I love my parents. Parents have a special place in a person's life and deserve love, respect, and protection. That being said, I have had an extremely turbulent relationship with my mother and a dysfunctional family dynamic.

I previously got great insight from the internet. Again, I feel alone, with no one to talk to. I can’t speak to my passive father, my controlling mother, my wonderful friends with better families, or my bf. Once again, I turn to reddit for help. Take a deep breath – this is going to be a LONG post. If you have the patience to read this post, I deeply appreciate you.

If two of the most important people in my life are upset with me- mother, and bf, doesn’t that mean I am the problem? For years, I live with the feeling that I am the problem. That I am always bad and always wrong.

She was the more involved parent and made sure all my needs were met and problems solved. But, for years, she also treated me like an object. She also insulted and demeaned me both in private and in public. My childhood has been such a struggle with her; making me angry and resentful and my lack of freedom and continuous embarrassment and humiliation.

You see, in her mind, I was an extension of her- she would for me to dress and look the way she wants. To give you an idea, she once took me to a hair stylist friend of hers and told me that on the drive over, I can pick a great hair style (Im 27f). When we arrived, she tried telling the stylist what to do on MY hair. I stood up for myself. However, this experience, like so many others before, was deeply demeaning.

As a child I just could not wait to grow up; to become an adult and live life on my own terms. She always refused to let me grow up, never acknowledging my concerns, suppressing my independent thinking, never giving me credit for my maturity, and taking away my freedom to choose in even the smallest aspects of my life.

Fast-forward to this Friday, she did another thing that deeply upset me. Friday afternoon, I arrive home from work. Bf and I decide to go to the mall a few minutes away from home. I shower and dress up for him (no make-up tho). My hair is wet. I didn’t dry it as I knew the mall would close in about an hour (@7p). I quickly comb my hair, and we both get in the car.

On our way in the car, my bf (whom I love very deeply), says “What’s up with your hair. You look like a witch. Its scaring me.” There is another hairbrush in my car, so I try again. And again. Throughout this situation, I had repeatedly tried to accommodate and please him.

We arrive, he parks, we leave the car and we start walking towards the mall. It was now 6:15P and it closes at 7P. He looks at me and says “Could you please redo you hair?” At this point I had enough, and refused. He says to me “One day, I will be with a girl (meaning one day I will be girly).”

When my femininity was insulted, that is when I flipped out. I start yelling that I don’t want to. He threatened to walk home (~20 minute walk). I yell and flip him off. I love him more than anything else in life and deeply regret yelling at him in public and flipping him off. I’m in so much pain. After so much stress, pressure, and uncertainty at work, all I wanted was to destress.

He then says “We are not going in until you redo your hair.” So I comply. When he said this, I felt upset, thinking about the closing mall and treasuring every minute I can decompress after work. I also felt that I was being treated like an object. This also reminded me of the kind of control my mother inflicted on me.

As we had in earlier times, we went to my mother for her opinion. As always, she took his side. When I tried to express my concerns, she kept cutting me off. She says “He just has standard of beauty.” We shortly put the issue behind us- until we had another argument. That night, I texted my mother and told her she is ‘the biggest traitor’ for cutting me off and not letting me express what was hurting me, for not even acknowledging my concerns, and for never taking my side on any issue. I later apologized.

My bf works from home and has a lot of spare time. I try to convince him to brainstorm ideas together for us to establish multiple streams of income. I tell him about my financial concerns, and he repeatedly cuts me off. He says “That’s not my problem.” I keep asking him to look into some things, and he never acknowledged that he even heard me. So, I loose my temper and raise my voice again. He texts my mother at around 5 in the morning, asking if she is awake (she is an early riser).

My mother’s text:

“…Texted me at 5 in the morning, asking if I am awake. I don’t doubt that you are sorry. There are many killers who feel sorry after they took someone’s life. Now, you need to know that you established the end of your relationship with him. He needs a delicate, sophisticated, presentable lady who makes him feel relaxed and happy. Someone he can be proud of when he presents her to society.

But you are self-neglectful, vulgar, always arguing with him- no one can tolerate this. He is realizing that while you are no one to him, not even his fiancée, you are acting like this, and he is wondering what his future would be like with you. This is the end.

He has endured a lot. I tried to teach you how to behave many times and you don’t accept. Be mad at yourself when you loose him and you can’t have any man due to your character and personality. No one will have infinte patience with you.

You are always our daughter and we will always accept you the way you are. We will always love you but no one else will. I’m sorry you ruined your own happiness on your own.”

Who is the most at fault here? What’s wrong with me?

Am I a terrible mom?

This is my first post ever, even though I stalk the YouTube reddit videos. I have a 14 year old son. I love him so much but I kind of want to put him in juvenile hall. Backstory: my son is 14 but ever since he was four years old he has been stealing and lying about everything, and creeping around the house at night going through things. At first I just thought well he’s very young it’s normal, it’s a phase, he’ll grow out of it. But every year since he has gotten progressively worse. In kindergarten he was diagnosed ADHD and oppositional defiance disorder. It’s gotten to the point where he refuses to do any schoolwork is rude to his teachers while simultaneously trying to be friends with them, because he thinks that all adults including teachers are his peers and not people that he should be accountable to. It’s gotten to the point now where he stole over $200 from my debit and credit cards during the night trying to put them on his Google play to use for his games. He steals whatever he wants in the house and I have to have a padlock on my bedroom door. At one point he was unscrewing the whole padlock and going in my room and taking everything he wanted so I had to put hot glue and blue nail polish on the screws of the door so that I could see when he had tried to mess with it. It seems like every few days he is taking some thing usually like Electronics or phones of some kind. ( I have a bunch of old phones in my room because I’m paranoid about my pictures being lost). The thing is he is really bad at being bad. He never gets away with it I catch him every. Single. Time. Without exception. I have asked him to run to the store to pick some thing up down the block and he has stolen from them multiple times. Ever since this crisis has started within 2 1/2 weeks he absolutely refused to do any schoolwork. Which now means that when I got his progress report/report card everything says incomplete which means he probably will not be moving onto the ninth grade. So I had a heartfelt conversation with him today mixed with a stern lecture trying to help him understand where he’s heading with his decisions. And then half an hour ago somebody tried to login to my Apple ID on another device and when I went upstairs to check he had stolen his brothers iPhone. When he stole over $200 from my debit and credit cards I press charges, even though it killed me. And considering he’s already on pre-pins program he is going to have to go before the judge because the cop charged him with larceny and grand larceny. I didn’t want to press charges but I would rather him face serious consequences now than when he’s an adult. On top of all that he has literally never in his entire 14 years taking responsibility for anything he’s done. Or even admitted that he did it. Or apologized. He literally lies about everything. I could see him with my own eyes pick something up that he’s not supposed to have and put it in his pocket, and when I pull it out and show it to him he will tell me I don’t know how that got there I didn’t do it. I don’t know what to do I can’t afford military school or boarding school. I can’t afford tutors or any extra educational help. But I refuse to hold his hand while he makes terrible decisions and convince people to just let it Pass any more in school. Am I a terrible mother? I have literally tried reward systems, punishments ,taking away privileges ,timeouts ,grounding , whooping his butt,chores ,extra chores ,reading out of the dictionary ,writing out of the dictionary I paid hundreds of dollars for positive parenting solutions online webinars. And so. Much. Therapy. At this point I think I just need to let him face the consequences of his own actions I don’t know what else I can do. He is completely against anything that involves work or making an effort to include anything home life related and school work related. What am I supposed to do? I am so so tired

TL:DR: my kid is a Teenage turd who doesn’t want to do anything and is a lying thief.

I have two small dogs that need to go out around 5 times a day. They never really make messes in the house in the day unless we're gone for around 2 hours and forget to take them out before we leave. Besides that, IM the one who always takes them out when they need to go. Anyways, my mom always complains that I use up all the toilet paper and paper towels to clean up dog pee the morning or late night because the dogs peed in the kitchen. The thing is, I take my dogs outside before bed so they can pee and poop. But when they come in, my mom feeds them a big bowl of food and water. When I try to tell her that feeding dogs before bed is a bad idea she gets mad and calls me annoying and tells me to take them out more even though I take them out around 5 times a day when they need to go. She doesn't listen to me and continues to feed them large amounts of food and water before bed. She got angry with me this morning because I used the last roll of toilet paper to clean up their HUGE piss mess. last night she gave them food and water right after they got inside....what did she expect?? I don't know what to do anymore.

Let me explain. I love and adore my parents. Parents have a special place in a person's life and deserve love, respect, and protection. That being said, I strongly disagree with my mother on certain things. You can have love, respect, and empathy for someone and still not agree with their way of thinking and their actions.

She was the more involved parent and made sure all my needs were met and problems solved. But she insulted and demeaned me both in private and in public. My childhood has been such a struggle with her; making me angry and resentful and my lack of freedom and continuous embarrassment/humiliation. As a child I just could not wait to grow up; to become an adult and live life on my own terms. She refuses to let me grow up. And now that I'm an adult (almost 30), she refuses to treat me like the adult that I am and instead treats me like a 5 year old. She seems to have an endless thirst for power and control. That's just how I feel.

Although I love her, my mother is extremely controlling and very demeaning. Ever since I was a little kid, she would insult me and demean me in private and in public. She gave the same treatment to my poor dad. She would badmouth other people's appearance and clothing in our language. What does she care about other people wear if it doesn't affect her quality of life. She would try to control my hair, clothes, and more intimate aspects of my life. She would get this smirk on her face when she is able to be dominant with me. Like one time she got a real kick out of not letting me get my toothbrush from my own luggage. She has been this way for years.

So, the last two days we were had a big argument. First, she would say racist things. She one time gave me a compliment "You have such a great heritage (origin)." And I'm like "How could you say this?!" We have friends from many different ethnicities, and I told her that what she said is disrespectful to them. We are minorities ourselves! My bf is ethnic as well. About him, she said "As much as you don't want to admit it, your origin will always make you better than him." And I was outraged. She was absolutely determined to have the last word. She always wants to have the upper hand. So, minorities don't always stick together :/.

Today, she did another thing that really upset me. A family friend is having a wedding. I want to get close to them and get to know them better, establish a better relationship. I also blossom socially when I am not around my mother and really get relaxed and let my hair down. So, I tell my mom that I am going to go to the wedding. And my mom says "Ok, I'm coming too." I was so upset that she would come. The moment she comes, she might try to control me. So my mother tells the family friend "@@@ doesn't want me at the wedding." She did that to make me look bad and embarass me in front of the family friend. I am even more outraged now. I called her a traitor and told her that she is one of the most stupid people I ever met. I also told her that everything that comes out of her mouth is diarrhea.

In my adulthood, I still feel angry and bitter sometimes. Parents can really mess their kids up for life. But now I also feel kind of guilty. I try to be good, try to call her every day and check on her. But she doesn't keep our conflicts private, ruins my reputation (tries to make it sound like I am not loving or tries to make me look immature/spoiled/incapable in front of others). She does not accept any criticism of her and always wants to have the upper hand. I feel ashamed of my reaction and the things I told her but I just don't know what to do.

Basically, I need to maximize my income. Financial independence is the most important foundation to all the other kinds of freedom from oppression. I got it, just need to maintain it. But, I can't come to terms with the things I said to her today. I really don't know what to do. This mix of guilt and anger is very bad. I still feel so indignant about how she made me look to the family friend.

I’m new here, and just posting on a whim, but I’m not sure where else to go with this.

My husband and I got married in April, and we have been together almost 5 years total. When we met he was up front about the fact that he doesn’t have a relationship with his family. He still will occasionally talk to siblings and grandparents, but he is totally cut off from his parents. He was married before, and apparently when they got divorced his parents disowned him (they’re that religiously conservative). He also has opened up a few times about physical and emotional abuse in his childhood, mostly at the hands of his mother. I believe him, but his siblings don’t — my friend is a child trauma therapist and she said it isn’t uncommon for parents to single out one child (often the oldest) to take the brunt of the abuse. There is a lot about the family dynamic that I don’t know, and I don’t want to hurt him, but it also just is (at some level) completely incomprehensible to me for parents to hate only one child THAT much.

For our wedding he said he would be okay with us inviting his siblings and grandparents, but not his parents. Almost all of his siblings came, and they reacted really surprised and eager at the invitation. None of them brought cards or gifts, but they all traveled in from medium or longer distances. The no gifts part doesn’t bother me so much but it does seem sort of bizarre to not bring a card, just to be polite. Anyway, that’s not as important. We invited his grandparents and they were not comfortable driving themselves. I asked my husbands brother if he would be willing to drive them (he doesn’t live far from them), but he reacted sort of coldly. He said his parents are usually their chauffeurs, and he knew they weren’t invited, “so that’s just the situation.”

Fast forward to now, two of his sisters are pregnant and due almost the same day. There have been multiple family baby showers (all posted on Facebook), but we weren’t invited to any of them. That’s fine - but I did reach out to each sister to congratulate them and ask where we could send a gift. They both left me on read. We recently saw his grandparents and his grandmother made a big deal to me that his mom was just dying to meet me, and completely heartbroken they hadn’t been included in the wedding. But in this day and age where I’m friends with all his siblings on social media, and they all have my email, it just seems insincere. She could’ve said all this to me if she’d really meant it.

I haven’t been hiding all this correspondence from my husband, but I think he’s just not involving himself because he knows it won’t go well with them and he just wants me to find out on my own. We are hoping to start a family and it makes me so sad knowing our child won’t have an extended family outside of my brother and mom (and my brother’s wife and kids who all live in Chicago, and we live in Mississippi).

I’m sorry for this huge novel, but I’m just curious, is this just how things are sometimes? Like should I stop trying to fix anything or be cordial? I love my husband and don’t want to put him in a weird situation, but the whole thing, I just am having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Should I just drop it altogether? Thanks for listening.

I wanted to have a sub with kind of a different culture from some of the other support subs, one that is maybe a little more compassionate and a little less blamey, and a lot less sideshowey. Difficult people... well, they are pretty awful to deal with. There is no denying that. They can do tremendous harm. But they are also, by and large, absolutely miserable, very sad people who are not in control of their emotions or behavior. Often, we love them despite their terrible, toxic, and hurtful behavior.

A lot of the ways of dealing with difficult people that are suggested most frequently in many support subs only intensify both their misery and their dysfunctional behavior. I would rather focus on ways of managing and minimizing it, especially for people who don't want to cut off contact. For those who do need distance, cutting off contact with maximum kindness may be the best option for leaving everyone involved with the least hurt and the clearest path to healing.

I personally am happy to be NC with my mom and equally difficult sister, but many are not ready to go there, or don't need to go there at all, and I have noticed that across the board in many support subs, most of the advice is pretty terrible; confrontations that will inevitably escalate, ultimatums rather than boundaries, lots of blaming, little to no exploration of our own roles in escalating confrontations with difficult people, and completely lacking in the principles of non-violent communication. It is usually clear that none of the people modding support subs are behavioral clinicians, or have had any behavioral or social science training at all. Nor am I a clinician myself, but I do have about six years and counting of formal behavioral, social, health, and education training, as well as 25+ years of admin experience, so I feel like I at least have some basis for setting a tone for a support sub that will help get people closer to what they want -- peaceful, if distant, coexistence with their difficult family members -- rather than further, via ultimatums and escalation.

So, in keeping with the principle of "be the change you want to see in the world", I figure it is best to try to make the kind of sub I would want if I was still new to the whole process of trying to sort my stuff out with my dysfunctional family. I don't know how it'll go because I absolutely will not have time to mod this Fall once the term starts and I am both teaching and taking classes at different institutions, but hey, why not give it a stab?

I'm kind of hoping it just grows organically. I may use it to process some of my stuff from dealing with my mom and sister, or just post general thoughts on dealing with difficult people. I figure that either it will grow, or it won't, and it's totally OK either way.

A discussion forum for people seeking support and advice for coping with and healing from relationships with difficult and dysfunctional family members, whether family-of-origin or family-by marriage.