Why is my mother so smug?

[Anonymous]

About literally everything. It’s driving me nuts.

We usually travel during the summer. This year due to DH taking a promotion, we plan to stay close to home. It feels like every time I talk to my mother she has to rub it in my face with comments like, “It’s sure going to be a boring summer for you all.” But with this strange air of pleasure I sense from her.

They tore up our street to put in new water mains. They finally came and repaired the damage, seeded. I mentioned to my mother that men all along the block were out analyzing their yards, and it appears the “grass race” is off and running, making a joke of it. The replied, “Grass seed never works. It’s never going to look like it did. You never get it to look right again.”

I guess maybe the word I am looking for is actually “negative”. There are other examples, these are just the most recent, but it can be about literally anything, always. What pleasure does she gain from this?

[Anonymous]

Sounds exactly like my mom but she's a full fledged narcissist and an alcoholic.

[Anonymous]

"Oh, only boring people get bored. We love summer days at the pool, going to Wolf Trap, farmer's market, Orioles games, ice cream. We're not bored, we love summer at home. I feel so lucky to have a summer with my kids."

"Luckily we're too busy and enjoy our house and our neighborhood too much to care much about how grass looks. I can't imagine being so petty as to care about how grass looks. Too much fun going on here!"

Rub it all right back in her face.

[Anonymous]

She's a know it all.

My mom was the same way. Loved her dearly and she was a great mom, but she had really poor EQ and was terrible at conversations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Oh, only boring people get bored. We love summer days at the pool, going to Wolf Trap, farmer's market, Orioles games, ice cream. We're not bored, we love summer at home. I feel so lucky to have a summer with my kids."

"Luckily we're too busy and enjoy our house and our neighborhood too much to care much about how grass looks. I can't imagine being so petty as to care about how grass looks. Too much fun going on here!"

Rub it all right back in her face.

+1
Turn it all around like she's the crazy one.

[Anonymous]

What a wonderful thing being bored. Especially with life running full speed daily. It gives your cells time to regroup and find body repairs you need to keep going. Your brain finally relaxes.

My BIL is negative also. No matter what you talk about he's got this snide nasty side that comes out. In his mind he's being sarcastic but it comes across as what it really is, RUDE.

I don't allow being pulled into his negative range so I throw out nice things to keep him quiet. If he's yapping about something so mundane I ask him mid sentence if he needs cat food or litter, anything for his personal use. After that his remarks stop.

It's so true you get more flies with honey than vinegar.

[Anonymous]

Where is OP’s mom vacationing this summer? That’s where I would start.

[Anonymous]

IME, unhappy people are the most negative and they sometimes take pleasure in "bad" things happening to other people. There are many people who are miserable and that's the only way they know how to live their lives. These are the same people who want to discuss violent crime and news stories as if it happened to them personally. They are always focused on the negative and tragic. I'm not saying this is your mom, but it's def my mom. Just offering this up for your consideration.

[Anonymous]

It's negativity. It's so engrained in some people that they don't even realize how they come across. Ignoring the comments usually works the best.

[Anonymous]

My mother is like this and oddly my DH is becoming like this so I have to point it out to him each and every time. I can’t stand it.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like my idiot narcissist father. He literally told me to use ivermectin because I caught Covid this spring and blamed my sickness on the vaccine, not the local outbreak.

Don’t listen to stupid. It’s a waste of your energy.

[Anonymous]

Tell her less. She is not a friend to you.

[Anonymous]

Ask her. “Mom, why would you assume our summer is going to be boring just because we’re not traveling? Why does your response have to be so negative? And why do you say it with a slight tone of satisfaction?” Hopefully it can make her aware of how she’s coming across, and if she keeps doing it at some point, you could add the statement that it makes you not want to share things with her because you know she will react by saying something negative.

[Anonymous]

She hates you and wish you were never born. Happy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She's a know it all.

My mom was the same way. Loved her dearly and she was a great mom, but she had really poor EQ and was terrible at conversations.

This. They don’t know how to “read the room.” It’s some deep need to be the know it all, the expert, the bearer of bad news. If you gently ask them to stop, they insist you are hypersensitive.