See=C
You=U
Next=N
Time=?
What was worse, was when I quit my computer tech job over a decade ago, and I walked out of the sever room.
Over my shoulder, I called, “See you NT!”
Britney Spears recorded both
**
C U Next Tuesday**
and
If You Seek Amy (loosely, F-U-C-K Me)
Stay classy, Britney.
Have I ever FELT this way? Sure.
Was it the right thing to do? Of course not. I’m an adult. You wait to calm down and then rethink things.
This is my new favourite saying.
Yeah, those guillotine techs can be rather jerkish.
“Let them eat cake! (Just a byte)”
Where do you go for emotional and psychological support when dealing with a narcissistic family member? I’m dealing with that right now. I’m trying to go very low contact or no contact as much as possible, but feel the need to vent. I know reddit has some narcissistic forums and I post there.
You have to come here to tell the stories.
I need stories about other people’s ‘dysfunctional’ families.
I like how you put ‘dysfunctional’ in quote marks.
Or, as an adult, you can calmly weight the positives and negatives of the situation and rationally come to the decision to tell someone to fuck off.
NOT doing so because you’re “an adult” is stupid and counter-productive to your own well being.
But thanks for playing the GUILT game! Just keep that one to yourself, k?
You can vent to me any time you like. You could shoot me a PM or email. There’s a good board for Borderline called BPD Families but I’m not sure about narcissism.
Family fucking sucks, man. I get sad without my Mom, but I’ve got a couple men in my group whose mothers also appear to suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder, and everytime I watch my friend tense up as he talks about the latest encounter they had, or how he’s really working on setting boundaries with her, I think “Thank Christ I don’t have to deal with this shit anymore.”
I have to limit my contact with both of my parents for different reasons.
Given what they’ve done to us kids, by which I mean myself and my older sister, over the years, as I said to her just the other day; “Our parents have been exceptionally blessed to have all of their children living close by their entire lives, and I don’t think that registers with them.”
Our younger sister got everything, including the full-ride through college. My older sister and I got nothing.
My mother is a racist conservative who lives to complain bitterly about our father and life in general. Some times I just ignore her calls or tell her I have a meeting or something to avoid getting together with her, because it will be nothing but stupid complaints about shit that happened years ago.
About 15 years ago, one of the groomsmen from their wedding met up with them for the first time in something like 25 years and we went to dinner with them. My mother had to break out into bitter complaints about the way my father made coffee 15 years earlier. Had fuck-all to do with anything being said, was incredibly embarrassing and pointless. Yes, that’s the type of crap that comes out of her mouth all of the time. No, I don’t think they ever heard from that guy again.
My father? I knew before I could speak that I would never be the son he wanted and I suffered horrendous amounts of physical and verbal abuse. The physical abuse only ending when I was 16, he chased me to my room, BROKE my door down and found me inside pointing a gun in his face. I promised him that if he ever touched me again, I would kill him. Even if I had to walk in his room while he was sleeping with a shotgun. (yes, I meant it and I would have done it too.) Even now, I don’t talk to him a lot, because stupid hurtful bullshit comes out of his mouth far too often. And I’m 55 years old now.
I get not telling your own family to fuck off. But putting up proper barriers to bad behavior is a necessary coping strategy.
Thanks for the comment. I interact with the neighbor’s dogs every day, give them water, pet them over the fence, and keep an eye on them. If and when these people decide to move (they’re renters like me) i might ask if they would let me take the younger of the two dogs.
Because we all know I mean “batshit fucking crazy”.
I don’t have a lot of family left. I only speak with about half the ones left. I don’t speak with them very often.
I still need to read about other “dysfunctional” families regularly to remind myself, no, this isn’t normal, and yes, I really don’t have it as bad as some.
Knowing this, it’s no surprise you ended up marrying someone who physically abused you and treated you like shit.
I’m glad you’ve figured out your worth, at least insofar as ending the abuse.
I don’t have many left either. I was in a small family to begin with. Now I don’t speak to my mother or biological father, two of my uncles are dead, and the only person I fully trust not to be toxic in some way is my Aunt, whose positive influence on my childhood is largely responsible for my sanity. When I go visit my family for the holidays, I’m seeing a grand total of three people. And hey, it’s fine. I’m an introvert, that’s kinda ideal.
As for ‘‘not having it as bad as some,’’ I’ll tell you what I see. When I tell people why I’m not speaking to my Mom, they are like, ‘‘Well that’s totally understandable. You have to take care of yourself!’’ But they are reluctant to extend the same permission to themselves. I have met plenty of people in miserable relationships with their parents who can’t necessarily point to some horrific story, just the ongoing soul-crushing low-level mistreatment that makes them think they have to put up with that shit, because at least it’s not overt abuse. I don’t think it’s for me to say what relationship anyone should have with their family members, but I wish people would cut themselves a little slack when evaluating whether the relationship is truly ‘‘that bad,’’ whether they are justified in feeling upset about it or needing space or anything.
The takeaway from my family story is not, I hope, ‘‘Well I should feel better about my own crappy situation.’’ It might better be, ‘‘Hey, maybe the bullshit I’m putting up with right now is really not worth it.’’
Ah, ok. I thought you were writing off people who had dysfunctional families as exaggerating. Nevermind.
I’m the same way. I need to talk to people about family dysfunction because sometimes it helps to solidify that no, I’m not crazy and yes this really is a fucked up situation. When you are inside of it, it can feel normal and you lose perspective.
I will say one issue I have with friends is figuring out whether their family stress is normal-level family stress or dysfunctional family stress. My family is so far outside of normal I don’t really have a good yardstick for pinpointing what is unhealthy. And obviously, ''Have you tried cutting them out of your life?" is a rather extreme suggestion for someone whose family member is a bit too passive-aggressive.
Really, though, it’s perception that matters most. If it feels harmful to the person in it, it’s unhealthy by definition.
Long story short, my story is this.
brother and his wife have told anyone who’d listen about what I horrible person I am for the last 20 years. I know about this, but wasn’t really too bothered (I assumed it was family venting). This part doesn’t bother me too much, but its relevant for later.
I overheard brother and wife discuss a couple they hate, and listened to them discuss trying to win over that couple’s children with presents and flattery. It was obvious they wanted to make the kid trust them so they could turn the kid against their parents (they hated the parents). Basically they were discussing winning over a child to sabotage that child’s relationship with their parents to hurt the parents.
I told the parents about that and some other bad stuff brother and his wife do. Father calls brother and wife on the phone and screams at them for 2 hours (not just for this, brother and wife have screwed with this couple for a decade and it reached a boiling point). brother and wife now want me to apologize. They said me discussing their dirty laundry is unforgivable (again, keep in mind they’ve done that to me for 20 years w/o any shame).
When I confronted brother about overhearing his conversation, he didn’t deny it. He said ‘the conversation was private’, as if that makes it ok and makes me the bad guy for listening to it. He and his wife are now working very hard to make their kids hate me.
I think he reads my posts here (I think he tracks my online activity. The reason I think this is because I was once a burglary victim and didn’t tell my family. But a week later one of brother’s kids was making fun of me for being robbed. I assume brother somehow found out I’d been robbed and his kid overheard brother and wife talking and laughing about it) so he may read this. But I want to cut him and his wife out of my life. I’m tired of their bullshit, and tired of no matter how they abuse or mistreat people, they are always the victim.
Ah, the hallmarks of a truly horrible person.
Deflect attention away from their shitbaggery by claiming the conversation was “private” and you’re the bad guy now. Yeah, I’ve heard this before. “Hey, my calling co-worker a N- was just between me and Ron. You’re the bad guy for telling on me!” “Hey, my conversation with my kid where I said I’d ‘beat him blue just like last time’ was a private conversation between me and my kid. You’re a bad person for calling me on it!”
There’s no winning here, there’s not even a peace. Walk away, move away, run away.
Don’t look back. No guilt and absolutely zero explanations or defenses. This is one of those times where silence is better than either of those things.
Yeah … oh, and have you had people assume you were clinically paranoid, too, because no one would ever go to that much trouble to screw with you? That’s always fun.