Ask Lemmy

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.

Used the fact that he named me after himself to commit fraud using my name.

Told my friend that he's like the son he never had, in front of me.

going into my backpack and stealing my HRT while i was in the shower, and refusing to give it back

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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....

Buying a brand new car when I didn’t have a bed to sleep on

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.

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.

This feels quite minor compared to most of the stuff here, but something that has stuck with me.

I was on holiday with my parents when I was younger - maybe around 12 or 13. We were on a short boat trip, and I noticed my dad was wearing a baseball cap. In my mind I had this cute scene of me taking the hat off his head and putting it on myself, and all of us laughing. Kinda wholesome. But the second I reach for the hat he whacks me hard around the back of my head. I was more confused than anything - why did he instantly resort to violence? I hated the injustice of it; the image in my mind of doing something fun, something you'd see other families doing, but then the actual result being the complete opposite. I never understood it, but then I've never had much in common with my dad.

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.

During covid my dad would not wear a mask willingly.

It shattered my perception of him, that probably will not ever go back to what it was.

Despite countless requests to not, they sent me to a parochial school where I was physically and sexually abused.

Probably variations of

"I'm going to kill myself cause of you."

And

"You have to love me or you have to leave."

We left.

It wasn't just one big thing (although there were plenty of those), it was death by 1000 cuts. In the end it was something relatively small. I asked her to remove me from her regular right-wing email blasts and she refused to do so. What kind of asshole refuses to do something so small for a complete stranger, much less a family member? A malignant narcissist asshole.

If you haven't read up on narcissistic family systems there's a lot of good content out there. Here's a short article.

Sent me a registered letter requesting I reply in kind and explain why he should keep talking to me.

20 years later he had no regrets, saw nothing wrong with what he said and did. Thinks we should carry on from where left off. He is also now disappointed with me because I never told him I have another kid. He wanted nothing to do with my other two but I should run around seeking his approval.

I already had a rocky relationship with my dad after he made some questionable statements concerning COVID, but there are 2 distinct memories that just keep popping up.

No 1 was him helping me move into my own apartment while my maternal grandfather was dying in the hospital. We were talking about vaccinations (a requirement to visit patients) and how me and my brother got one, he started tearing up and said something about how kids shouldn't die before their parents, how egotistical we were for getting vaccinated, and how we'll die in 2 years.

No 2 was a few years later, we were standing on the sidewalk after having watched a movie, and someone had hung a pride flag from their balcony across the street. And while I'm not part of the LGBTQ community, I have good friends that are, and am firmly of the opinion that people should be allowed to do who and whatever they want to, as long as everyone involved consents. However, my dad apparently felt important enough to complain about how that's just "gay propaganda" and how he "isn't against it but they shouldn't force it into everyone's face" and so on.
My guy, it's a flag. On a balcony. On the 4th fucking floor!? Chill out.

My dad was a rush limbaugh guy in the 90’s then moved to info wars, my mother who he married when she was 16 dotes on him due to his history of being abused as a child, so my dad never grew up, never learned any hard lessons, and she never made anything of herself but to be his voice box when I refused to debate him on politics.

My mom then only called to relay her struggles, or to nudge me on politics, I would call her on holidays and gift them lavishly with my nice IT job, especially after my dad was forced into retirement during Covid.

Anytime I mentioned a challenge in my life they would turn it around and tell me how they had it worse, when I told them good news, it barely registered.

The last straw was when she called me just before the last presidential election to strongarm me into voting for Trump. She crossed a line and I hung up. Haven’t talked since, and finally have peace in my life, well some peace anyway.

My father definitelty had narcissistic personality disorder, untreated of course because his culture downplays any sort of emotional introspection. He cheated on my mom and tried to justify it by claiming she wasn't satisfying his sexual needs, when in reality she was medically compromised, and couldn't physically reciprocate those needs all the time.

Not to say my mother was a saint, cause she had her own issues of emotional detachment at times where she could be comforting most of the time but cold if you said the wrong thing to her, to the point where she beat me one time because I claimed offhandedly to my sister that "mom hates me". She and my dad still used corporal punishment to keep us and our cousins in line.

But I still respected her more than my father cause she helped not only her family members, but my dad's family members as well, allowing his brother to stay with us for a while as he traveled to the US. She even helped my dad write his own dissertation while she was raising me and my sister. Not to mention she hosted both her parents and took care of them and helped them find jobs.

But my father decided to be one of the most depsicable human beings I know personally because when my grandfather on my mom's side died and we all traveled out of the country to arrange, organize and attend his funeral, he not only brought the woman he was fucking into the house, they apparently had sex all over the house, leaving used condoms in several spots, they slept in my mother's bed, and he took her to various tourist spots that my mom practically had to drag him to. And it gets worse: He used the excuse of attending the graduation of his daughter from his previous marriage to get out of attending my grandfather's funeral, and of course, he didn't go to that event either despite my half-sister mailing him an invite.

And that's not even getting into the shit he did before he met my mom.

Yes, it gets much talk in therapy.

• entering my flat multiple times without my consent/knowledge and not leaving when asked to (thanks for the 3h meltdown where I was completly locked inside my brain and couldnt do anything but repeat a few words over and over and rock back and forth on the couch, really liked that one)

• ignoring obvious signs of mental/neurological issues in their child (because somehow children cant have those??)

• treating our relationship as something transactional

• forcing me to do activities i really dont want to, trying to argue away my fears and thinking they "won" after i shut up

I might talk to them again if they write a letter apologizing for atleast something. I havent told them this and i realise that its kind of unfair to set a condition that the other party doesnt know about, but if they dont come to this conclusion themselves then it doesnt feel genuine to me. It really sucks because I have no other people to rely on (emotional and material) but it also kind of was like that before I stopped talking to them, because every favour needs to be repaid or might be used in an argument against me and every fear and concern is argued away.

edit: oh and i realise that some of this is my fault because i really am sometimes difficult to deal with and very stubborn and i try to take responsibility, but at the same time it often feels like I have to work with both of my hands tied behind my back and I wasnt given the tools as a child to do better.

My mom poured bleach into the enclosures of my brother's pet tarantulas when she was kicking him out over laundry or something.

He's a better person than i cause he still cares about her

I'm gay but like, the kind that almost got murdered in the 90s for coming out in a rural high school (I know Judy Shepard well). Fast forward to my mom telling me she's conservative in every way "except she belongs to the log cabin republicans" and I just lost it. "God gave you a gay kid so you could realize everything else they're saying is a lie, too, but you're too stupid to get that."

And that's when I suddenly realized she had been outright abusive and manipulative my whole life, and it was just this idea of a perfect mom that clouded my vision on it. She weaponized her kids against our dad, his family, anyone she didn't like. Because she was too much of a victim to fight her own fights. Emotional incest. Lots of therapy fodder.

Does it count if it's the parent of my kid? When our daughter was around 1yo my ex-wife got mad at her for being too selfish. I found her pouting not wanting anything to do with our 1yo because she was "not nice to her". That really opened my eyes to her personality.

I was broke and hungry in college. My mother had already told me not to ask her for money, but I called anyway, hoping maybe my gran could help. My mother screamed at me and hung up.

I didn't take action on this for another thirty years.