So, I’m at an event, and I’m talking with this woman who had gastric bypass surgery, and we get on the subject of the psychological effects of massive weight loss on family. Her marriage is ending, and maybe that’s because of how much she’s changed, or because of the role her husband had her in and how that changed, or who knows? Anyway, we’re talking, and I say my sister had gastric bypass, and I talk a little about how Mom’s reaction to me has changed in the time since. Now, Mom was on me about my weight when I weighed a hundred pounds less than I do today, and when Roberta was much heavier than me. In fact, I clearly remember an incident in 1985 when I brought the Important Boyfriend home for the First Dinner With the Family, and she used the opportunity to say “Tsk, Deb, do you really need that?” when I took seconds on something. Which was so mortifying that I remember it twenty years later.
But it’s definitely shifted, partly because I am much heavier, but I started to notice that it’s partly because I’m the best available target now. And to give Mom credit (I was saying this in the conversation), she’s growing and learning, and recently she said something inappropriate about my weight and I said so and she said “You’re right” and backed off. So that was great.
So this woman comes up and says “Forgive me for intruding but I couldn’t help but overhearing…” and shares a moment with her own mom and their relationship about weight, and shares a fairly powerful insight, an incident that made it crystal clear that her mother’s issue was jealousy. Narcissism. That she saw her daughter’s weight only in relation to her own weight.
And I congratulated her on her insight and she said something like “That’s your mother’s issue too. It’s narcissism.” And I said, “No, in my case, that’s not it, but I appreciate how meaningful it was for you; in my case, it’s…” “No,” she cut me off, “It’s narcissism.”
“Everyone’s different, of course,” I said, still smiling and being polite, “And in my case,”
“It’s narcissism, trust me.” She said.
Okay, narcissism? Is what a person has who thinks her insight must be true for everyone always.
That’s awesome.
And mom is quite narcissistic, but I agree… this isn’t that. It’s something else.
Oh, yeah, I agree about Mom, she is narcissistic in very specific ways.
But what she never does is have your weight (or my weight, or indeed, Steve’s weight) be about her weight.
Totally true.
I’m not sure this necessarily applies to your mom, but isn’t it possible that the narcissism wouldn’t be about her weight, per se, but more about how the weight of the people close to her reflects on her? Like, what kind of mom/wife is she if…
The thing with this woman whom I met was that, with her mom, it was all about comparing her own weight to her daughter’s. And this woman had so absorbed and inherited her mother’s narcissism to such an extent that she could only see other people’s mothers from her personal lens.
Personally, I don’t think my mother gives a shit about what kind of wife/mother she appears to be, although she cares very much about what kind of person she appears to be, if that makes sense.
Hrm, I’ve noticed this tendency to assume someone else’s situation is exactly like your own in a lot of people, though never quite to this degree. (Most people I’ve observed have the sense to accept it when you explain that your situation is different.) I never considered it as a manifestation of narcissism before. Very interesting indeed.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s about what kind of wife or mother she is. It is about an inherent inability to really really empathize about particular behaviors. She just can’t get past ‘Why can’t you just stop?’. She is working on that, (it has come up BIG TIME between us this last week) as well as working on what is and is not her business (which Deb addressed).
Also, she has a sort of blurty thing, which took me forever to realize, because I have a blurty thing, and she’s so much more dignified than I am.
But like the incident way back twenty years ago, that’s classic Inside Thought/Outside Thought stuff. “Think it, say it, it’s my way” as Cordelia says. And in recent months, when I’ve said to her, “This isn’t an appropriate thing to say right now,” she’s understood that.
Dignified. That’s the key to understanding mom. Because she has such a dignified and controlled presentation, you forget that maybe she’s not always perfectly in control, sort of like the rest of us.
Nicely put.
Yeah. I should get a blog or something.
the child is an extension of the mother and society views every failure in a child and lays it at mommies doorstep maybe it is not so much narcissism as cultural self -defense she can always say to herself I tried to straighten that child out when the experts haunt her doorstep with blame.
But sop, she is the same to her husband.