When People Make You Feel Overly Responsible For Your Relationships

In 2014, I shared a picture on Facebook.  It was taken on my parents’ wedding day in 1969.  In the picture, they were standing by my father’s car, talking to my mother’s uncle.  A rather innocent picture that I mistakenly thought even my highly judgmental, critical family wouldn’t have a problem with me sharing.  I was wrong.

The first comment was from one cousin.  She mentioned how my father & I shared a love of old cars.  He always taught me about cars.  Not only maintenance, but identifying engines, years, makes & models.  I said it was about the only thing we had in common but we really did share that love of cars.  She didn’t respond to my comment.  One of our aunts, however, did.  She was a very devoted flying monkey & covert narcissist, as is evident by her reaction.

This aunt attacked me & said I needed to figure out more things to share with my father.  She was so hateful that I simply deleted her comment without responding.  I knew anything I said would fall on deaf ears, so it wasn’t worth my time or energy to explain my side to her.

Wasn’t this ridiculous though?! My aunt said I should be the one to change to please my father.  Obviously she didn’t care about me, my feelings or interests.  She never told my father about how he should try to get interested in things I like to please me.  And, as the icing on the cake, she was disrespectful & down right hateful in sharing her ludicrous opinions with me.

This is how it often is with adult children of narcissistic parents.  We are the ones given the responsibility of making relationships in our lives work.  We grow up knowing we must figure out how to please our parents at all times.  After we grow up, it seems that not only are we supposed to make the parental relationship work, but other relationships too.  Marriages, in-laws, friendships, coworker relationships.. all are our responsibility according to many people in our lives. 

In thinking about this, I have developed a theory about why people think it’s up to victims to make relationships work.  We are the safe ones to put that burden on.

Consider my situation with my aunt.  She remembers me as the blindly obedient, terrified child I once was.  She clearly thought I was still easy to boss around & probably still starved for the approval of my parents.  These factors would make me the easier person to confront in this situation than my father who, like her, was a covert narcissist.  It makes sense in a way that she took the easy route by dealing with me instead of him.

While in an odd way, it’s almost a complement that someone feels safe so with you, it still just, well, stinks!  It’s not right for people to make you feel as if you’re the one who needs to do all the work & make all the changes in that situation!  If they are going to talk to you about making changes, they should talk to the other person as well.

If you are in this situation, you have rights!  You can ask this person why they think it’s ok to put this pressure on you while saying nothing to the other person (which might get them off your back because they can have no good answer to this question!).  You can tell them this topic isn’t up for discussion & refuse to discuss it with them.  You can set whatever boundaries you need to in order not to take full responsibility for fixing things, because that responsibility is not 100% yours!  Don’t let someone make you feel as if it is.  You deserve better than that!