BonesOfTheMoon

This is a new one!

I spend a lot of time mulling this over, since my therapist thinks that both my SO and MIL have malignant narcissism.

What I can say about both of them is that they really find doing emotionally disruptive things absolutely vital to their lives. MIL likes to pit her kids against each other so she can watch them fight, and she smiles like a vampire who just had a delicious blood feast when she sees it. Her only grandchild develops an eating disorder? Nothing will do but to run out and buy her some size XXL pyjamas to make her feel worse. Everything for her is a provocation and meant to trigger a negative reaction, because that's what she gets off on. It's beyond being an asshole, it's pathological and emotionally disturbing.

My SO, one of the biggest examples is the gifts he buys me. They're usually highly thoughtful and unique, but they're also really for him (it's several times been a piece of art), and part of it is so he can take pictures of them for Instagram and display his fine taste in things to everyone. If I tried to move out and take those things with me, he'd probably break my arm. Nothing is really a gift with him, it's just a way for him to get himself something he can show off with. Or he'll spend a long time taking pictures of things we've bought on trips just to show what interesting and unique tastes he has and how therefore he's better than anyone else. It's really tone deaf and it really reflects how he doesn't actually enjoy anything, but rather what doing something or buying something will help to elevate his status in his mind. It's tiresome and tone deaf. It isn't that I don't like the gifts, but the whole point is that they're not really gifts at all, and my birthday or whatever is just an excuse to acquire something that makes him feel important. He really has no friends, and I think this is a desperate way to make the few people who try to be nice to him at least superficially on social media think he's important, but really nobody can stand him beyond the superficial.

I think an asshole would just not be bothered with anything so deliberately manipulative, but just be really careless with your feelings and react badly when they get angry. I think that's the difference is the deep rooted pathological nature of it.

Treatable is an optimistic way to describe it. My therapist friend says it's virtually like starting from scratch with every session she does with a borderline, they're super resistant to treatment and have very poor insight.

It's a global far right power grab, fueled by dark money and weaponized disinformation. He's just the face of it.

I'm Canadian, but Americans make a lot of great artists and musicians, and some absolutely amazing food.

Or a cop who has to fight with them on the side of the road.

It's hard to give up because some of the musicians I really like post there, and indie musicians are often struggling financially and Substack is simply a bigger platform.

This girl lost her upper lip due to her pit. https://www.reddit.com/r/BanPitBulls/comments/15kqwmd/lip_removal/

But people who actually see people who have been bitten by pit bulls agree they should be banned: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/06/29/doctor-says-ban-pit-bulls/11709481/

I can't say I agree. Asshole owners don't help, but I have a good friend who is a well educated health care professional who raised one devotedly from puppyhood, spent thousands of hours and dollars on special training to try and keep her well behaved, she was a beloved family pet and very well loved, and she was a pretty good dog, but someone came in the house one day and she attacked them without warning. Animal behaviourists say part of the problem is that a pit gets very still when it's feeling threatened or aggressive, so you can't really tell until it's attacking. But honestly you couldn't get me near one.

I did!

Happened to me a few weeks ago actually. And the thing with pit bulls is that they don't really have body language that warns you they're about to attack or feel threatened, they stay very still and then fly at you, and that is a powerful bite. The nursing and emergency medicine subreddits have horror stories of children who died or lost their faces from pits.