Do you love your narcissistic parent?

I don't. I only loved him when I was very little. He's always been so abusive (verbally and emotionally), all that love completely dissipated. It always surprises me to hear that other adult children of N parents still love them and want to keep them in their life.

I love them because they are my parents. Not as people. Does that make sense?

It does That's how I feel about my mom, who was more neglectful rather than mean. My father though... no love in any way, shape, or form there...

Have you dated NPDs?

I do love my narcissistic mother. Aside from her being that, she is also so loving, wonderful and amazing. She is hilariously funny (in a narcissistic way, though). She is brilliantly smart (imparting words of wisdom that are quite skewed, but not wrong). She does crossword puzzles in pen. She has great language skills.

She has loved me as I am an extension of her. I have stayed in her good graces. We have had countless good times together. Yes, she is twisted, but she taught me the whole world is, too.

She had hard knocks that burst her bubble. My father's death took such a toll on her, she never recovered. Not, in her old age, the narcissistic tendencies have become out of hand and the depression and hysteria, too. It pains me to see her go down this way.

Yes, I have anger for a lot of things she did and said to me. But I also have infinite love for her. She is my mother. I have no doubt she truly loves me.

I am sorry you both had so much abuse you don't love or like your parents at all.

In my case, being a narcissist did not really make my mom a bad person. She's just twisted and a control freak. Her bark is worse than her bite and she is her own worst enemy.

I think one good thing she did and a reason why I feel better about her is because, while she was pretty abusive to all three of her daughters, she never pit us against each other. We are all together as daughters in a kind of therapy together where we finally figured out that mom is narcissistic/ histrionic disordered and can commiserate and support each other.

I was waaaaay below my brothers. She deeply and openly preferred them, over me.

And that was just not OK with me.

She said didn't love me a much because i didn't "need" her. So, I was a tough, resilient independent person so you didn't love me? OK.

Right. Kids don't need their parents.

Was she of that old school thinking that the boys were more important than girls?

I know if we were boys, my mother wouldn't have said any of the things she said to us girls. She wouldn't have pulled any of the crap she did. She would have raised us to be providers, whereas i was actually told, not by just her, but by lots of family and their friends, too "Don't be a provider, marry one".

Your mother had some deep rooted issue with you because you were a girl, I guess.

My brothers were the golden children. I always thought she was a bit jealous of me and the things I did.

yes but i am just insanely frustrated with all the emotional damage I've gotta sort through now because of her

I feel the same way. If she were anyone but my mother I would avoid her like the plague.

My relationship with my parents has been so systematically, intrinsically, and subtly emotionally abusive, I'm not sure what I ever felt was love. There was only an unfulfilled needing inside that evolved quite early into a solid self-loathing. After all, if the two people who are programmed by evolution and nature to love you automatically and unconditionally don't, then the child logically concludes there must be something wrong with it, that it must be unlovable. Children have nothing else to go on in their powerless little world and limited comprehension.

The more I'm aware of all the machinations of ongoing abuse, the less my desire for my parents in any way, shape, or form. You can only try to pet the dog that bites you so long. I'm not sure if they realize that once our one last standing connection to each other is gone, there will be absolutely no incentive whatsoever for me to communicate with them. They probably don't realize it; narcissists are typically unaware of or unwilling to face reality.

I'm hopeful for myself, though, because for the first time in my life, I blew up at my mother (a quite recent reaction of mine) and was traumatized very little in the aftermath. Instead of fear and guilt during the mental autopsy of our conversation, I felt only numbness and then later frustration and anger at her inability to grow as I have. I take it as a sign that I'm finally beginning to instinctively operate as a person with self-esteem and, therefor, boundaries. The Catch-22 is that I can't go to my parents for praise about my personal victories in this area because all the victories have been over them!

I've been able to spot narcissistic people around me much, much faster, too, and have been unloading them from my life with dispatch. The hardest part is changing the behaviors that attract them to me in the first place--being an emotional cheerleader for others, almost automatic agreeability, focusing on the other person in conversation out of courtesy--and accepting that I will be disliked by some for this change, since disappointment and then emotional abandonment were my parent's weapon of choice. It's a constant trigger. The trick is apparently to be so full of self-esteem that no one's opinion of you--no one's--matters. Tough to do in isolation, very tough.

But isn't that what people with NPD developed or learned to do at an early age? If so, I'm not so sure that's the best solution, either.

I love my mother, but I don't trust her. I think I actually feel sorry for her in a way, but I could wring her neck for what she's done to me, my sister, and even my dad.

No, it's not.

Are you sure? I'm not sure because I don't have NPD although I think my dad did, and it seemed like he was that way, based on what I understood of his deprived childhood.

I think what is needed is an ability to consider other people's opinions realistically, especially those who are close to me. And, when there is some indication I have done something that I'm not especially good at or proud of, or a result that I'm not especially proud of, then to take that into account, both in my view of who I am and in things I might try to do differently another time.

Quite sure.

I've been researching NPD for years. Narcissists are deeply invested in what other people think of them. The NPD's self-esteem is tied to others' admiration of and attention towards them, it's called Narcissistic Supply. They need others to at least appear to do what they cannot do for themselves: love themselves. It's typically a response to insufficient nurturing from one or both parents who are more often than not narcissists, themselves.

People who genuinely possess a strong, unshakable sense of self-esteem are not narcissistic, they are healthy. You can tell when you've reached this point when neither compliments nor insults affect you--they are both merely opinions of people on the outside looking in. Only you know who you really are.

Well, if you think that will work for you, go for it. I don't think that would work for me. If you want to judge your view as "healthy" and me not healthy -- that's your opinion, perhaps one that is shared by people whose work you have been reading for years. I still don't think that would work for me, and is not an attitude that I want, so therefore, for me, I don't think that would be "healthy".

I do love my father.

If I'm being honest, not really. I've had a really tough time with forgiveness.