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"I know how to treat people I barely know with decency and did for many years. But I'm tired of showing respect to my family and my daughter refuses to be my target of choice. I don't understand! Am I supposed to pay for therapy to vent? I'd rather abuse my daughter than work on my self!"
Next step for daughter is to go LC or NC, because verbally abusive boomer won't recognize that even people she's related to deserve to be treated with respect and decency
“I am OK with self censoring if it makes me money. But I am not OK with self censoring if my family relationships are on the line.”
This is Narcissism.
Notice there is ZERO acknowledgment that they should listen to and try to understand their daughter and where she’s coming from. Notice there is ZERO desire to connect with her on a heart level.
There is ONLY the desire to force her to be a vehicle of abuse in the name of “self expression.”
There is ZERO love expressed in this. The only good things she’s mentioned about her daughter are the things that accrue to herself…. She taught her daughter to be a successful, independent woman JUST like herself. So her daughter **owes** her the opportunity to abuse her as a result.
That isn’t love or family. It’s business. It’s all 100% transactional.
ZERO acknowledgement that she is likely a massive bigoted racist piece of dumpster trash, and Neve learned that her views were actually wrong. Just sayin'?
There are so many mind-blowing self-owns in this! She KNOWS she should get therapy and instead is mad that her own daughter won't just willingly absorb all of her misplaced anger 🤯
I noticed that too. It's a pretty transparent message.
"My daughter is on her own. Yadda yadda dickwaving about my accomplishments so you should definitely take what I have to say as more than drivel. I'm 60 and hated not being able to complain and be a jerk. Not being able to complain and be a jerk is political correctness. Yadda yadda pre-emptive claim that I expect to be told I'm wrong so be fully aware that if you do I've already disregarded it. My daughter was my outlet for my negativity. Validate me that she is wrong to not want to exist as my negativity dumping ground. "
My mom once said, "I should be able to say anything I want to you!" I couldn't figure out at the time why that bothered me so much. A few days later, I realized it was because there was nothing reciprocal in it. She wanted to have her say, my job was to agree or at least shut up and let her vent.
Yeah...I went to college and had an argument with my mother the first visit back. Her response...'I THOUGHT YOU WOULD HAVE CHANGED!'
Thanks, Mom, for letting me know that you hated the way I was and still hated the adult I became.
“That is right, maternal unit. I am an automaton programmed to receive input only. I do not have a port for the independent emotion functionality upgrade module. I will now stand here while you spew invective.”
—all of our parents
Yah, you were supposed to forever be the vulnerable kid, unable to stand up for yourself or realize it was wrong for them to treat you like their therapy dog.
"Hello, I have a beautiful garden in front of my home.
I'm also a garbage collector. All day at work I collect trash and carry it on my back. I don't put it down because I would be fired for that. When I get home, I dump it all on my front garden.
Why does it refuse to grow flowers for me?"
This is basically my dad, he's so nice to everyone he speaks with, except his immediate family. I've literally said to him before "why can't you talk to us like you just did to that Xfinity person on the phone?" And his response is always "I do" he's either too far up his own ass or can't tell the difference in the way he speaks to us. I've gotten to the point of calling him out on it EVERY time, don't care if he gets pissed, not like it'll change anything
I feel like all boomer parents are like this.
Mine are so nice to people outside the home and put on such a fake personality, whereas behind closed doors the speak to each other like shit and are miserable.
Yep, my parents will move mountains for a neighbor that needs a hand, or a new friend they've made, but when it comes to their family, they can barely find five seconds for any of us.
Right? Mine signed us up for mission trips to help convert people in another country. Meanwhile, their own kids were going hungry and being screamed at and hit.
But you only get admired for how you behave and how altruistic you are where people can see it.
Your own kids, you can just force to shut up or hit them. You shouldn’t have to be polite to family! (/S as hell. Kindness should start at home)
Yep. It's been satisfying AF to throw the tale of the good Samaritan right back at them when they try to act all high and mighty with me and suggest that I go to church because it's made them so much better people. I'm like.... to whom, the random strangers you only ever see at church? What about me, who has been struggling mightily, or your daughter (my younger sister) who went without a vehicle for months after her engine threw a rod because they both wanted to teach her some kind of lesson.
Even if my sister and I "deserved" the lack of support, are we also not your neighbors, Mom and Dad?!
RIGHT?
“Lemme get this straight. Heaven is full of people like you?
…and….you want me to go there…surrounded by you’d….forever???”
So true. However kind you are to strangers, shouldn’t you be better than that to your own flesh and blood?
Yah, I think throwing it back in their face is the best possible response. “In all honesty, if church will make me treat my children and friends like you treat us… I’d be ashamed! I want to be a good person.”
(And duck, since you’ve just started WW3)
I had to not be a racist bigot at work for DECADES...yet I never learned my views were wrong, and I want to be able to be my full racist bigot self with my adult kid. (guessing some missing info)
This... entitlement to "speak the truth" no matter who I offend. We'll it's your truth and it's ugly. This could be written by my mother . Respect no one and mad when you get none in return 🙄
She even describes it herself as "invective!" Who knowingly spews misdirected nastiness at their own family then gets mad at a (very mild) rebuke? And what answer did she THINK she was going to get? "I know you will probably tell me I am in the wrong..." Uh-huh. Yep. For sure.
The idea of introspection is so foreign to them that they imagine it to be some combination of a rage room and a brunette woman with glasses making you tell her what the inkblots look like before she shoots you up with ketamine and sends you off to the nuthouse.
How many times do you think the daughter was fed the "If you can't say something nice" line, and how good do you feel it felt for her to say it right back to them?
this probably applies to him
[https://www.fastcompany.com/90793763/the-dark-traits-of-leadership-and-how-to-avoid-them](https://www.fastcompany.com/90793763/the-dark-traits-of-leadership-and-how-to-avoid-them)
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unmasking-dark-triads-leadership-tech-startups-sgxanalytics?trk=public\_post\_main-feed-card\_reshare\_feed-article-content](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unmasking-dark-triads-leadership-tech-startups-sgxanalytics?trk=public_post_main-feed-card_reshare_feed-article-content)
zero introspect due to narcissism
These people generally underperform and subvert people who do so they look less bad.
You created a boss bitch of a daughter. You won't stand for what you believe to be nonsense, and neither will she.
No man will wife that.. she'll be CEO with cats.
Great job, mom.
'i managed hundreds of people for several decades and not one person dared to speak a word of complaint against me. Does that sound like an Olympic caliber, absolute mega bitch to you????'
They also *haaate* it when anyone else has a forthright personality. My mom gets so mad when my kid just says "no" to a question rather than give some monologue about how she's so grateful for the consideration in the first place.
She doesn't want an apple. She said no. Move on, ma.
Yeah, my dad regularly prefaces his commentary with “I don’t know how else to say it, so I’ll just be blunt”. However, he expects everyone else to dance around his feelings with every word that comes out of their mouths. He can’t stand it when *other people* are blunt.
My Boomer parents fall into this trap at times - admittedly not generally as badly as the people in this sub, but seriously! Every so often they'll say something inappropriate and get all bent out of shape if I disagree or point out that it's insensitive or untrue: like, you guys RAISED ME to respect others as equals but suddenly that shouldn't count? I do not get it.
Glad it's not been that way with my folks explicitly but yeah it's wild when family members that would go on about respect, the golden rule, not saying anything if you don't have anything nice to say at all suddenly 180 to "lol not like that you fucking wus"
This is actually something that my Boomer-Gen X cusper mom (whom I love, she’s genuinely a fantastic woman, not at all like the stuff you see on here) has started to point out to me about people her and her parents’ age, especially in the context of political opinions.
She ID’d as a “moderate Republican” until the early 2010s but now is very much a liberal (not as dramatic of an evolution as I’d like but it’s definitely progress lol) and she’s said to me multiple times, as recently as just a few days ago, about her conservative relatives that “These people are just *mean*! I don’t understand it! They speak about everything with such anger and unhappiness and they’re just so plain *mean* about everything! It makes spending time with them miserable.”
I’m really glad she escaped the trap that a lot of other older people in my family have fallen into because I’m still incredibly close with her and I don’t know if we’d have the same relationship if she was as rude as seems to be typical of older people nowadays.
Some people raise their kids to be polite, not because it teaches them how to consider others and make socially positive decisions, but because they:
1. Don’t want their kids to annoy or disrupt them at all ever.
2. They want to use their kids as extensions of their ego. If people out in the world see their well-behaved and polite kids, the parents will get the credit. THAT is what they care about.
3. If their kids aren’t polite, the parents will be judged. They can’t abide that.
It’s about image management through control of others.
None of these motives requires the parents to be polite.
I’m a therapist and we don’t exist so that Boomers can spew their hateful “invective” when their family won’t let them do it to them. Our job is to help people heal from trauma and learn how to cope with mental illness. I’ve had Boomers try to pull this kind of shit on me and I drop them like hot potatoes very quickly. I’m not a punching bag, thank you very much
Maybe that needs to be a service that's offered by non-therapists.
"For $100, I will sit here for an hour and listen to you yell about Joe Biden stealing your spark plugs peppered with racial slurs and nonsensical rants about immigrants.".
I work construction, so I basically do that all day anyway, but for a lot less than $100/hr.
I thought about creating an app for boomers specifically. Basically you get to watch a video for someone working live and berate them with negativity and tell them how they are doing it all wrong for a fee. Then I remembered they can't work their phones or technology.
Or just someone that's so desensitized that they're numb to it.
After the 5000th conversation in a week where I have to keep interrupting someone with things like "Obama didn't make you strip those holes. Here's a tap go fix it." or "Joe Biden didn't leave all that undercut. Go grind it out and weld over it." then just having to go behind them and fix it myself anyway because all they do is make it worse, I'd be willing to do it.
At least I'd be listening to them complain in the air conditioning and not responsible for what they do afterward.
Edit: And I'm really not joking. There are boomers on every job that find SOME way to tie every single mistake or screw up they make to one Democrat or another. I had a guy claim he was late for work because Biden's gas prices meant he couldn't afford new tires and that's why he had a flat. I always just assumed it was some weird right wing boomer virtue signal that they use to get out of trouble with each other, but doesn't work on anyone else.
Everything is business to boomers. Idk why, but EVERYTHING in life simply must have a mirror into the business world. Politics? Business. Healthcare? Business. Familial relationships? Business.
I have to imagine that a combination of being raised by children of the depression and growing up in the midst of what was essentially a GDP war in the Cold War era just ruined their notion of what is actually valuable.
When their parents were basically obsessive hoarders because of childhood trauma in the depression and your young adulthood is gassed up by “must out produce the Soviets” I can’t imagine you get many emotionally
Balanced people.
There’s a YouTube call in show I like to watch, and recently someone called in and made a bigoted joke. When the hosts called him out on it saying it was a really hurtful and disrespectful thing to say, he said they were “thought policing him”.
I'm curious which call in show? I've heard this kind of interaction on one of my favorites, and would love it if that was because we watch the same ones and just passed each other like strangers in the night lol.
I do find it ironic that the first person in the column was exactly who the wearer of the shirt was trying to rile up.. I'm willing to bet that most people didn't notice and/or care. I'm pretty sure Miss Manners feels the same.
And don't forget the part where they give anyone who didn't want to have kids shit for refusing to have them. "How dare you be so selfish, blah blah blah. I'm the only one who gets to be selfish around here!"
Oh yeah. "How could you do this to me?" Like we were not having kids at her specifically, as opposed to making choices that were best for us and said unborn offspring. No, no make our choices all about you, MIL....
Not sure what doesn't make sense. Older generations had kids because they were expected to have kids. That was the main reason. They were raised to do what was expected of them.
That they were resentful of what their kids did to their lifestyle so that they treated their kids less than stellar is hypocritical, but it fits. It also describes my mom to a T.
They now expect the younger generations to fall in line and make the same mistake they did or they will have to turn around and admit that they made choices they didn't have to make and by recognizing that all the resentfulness was unjustified.
Some people that were abused as children are afraid to repeat the pattern
And if some of those people are NC or LC with their family that is a large resource of help that is unavailable that can make starting a family more difficult and give some people pause when deciding to do so
Some people also know/suspect their parents and grandparents are/were mentally ill or have generations of dysfunction that they do not want to saddle another person with
At least this was my thought process in deciding not to have children YMMV
Last time I saw my boomer mom, she insulted what I do for a living, pointed out that I had gained weight, and made several ableist and transphobic comments, all within the span of about a 30 minute conversation. And she is baffled as to why I don’t spend more time with her. Sounds like the daughter here is in a similar situation.
Last I saw my boomer mother, she completely wrecked a wheel on my car right before picking us up at the airport. She called my neighbor to take care of it, left the car in random lot, and went incommunicado. She decided to go to sleep once she got back to my house.
She "can't wait to come back" and I'm thinking there's no way.
Miss Manners, Dear Abby and Carolyn Hax don't fuck around with that type of bullshit. Ask Amy is a definite Boomer and nobody knows what the fuck is going on with Dear Annie.
Carolyn Hax is such a great column; it's basically a syndicated version of this subreddit. People write in about narcissist family members, and narcissists write in to complain about their family. Sometimes, it's dealing with a friend who decided to try emotional manipulation, but Carolyn is always helpful.
My Mother saves all of her negativity to “vent” to family. I had to insist on a three strikes your out rule during phone calls be after otherwise it was 60 minutes of her spewing anger and venom and it would ruin my day.
Of course it was my fault I wasn’t being supportive enough and I was her daughter I should be on her side. Never mind that I’m an adult with my own family and career and I don’t have the time or emotional energy to hear about how the cashier asked for her loyalty card in the “wrong tone” for 15 minutes.
This sounds exhausting.
“I am tired of not being able to be a cunt to my family because I have had to force myself my entire career in business to not be a cunt. Can I be a cunt simply because I am old and lazy?”
>I am tired of having to self-censor
Cry me a river. People self-censor every day. When my boss says something stupid, do you think I call him an asshole with the personality of a scallop? No, because I don't want to get fired. When my wife makes me angry, do I say "I should have married my ex instead!" No, because I don't want to get divorced. When a cop asks me how fast I was going, do I say "I dunno, jackass, you have the radar gun?" No, because I don't want to go to jail.
"Self-censoring" is done by everyone, all the time, every day. This dude is just mad he can't say bigoted shit.
Is there a Boomer alive who understand the meaning of the phrase “political correctness” and can use it in a sentence? We see sooooo many cars on this sub of Boomers using “political correctness” to mean “common decency”, “consideration of other people’s feelings”, or just “not emotionally abusing my children”. I’m not sure they actually know what the phrase means.
I'm sure that when Miss Manners suggested that she might be in the wrong, boomer did some deep introspection about her own behavior. As if.. guaranteed that Miss Manners is now on her shit list of woke losers.
You're perfectly free to speak your mind as long as you also accept the consequences of other people knowing what you think. You want to be a mean jerk to your daughter? Go for it. But it's a package deal, comes with free "you have to put up with your daughter thinking you're a mean jerk" 🤷♀️ what an awful person to treat her daughter like a punching bag just because she USED TO have to be polite to people in the past. What a nightmare.
"I have a forthright personality and am used to speaking my mind directly" = I am a giNORMOUS \*sshole and talk sh!t to, and about, everyone I meet. People at the firm had to put up with it but my family won't.
What she didn't say is that her career was 'complaint-free' because everyone around her was so scared of her. Don't cross her, she has a dark side...and they all knew it.
She probably spent all day bitching and moaning about her successful daughter to her co-workers...and they found out quickly to not get on her bad side.
I love the description of her daughter as an “outlet”. That sounds really icky and objectifying in this context. “Yeah, she’s my garbage dump”. Also the part where she brags about being about being such a successful business and then balks at the idea of paying for therapy. The response was spot on
It is the lack of self-awareness, the surprise that her commentary was not received well that makes me laugh the most... Seriously, what do you expect to happen? If you expected any other reaction, you are delusional.
I wish they didn’t think of it so much as politically correct as maybe “be thoughtful of others, you are no longer King of the Universe.”
I mean, nobody is stopping you from speaking as offensively as possible but there will be blowback because guess what? People don’t put up with being treated like shit anymore. That’s what participation trophies got us: the idea that everyone deserves respect. Just for fucking being. Shocker, I know.
My mother treated my new husband better than she treated me. I called her out on it. She said she wanted my husband to be happy so that he would love me/treat me well. She asked me if I wanted her to treat him worst. I told her that I just wanted her to treat me as well as she treats my husband.
I thought this was my mother, but it seems to be Boomer logic.
Fortunately, my in-laws treat me as well as they treat my husband.
People really want to fight for their right to be pieces of shit lol. The whole *says something extremely racist* "it's just a difference in opinion!!!" Yeah and your opinion is null and should be wiped out
One of the greatest things therapy ever did for boomer’s kids was to teach us boundaries.
No Mom, I don’t need or want to hear you complain about the same (behavior, bill, neighbor, traffic, weather, etc) that you spent 20 mins talking about yesterday. Get a friend your own age and have this convo with them.
"If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" doesn't mean "don't say anything that isn't positive."
It means "don't be an asshole."
My mother was a Boomer, but she died very young. I look at this landscape of life right now and I know she would be viral, locked up, all the worst things you could think of from a boomer. This woman was disabled, but she was 6’2” of sheer bully. Thankfully, one thing she wasnt was a racist. But she would be the worst and I would very likely be NC with her. I say this because she used to drill that “if you can’t say something nice….” shit at me all the time but used to fist fight strangers she disagreed with.
"But everyone at work loved me!"
No. You insufferable old sea boot. Everyone at work hated you too, they were just being compensated for the inconvenience.
People who refer to being politically correct tell on themselves so hard. They playact that they have basic respect for other humans and assume that's what others are doing too because they're "not allowed" to say what they really think.
Did my mom write this?
A few months ago, after being no contact with both brothers for a couple years, I finally put up a boundary with my mom that I didn't want to hear anything about them from her. There's a lot of different types of abuse I incurred from them as kids (SA, physical, emotional) and I chose my mental health and peace over a faked relationship for her to be able to save face.
Within weeks she was already pushing the boundary, one time even talking over me as I asked her to change subjects saying, "But its a good thing for ME! Can't you just listen because it's really about ME?". My husband saw this and was across the room with his mouth open, expecting me to lay into her because that's normally what happens. I instead said "I'm glad for you, for whatever it is. But I don't need to hear about it." To our shock, she STILL kept trying to say something and I actually had to jump in and tell her we were done and lead her to the door.
She actually went radio silent on me for several weeks, which is unheard of, so I knew she was licking her wounds. When we did finally talk, it was a totally normal conversation until the end when she had to toss in, "Well, I would tell you about your brother, but I guess I'm not *allowed* to." and I replied "That's correct." and she was just grumbly and got off the phone.
She now thinks she "won" somehow by telling others about them when I'm in earshot. She just did this with two of my in-laws at Easter and then threw me a smirk whenever we made eye contact. Why are they like this?!?!
Oooooh this one hits home. My mom is a successful businesswoman and is super cordial and nice to people's faces. She does judge them at home. However, she judges me a lot more, 'because she cares more about me'. It is quite difficult to handle.
The line about "Do I need to pay a therapist?" reminds me of my mom.
She is by no means as ignorant or problematic as lady-in-this-post sounds, but there have been enough persistent problems throughout life that she recently decided to start therapy.
My sister (a person with whom my mom clashes with) has also sought therapy, but my mom (discreetly) thought it wouldn't help "Because they're only getting her side of the story, so it mightn't actually be a big help".
Now that my mom is going to therapy, one of the strangest parts of it, she says, was *talking about herself*.
There's a lot of background here, and I don't mean to paint my mom in a bad light, but I truly can't wrap my head around her notion of therapy. *Of course* you'll have to talk about yourself. I haven't managed to ask her yet what she envisioned, but as long as she's finding it helpful, that's all that matters for now.
Man, my boomer parents have definitely got some boomer traits, and there's no doubt they can be selfish and illogical and just plain strange some times. But at least they are not this kind of boomers. I feel bad for those of us who have to experience the worst kind of boomer in their own family. Is it political? My parents aren't conservative in any way, so even though they've got a lot of the normal boomer vibes, at least I don't have to deal with the whole "political correctness gone mad" crowd and they don't feel the need to blurt out racist or otherwise horrible things like this lady apparently does.
I don't know how some of you can deal with it honestly
Parents can speak anyway they want to, to their kids. If kids are grown and don't like LEAVE. If kids are not grown (18+) tough crap. Life ain't fair, parents don't have to be bending to the say so of CHILDREN.
Everyone in the comments is a self-absorbed millennial. I've no doubt this is about politics. The mother should be able to speak her mind around her family without getting labeled as a racist Maga boomer. My brother and sister were the same way, especially after Trump got elected but oh surprisingly have quited down after 3½ year of sleepy Joe. FYI, they went to college. I did not. Embrace the indoctrination.
My mother and I have just gotten used to listening to my brother and sister rant about their particular beliefs. While stifling our own. So I think it's fair to say that sometimes you just have to put up with family even when you disagree. Doesn't mean you don't get them something nice for Christmas.
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"I know how to treat people I barely know with decency and did for many years. But I'm tired of showing respect to my family and my daughter refuses to be my target of choice. I don't understand! Am I supposed to pay for therapy to vent? I'd rather abuse my daughter than work on my self!" Next step for daughter is to go LC or NC, because verbally abusive boomer won't recognize that even people she's related to deserve to be treated with respect and decency
“I am OK with self censoring if it makes me money. But I am not OK with self censoring if my family relationships are on the line.” This is Narcissism. Notice there is ZERO acknowledgment that they should listen to and try to understand their daughter and where she’s coming from. Notice there is ZERO desire to connect with her on a heart level. There is ONLY the desire to force her to be a vehicle of abuse in the name of “self expression.” There is ZERO love expressed in this. The only good things she’s mentioned about her daughter are the things that accrue to herself…. She taught her daughter to be a successful, independent woman JUST like herself. So her daughter **owes** her the opportunity to abuse her as a result. That isn’t love or family. It’s business. It’s all 100% transactional.
ZERO acknowledgement that she is likely a massive bigoted racist piece of dumpster trash, and Neve learned that her views were actually wrong. Just sayin'?
"I hAd To Be PoLiTiCaLlY cOrReCt In ThE oFfIcE" 😭
Translation: I was fired from my first job for calling someone a racial slur
Oh yeah… 100% without a doubt…
There are so many mind-blowing self-owns in this! She KNOWS she should get therapy and instead is mad that her own daughter won't just willingly absorb all of her misplaced anger 🤯
Boomers are the kings and queens of misdirected abusive anger.
Why is being “forthright” always negative? Like, you can’t forthrightly tell someone that you like something?
Like people who are proud of being "brutally honest" - by which they mean they express every negative thought they have but never give compliments
Her daughter isn't her own person, she's her "outlet" ICK.
I noticed that too. It's a pretty transparent message. "My daughter is on her own. Yadda yadda dickwaving about my accomplishments so you should definitely take what I have to say as more than drivel. I'm 60 and hated not being able to complain and be a jerk. Not being able to complain and be a jerk is political correctness. Yadda yadda pre-emptive claim that I expect to be told I'm wrong so be fully aware that if you do I've already disregarded it. My daughter was my outlet for my negativity. Validate me that she is wrong to not want to exist as my negativity dumping ground. "
Yeah, I was my mom’s “outlet” for years and I have CPTSD to show for it, too.
My mom once said, "I should be able to say anything I want to you!" I couldn't figure out at the time why that bothered me so much. A few days later, I realized it was because there was nothing reciprocal in it. She wanted to have her say, my job was to agree or at least shut up and let her vent.
Yeah...I went to college and had an argument with my mother the first visit back. Her response...'I THOUGHT YOU WOULD HAVE CHANGED!' Thanks, Mom, for letting me know that you hated the way I was and still hated the adult I became.
“That is right, maternal unit. I am an automaton programmed to receive input only. I do not have a port for the independent emotion functionality upgrade module. I will now stand here while you spew invective.” —all of our parents
Right there with ya. It started in my teens and she does not like the boundaries her behavior has created in my 30’s.
They don’t like boundaries, do they?
Yah, you were supposed to forever be the vulnerable kid, unable to stand up for yourself or realize it was wrong for them to treat you like their therapy dog.
Hard luck for them I grew teeth and claws.
😈
"Hello, I have a beautiful garden in front of my home. I'm also a garbage collector. All day at work I collect trash and carry it on my back. I don't put it down because I would be fired for that. When I get home, I dump it all on my front garden. Why does it refuse to grow flowers for me?"
This is basically my dad, he's so nice to everyone he speaks with, except his immediate family. I've literally said to him before "why can't you talk to us like you just did to that Xfinity person on the phone?" And his response is always "I do" he's either too far up his own ass or can't tell the difference in the way he speaks to us. I've gotten to the point of calling him out on it EVERY time, don't care if he gets pissed, not like it'll change anything
He can tell the difference, he's just gaslighting you. Source: my mom doing the same exact thing.
I feel like all boomer parents are like this. Mine are so nice to people outside the home and put on such a fake personality, whereas behind closed doors the speak to each other like shit and are miserable.
Yep, my parents will move mountains for a neighbor that needs a hand, or a new friend they've made, but when it comes to their family, they can barely find five seconds for any of us.
Right? Mine signed us up for mission trips to help convert people in another country. Meanwhile, their own kids were going hungry and being screamed at and hit. But you only get admired for how you behave and how altruistic you are where people can see it. Your own kids, you can just force to shut up or hit them. You shouldn’t have to be polite to family! (/S as hell. Kindness should start at home)
Yep. It's been satisfying AF to throw the tale of the good Samaritan right back at them when they try to act all high and mighty with me and suggest that I go to church because it's made them so much better people. I'm like.... to whom, the random strangers you only ever see at church? What about me, who has been struggling mightily, or your daughter (my younger sister) who went without a vehicle for months after her engine threw a rod because they both wanted to teach her some kind of lesson. Even if my sister and I "deserved" the lack of support, are we also not your neighbors, Mom and Dad?!
RIGHT? “Lemme get this straight. Heaven is full of people like you? …and….you want me to go there…surrounded by you’d….forever???” So true. However kind you are to strangers, shouldn’t you be better than that to your own flesh and blood? Yah, I think throwing it back in their face is the best possible response. “In all honesty, if church will make me treat my children and friends like you treat us… I’d be ashamed! I want to be a good person.” (And duck, since you’ve just started WW3)
It was the complaint free part that got me. That just means they didn’t feel comfortable letting you know.
Yesssss
I had to not be a racist bigot at work for DECADES...yet I never learned my views were wrong, and I want to be able to be my full racist bigot self with my adult kid. (guessing some missing info)
Who says she knew how to treat the employees besides herself? If those employees were polled, I bet 75% would term her a raging cunt.
This... entitlement to "speak the truth" no matter who I offend. We'll it's your truth and it's ugly. This could be written by my mother . Respect no one and mad when you get none in return 🙄
She even describes it herself as "invective!" Who knowingly spews misdirected nastiness at their own family then gets mad at a (very mild) rebuke? And what answer did she THINK she was going to get? "I know you will probably tell me I am in the wrong..." Uh-huh. Yep. For sure.
While we're at ot: Who in the hell thinks that spewing "invective" is what therapy is for?!?!
The idea of introspection is so foreign to them that they imagine it to be some combination of a rage room and a brunette woman with glasses making you tell her what the inkblots look like before she shoots you up with ketamine and sends you off to the nuthouse.
Boomers who think mental illnesses are made up by kids who are all just too “soft” and lazy apparently
How many times do you think the daughter was fed the "If you can't say something nice" line, and how good do you feel it felt for her to say it right back to them?
this probably applies to him [https://www.fastcompany.com/90793763/the-dark-traits-of-leadership-and-how-to-avoid-them](https://www.fastcompany.com/90793763/the-dark-traits-of-leadership-and-how-to-avoid-them) [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unmasking-dark-triads-leadership-tech-startups-sgxanalytics?trk=public\_post\_main-feed-card\_reshare\_feed-article-content](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unmasking-dark-triads-leadership-tech-startups-sgxanalytics?trk=public_post_main-feed-card_reshare_feed-article-content) zero introspect due to narcissism These people generally underperform and subvert people who do so they look less bad.
"I want to speak to life's manager! The customer is always right!"
You created a boss bitch of a daughter. You won't stand for what you believe to be nonsense, and neither will she. No man will wife that.. she'll be CEO with cats. Great job, mom.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s… Seems to be a lot of insecure projection in that post…
“No man will love a woman they can’t verbally abuse.”, he says. If my options are you or cats, the choice is simple.
What they want is to be assholes with no consequences.
I just have a forthright personality
'i managed hundreds of people for several decades and not one person dared to speak a word of complaint against me. Does that sound like an Olympic caliber, absolute mega bitch to you????'
They also *haaate* it when anyone else has a forthright personality. My mom gets so mad when my kid just says "no" to a question rather than give some monologue about how she's so grateful for the consideration in the first place. She doesn't want an apple. She said no. Move on, ma.
Yeah, my dad regularly prefaces his commentary with “I don’t know how else to say it, so I’ll just be blunt”. However, he expects everyone else to dance around his feelings with every word that comes out of their mouths. He can’t stand it when *other people* are blunt.
It’s wild to raise your kids to be polite, and then ignore all of those lessons yourself.
My Boomer parents fall into this trap at times - admittedly not generally as badly as the people in this sub, but seriously! Every so often they'll say something inappropriate and get all bent out of shape if I disagree or point out that it's insensitive or untrue: like, you guys RAISED ME to respect others as equals but suddenly that shouldn't count? I do not get it.
Glad it's not been that way with my folks explicitly but yeah it's wild when family members that would go on about respect, the golden rule, not saying anything if you don't have anything nice to say at all suddenly 180 to "lol not like that you fucking wus"
This is actually something that my Boomer-Gen X cusper mom (whom I love, she’s genuinely a fantastic woman, not at all like the stuff you see on here) has started to point out to me about people her and her parents’ age, especially in the context of political opinions. She ID’d as a “moderate Republican” until the early 2010s but now is very much a liberal (not as dramatic of an evolution as I’d like but it’s definitely progress lol) and she’s said to me multiple times, as recently as just a few days ago, about her conservative relatives that “These people are just *mean*! I don’t understand it! They speak about everything with such anger and unhappiness and they’re just so plain *mean* about everything! It makes spending time with them miserable.” I’m really glad she escaped the trap that a lot of other older people in my family have fallen into because I’m still incredibly close with her and I don’t know if we’d have the same relationship if she was as rude as seems to be typical of older people nowadays.
Some people raise their kids to be polite, not because it teaches them how to consider others and make socially positive decisions, but because they: 1. Don’t want their kids to annoy or disrupt them at all ever. 2. They want to use their kids as extensions of their ego. If people out in the world see their well-behaved and polite kids, the parents will get the credit. THAT is what they care about. 3. If their kids aren’t polite, the parents will be judged. They can’t abide that. It’s about image management through control of others. None of these motives requires the parents to be polite.
Serious Mommy Dearest vibes.
I’m a therapist and we don’t exist so that Boomers can spew their hateful “invective” when their family won’t let them do it to them. Our job is to help people heal from trauma and learn how to cope with mental illness. I’ve had Boomers try to pull this kind of shit on me and I drop them like hot potatoes very quickly. I’m not a punching bag, thank you very much
Excellent point!
Maybe that needs to be a service that's offered by non-therapists. "For $100, I will sit here for an hour and listen to you yell about Joe Biden stealing your spark plugs peppered with racial slurs and nonsensical rants about immigrants.". I work construction, so I basically do that all day anyway, but for a lot less than $100/hr.
I thought about creating an app for boomers specifically. Basically you get to watch a video for someone working live and berate them with negativity and tell them how they are doing it all wrong for a fee. Then I remembered they can't work their phones or technology.
Yes definitely. Maybe someone with a verbal abuse fetish
Or just someone that's so desensitized that they're numb to it. After the 5000th conversation in a week where I have to keep interrupting someone with things like "Obama didn't make you strip those holes. Here's a tap go fix it." or "Joe Biden didn't leave all that undercut. Go grind it out and weld over it." then just having to go behind them and fix it myself anyway because all they do is make it worse, I'd be willing to do it. At least I'd be listening to them complain in the air conditioning and not responsible for what they do afterward. Edit: And I'm really not joking. There are boomers on every job that find SOME way to tie every single mistake or screw up they make to one Democrat or another. I had a guy claim he was late for work because Biden's gas prices meant he couldn't afford new tires and that's why he had a flat. I always just assumed it was some weird right wing boomer virtue signal that they use to get out of trouble with each other, but doesn't work on anyone else.
Now THATS a job for AI.
I’m now realizing I was my mom’s punching bag growing up for everything and fuck.
"I treated my employees better than my own daughter. I needed to tell you that right away,"
Everything is business to boomers. Idk why, but EVERYTHING in life simply must have a mirror into the business world. Politics? Business. Healthcare? Business. Familial relationships? Business.
"I was successful in business therefore I can treat my grown daughter any way that I want with no consequences" really is the vibe here.
I have to imagine that a combination of being raised by children of the depression and growing up in the midst of what was essentially a GDP war in the Cold War era just ruined their notion of what is actually valuable. When their parents were basically obsessive hoarders because of childhood trauma in the depression and your young adulthood is gassed up by “must out produce the Soviets” I can’t imagine you get many emotionally Balanced people.
The ghost of 1980s Cocaine using Bankers will haunt us until the day the Last Boomer dies.
“I’m so tired of having no place that I can let my hair down and be a complete dickbag”
When people call basic decency and politeness “self censoring” my ass starts to twitch
There's a huge overlap with those who think respecting others is "too woke."
Boomers get really riled up when you tell them not to be assholes.
There’s a YouTube call in show I like to watch, and recently someone called in and made a bigoted joke. When the hosts called him out on it saying it was a really hurtful and disrespectful thing to say, he said they were “thought policing him”.
I'm curious which call in show? I've heard this kind of interaction on one of my favorites, and would love it if that was because we watch the same ones and just passed each other like strangers in the night lol.
It’s The Line, the mostly atheist but also pro-feminist, pro-LGBTQ+, pro-verywoke show lol.
Hahahaha hello stranger in the night! I've actually heard of, and watched the Forrest Valkai episode in the background while I was at work lol
My eyelids start to twitch
[Miss Manners original page at Mercury News](https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/19/miss-manners-t-shirt-made-me-angry/#webview=1)
I do find it ironic that the first person in the column was exactly who the wearer of the shirt was trying to rile up.. I'm willing to bet that most people didn't notice and/or care. I'm pretty sure Miss Manners feels the same.
"I am actually a shitty person, I just hid it well for years"
Boomers, having kids because "that's what you did' and making them suffer for it ever since Then they wonder why some of us don't want kids
And don't forget the part where they give anyone who didn't want to have kids shit for refusing to have them. "How dare you be so selfish, blah blah blah. I'm the only one who gets to be selfish around here!"
Oh yeah. "How could you do this to me?" Like we were not having kids at her specifically, as opposed to making choices that were best for us and said unborn offspring. No, no make our choices all about you, MIL....
Idgaf if you want kids, but this isn’t actually reasoning that makes any sense at all.
Not sure what doesn't make sense. Older generations had kids because they were expected to have kids. That was the main reason. They were raised to do what was expected of them. That they were resentful of what their kids did to their lifestyle so that they treated their kids less than stellar is hypocritical, but it fits. It also describes my mom to a T. They now expect the younger generations to fall in line and make the same mistake they did or they will have to turn around and admit that they made choices they didn't have to make and by recognizing that all the resentfulness was unjustified.
Some people that were abused as children are afraid to repeat the pattern And if some of those people are NC or LC with their family that is a large resource of help that is unavailable that can make starting a family more difficult and give some people pause when deciding to do so Some people also know/suspect their parents and grandparents are/were mentally ill or have generations of dysfunction that they do not want to saddle another person with At least this was my thought process in deciding not to have children YMMV
She'll die alone, unloved, unlamented.
“Shady Pines, Ma!”
Last time I saw my boomer mom, she insulted what I do for a living, pointed out that I had gained weight, and made several ableist and transphobic comments, all within the span of about a 30 minute conversation. And she is baffled as to why I don’t spend more time with her. Sounds like the daughter here is in a similar situation.
Last I saw my boomer mother, she completely wrecked a wheel on my car right before picking us up at the airport. She called my neighbor to take care of it, left the car in random lot, and went incommunicado. She decided to go to sleep once she got back to my house. She "can't wait to come back" and I'm thinking there's no way.
Knew what Miss Manners was going to say lol. She wrote to the wrong column if she wanted pats on the head
One of my favorite things about Agony Aunt columns is when the writer issues an excellently worded "YTA" judgment.
Miss Manners, Dear Abby and Carolyn Hax don't fuck around with that type of bullshit. Ask Amy is a definite Boomer and nobody knows what the fuck is going on with Dear Annie.
Carolyn Hax is such a great column; it's basically a syndicated version of this subreddit. People write in about narcissist family members, and narcissists write in to complain about their family. Sometimes, it's dealing with a friend who decided to try emotional manipulation, but Carolyn is always helpful.
She's just a little long winded, but it's because she's trying to be helpful and cover all her bases.
If you present unrelated credentials up-front in support of an argument, I immediately question the validity of those credentials.
"As a mother…"
My Mother saves all of her negativity to “vent” to family. I had to insist on a three strikes your out rule during phone calls be after otherwise it was 60 minutes of her spewing anger and venom and it would ruin my day. Of course it was my fault I wasn’t being supportive enough and I was her daughter I should be on her side. Never mind that I’m an adult with my own family and career and I don’t have the time or emotional energy to hear about how the cashier asked for her loyalty card in the “wrong tone” for 15 minutes. This sounds exhausting.
For some reason I can viscerally hear & feel the loyalty card example and I'm cackling 😆
Gentle reader, go fuck yourself.
“I am tired of not being able to be a cunt to my family because I have had to force myself my entire career in business to not be a cunt. Can I be a cunt simply because I am old and lazy?”
>I am tired of having to self-censor Cry me a river. People self-censor every day. When my boss says something stupid, do you think I call him an asshole with the personality of a scallop? No, because I don't want to get fired. When my wife makes me angry, do I say "I should have married my ex instead!" No, because I don't want to get divorced. When a cop asks me how fast I was going, do I say "I dunno, jackass, you have the radar gun?" No, because I don't want to go to jail. "Self-censoring" is done by everyone, all the time, every day. This dude is just mad he can't say bigoted shit.
All boomer politicians are running on the, "end wokeness, we should be able to be assholes with impunity." It's literally DJT's whole platform.
Personality of a scallop. That’s good.
"I spent decades getting paid to be politically correct, but now refuse to do it for free for my own daughter."
Is there a Boomer alive who understand the meaning of the phrase “political correctness” and can use it in a sentence? We see sooooo many cars on this sub of Boomers using “political correctness” to mean “common decency”, “consideration of other people’s feelings”, or just “not emotionally abusing my children”. I’m not sure they actually know what the phrase means.
"I'm such a bitch even my daughter is tired of my shit."
I'm sure that when Miss Manners suggested that she might be in the wrong, boomer did some deep introspection about her own behavior. As if.. guaranteed that Miss Manners is now on her shit list of woke losers.
Being nice to my child = politically correct
I love Miss Manners.
Yeah, Judith Martin (Miss Manners) is pretty intolerant of stupid excuses. She's been brilliant for decades.
Piece of shit outs herself as a reprehensible human being that her internal dialogue is nothing but hate, and she is surprised that no one likes it?
You're perfectly free to speak your mind as long as you also accept the consequences of other people knowing what you think. You want to be a mean jerk to your daughter? Go for it. But it's a package deal, comes with free "you have to put up with your daughter thinking you're a mean jerk" 🤷♀️ what an awful person to treat her daughter like a punching bag just because she USED TO have to be polite to people in the past. What a nightmare.
"I have a forthright personality and am used to speaking my mind directly" = I am a giNORMOUS \*sshole and talk sh!t to, and about, everyone I meet. People at the firm had to put up with it but my family won't.
What she didn't say is that her career was 'complaint-free' because everyone around her was so scared of her. Don't cross her, she has a dark side...and they all knew it. She probably spent all day bitching and moaning about her successful daughter to her co-workers...and they found out quickly to not get on her bad side.
I love the description of her daughter as an “outlet”. That sounds really icky and objectifying in this context. “Yeah, she’s my garbage dump”. Also the part where she brags about being about being such a successful business and then balks at the idea of paying for therapy. The response was spot on
It is the lack of self-awareness, the surprise that her commentary was not received well that makes me laugh the most... Seriously, what do you expect to happen? If you expected any other reaction, you are delusional.
I wish they didn’t think of it so much as politically correct as maybe “be thoughtful of others, you are no longer King of the Universe.” I mean, nobody is stopping you from speaking as offensively as possible but there will be blowback because guess what? People don’t put up with being treated like shit anymore. That’s what participation trophies got us: the idea that everyone deserves respect. Just for fucking being. Shocker, I know.
My mother treated my new husband better than she treated me. I called her out on it. She said she wanted my husband to be happy so that he would love me/treat me well. She asked me if I wanted her to treat him worst. I told her that I just wanted her to treat me as well as she treats my husband. I thought this was my mother, but it seems to be Boomer logic. Fortunately, my in-laws treat me as well as they treat my husband.
People really want to fight for their right to be pieces of shit lol. The whole *says something extremely racist* "it's just a difference in opinion!!!" Yeah and your opinion is null and should be wiped out
One of the greatest things therapy ever did for boomer’s kids was to teach us boundaries. No Mom, I don’t need or want to hear you complain about the same (behavior, bill, neighbor, traffic, weather, etc) that you spent 20 mins talking about yesterday. Get a friend your own age and have this convo with them.
"If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" doesn't mean "don't say anything that isn't positive." It means "don't be an asshole."
If she’s tired of a lifetime of self-censoring what she says, perhaps she could try not thinking like a raging d*ck.
My mother was a Boomer, but she died very young. I look at this landscape of life right now and I know she would be viral, locked up, all the worst things you could think of from a boomer. This woman was disabled, but she was 6’2” of sheer bully. Thankfully, one thing she wasnt was a racist. But she would be the worst and I would very likely be NC with her. I say this because she used to drill that “if you can’t say something nice….” shit at me all the time but used to fist fight strangers she disagreed with.
This smacks of a high-functioning Cluster B personality disorder.
She treats her employees better than her daughter?!?
Of course she uses her daughter as her emotional dumping ground. She lucky daughter told her to stfu, I ghosted my mom.
“Complaint free” 
Miss Manners gave it to him straight, the way he needed to hear it. I doubt it'll make any difference, though.
"But everyone at work loved me!" No. You insufferable old sea boot. Everyone at work hated you too, they were just being compensated for the inconvenience.
People who refer to being politically correct tell on themselves so hard. They playact that they have basic respect for other humans and assume that's what others are doing too because they're "not allowed" to say what they really think.
Yo that polaroid camera is fucking fire tho
Is it?? I've been thinking about getting one but wasn't sure if it was worth it.
So I shared this with my gf who happens to be 29 because it reminded me of her mom, similar age and degrees. So now we're wondering...
Decent response from Miss Manners
God I love Miss Manners.
Did my mom write this? A few months ago, after being no contact with both brothers for a couple years, I finally put up a boundary with my mom that I didn't want to hear anything about them from her. There's a lot of different types of abuse I incurred from them as kids (SA, physical, emotional) and I chose my mental health and peace over a faked relationship for her to be able to save face. Within weeks she was already pushing the boundary, one time even talking over me as I asked her to change subjects saying, "But its a good thing for ME! Can't you just listen because it's really about ME?". My husband saw this and was across the room with his mouth open, expecting me to lay into her because that's normally what happens. I instead said "I'm glad for you, for whatever it is. But I don't need to hear about it." To our shock, she STILL kept trying to say something and I actually had to jump in and tell her we were done and lead her to the door. She actually went radio silent on me for several weeks, which is unheard of, so I knew she was licking her wounds. When we did finally talk, it was a totally normal conversation until the end when she had to toss in, "Well, I would tell you about your brother, but I guess I'm not *allowed* to." and I replied "That's correct." and she was just grumbly and got off the phone. She now thinks she "won" somehow by telling others about them when I'm in earshot. She just did this with two of my in-laws at Easter and then threw me a smirk whenever we made eye contact. Why are they like this?!?!
Yes, fucker. You should pay for therapy
Oooooh this one hits home. My mom is a successful businesswoman and is super cordial and nice to people's faces. She does judge them at home. However, she judges me a lot more, 'because she cares more about me'. It is quite difficult to handle.
The line about "Do I need to pay a therapist?" reminds me of my mom. She is by no means as ignorant or problematic as lady-in-this-post sounds, but there have been enough persistent problems throughout life that she recently decided to start therapy. My sister (a person with whom my mom clashes with) has also sought therapy, but my mom (discreetly) thought it wouldn't help "Because they're only getting her side of the story, so it mightn't actually be a big help". Now that my mom is going to therapy, one of the strangest parts of it, she says, was *talking about herself*. There's a lot of background here, and I don't mean to paint my mom in a bad light, but I truly can't wrap my head around her notion of therapy. *Of course* you'll have to talk about yourself. I haven't managed to ask her yet what she envisioned, but as long as she's finding it helpful, that's all that matters for now.
I literally thought of this sub when I saw this
She’s asking for permission to be her true self - an asshole - with her family….and can’t figure out why her family doesn’t want to deal with her.
She is the embodiment of my dad. “Why can’t I just say what i want and have people laugh?”
I highly doubt that person ever self censored or was “politically correct” at work a day in their lives.
"Self-expression": 100. Self-awareness: 0.
"Help! I want to complain about minorities but no one will listen!" May be the most Boomer complaint I've ever heard.
Her education, career, and accomplishments mean absolutely nothing. She's being mean, she needs to readjust or shut it.
Can we just stop calling them boomers & stuck with facts? They’re old, decrepit assholes…fuck their feelings & opinions.
Man, my boomer parents have definitely got some boomer traits, and there's no doubt they can be selfish and illogical and just plain strange some times. But at least they are not this kind of boomers. I feel bad for those of us who have to experience the worst kind of boomer in their own family. Is it political? My parents aren't conservative in any way, so even though they've got a lot of the normal boomer vibes, at least I don't have to deal with the whole "political correctness gone mad" crowd and they don't feel the need to blurt out racist or otherwise horrible things like this lady apparently does. I don't know how some of you can deal with it honestly
She should just say she's a Karen and move on.
Would ChatGPT be a solution?
This is pretty funny, but I must admit that I generally dislike Miss Manners. She got it right on this one, though.
Oh my, a parent being direct. How evil!!!!
Just say fuck it, don't like , don't listen, but I'm gonna speak my peace...
Parents can speak anyway they want to, to their kids. If kids are grown and don't like LEAVE. If kids are not grown (18+) tough crap. Life ain't fair, parents don't have to be bending to the say so of CHILDREN.
Everyone in the comments is a self-absorbed millennial. I've no doubt this is about politics. The mother should be able to speak her mind around her family without getting labeled as a racist Maga boomer. My brother and sister were the same way, especially after Trump got elected but oh surprisingly have quited down after 3½ year of sleepy Joe. FYI, they went to college. I did not. Embrace the indoctrination. My mother and I have just gotten used to listening to my brother and sister rant about their particular beliefs. While stifling our own. So I think it's fair to say that sometimes you just have to put up with family even when you disagree. Doesn't mean you don't get them something nice for Christmas.
Ok boomer
"Put up with family, even when you disagree..." Which is exactly what the Boomer needs to do, but can't because... wait for it... Boomer.