My wife’s parents are pretty bad. The worst thing that comes to mind immediately (sure there are worse) was a time we recommended and watched Baby Driver. We had good reasons to believe she’d enjoy it (not relevant why and not going to get bogged in unnecessary details). Literally as soon as the movie ends she says to my wife “Well, it just shows how much we’ve drifted apart because I did not like that movie.”

So, things sort of escalate and we’re packing to leave because why the hell would we stay after a comment like that. She’s already got crocodile tears and has twisted the situation around to make her seem like the victim. Stuff like “but you never do talk to me” blah blah blah.

She’s always so paranoid about being viewed as a bad mother by her children, but rather than ever apologize for anything or try to improve its always just the passive aggressive “you must think I’m terrible” at the smallest things. It’s so manipulative. It’s like she knows saying it over tiny things will get her family to be comforting and insist it isn’t true. Meanwhile when she does actually out of line things she never says that sort of thing and instead tries to be the victim. It’s disgusting.

I really really dislike my wife’s parents. I’ve found peace and am able to be cordial but holy fuck.

My parents wanted to be so hands-off they would let me and my sisters have collective authority over each other. This led to utter disaster.

I asked my mom if she ever made mistakes and without skipping a beat she just says no. Looked at me like I was asking something very strange. I was maybe 13 or so when I asked.

All my life I thought that she would love me, if I achieved certain test scores or finished a certain degree.

Then there was high school graduation night. I had worked really hard to get there and I will never forget how she made that annoyed face to let me know that she wanted to leave early. It was like a punch in the gut because it became clear to me at that point that there was nothing I could do to make her love me.

She wasn’t capable of giving love. That’s really fucking sad and I am still grappling with it, but it gets easier.

My father was a good man, through and through, but he didn’t always think about the consequences of his actions. He ran his own business quite well for many years, and my mother and I were well taken care of right up to when he died and beyond.

However, for a few years before he retired, the business wasn’t doing well. He kept it afloat with his retirement fund, and drained it pretty quickly. He never touched mom’s half nor what he’d set aside for me. Mom found out and forced him to shut the place down and retire early.

However, because he spent all that money keeping the business afloat, he had to keep working to make any kind of income. He went and got his CDL and drove busses for the city and the school in the small town he and my mom lived in for a bit before taking a job as an instructor at the small local college.

It was during one of these days out teaching his students that he got bit by a mosquito and contracted West Nile Virus. It affected his health like less than 1% of people that contract it. It attacked his nervous system, and he was unable to breathe unassisted. Mom, having medical power of attorney, told the doctors to pull the plug after a month with no improvement.

Because he elected to keep all his employees employed, he had no retirement fund, forcing him to continue working and thus putting himself into a position to be bit by that mosquito. His kindness killed him, if indirectly, and about a decade late.

Someone I know was hospitalized and their parent seemed more concerned about how it inconvenienced them than the person in the hospital.

Emotionally manipulated me back into multiple abusive situations to act as her shield, and has refused to so much as acknowledge what was going on. Can’t even have a talk about it, it’s just shut down immediately.

Now she doesn’t even know that she has a daughter instead of a son, and never will.

Not the most but probably one of the last ones. When I decided to move to another country my mother refused to help in any way, even though the money necessary would make no difference in my parents life. Not only that, but she actively sabotaged every effort I made and in my last day she asked me to talk to her. She cried and cried and said: “I fought so hard for you to stay here. Who is gonna take care of me now?”

And that’s how I moved to Canada in February without a winter jacket and had only 20 dollars in my bank account after paying the initial expenses.

My mom was very strict with me as a child, but I don’t think it was narcissistic. She was very focused on my education. I had to do well and get a good job. But it was because she wanted me to have good health insurance as I have had chronic health issues from birth. I have a good job now, my student loans are paid off, and she was right about me needing good health insurance. Our relationship is lovely now. But I’ll probably always remember the time that I skipped a homework assignment and she spit in my face.

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of books on narcissism and have been picking up on the idea/notion/possibility/viewpoint that narcissism is a spectrum like autism is. In autism, which itself is incredibly common due to the fact that it’s multiple genes/processes/whatever performing multiple parts of a spectrum (think a carpet representing humanity and a shattered cup on the carpet, I use the shards in this visual to represent pieces of the spectrum scattered across humanity, apologies if anyone thinks a shattered cup seems like a negative comparison, I don’t), you have the majority of humanity having some variance in it, which goes to demonstrate there’s no such thing as a neurotypical. As in, if a scouter was invented that instead of scanning your power level scanned your autism level, everyone would have their very own signature number. I would be over 9000. Same with narcissism, if this view is correct, as it would be another shattered glass on the carpet that is humanity, with the shards from both glasses overlapping in their territories (which when you think about it makes the family dynamics in The Good Doctor all the more awkward, it’s one spectrum at odds with another in a show where the main character is a medical savant with autism). And again, not trying to make an awkward comparison, I have friends who openly confess to me they’re deep on the narcissism spectrum, and these people at least are trying their best in life, as well as showing narcissism is a neutral condition that just happens to seem more negative in modern urban situations

This is a pseudopsychological word salad, but please accept my apology if you’re 14 or chatgpt prompted for redditisms, if that’s the case good job.