I still attend church and for various reasons haven't yet chosen to share my unbelief with anyone except my wife and bishop. Anyway, a couple of Sundays ago it was my birthday and I received a card in the post from my dad. It read:
Happy Birthday 'Sherlock' (don't forget it's the sabbath day).

I kid you not. I'm a middle aged man and he felt the need to remind me that my birthday fell this year on the sabbath, with the obvious implications of keeping it holy.

Now some might suggest that this was just meant as a joke - but if you knew my dad you'd know he was deadly serious. My wife is cool with how I feel about the church so we ended up skipping church and going out for a nice meal.

Surely I'm not alone in having well-meaning, but essentially completely crazy uber-TBM parents? Feel free to share your own horror stories.

When I was 35 I moved 2000 miles away from my parents. I was married, 2 kids,had a nice home, and was an inactive mormon.

My parents dropped in for an unannounced visit. Yes you read that right. Anyway, I had a neighbor (nevermo) who i had become good friends with. I introduced her to my mother. We stood in the front yard and chatted for a while. When my mother turned to leave she sized my friend up and down and said, hey, do me a favor. Make sure Mia behaves herself. Friend and I were stunned.

Next day my friend asked me what that was all about. All I could say is my mother is nuts. No, really, she's nuts. Can I come over and have a drink? They aren't leaving until tomorrow.

I would've thought seriously about dreaming up a "business trip I have to go on leaving tomorrow - so sorry!"

I knew of a tbm mom that found a porn video in her teen son's room, she smashed it to bits with a hammer, boxed it, wrapped it and gave it to him as a gift. That's a little psyco.

Our parents are really worried about us right now because we just came out to them.

I don't want to poke fun at this, because I realize that her feelings are strong and real to her, but my husband just received an email from her yesterday, "My dream" in the subject line.

She dreamed that we (her son, myself, our kids) were driving. We got to a puddle and debated about whether we should drive through it or not because we didn't know how deep it was. We drove into it and every last one of us drowned.

Ended the email with "Something to think about."

I love my mother-in-law. I got lucky to have a great one. She's a wonderful woman.

But this really rubbed me the wrong way.

There's nothing to think about. Your dream was YOUR dream, a projection of your worries and feelings.

It has nothing to do with us, and I'm not going to be influenced by fear and mystery anymore.

Not only that, but I'm getting really fed up with our parents indirectly accusing of us damning our children because we're not going to feed them Mormonism.

Yeah well, tell them you had a dream too . . .

You dreamed that your kids were growing up all alone in a big competitive world and everytime someone offered them a job or invited them to attend a university your kids kept responding that they knew the world was really flat and as soon as people heard them, they would kick your kids out into the dusty road where the horses and chariots would dodge their humiliated bodies, and then the vision changed and you saw them as 48 year old people applying for jobs as table bussers at Waffle House, and then you woke up terrified and shaking.

Something to thing about.

I call bullshit -- I've never heard of a real dream where the dreamer was not the main character.

About a month ago, my DW let it slip around my TBM parents that we were no loger attending TSCC and looking into other options for spirituality, mostly looking at Buddhism-style teachings where we are one with the universe and we are divine creators in ourselves...anyway...

My Mom started to cry on the phone...

My mom threatened that my 2 children would not be mine in the afterlife because DW and I are not sealed in the Big House...that my 2 daughters would go with my DW's ExHusband...

One of my Sisters still sends me "Daily Scripture" text messages...

My dad decided to pull me into his office at the last big family gathering...a PPI of sorts...
"What is this about?"
"Where did your mom and I go wrong?"
"What about the time you spent in Israel?"
"What about your mission?"
"What about my granddaughters?"
"What caused this to happen?"
"Are you sinning? Is this why?"

Another of my sisters will not let her kids come to my house at all because of what we don't believe.

This year was our year to plan the Family Reunion...It has been taken away, and my mom doesn't want to have anything to do with our ideas...my favorite was to do a local visit to other cultures here in SLC (Buddhist Temple, Hindu Temple in Spanish Fork for the festival of colors, Catholic monastery where they are beekeepers and sell delicious honey, etc...) She did this because "I am the matriarch and I decide whether or not my grandchildren see other religions!"

Before I was born, my grandparents took my 2 oldest sisters on a trip that included the beach...they bought my sisters very modest bikini's...when they got back, my mom sewed fabric in between the pieces of the bikini because her daughters stomachs are sacred...

My sisters refuse to go to any pool or swimming area with us because of the bikini issue... (I'm not ever going to tell DW to wear a full piece...she likes bikini's and she looks good in them!)

I could keep going on...

I would go ahead with the family reunion anyway. Be sure and send invites to everyone. Who ever shows up will be the ones who get to have the fun.
Besides that your kids shouldn't have to miss out just because grandma is having some issues.

I wouldn't even know where to begin with explaining my TBM mother. She is completely insane and TSCC completely exacerbates it. She needs to be put into a looney home. I'm afraid to come out to her because she has always been "suicidal" meaning I know she would never do it, but she fakely has attempted many times (in front of her children too). If you ever say anything to her about her needing to get help, she'll go on a rant about how God loves her and say that you are influenced by Satan. Yup....Her family is all nuts too. She's had her mother and her sister try to lecture me about how evil I am. And they are all crazy to the point that they create stories in their heads and then say that I (or my dad or siblings) make up stories, not them. Could go on for days about their sheer craziness. But I will stop now.

We need to resurrect threads on narcissism. A lot of the stories in this thread have clearly narcissistic actions perpetrated by the crazy TBMs.

In particular, ktay, your story is a good example.

"If you don't do what I want, I'll kill myself!" Classic.

Spinning events to mean completely different things... Making up stories, then claiming YOU are the one full of lies...

Sending others to do their dirty work on you, or further their agenda... These people are called Flying Monkeys because they are under the spell of the narcissist.



Ever have what feels like a perfectly normal interaction with the crazy ones, where it turns out to be a long, involved set up? They get you cheerful, in a good mood, maybe even offer a token apology, and then Blam! blindside you with a nasty insult or accusation delivered in a honey sweet voice.
It's deliberate. Calculated for maximum emotional swing on your part. That reaction is what they live for.

Now my brother calls me to tell me about their antics to him and his wife, a very kind and patient woman. Twice now, they've driven 1500 miles to see them and given them five minutes' warning of their arrival. They parked their RV on his driveway for a week once and came in to visit his family only two or three times. They just sat out there. My brother showed mom the flowers his wife had planted, and mom said that it wasn't as good as the neighbor's. Just unbelievably ignorant stuff like that.

I don't think it has anything to do with Mormonism in their case. They're just jerks.

Are you sure your not related to me?

maybe my family, and (choke) even my in-laws aren't so bad after all. PPI @ family reunion? Daily scripture text messages? Emails about dreams involving the entire family drowning?

My sympathies to all of you. Then again, in over eight years since I resigned my membership, I've yet to tell my mother about it. She knows I went 'inactive', but I've never confessed the real truth. (I believe I'm actually still tied to my mom by the world's longest and strongest umbilical(sp) cord.) Anyway, it's the same with my wife. We're cowards.. and we haven't got it anywhere near as bad as all of you. I hope someday we'll have the bravery you all possess.

I haven't told my mother about my leaving either. I don't think it's cowardice. Avoiding needless pain, suffering, irritation, and expense for you AND your parents is a good thing in general. Why open yourself up to problems if you can easily avoid them?

Don't get me wrong; I understand that some people feel the need to "come out" to their parents, and I respect that. I don't feel the need.

Winks, It's nice to know there are other people who have experienced that complete psycho-ness, even though it's such a sad thing to have to deal with those things from a parent. And Makurosu, I think sometimes that a lot of mormons feel superior since they think they have the fullness of gospel and were chosen by God to come at this time (etc), that they think it's ok to be complete assholes to others. There's been so many times where I accomplished something and my mother had to tear me down, telling me something negative or that I didn't do well enough. Maybe it's just that morgs are supposed to be constantly trying to attain perfection and when you don't do something perfectly, you are a failure. And they don't hesitate to let people know it either. What sad lives they live!

My mom is also nuts. She truly believes she's always receiving "promptings" and "personal revelations" from HF. Here's a fine example of something I learned just in the last year about her from one of my sisters.

When my mom decided to put in the divorce papers, she suddenly had a revelation that my father was going to die in 6 months, so she withdrew the papers for a short period. When my dad didn't die, she started insidiously turning me and another sister against him. This turned into a full-blown family squabble that ended up with 1/2 of my family not talking to the other 1/2. I was estranged from my father and oldest sister for a decade before I realized the emotional abuse my mother bestowed upon me in the name of "religion and love."

My mother is silent about it - she knows I'm inactive but doesn't know the depth of it. I recently went to visit my parents for the weekend to find a strategically placed "Rescuing Wayward Children" book sitting on the counter. I know she wanted me to see it. It really kind of made me mad that she thinks I'm wayward.

My cousins are the worst though. A long time before I left the church I (stupidly) expressed some doubts to my cousin about the church. She wrote me a long email about how she could see in my eyes that I was falling into Satan's grasp. ACK.

Wow, I feel sorry for you guys! I thought I had it bad with a few nasty phone calls & being cut off...

At least you have a rag-tag "family" of sorts here! Imagine going rogue before the internet! Yikes!

The latter half of the story involves the dangers of escaping the morg in the early latter days...

YOU get to CHOOSE your friends.

In other words you are stuck with your family whether you like them or not. The good news is that you are only "stuck with them" if you actually choose to put up with their crazy antics.

My parents are also nuts. I remember the days when I was slowly exiting mormonDUMB. My dad was constantly looking at my underwear to see if I was wearing garments. HOW PERVERTED!

I wanted a corse at college that would be my last and get me into a house as it would prepare me for the paperwork I'd need to leagly remove myself from my parants it was part of a law degree. The rents must have known because suddnely they had a bad feeling about college and didnt want me going and managed to convince the staff that a bad black cloud they could see ove hte college was a perfectly aceeptable reason for me n ot to go.

"Thanks for the card, Dad. (And don't forget I'm a middle-aged man and I realize what day of the week my Birthday is on)."

So, your birthday is on a Saturday this year, huh? Cool.

WinksWinks, is THAT narcissism?! I had never thought of it like that, but it makes perfect sense. It sounds exactly like my family. It's full of these Messiah-complex, charismatic people and they do absolutely what you described. Once I drove four hours out of town to join the family's celebration of a temple sealing. Since my husband couldnt come with me, he told me, "you know your brothers are going to gang up on you, right?" He totally called it.

Even though it was no secret that I wasn't a member anymore, I still went down there and made a big show of support saying things like, "I know what this means to you guys and I'm so happy for you. I love having you as a sister-in-law."

Unbeknownst to me, the entire time I was down there the sibs were working on my parents. . . Basically fomenting completely unwarranted hatred toward me. I ended up trying to keep my cool, speaking calmly, saying "I think this is getting blown out of proportion," while five adults screamed at me in front of my six and nine year old boys.

The final bit made everything obvious when my mother started hissing "atheissssssst" at me.

That took a year of therapy to get over. And my family still blames me for not only BEING the problem, but also holding grudges. I have no idea why I ever gave them another chance to hurt me after that. It must be because I'm not "forgiving" enough.

Sorry for the rant. The narcissism comment really struck a chord with me.

Yes, and I wish there was more information about narcissistic behaviors.

I read a lot on daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com to finally get a handle on a lot of the behaviors.
I don't recommend participating, but it can be cathartic. Carol Y. found out that the website owner is a covert narcissist, most likely getting information on how best to manipulate and mess with people. Plenty of people still post very informative stuff there though.

I mean, a clinical description of how the narcissist views everyone else doesn't even scratch the surface of the kinds of behaviors and tactics they get up to.

Also useful to know is that people raised by narcissists ATTRACT other narcs. And may have picked up a lot of narcissistic behaviors simply from constant exposure, not knowing it's not "normal".
Children of narcs often wind up together, partly because of some of this lingering behavior. It's familiar, they know how to deal with it, and it's usually not as malignant or pervasive as someone with the full blown personality disorder.

Me and the hubs were both raised by narcs. His were starving poor, extreme liberal, matriarchal, squatters. Mine were poor but not starving, extreme conservatives, patriarchal, mormon snobs.
We have a strange amount of personality likes and dislikes in common though. We each ran far from the extremes of our families to the middle politically.



Depending on a lot of factors, a full blown narc personality may not ever be capable of recognizing what they do to other people as wrong.

Doesn't mean they're all hopeless cases, like my mother always thought something was wrong with her, when she was younger, she recognized that her behavior was offputting to a lot of people, but not why. She decided she's on the autism spectrum, and that was that. No more personal growth, that's how she is. Now she's very entrenched in her behaviors, hypochondriacal, and blames everything on a poor memory. How can anyone hold anything against her if she has no idea what you're talking about???

Problem is, she's not that forgetful, it's only about negative things she's done. That and she's getting more deliberate and overtly malignant now that I've confessed to my apostacy.

I think she could have changed and worked on herself if she'd gotten some counseling early enough.

I think narcissism and Mormonism goes hand in hand. My husband's ex wife is a full blown narcissist and the church has provided a great way for her to control everyone in her sphere. The whole "child of God" thing really resonates with her and she twists the doctrine so that it works in her favor in any argument or scenario.

This woman, a high school dropout now on her third husband and mother of five kids by three different men, actually claimed that I'm a "bad influence" because I'm not a Mormon and I had two beers in my fridge during the one and only visitation she allowed my husband to have with his daughters. I'm childless, was a virgin when I got married at age 30, and am on my first marriage. I have three college degrees. And yet because I am not a Mormon, I am a "bad influence". Actually, I think I'm a "bad influence" to her because I've been to school and because I establish boundaries... but she has to phrase it in a way that makes me sound immoral and whorish just because I never bought into the Joseph Smith myth.

When she was married to my husband, my husband's ex used to do things like spend the mortgage money on trips to the temple or tithing. She'd make big purchases without my husband's consent or knowledge. He was so afraid of her rages and craziness that he let her get away with a lot of nonsense, which eventually led to financial ruin. Whenever he raised any kind of protest about the money she was spending, the ex would dramatically declare that the "Lord would provide". Yeah... the Lord provided bankruptcy and foreclosure.

My husband has since turned that financial nightmare around. He lives a totally different and much better lifestyle without the church or his crazy ex wife and her religious delusions. Sadly, her kids are still trapped in the nightmare and probably have no clue that their mother is emotionally abusive. It's like they live in a cult within a cult. But I have every confidence that once the LDS church stops serving her purpose, my husband's ex will drop it like a hot potato.

I realized after many shitty days of thinking about it that I was raised in a cult by people with child-like minds. The coming to terms with how I was raised and how that made me who I am was/is the hardest thing in my life so far. Still the only thing that can make me cry.....

Thanks all for your comments. I testify and know with every fibre of my being and beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am truly not alone in having completely lunatic über-TBM parents.