No, I’m not your mother!

As I wrote this title, I had a giggle to myself, it felt good. I giggled because I was reminded of a book, I believe it was by Dr. Zeuss that I used to read to the kids. In the book this little chick walked about approaching other animals and objects asking, “are you my mother”? The little chick in the book eventually did fine his mother and there was a happy ending.

However, inside of a narcissistic relationship the “no, no I am not your mother” will absolutely not create a happy ending for you or the narcissist. It will however create an eye opening for you, as well as a ground hog day type of situation if you have in fact raised people through those teenage years.

You may or may not notice the uncompromised life that the narcissist is living. You may or may not have noticed that with time you have taken on more and more including a job outside the home (maybe) you also become the chief domestic officer. Just take a moment to think about all oof the responsibilities that you have taken on… Perhaps you have children, maybe the home is your job. I don’t know, but whatever your circumstance was prior to the narcissist, I bet it has changed.

At the beginning of the relationship, they may have been more than willing to help out in the house with cleaning, taking out the trash, taking the car to get it serviced and cleaned. The narcissist probably even picked up after themselves, knew where things like the dishwasher were kept and other useful kitchen items, the narcissist probably willingly assisted with tasks and errands. This slowly changes and if anyone has had children or teenagers that don’t want to do something these narcissistic phrases might just become very clear as you hear them now.

“I am busy doing work”, “I will later”, The clicking of the tongue, the hunched posture and just ignoring that you exist with no eye contact, the whining about how they’ve done so much already that day, it’s they’re time to relax.

The narcissist’s answer or replies to requests for help with whatever it is you are asking sometimes to have an adult twist.

“I’m the only one around here who is making money and working” and with this reply generally comes the conversation turning to how “you don’t do anything, look at this mess etc…

All the while the crumbs everywhere, the dishes that seem to have migrated under the furniture (probably in fear of the narcissist) ok bad joke, not really. The fruit cores and pieces of garbage be it candy wrappers, tissues or crumpled up pieces of paper the narcissist dug out of his pocket after the clothing was washed to throw on the floor etc…

At some point if you are living with, or even married to the narcissist it becomes a progression. You request, you ask, and then at some point it turns into begging and then outright war to try to get them to help you with anything. As this is unfolding, they’re behaviours that mirror that of a teenager get worse and know that they are also feeding off of your energy from your negative responses. Bad attention is better than no attention and they see that you are more affected as time goes on and that’s what they want.

Did you notice though that by the time that you got to this stage you may be wishing that you hadn’t ever asked them to do anything for you in the first place?

What generally ends up happening with the narcissist and taking any responsibility for chores let alone themselves is; they begrudgingly will drag they’re carcasses to the said chore all the while counting how many ways that they hate you for making them do this and how inept you are for not doing this. While they are thinking these thoughts about you the situations are going onto that score card inside of that wee brain to be used as ammunition against you at a later date.

In terms of the chores or even just the being responsible for themselves what usually ends up happening is the narcissist purposefully will do such a shitty job, break something, or make a bigger mess out of the mess so that you don’t want them to do anything ever again and eventually won’t ask. Perhaps you don’t catch onto this right away and you end up doing twice the amount of work, initially. Eventually though you do all of the chores, because it is just easier. This is you following the narcissists plan to a T.

They are void of responsibility for anything that does not bring them joy or should I say self satisfaction, and this is by no means resembling anything close to the Marie Kondo way either.

Since the behaviours that they display are so childish I thought what would happen if praise for a good job was given? Not just any praise, but overdoing it, like…” wow I didn’t know you had that skill”! or “You did such a fantastic job, nobody could have taken the garbage out better than you”!

In my case it was strength needed to do things in the yard. We had already gone through the whining, the pleading, the shitty job, and followed up by the fighting and outright refusal. The next time I started with playing up the obvious differences by stating things like you are the only person who could do this, your strength is needed, wow look at how you did that, look how fast you did that! Then I made the mistake (honestly enough) I said, “that would have taken me hours”. The spell was broken, the focus was taken off of the narcissist. I’m sure that the praise could have lasted for days, weeks, months even years. With each and every task this is exactly what was wanted and expected from you.

This gives you another glimpse into the age range the narcissistic individual decided to shut down. Sad really, however..

“No, I am not your mother! I am not here to fix you, re-train you, or assist you in any way to put you back together again after someone else broke you, and after you tried to break me and take all that I had”.

If you should notice that you have acquired a child when you had none, or you have an extra one in your house now. Maybe you are doing all of the work inside, outside, with the little humans and twice as much to appease the grown child, please stop and take note. Is there someone that just might be creating situations in your home that you might need to say, “I’m not your mother to”?

Take Care, Be Safe, and Find Your Happy!

If you resonate with this article or know someone who might resonate with this please share.

If you are suffering from narcissistic abuse and need help:

collaborativecaretherapies.ca

Somatic Trauma Informed Coaching specializing in narcissistic abuse.

— Cheryl