83 Comments From Toxic Parents That Did Far More Damage Than They Probably Realized

When I was 10 years old, my mom told me she was going to k**l herself the weekend my father remarried. She was driving me home from her weekend visitation. My dad was getting married the following weekend. She told me to expect a call on Sunday to let me know she was dead. I screamed, and cried, and begged her not to leave me, especially with my wicked stepmother who treated me like the red headed stepchild, and an alcoholic dad who knew I was being treated unfairly, but just kept his mouth shut to avoid confrontation. But no, she insisted she had to go. She couldn’t stand the idea of my dad remarrying, when she was alone.

So, the whole weekend of my dad’s wedding, I had to smile and pretend to celebrate, while the entire time, I was wondering, “Is my mom dead? Has she done it yet?” Every time the phone rang, I almost passed out from anxiety. Meanwhile, of course she didn’t do it. She picked me up the following weekend, and didn’t say a word about it. No explanation, no apology, no acknowledgment of my trauma at all. Just pretended it never happened.

Every time I see pictures of my dad’s wedding, I just think about me, that poor sad and scared kid, who had f**king no one to talk to, no one to make me feel safe and loved, and no one to rely on.

That’s why I don’t feel the slightest twinge of guilt for being no contact with my mom. I’ll never speak or lay eyes on that woman again. Even in death. I’m not participating in any funeral or burial arrangements when she dies. They can throw her in the trash, for all I care.

My dad called me a “wh*re”, (direct quote) when I was 12 for wearing a sports bra with an open flannel with jeans, while at home. It was 94, so it was the trend. Basically starting puberty made me inappropriate. Recently my 11 year old came out of her room in a similar outfit the other day, as she wears one for pajamas around the house, so did my other daughter, without long sleeves over it, and all I see is girls being comfortable at home. Literal children just being comfortable in their own skin and bodies. It’s so weird my dad took offense to me just existing and being comfortable, while at home without company.

They was other stuff too, but this sticks out.

I was pregnant with my first and only child at age 38. Had a great career, debt-free in my own home, a stupendous partner, and was stable AF. At seven months pregnant, my mom asked me if I'd give her legal guardianship of our child. I laughed so hard when she asked, but it was not a joke. She was dead serious. She kept insisting she'd be a better parent than I could and be able to give our daughter a better life than we could. 'You could keep her for as long as you can, but that way it's legal... Just in case.'

I was speechless. Like legit, hung up on her, speechless.

I knew I had to have new boundaries in place cause of the baby, but I didn't realize I had to put up the proverbial walls months before the baby even arrived.

In the very few IRL visits we've had since, I've caught her coaching my infant to call her 'Mama.' Nipped that in the bud by explaining that the next time I caught her coaching my kid, she would have all access and communication revoked. Presents sent back unopened. Blocked phone calls. Missed holidays and birthdays.

I can handle my mom's flavor of crazy, but I refuse to allow my kid to be a pawn in her ego games.

Starting around 8–9 years old, my dad started saying, 'you’re a lesbian,' 'you look like a lesbian,' 'you like girls,' etc. This was the late '90s, and I looked like a basic girl then. He’d say this to me sometimes when I had friends spend the night.

I always got so much anxiety about how he’d embarrass me in front of them or accuse me of liking my friends in a romantic way. I just stopped inviting them over.

It was confusing. As I got a bit older, I honestly thought I must be a lesbian, and my crushes on boys were wrong. It was f**ked up.

When I was about five my nDad told me that it was his job as my father to break my spirit.

When I was about seven I got placed in a highly advanced academic program at school - very competitive. My nDad was deeply bothered to learn that his daughter was so intelligent. He went on a rant at the dinner table about what a waste of money it would be for him to send me to college, "just so [my] husband could have intelligent conversation. "

"Satan told me to k**l you and your sister with a potato peeler yesterday. You should thank god I didn't."

I was 7. My sister was 5.

My mother would always say "I've know since I was young that my kids wouldn't live long, especially my daughter god told me she wouldn't make it past 16" and she would stare at me when she would say it with this excited dead stare. I was so uncomfortable. I was also terrified to turn 16. I thought she was going to k**l me.

My dad was single and dating wasn’t going well, I guess. He lamented to a table full of his own dinner guests that young women like me aren’t interested in men like him, they’re interested in men like (insert my boyfriend’s name).

My bf was sitting right next to me. It made my flesh crawl but it’s not the first time he said s**t like that. I always felt his feelings toward me were extremely abnormal, to say the least. I wasn’t surprised he felt that way, I was just mortified he said it in front of so many people, some of them strangers to me.

Other people at the table were like “surely you don’t understand how that sounds,” and dad doubled down. He knows how it sounds.

Edit: I was about 30 years old when this happened.

"to be honest, I can't hug you now that you have [gestures at b**bs]" from my dad is really up there for me

I got pregnant after five years of trying to conceive, at the start of the pandemic, so I was terrified of losing my child. My mom said, 'No big deal, I already have a plot in the graveyard you can use to bury it. See, I always think ahead.' Thankfully, it was a good pregnancy, and I now have a healthy (alive!) 4-year-old daughter.

My mom had a miscarriage before I was a year old, and always blamed me for it (I left her in a bad state, she had to take care of me and couldn’t take care of her pregnant self, etc.). So as soon as I was learning to talk, she would make me apologize to God in my nightly prayers for k**ling my baby brother, since I had already been baptized when it happened, and I had to carry that sin until I could atone for it in my first communion.

When my brother died, my dad said my brother didn't deserve a funeral because my brother was an a***ct.

My bats**t crazy stepmom told my aunt (the sister that was closest to my dad, and the only member of my dad’s family that would tolerate her) that as a teenager, I was 'overly flirtatious' with my dad because I secretly wanted to sleep with him. Luckily, I only found out she felt this way long after my stepmother had died. The confrontation would have been beyond ugly had I known, but I had been estranged from her and my dad for about seven years before she died. Needless to say, I don’t miss that witch.

“Are you done dying?” My father told me that when I had just recovered for sepsis. I came home to maggots crawling in the house. I had had major surgery to save my life. He expected me to cook and clean up after him. This is when I made decisions to leave his sorry a*s.

She would take my phone and flirt with a boy I dated, pretending to be me.

Mom wanted me to put her name on my bank account under the pretense that it was for security reasons. When I refused, she kept trying to talk me into it and eventually exploded, 'If something happens to you, I can't access your money to do anything about it!' She's in her 70s, I'm in my late 30s. Why this is running through her mind weirded me out and told me to run.

“You don’t even really have to spank or smack your child… a little bit of guilt goes a long way. They will feel that and correct themselves”

Hard to choose the creepiest but this was up there in the top 5.

1980. I was upset / crying because things at school were s**t. My father was getting aggravated at my being upset. I said, "This is really important". His response, "pfft Yeah, to YOU" and left the room.

I remember very vividly thinking, " I will never open up to him again".

I was 10.

When I was 19, my emotionally immature mother said, “You know, if we were married, we would be headed for divorce court.” It’s been like 17 years and I’m still so f**king dumbfounded and disturbed by that comment.

My husband and daughter and I met my mom at the fair one year. We ran into this guy that I had briefly worked with before he left, fired or quit, anyone's guess. I didn't know, didn't really care honestly. I never even learned his name. He seemed to want to hang out with our group because his friends ditched him. I really didn't want to have him with us honestly but my mom felt bad for him supposedly being ditched and then learning he was now homeless. She spent the day trying to set him and I up in situations where it was like a date. I kept walking away and wanting to do something with my family and for whatever reason my mom kept trying to push this guy on me and was getting angry that I kept refusing. She started calling me rude and saying I was being a bad friend. I told her for one, he was not my friend, and two, going on a date with him while married would make me a bad wife, something she should know something about (seeing as she cheated on my dad). This all understandably upset my husband.

Anyway, after he finally got the hint and left, my mom stood there and said, "Just imagine what your life would be like if you had married him."

I jokingly said, "Well, for one, I'd be homeless, you could go ahead and date him if you're so curious."

She got mad and said, "Really, think. He's a great guy. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have someone like him?"

I got really mad, tore into her how that whole thing was super inappropriate and incredibly disrespectful to my husband and child. And how she might be okay with stepping out of marriages but to me nothing is more sacred.

My husband and I had a fight that night because at some point he thought I was willingly trying to wander off with this guy. I explained to him that I never wanted the guy there in the first place and my mom was oddly obsessed with this guy. We both decided we never want to go anywhere like that with my mom again. We also went really LC, too.

To this day it really bothers me that my mom basically tried to "pimp" me out to a homeless guy in front of my husband.

I was 9, and growing as any child does, but i had always been super skinny and tiny as a kid. I reached for the last slice of pizza at dinner and my ndad glared at me and then said in front of everyone “you don’t fit into last years bathing suit anymore” safe to say my relationship with food was never the same and he put me on so many restrictive diets for years to come, when I was already underweight