It’s wild how these people just can’t fathom that they are the problem.
Every once in awhile these sort of posts make me introspective, they say almost exactly the same as my opinion about what I think of far right conservatives. Then I remember I’m not the one oppressing people and want to accept everyone as long as they don’t bring intolerance.
Something to remember I think is that just because people on both sides of an issue talk the same way about the other side, does not inherently mean that both or neither have a point.
This is one thing that I find very odd: you’ll see posts like this of obvious pieces of shit but the moment you start talking about being intolerant on intolerant people, or of being tired of caring about this sort of thing, you’re suddenly a worse per son than the actual bigot.
I guarantee you within 5 minutes of seeing/talking to his kids, he mentions trump and dives hard into his extreme right politics.
But its everyone else that has “Trump Derangement Syndrome”, not him and his incessant need to make it the center of his life.
I mean, he admits to not being there when his kids were growing up. And he spends the time talking about his offspring’s family and their “values.” They have the kids, so they’re obviously willing to keep tolerating him if the kids get to see him enough that they are “the light of his life” or whatever. But he’s still talking about how he doesn’t know if he can stand to have a further relationship with his kid (that he wasn’t around to raise) and their spouse. Because politics.
So…I don’t think this guy’s probably on the right side of any issue they have.
But he will always love his grandchildren, because surely they won’t ever espouse opinions he doesn’t like… right???
grandchildren are still young enough to be cowed into only saying what grampy wants to hear.
When they get older he’ll turn against them too.
That’s how the religious indoctrination at the base of this works. By design you NEVER question the church. And the Conservative GOP leadership has tapped into that reality distortion field. They could literally tell these people to commit murder and they would…
It’s Nazi level propaganda scary.
They could literally tell these people to commit murder and they would…
They did and they do.
No estranged parent ever does.
(For anyone that wants to know more: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/)
Can confirm, wrt the boundaries portion. I had to have a discussion with the parent with whom I maintain minimal contact, for reasons. They managed to throw in a wild accusation and went absolutely bat guano, demanding I inform a payee of one of her checks that did not show up in the mail that she would be deducting the stop payment fee from the next check. I said I would not, because there is no legal provision for that, and they sent me a screenshot of their bank’s stop payment notice suggesting she talk with the payee, circled and highlighted in paint, to inform me, and I copied the text to paste it here:
You’re out of line. Its not my fault they can’t keep up with their mail. Someone has to pay the fees and I’m not paying!
It’s crazy. I know I’m part of the problem too. These people need something other than factual rebuttals to bring them back into the fold but I’m le tired. I can’t do it anymore. But that means the system is working as intended and we must strive to dismantle it.
I’m le tired
Well, have a nap…then fire the missiles!!
(hoping you were making this reference, or this comment is going to be super weird)
I’m just starting my deeper learning about narcissism, but I think one trait is literally being unable to admit fault. It’s how their brain works.
patriarchy : social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line
“They don’t value patriarchy”. It’s not meant to be a positive thing you idiot.
They can’t say “Christian values” anymore, so they’ve replaced it with “family values”, and in this case the more brazen “patriarchy” (which probably came from bashing feminism) and various scattering of “values”.
It doesn’t even have horses
It’s one of those “if you won’t respect me as an authority, I’m going to treat it like you aren’t respecting me as a person”. It all comes back to authoritarianism and maintaining hierarchies. Conservatives believe someone must be in charge and what that person says goes, and then an extension to that is they want to approve of who is in charge and do not want to follow a woman or minority.
“When I retired I tried to rebond with my kids”
So you were always a bad father.
Exactly. Good parents don’t have to rebond with their kids.
Even mediocre parents. My dad wasn’t that great a parent and we still had a bond until the day he died.
My dad was the contrasts - when it was great, he was a great man, a great father, and a stellar husband. when it was bad… oof, was it bad. And we still had a relationship. I suspect OP’s example is a real super chud.
Exactly. This person may very well suffer with some degree of narcissism, which would make it impossible to see their own responsibility in the whole thing, hence the projection.
This post reeks of “the missing missing reasons”.
Thank you! I had heard that term before and was racking my brain trying to remember it, because it seemed to apply to this situation so well. My mom is like this with my older brother. They’ve been no contact for over 15 years now because my mom said some racist things about my sister-in-law and niece. But when she describes why she doesn’t talk to my brother, that is never mentioned. It’s always vague reasons like “his wife won’t let him talk to me.”
There’s an excellent series of posts about it here: https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html
That’s the exact article I was thinking of!
The whole “they sent me pages and pages of abuse but they won’t tell me why they cut contact!” is wild. You can read. Read.
That was a fascinating read, thanks for linking it.
It’s SO good. Facebook is riddled with these parents.
The thing is, if grandpa were to shut up about Trump and the sins of the gays, then his family would actually hang out with him, even if they know he sees the world differently.
I hate how politics went from having disagreements but still being civil and friendly to if you disagree on something you can’t even be in the same country because “you’re what’s wrong” with it…
That’s propaganda for you. It started with debates, but when you’re pushing for something that’s obviously bad to enrich yourself it’s hard to have honest conversations about it so you turn to hate.
“Let’s not discuss tax rates, it’s the damn communist liberals that just want to destroy America! They don’t care about tax rates, they just want free unicorns and to dress their kids as furries!”
I’m interested to hear more about the free unicorns. Is that a policy someone is campaigning on? Is there a signup sheet? Can I take one home today?
He’s just got a new kid in the family and he sees it as an opportunity to berate everyone for not having his worldview. Yeah those guys definitely not the problem.
Lots of projection here.
At least at the end he says he loves them all and wants there to be an end to division.
Too many families (and societies currently) completely break apart out of ego and stubbornness.
Grandpa is having a big old moan (semi-publicly unfortunately) about differences in values. But he is concluding with love and longing for togetherness, which is exactly what is needed to transcend the beef and intolerance.
I was expecting to dogpile this but actually I see the redemption in it.
If this person is truly narcissistic as the title states, then the call for unity at the end is simply a method of playing the victim. And I’m inclined to believe the title, since his child has gone no-contact. Because going no-contact is often the only way for children of narcissists to begin improving their own mental health after growing up with a narcissist for a parent.
If there’s one thing narcissists love, it’s turning things around on their victims. They always want to control the narrative to be the victim. Given that context, the call for unity rings hollow. Because it could easily just be a way for the grandfather to flip the script and paint their child in a bad light. It allows them to go “hey I’ve been trying to reconcile and they have refused.” But what the people reading this post wouldn’t know (especially if they’ve only seen the grandfather’s side) is that the child has been refusing because every time they have tried in the past they have been burned.
If there’s one thing narcissists love, it’s turning things around on their victims. They always want to control the narrative to be the victim.
DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. Narcissists are unbearable.
Yeah it feels a lot like missing missing reasons it isn’t, but it hits that same part of my brain screaming yikes
I don’t see the redemption. This person was obviously a horrible father always and caused his children to suffer his behavior. Whatever happened with Trump was just the icing on top of the cake and only gave a place for these behaviors to be projected.
I’m getting the impression that they “re-bonded” after retiring because their ex cut them out, and the divorce was a result of their ego and stubbornness.
And he had NOTHING going on after retiring.
because their ex cut them out
That is being too generous in your assumption. Family courts go above and beyond to try to maintain relationships between parents and children. If this guy wasn’t a part of his children’s lives it’s either because he chose not to be or because he was so abusive that a judge decided that it was in the child’s best interest to keep him away. Short of kidnapping one spouse can’t unilaterally cut the other out of the children’s lives after a divorce.
Narcissistic parents are a real thing that some people need to learn about.
I stopped being so open about the fact that I disowned my narcissistic mother, at least among strangers. I got sick of all the arguments from people who would also want nothing to do with her, if they ever had to misfortune to meet her.
She is a nasty, vindictive, obsessive person who goes out of her way to hurt people. She sees people as tools to manipulate, not as human beings. The only relationships she has ever been able to maintain are with people too afraid of her to leave.
But sure, tell me again how blood is thicker than water.
It’s so weird to think anybody would even argue that. They have no idea what you could have been through as a child or even as an adult.
I can relate. “That’s your parent! The Bible says honor your father and mother!”
Bible aside, I do honor them, in that they suffered abuse without access at the time to professional help, as in turn did I. When I became an adult and realized I was fast having the save nasty personality, I got myself into therapy. Some therapists were pretty awful and one actively did more harm than good (low cost, sliding scale; whole other story), but I kept at it. And when I end up going full no contact, with the parent with whom I’m minimal contact, whether that’s before they pass from this earth or not, I’ may end up back in therapy, abd if not, there will be plenty of shadow work, ongoing, for maybe the rest of my life. And that’s just fine. That parent has money and Medicare part B, so there’s zero reason they can’t choose to get better, but it’s just easier to blame everyone else.
Yeah ouch. My favourite “a mother always loves her children!” etc.
Keep going and good luck!
Agreed. People who don’t understand how you can be estranged from your parents have NO idea how crazy they can be.
It is shocking how people will come into a thread like this and lambast OP. It’s like “Well, so very sorry that you had a good life and never had to deal with this, I guess.”
Projection is their go-to coping strategy
I just reviewed a bunch of posts like his and the comments are like this:
my daughters think abortion is cool and my son thinks communism is awesome
Based
Yes all us commies are just lined up to have an abortion so we can be the cool kids.
Lol I like how this dude reads the very basic textbook definitions of Marxism, and is like “look how this describes how fucking awesome Marxism is!”
He’s probably been told his whole life that communism is the hatred for all things American, so seeing any other definition makes him think he’s reading a sales pamphlet.
I went to a Christian University and I’m leftist as hell.
Same
Right so he is just another god damn lead-brained lunatic.
Can you imagine making your identity be publicly attacking your children over their beliefs?
I found a few like this last night. They have ZERO insight.
Unfortunately the level of narcissism among boomers and older gen x is pretty high. I guess we’ll have to wait to see how millennials do.
Don’t feel bad Elmer, when those grandchildren grow up and have their own opinions, they’ll hate you on their own.
“Far left liberal”
LolI love that they have no idea what anyone who isn’t a conservative troll night think politically and how it might not all be the same.
deleted by creator
Found a few more last night.
Oh honey, no wonder your kids don’t talk to you
So close, but at the same time, couldn’t be further away lol
