@Kash & Omie. The similarities are all just too weird!! My mother has a deep seated fear of psychology and decided she didn't want to have anything to do with sex only one year into her marriage with my stepdad (I was eight when they met and married).

🙁

My brother and I were raised by a narcissist. She's dead now. Mostly now it makes me feel sad. She was an Gemini with an Aries moon and in a lot of ways she was one of the most exciting women I will ever know. She was tremendously seuccessful, beautiful when she was young, and married a man who was probably the greatest real "success" our family has been associated with. Unfortunately he died when my brother and I were both kids.

She was a psychologist, an extremely respected one. But my brother and I were her "objects" and we both spent our whole lives fighting the way we felt about ourselves and feeling isolated and invisible. We were not close when we were children because she had to be the center of the action. I could really not get married or have a child with much success -- she had retired by then and actually once tried to get custody of my son because she insisted I could not take care of him. I quit several jobs in terror of the possibility that was true. Then, once I wasn't working, I was too poor, a quitter and a failure.

She could not live in a universe where she was not the center of attention: the most important, the wealthiest, the most capable, the one in charge, and then also the one who needed the most help. She was either the most intelligent or the most in need, the most whatever.

We both understood that we were centrally important to her survival. Because of this I could say I am an almost total failure as an adult, and my brother never married or had a girlfriend -- I don't think as long as he's been alive. Both of us struggle with money because neither of us believe anyone would pay us decently since we are so inadequate.

We loved her, though, you know. We were complicit in protecting her in her illusions of wealth and beauty and brilliance and power and control and indispensability. We couldn't live with ourselves any other way.

((((BIG HUGS TO ALL))))

Just wanted to say that. Need a moment now to digest all the new stories.

PG I just saw your post--thanks for the heads up.

Coming back to this later as I'm going to work. Eva one of my siblings doesn't have relationships/intimate relationships. Ever. She is afraid to.

So the biggest issue with me getting counseling (other than I was trying to destroy her) was that I was ruining her reputation in the mental health field

..... but of course - it's ALL about her!

Kash I can't believe how many parallels there are between your mother's behavour and that of mine. We weren't allowed to interfere in my father's treatment or nursing or even feeding when he had cancer, never mind it was an utter horror show (and all about HER! - she once threw him on the bed when he had gangrene of the spine and was in utter agony, shouting "You have to fight harder!! What about me? How am I going to live alone?"). And we weren't allowed to hav eany input into his funeral either (at least we got to go, though my poor Sis got separated sinc eshe expected to sit next to Ma who instead imported one of her 'girls' on oneside and my cousin on the other, so Sis got left on her own (her Husband had refused to come).

She also said I'd get over my handicap if I loved her, and how COULD I emabarass her so - obviously I didn't love her.... and worse. I was about 13/14 when she kept saying things on those lines... imagine, with no support anywhere, I had to handle that.

People wonder why I married my ex, but it was largely because he was prepared to stand up to Ma and to protect me from her. He always answered the phone, and at one point told her no she couldn't speak to me, and he wouldn't permit it ever again if she kept upsetting me. And he added that it was unfair to punish me and my sister for not being her own children. Nobody had siad that to her before! Needless to say, she grew to respect him a lot.

In truth you never get over these things but you can learn to handle them... only in my experience by distancing yourself, however. Because she isn't going to change - ever. She can't. So it's up to you to change the dynamic of the relationship - nothing else will work.

I don't by the way believe such people are capable of love, as we understand it.