter I was a dad to. I met the girl who presented herself as a hard working single mom who was going to university. Shortly after she moved in, it was very clear that she was not going back to university because she owed over a hundred grand in student loans and never even got a degree out of it. She "couldnt" work citing health concerns and after working with her through her health concerns (teeth, back surgery) I started getting fed up. I had been working full time, practically raising her kid as a single father, paying for everything and she wasnt working and I had a quarter million fruit flies in my house because she wouldnt clean up. I'm talking 14 empty packs of cigarettes on the living room table 16 empty 2 litre bottles of soda and to catch up on the dishes I'd have to run the dishwasher back to back. Three days of her daughters breakfast cereal dishes on the kitchen table side by side. When I finally got fed up and demanded she start doing something around the house she simply broke up with me, left me with thousands in bills and told anyone who would listen that I was abusive, a mess that took months to sort out because I am well known in my community. Oh and she left close to ten tons of junk in my garage.

I've dated a gambling addict, a person with BPD, and had a Jerry Springer episode with a woman who tried to trick me into thinking she was pregnant with my kid (it was her HUSBANDS) so I could get roped into paying child support.

I've hit a really rough patch and I realize I am better off having nobody than being surrounded by these people. Unfortunately, I was trained as a kid that it was normal for people who are supposed to care for you to have one sided relationships and to sabotage your life and relationships.

I know what a healthy relationship is, it is built on mutual respect and trust and friends help eachother out from time to time provided its not excessive. The problem in being an ACON is that my radar or picker is just completely out of whack. I trust and keep trusting. These users must just sense it. Its not like I've met all of these people the same way. The skeefing friend is someone I've known since elementary school. The Saran Wrap man I've known through sports for 8 years. The girlfriends I've met online, in person, through friends I've tried many different methods.

Its easy when your doing well and everything is going OK not to notice the people around you are using you. But when times are tough, these people all disappear. Then I'm left realizing that all the time, energy, and money I put into helping these people was completely wasted and that they have no qualms or issue with walking away and leaving me holding the bag for their mess.

I went NC with my aNPDmom a couple years ago, and it was a great decision. Unfortunately, I have to go NC with a lot more people than just her, and I have to work on repairing the damaged radar or picker she left me with.

Anyway rant over. Thanks for reading.

Wow, dude. I'm floored---and so sorry you are going through all this. Sounds like so much of the same bullsheet that I went through with the users and moochers. They are everywhere---and WE have been conditioned to tolerate this crap from others. At least now you see it; and can work on these issues in yourself. I've had to clean house too---and cut several long-term "friendships" out of my life because of the same type of sh*t. (Although I can't say any of these frenemies actually drank my vodka or vanilla extract for that matter.) Chop these losers out of your life and you'll be better for it; I promise.

I hope you're feeling better today. Six grand, while a good chunk of change, isn't worth taking your life over. Neither are these worthless slobs you're attracting. Hang in there---things DO get better, but you need to work on spotting the A-holes before they spot YOU.

New Rules for Computerology:

1, No more lending money. Period.
2. No more supporting anyone---regardless of how much they "need" you. No couch-surfing, no dishwashing or raising someone else's kids.

It's time you take care of YOU for a change.

I love you man!