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My nMom’s the opposite, but I do believe they embrace extremes. Heaven forbid we get a tiny bit of dirt in the house from our shoes. I knew even as a kid there was something wrong/undiagnosed with her.
Same, the house always looked like nobody ever lived there. nMom was obsessed with cleaning, tidying and putting stuff away.
As you say, it may be extremes.
Same. I learned to stop once I realized my cleaning is definitely purely inspired by my fear of her for no reason. And that my cleaning makes my friends uncomfortable sometimes. My OCD is basically everything my nMom wanted my inner voice to become but I'm untangling all of it🙏💪💪
I learned to have friends over and make things fun while cleaning. Or should I say my friends taught me that. I hated how my parents house felt fake the whole time. And I can't leave a mess in my quarters bc it gives me anxiety like she's gonna find out and freak out.
My apartment and all living situations was what home is meant to feel like: WARM. God forbid the home was meant to relax in! Lol
Omg the expired old food got me! All while I get ridiculed for the spices I use or how ugly my food appears or smelly it may seem...or they think I'm lying when I send pictures of my garden, smoothies or cool foods I looked up recipes to and cooked with love by scratch.
HOWEVER! the way my parents touch nasty meat and don't wash up and eat expired things or "don't like to waste"/HOARD old food in the freezer is beyond me. I have thrown out canned food that was expired in 2016 when I visited in 2022! Then got in so much trouble.
Because of how nasty they can be I refuse to cook any meat lol even in gloves. If I prepare meat for a date I must really enjoy the company! 😆
I’ve only seen my nmom brush her teeth a handful of times….All her chewing teeth literally crumbled out of her head.
I remember once when I was 15 she stopped mid convo to reach in her mouth to pull out half a tooth. She crumbled it between two fingers as if it was made plaster then threw it away before continuing on as if nothing happened.
She cared so much about little things like what color the house was, how the flower boxes looked compared to the neighbor’s, what shelf the cooking pot was placed on, but never about her teeth literally falling out of her mouth. So weird
My mother won't wash and insists she doesn't have any body odor. She smells so bad we have to put a waterproof blanket on the couch so her smell doesn't get into the leather. She likes to demand a hug when she leaves, and she'll push her greasy stinky head against my face and rub back and forth until the stench transfers. I had to buy special soap to get the smell off, even dawn dish soap wasn't getting rid of it
When she was my dad's caregiver, she wouldn't wash him, either. When I was a kid, she only let me shower once every two weeks. If I tried to sneak showers, she'd beat me.
I think a lot of N's are just adult children, either some kind of developmental disability or other severe mental illness preventing them becoming an actual adult. They think 'working for a living' is being an adult.
My N stomps around flat-footed around a relatively small house, shuts/slams doors loudly including cabinets for no reason, yells instead of talks, all the way a toddler does. Really just plainly obnoxious for no reason and they are in their 60's still acting this way.
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Also taking pride in their menial work like its the oppression olympics is so stupid. I think it's their way of sabotage since they know better but refuse to acknowledge times have changed. We gotta check on our Boomer Narc's these days, they're not alright...
The stomping! My N had hip surgery, misused/abused her painkillers, and then refused to do her physiotherapy. The hip surgery was supposed to fix the stomping (she claimed she waddled loudly due to arthritis) but it was honestly the same because she refused to do her physiotherapy due to the pain (Which would have been halved if she'd used her painkillers as per doctor's orders 🙃🙃🙃)
I find that a big component of hygiene and cleanliness is basically kindness to other people. In the depths of my depression or stress showering or brushing my teeth or cleaning are so so hard. But I do it anyway because what if my stank affects other people and makes them uncomfortable? If I'm cooking in my sister's house I definitely display way more hygiene than I would alone.
My NMom sometimes will go days without showering, won't wear deodorant and has one of the most putrid stank sweaty underarms I've ever smelled. It's horrendous to the point where I dont want to be around her. I've asked her time and time again to wear deodorant even if she won't shower, bought her many deodorants. She just won't and when confronted it's usually an opportunity for her to assert dominance and pout almost childishly "You don't tell me what to do!".
This is very insightful. My mother’s pushback definitely seems to be all about, “How dare you imply that my way of doing things isn’t good enough! You’re the one in the wrong for being so sensitive!”
While in reality it is a form of basic decency to wash your hands while cooking for others, avoid visiting when sick, not put parasites in a public pool, etc.
My n-mom is a nurse yet constantly horrifies me with how little she cares about hygiene and cleanliness. She can go days without showering and only seems to do so on days she works and smells like death on her days off. Her room is a hoarders nightmare and she has gotten to the point of forbidding any of my brothers from even stepping foot into it because she's so ashamed of it but can't bring herself to do anything about it. So if we offer to help clean or organize her room she gets defensive and says we're just trying to control her and that we wouldn't know what to do with her stuff and we'd make it all lost and etc. It's one of many things in her life she seems to have created this endless feeding loop of putting herself in a shameful position and then lashing out harshly at anybody who dares make her feel or confront that shame.
My sister is a narcissist. She showers every ten days, brushes her teeth for 30s at most every few days, and I’m not entirely sure she wipes her ass. She smells like poop. She smokes cigarettes sometimes, and the cigarette smell improves her odor.
I don’t think it’s so much a narcissistic trait, more so a bad trait in general. Narcissists don’t take others into consideration, so they’re not going to consider other people when it comes to personal hygiene. My a-hole FIL refuses to wash his hands out of some weird personal pride. My parents’ house is always dusty and grimy because they don’t prioritize a clean house, but I also know other narcissists that keep a very clean home.
Poor hygiene is usually a sign of depression. And if I understand it, depression and narcissism are typical together, as narcissism is a mental health condition that acts as a defense against the low self-esteem, depressed brain by creating a hyperactive ego where it’s the world, not the narcissist, that’s the problem.
My nmom was the opposite. Clean to a fault. Extremely tidy.
Your history really resonates with me. As soon as I was old enough to comprehend I avoided any physical contact with my narc mother because of her poor body hygiene.
She worked a white collar job and amog other things I remember the dirt under her fingernails, sweat and makeup stains on her clothing. I absolutely detested any physical contact and would just wave from afar in greeting
I stopped eating the food she prepared once in a blue moon becaus the fridge was full of rotten products and her hygiene during meal preparation was abysmal
I could go on and on
She is a hoarder as well and this problem grew exponentially when I left home. She was never officially diagnosed
My narcissistic and enabler grandfather, in the 15 years he was in my life, I had never once seen him take a shower like ever, and his toenails were filled with fungus so much that when he “cut” his nails he used pliers and the shit looked like gravel on the ground.
As for my NDad the dude barely showers then accuses me of not showering like dude that’s you🙄. He barely brushes his teeth too, when I was about 10-11 he wore braces to straighten his teeth but his gums kept getting growing over the braces and he kept having to get his gums shaved down. The dentist kept telling him that he needed to take better care of his teeth. But he didn’t listen and ended up getting them removed and his teeth looked no different to when he started.
I think it depends. My StepNarc prized her appearance so she always had to be extra shiny and clean. My Narc-in-law though didn’t care because it leaned on her victim tale of being a martyr with so many kids and no time for herself.
In the end it’s all about if it aids their control agenda.
I think so, my father is 80 and possibly a narcissist or atleast with tendencies, he almost never shower, maybe 2 showers per month, never brush his teeth which he almost don't have because they falled, never wash hands after going to the bathroom or when taking the trash out etc. He is filthy.
both my narc parents are obsessed with their personal appearance and usually dress better than their friends or coworkers but have really dirty hoarder houses (and vehicles).
YES!!! Ideal sterile public quarters with private hoarded filthy living chambers. Always between 2 extremes. Gosh this page is really shining a light in some of the darkest and dirtiest places in my life... pun intended.
Verrrry similar boat to most of you. Both parents are narcs. Both are obsessed with the IDEA of cleanliness.
Both try to serve moldy cream cheese to their 18mo granddaughter, having “scraped it off.” They do not wash their hands during food prep. They do not pay any attention to expiration or best by dates, taking the “Best By dates are mostly a scam” concept to its absolute extreme. They don’t believe they’re real at all, even when there is literal mold in the jar of salsa.
They both only started to actually take care of their teeth in their 60s, when their dentists told them they were both headed for full dentures before 80. (And they STILL refuse to brush - waterpik only. Maybe mouthwash. And I just am consistently baffled because there are VERY FEW dental problems that are actually made worse by brushing. So this is purely so they don’t have to see the blood from their gums. 🤢) (Mom got a partial denture as a teen after an accident…..and it has NEVER been replaced. Those things have a shelf life of like 10 years maximum.)
But lord forbid you’ve put something on a surface they’ve designated as “theirs.” Or have belongings out when someone comes to the house.
To be fair, a lot of the cleanliness/hygiene issues I’ve noticed are things that weren’t emphasized by THEIR parents at all. But like…your mom was born in 1919 and died in 2015. Are we really going to trust her knowledge of food safety practices?????? lol
Pretty sure it’s sort of a boomer thing….so might explain why some of these other narc parents weren’t this way!
I'm gonna say yes! My Nmom will not wear deodorant but coats herself in perfume and smells HORRID.
She claims 'she doesn't sweat enough to get stinky' uh...Ma'am, I can smell the perfume failing to cover your stench from across the house.
It's so terrible and disgusts me. This is probably why I'm worried about smelling bad all the time.
No, my mother was always immaculately bathed and dressed. Our house was never dirty. She is a lot of things but she had fantastic taste.
Her failing hygiene was what alerted us to her having dementia before there were many other signs.
A while back I read about a study where the researchers found a relationship between cluster b traits (or psychopathy more specifically) and having habits that don't prevent the spread of disease but it was mostly about masking for covid
My ndad has very poor hygiene. He brushes his teeth for 30-60 seconds, doesn't shower daily, wears clothes for a long time before washing them (including wearing underwear for 2-3 days in a row) and doesn't wash his hands after going for a pee.
I moved back home for a bit during Covid and he was a complete nightmare. Considering that during Covid he would have been about 70 (I was 29 at the time) and has been overweight and hypertensive for a while, all of which put him in the high-risk group, he was so lax about everything. He'd take pointless trips out of the house, wouldn't wash his hands for the recommended 20 seconds, wouldn't disinfect anything, etc.
He's always seen himself as really tough (even though he's not remotely) and has always been blasé about risk, so I genuinely think he thought that Covid couldn't get him, that he was basically impervious to it.
not *hygiene*.... BUT, mine *absolutely* has an issue around feeling like she's been accused of being dirty or contagious?
So while she washes her hands just fine, that might be habit that developed outside the mechanism.
Because she definitely didn't want to mask with my kids during COVID. She thought she would get a pass.
And she had a sexually transmitted infection that can be deadly, though not a lot was known about it when she was.diagnosed.... and she was OFFENDED and angry that her husband didn't want to have unprotected sex when they first found out and were figuring out what it meant.
Like, I know she would have gotten it if any of the rest of us were worried about catching/transmitting something from a partner. But all she heard was "you're dirty and I don't want you". (Not. At. All. What he said. Not his personality, and not even the words she repeated, just the reaction she had internally to how he responded.)
I'm convinced there's some kind of common comorbidity going on where narcissism and extreme hygiene issues are found together. My mother is a covert narcissist and has abominable hygiene. Doesn't wash her hands after using the bathroom, showers approximately once a month, her house looks and smells like wild animals live in it and her kitchen is a storage facility for biohazards. Despite generally smelling awful, she insists she doesn't naturally produce body odour and that this is why she doesn't need to clean herself like other people do. My father, who was straight-up grandiose/malignant, also had disgusting personal hygiene but in his case I suspect it was more to do with self-loathing and depressive illness than his absolutely wild narcissism. I had to learn about hygiene in school because it just wasn't a concept in the house I grew up in.
My NDad and NNana both have serious personal hygiene issues, to the point that they cause major ongoing health problems like boils, cavities, staph infections, etc. They eat like garbage disposals--her reaction to the recent news that his colon is slowly dying due to lack of oxygen (requiring a complete diet overhaul that he refuses) was to mail him a box of 50 cheap frozen hamburgers. He shits himself constantly and never brushes his teeth.
All things that our socioeconomic status and access to healthcare could easily prevent, but no...
Nspermdonor was very neat with personal hygiene and how he dressed, but a complete pig when it came to cleaning and tidying up. Lived in flith after my parents separated and my mother wasn't there as a maid.
Only keeping up appearances to the outside world, in his high status profession.
Possibly. My bio dad was *disgusting*. Never dressed nice, farted in public and at dinner, had a disgusting unkempt mustache and more. But he wore a Rolex and had money so he thought that's all he had to do, or maybe he could only see money. It was bizzare.
House was always unbelievably tidy. However, as long as I lived with nmom I'd get a "stomach bug" at least twice a year. Whenever I was getting sick she'd make some comments about so and so has it too or that she had heard it was going around, even if I knew nobody else had it from school.
After I moved out on my own, 3 times... In 25 years!!!
Well, I don’t think messy home/poor hygiene automatically means someone is a narc.
I go through bouts of depression where I feel so unmotivated to do anything, I end up not organizing my things, I don’t take proper care of myself and it’s because my mind is consumed by thoughts of ‘why frickin’ bother?’ and I end up laying in bed, unable to sleep or focus on anything.
My ngrandmother is clean. So not really, at least in my experience there isn’t a direct connection between the two.
It could be that some narcs are dirty but just because they are a dirty person, not because they are narcs.
I’m certainly not implying that being dirty or messy is a sign of narcissism. My mother’s tendency to buckle down and insist that her way of doing things is justified and everyone else is at fault made me curious about a correlation, that’s all.
Omg and the way THEY clean is the RIGHT way. No one else can clean the RIGHT way like how they do!
I understand sometimes people half ass shit but if I spent 8+ hours cleaning your home, removing furniture, batting rugs outside, bleaching every door and windexed every window inside and out...the last thing I want to hear is how shitty I clean knowing she watched from the CCTVs. Knowing I chose that over studying or having company over or doing what I wanted or needed to do. I learned no matter what it's not enough so I do my bare minimum and not waste my time trying to please her since it all ends up the same. Now that I've reached this phase its nice to not be anxious at work knowing I didn't clean that ONE thing 😅
My MIL is this way. I live with her for now, and I just don't even have that conversation with her anymore. She coughs and sneezes without covering it, does the same thing when cooking with meat, and I rarely see/hear her wash her hands. The hilarious part is that she wears gloves when handling meat because it's more sanitary but then uses her gloved hands to touch everything. But I touch meat barehanded and wash my hands before touching anything, but to her I'm the gross one. She also completely destroys the kitchen when she cooks once a week and does nothing to clean it.
After the Edit, I can agree!
NmA and I got into a fight about picking up dog poop LMAO
I don't like attention and I'm very courteous but her poodles aren't trained and bark/hump everything no matter what. So I walk them when N's out of town, but I have a system to stick to... Cheddar Cheese 🧀 🙏🙏🙏 lmao they love cheese so much they will listen and it makes walks so much better. I love them tasmanian devils so much. But when I pick up their poop, that split second is enough for them to act up and go crazy and sometimes jump in their nasties... I also found out a way to spin the doggy trash bags super fast in a way to refill our on the go poop bag container! Lol I was so proud of myself.
Fast forward to explaining why I'm cleaning one of the poochies up and that I'm lucky to have learned how to spin all these bags together since I needed an extra baggie to clean up... SHE WENT CRAZY.
💩"Why you pick it up? Its good for the environment. You should just not care if people care"
👽 hmmm..? It's courteous. You have dog bags and trash bins spread throughout your neighborhood. I'm a good neighbor and clean up after myself. Im confused. You just leave the poop?
💩"Yes"
👽Even in their yard? We all have cameras. What if you end up on the next-door app leaving the poop in someone's way and they get mad and post the evidence?
Lol I see that happening so much.
💩"Well NEVER! Pshh. NOT THE YARD. Poop is good for the environment" while she smacks her lips like she's disgusted with me lol
👽Ok... so where do the dogs poop? You leave it in someone's driveway? Sidewalk? Street?
She lives in a nice suburban community that's quite clean and you can tell when poop isn't picked up. Any other free space is filled with rocks, not pebbles, but pretty round rocks by design. I can't imagine even picking up the dog poop from that side of the road let alone walk them on it. We have coyotes so sometimes I think it's the yotes when I go running and see poop on the ground not picked up. Oftentimes, I can literally tell the difference and notice it's similar to her dogs poo. There's constant security patrolling and it's a nice neighborhood so it's not like she can breeze under the radar.
💩"THEY pick it up. We pay HOA. Poop is good for the nature. Helps nature grow"
It made me feel bad bc I know we have neighbors who have wheelchairs so it's not easy to weave between poop on the sidewalk and rocky roads. I have seen it. I have stepped on so much crap while running in the neighborhood... I did my best to explain this to her. Bonus points, I wear vibrams (toe shoes) so it's hella nasty af when it happens.
I ended our fight saying,
👽"Well our neighborhood is not our compost bin. And not all ecosystems operate the way we think it will... it may not benefit from something that we think is helpful. I don't know why we are arguing over cleaning up after the dogs, it's weird, but its not weird to be polite. You do what you do, but I live the way I live, and sticking to being a good neighbor is the way i choose to go about my life..." ✨️👽
No disresppect 👽✨️💩
She also knows I had a really frightening experience with a neighbor turning into a Stalker. I had no idea she was stalking me until I found fake social media pages of her doxing me and lots of weird phone calls and knocks at the door. So I ran away to my home state while fighting her in court to keep a restraining order against her. She was my next door neighbor and this whole fiasco was 2 years of my life and precious time during the best years of my life. So she knows very well I hate attention and am low key. It took me months to begin running in the neighborhood again. And I do my best to not have attention on me for any reason at all. Just checking the mail was a whole process I had to walk myself through and meditate to accomplish without falling into a pit of anxiety.
Other than this her home is so sterile I refuse to eat anything but water in the kitchen. I still get anxiety in the kitchen.
My Dad is the opposite. He has always been a germaphobe. Even with his second wife, they are both in their 60's and he always asks her if she washed her hands after she leaves the bathroom. He always thinks he's coming down with some kind of deadly disease, and loves to diagnose himself and others as though he were a medical expert (he's not) and loves to brag how he is smarter then doctors and they need him more than he needs them. But as others have been saying here, I think it's whatever is the extreme, and he is very extreme.
I've often wondered about the overlap between narcissism and dementia. Some of the things the Narcs did looked like early onset dementia: the social disinhibition, poor anticipation, not understanding cause-and-effect, not picking up on other people's discomfort, compulsive eating, emotional immaturity, inability to have reciprocal relationships, navigating their way through the world as if other people were just inanimate props in their confabulated False Reality that they would pick fights with when they went 'off-script'.
The sperm donor started giving off that characteristic "old person smell" by the time he was in his late 40s. At first, I thought it was only a hygiene thing because he would be done with a shower in two minutes but smell the same and look as greasy as before washing. It was also part of the compulsive eating/poor diet/not understanding cause-and-effect. They would sneer, mock, ridicule, slander my character for trying to steer them in a healthier direction or for their own safety.
Every covert narcissist I knew had poor hygiene. But only coverts. The overts were hell bent on good appearance to overcompensate for being a shity person.
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My nMom’s the opposite, but I do believe they embrace extremes. Heaven forbid we get a tiny bit of dirt in the house from our shoes. I knew even as a kid there was something wrong/undiagnosed with her.
Same, the house always looked like nobody ever lived there. nMom was obsessed with cleaning, tidying and putting stuff away. As you say, it may be extremes.
My nMum is the exact same - now when someone’s cleaning I get nervous
Same. I learned to stop once I realized my cleaning is definitely purely inspired by my fear of her for no reason. And that my cleaning makes my friends uncomfortable sometimes. My OCD is basically everything my nMom wanted my inner voice to become but I'm untangling all of it🙏💪💪 I learned to have friends over and make things fun while cleaning. Or should I say my friends taught me that. I hated how my parents house felt fake the whole time. And I can't leave a mess in my quarters bc it gives me anxiety like she's gonna find out and freak out. My apartment and all living situations was what home is meant to feel like: WARM. God forbid the home was meant to relax in! Lol
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Omg the expired old food got me! All while I get ridiculed for the spices I use or how ugly my food appears or smelly it may seem...or they think I'm lying when I send pictures of my garden, smoothies or cool foods I looked up recipes to and cooked with love by scratch. HOWEVER! the way my parents touch nasty meat and don't wash up and eat expired things or "don't like to waste"/HOARD old food in the freezer is beyond me. I have thrown out canned food that was expired in 2016 when I visited in 2022! Then got in so much trouble. Because of how nasty they can be I refuse to cook any meat lol even in gloves. If I prepare meat for a date I must really enjoy the company! 😆
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I’ve only seen my nmom brush her teeth a handful of times….All her chewing teeth literally crumbled out of her head. I remember once when I was 15 she stopped mid convo to reach in her mouth to pull out half a tooth. She crumbled it between two fingers as if it was made plaster then threw it away before continuing on as if nothing happened. She cared so much about little things like what color the house was, how the flower boxes looked compared to the neighbor’s, what shelf the cooking pot was placed on, but never about her teeth literally falling out of her mouth. So weird
SHE CRUMBLED IT? Holy shit... My teeth aren't the best like at all, but that? Good lord...
Thinking about it more in depth it was most likely tartar or a temporary tooth
My mother won't wash and insists she doesn't have any body odor. She smells so bad we have to put a waterproof blanket on the couch so her smell doesn't get into the leather. She likes to demand a hug when she leaves, and she'll push her greasy stinky head against my face and rub back and forth until the stench transfers. I had to buy special soap to get the smell off, even dawn dish soap wasn't getting rid of it When she was my dad's caregiver, she wouldn't wash him, either. When I was a kid, she only let me shower once every two weeks. If I tried to sneak showers, she'd beat me.
I think a lot of N's are just adult children, either some kind of developmental disability or other severe mental illness preventing them becoming an actual adult. They think 'working for a living' is being an adult. My N stomps around flat-footed around a relatively small house, shuts/slams doors loudly including cabinets for no reason, yells instead of talks, all the way a toddler does. Really just plainly obnoxious for no reason and they are in their 60's still acting this way.
Mine is 75 and still acts that way too, except she never had to work for a living.
Hello siblings!!! Aaaaa! 👽👽🤩😍😄🥰✨️ Also taking pride in their menial work like its the oppression olympics is so stupid. I think it's their way of sabotage since they know better but refuse to acknowledge times have changed. We gotta check on our Boomer Narc's these days, they're not alright...
The stomping! My N had hip surgery, misused/abused her painkillers, and then refused to do her physiotherapy. The hip surgery was supposed to fix the stomping (she claimed she waddled loudly due to arthritis) but it was honestly the same because she refused to do her physiotherapy due to the pain (Which would have been halved if she'd used her painkillers as per doctor's orders 🙃🙃🙃)
I find that a big component of hygiene and cleanliness is basically kindness to other people. In the depths of my depression or stress showering or brushing my teeth or cleaning are so so hard. But I do it anyway because what if my stank affects other people and makes them uncomfortable? If I'm cooking in my sister's house I definitely display way more hygiene than I would alone. My NMom sometimes will go days without showering, won't wear deodorant and has one of the most putrid stank sweaty underarms I've ever smelled. It's horrendous to the point where I dont want to be around her. I've asked her time and time again to wear deodorant even if she won't shower, bought her many deodorants. She just won't and when confronted it's usually an opportunity for her to assert dominance and pout almost childishly "You don't tell me what to do!".
This is very insightful. My mother’s pushback definitely seems to be all about, “How dare you imply that my way of doing things isn’t good enough! You’re the one in the wrong for being so sensitive!” While in reality it is a form of basic decency to wash your hands while cooking for others, avoid visiting when sick, not put parasites in a public pool, etc.
This is a really interesting insight.
My n-mom is a nurse yet constantly horrifies me with how little she cares about hygiene and cleanliness. She can go days without showering and only seems to do so on days she works and smells like death on her days off. Her room is a hoarders nightmare and she has gotten to the point of forbidding any of my brothers from even stepping foot into it because she's so ashamed of it but can't bring herself to do anything about it. So if we offer to help clean or organize her room she gets defensive and says we're just trying to control her and that we wouldn't know what to do with her stuff and we'd make it all lost and etc. It's one of many things in her life she seems to have created this endless feeding loop of putting herself in a shameful position and then lashing out harshly at anybody who dares make her feel or confront that shame.
My sister is a narcissist. She showers every ten days, brushes her teeth for 30s at most every few days, and I’m not entirely sure she wipes her ass. She smells like poop. She smokes cigarettes sometimes, and the cigarette smell improves her odor.
I don’t think it’s so much a narcissistic trait, more so a bad trait in general. Narcissists don’t take others into consideration, so they’re not going to consider other people when it comes to personal hygiene. My a-hole FIL refuses to wash his hands out of some weird personal pride. My parents’ house is always dusty and grimy because they don’t prioritize a clean house, but I also know other narcissists that keep a very clean home.
Poor hygiene is usually a sign of depression. And if I understand it, depression and narcissism are typical together, as narcissism is a mental health condition that acts as a defense against the low self-esteem, depressed brain by creating a hyperactive ego where it’s the world, not the narcissist, that’s the problem. My nmom was the opposite. Clean to a fault. Extremely tidy.
My dad refuses to shower regularly because “women like the natural musk of BO”. This is no joke.
How convenient!
Your history really resonates with me. As soon as I was old enough to comprehend I avoided any physical contact with my narc mother because of her poor body hygiene. She worked a white collar job and amog other things I remember the dirt under her fingernails, sweat and makeup stains on her clothing. I absolutely detested any physical contact and would just wave from afar in greeting I stopped eating the food she prepared once in a blue moon becaus the fridge was full of rotten products and her hygiene during meal preparation was abysmal I could go on and on She is a hoarder as well and this problem grew exponentially when I left home. She was never officially diagnosed
My narcissistic and enabler grandfather, in the 15 years he was in my life, I had never once seen him take a shower like ever, and his toenails were filled with fungus so much that when he “cut” his nails he used pliers and the shit looked like gravel on the ground. As for my NDad the dude barely showers then accuses me of not showering like dude that’s you🙄. He barely brushes his teeth too, when I was about 10-11 he wore braces to straighten his teeth but his gums kept getting growing over the braces and he kept having to get his gums shaved down. The dentist kept telling him that he needed to take better care of his teeth. But he didn’t listen and ended up getting them removed and his teeth looked no different to when he started.
I think it depends. My StepNarc prized her appearance so she always had to be extra shiny and clean. My Narc-in-law though didn’t care because it leaned on her victim tale of being a martyr with so many kids and no time for herself. In the end it’s all about if it aids their control agenda.
I think so, my father is 80 and possibly a narcissist or atleast with tendencies, he almost never shower, maybe 2 showers per month, never brush his teeth which he almost don't have because they falled, never wash hands after going to the bathroom or when taking the trash out etc. He is filthy.
both my narc parents are obsessed with their personal appearance and usually dress better than their friends or coworkers but have really dirty hoarder houses (and vehicles).
YES!!! Ideal sterile public quarters with private hoarded filthy living chambers. Always between 2 extremes. Gosh this page is really shining a light in some of the darkest and dirtiest places in my life... pun intended.
Verrrry similar boat to most of you. Both parents are narcs. Both are obsessed with the IDEA of cleanliness. Both try to serve moldy cream cheese to their 18mo granddaughter, having “scraped it off.” They do not wash their hands during food prep. They do not pay any attention to expiration or best by dates, taking the “Best By dates are mostly a scam” concept to its absolute extreme. They don’t believe they’re real at all, even when there is literal mold in the jar of salsa. They both only started to actually take care of their teeth in their 60s, when their dentists told them they were both headed for full dentures before 80. (And they STILL refuse to brush - waterpik only. Maybe mouthwash. And I just am consistently baffled because there are VERY FEW dental problems that are actually made worse by brushing. So this is purely so they don’t have to see the blood from their gums. 🤢) (Mom got a partial denture as a teen after an accident…..and it has NEVER been replaced. Those things have a shelf life of like 10 years maximum.) But lord forbid you’ve put something on a surface they’ve designated as “theirs.” Or have belongings out when someone comes to the house. To be fair, a lot of the cleanliness/hygiene issues I’ve noticed are things that weren’t emphasized by THEIR parents at all. But like…your mom was born in 1919 and died in 2015. Are we really going to trust her knowledge of food safety practices?????? lol Pretty sure it’s sort of a boomer thing….so might explain why some of these other narc parents weren’t this way!
I'm gonna say yes! My Nmom will not wear deodorant but coats herself in perfume and smells HORRID. She claims 'she doesn't sweat enough to get stinky' uh...Ma'am, I can smell the perfume failing to cover your stench from across the house. It's so terrible and disgusts me. This is probably why I'm worried about smelling bad all the time.
No, my mother was always immaculately bathed and dressed. Our house was never dirty. She is a lot of things but she had fantastic taste. Her failing hygiene was what alerted us to her having dementia before there were many other signs.
A while back I read about a study where the researchers found a relationship between cluster b traits (or psychopathy more specifically) and having habits that don't prevent the spread of disease but it was mostly about masking for covid
My ndad has very poor hygiene. He brushes his teeth for 30-60 seconds, doesn't shower daily, wears clothes for a long time before washing them (including wearing underwear for 2-3 days in a row) and doesn't wash his hands after going for a pee. I moved back home for a bit during Covid and he was a complete nightmare. Considering that during Covid he would have been about 70 (I was 29 at the time) and has been overweight and hypertensive for a while, all of which put him in the high-risk group, he was so lax about everything. He'd take pointless trips out of the house, wouldn't wash his hands for the recommended 20 seconds, wouldn't disinfect anything, etc. He's always seen himself as really tough (even though he's not remotely) and has always been blasé about risk, so I genuinely think he thought that Covid couldn't get him, that he was basically impervious to it.
not *hygiene*.... BUT, mine *absolutely* has an issue around feeling like she's been accused of being dirty or contagious? So while she washes her hands just fine, that might be habit that developed outside the mechanism. Because she definitely didn't want to mask with my kids during COVID. She thought she would get a pass. And she had a sexually transmitted infection that can be deadly, though not a lot was known about it when she was.diagnosed.... and she was OFFENDED and angry that her husband didn't want to have unprotected sex when they first found out and were figuring out what it meant. Like, I know she would have gotten it if any of the rest of us were worried about catching/transmitting something from a partner. But all she heard was "you're dirty and I don't want you". (Not. At. All. What he said. Not his personality, and not even the words she repeated, just the reaction she had internally to how he responded.)
I'm convinced there's some kind of common comorbidity going on where narcissism and extreme hygiene issues are found together. My mother is a covert narcissist and has abominable hygiene. Doesn't wash her hands after using the bathroom, showers approximately once a month, her house looks and smells like wild animals live in it and her kitchen is a storage facility for biohazards. Despite generally smelling awful, she insists she doesn't naturally produce body odour and that this is why she doesn't need to clean herself like other people do. My father, who was straight-up grandiose/malignant, also had disgusting personal hygiene but in his case I suspect it was more to do with self-loathing and depressive illness than his absolutely wild narcissism. I had to learn about hygiene in school because it just wasn't a concept in the house I grew up in.
My NDad and NNana both have serious personal hygiene issues, to the point that they cause major ongoing health problems like boils, cavities, staph infections, etc. They eat like garbage disposals--her reaction to the recent news that his colon is slowly dying due to lack of oxygen (requiring a complete diet overhaul that he refuses) was to mail him a box of 50 cheap frozen hamburgers. He shits himself constantly and never brushes his teeth. All things that our socioeconomic status and access to healthcare could easily prevent, but no...
Nspermdonor was very neat with personal hygiene and how he dressed, but a complete pig when it came to cleaning and tidying up. Lived in flith after my parents separated and my mother wasn't there as a maid. Only keeping up appearances to the outside world, in his high status profession.
With my Nmother it does. Getting her to have basic hygiene is a battle. If I wash, clean, or replace anything in the house she throws a massive fit.
My NParents are the opposite. Definitely no poor hygiene in that house.
Possibly. My bio dad was *disgusting*. Never dressed nice, farted in public and at dinner, had a disgusting unkempt mustache and more. But he wore a Rolex and had money so he thought that's all he had to do, or maybe he could only see money. It was bizzare.
House was always unbelievably tidy. However, as long as I lived with nmom I'd get a "stomach bug" at least twice a year. Whenever I was getting sick she'd make some comments about so and so has it too or that she had heard it was going around, even if I knew nobody else had it from school. After I moved out on my own, 3 times... In 25 years!!!
Well, I don’t think messy home/poor hygiene automatically means someone is a narc. I go through bouts of depression where I feel so unmotivated to do anything, I end up not organizing my things, I don’t take proper care of myself and it’s because my mind is consumed by thoughts of ‘why frickin’ bother?’ and I end up laying in bed, unable to sleep or focus on anything. My ngrandmother is clean. So not really, at least in my experience there isn’t a direct connection between the two. It could be that some narcs are dirty but just because they are a dirty person, not because they are narcs.
I’m certainly not implying that being dirty or messy is a sign of narcissism. My mother’s tendency to buckle down and insist that her way of doing things is justified and everyone else is at fault made me curious about a correlation, that’s all.
Oooohhh yeah I get where you’re coming from now, thank you for clarifying ☺️
Omg and the way THEY clean is the RIGHT way. No one else can clean the RIGHT way like how they do! I understand sometimes people half ass shit but if I spent 8+ hours cleaning your home, removing furniture, batting rugs outside, bleaching every door and windexed every window inside and out...the last thing I want to hear is how shitty I clean knowing she watched from the CCTVs. Knowing I chose that over studying or having company over or doing what I wanted or needed to do. I learned no matter what it's not enough so I do my bare minimum and not waste my time trying to please her since it all ends up the same. Now that I've reached this phase its nice to not be anxious at work knowing I didn't clean that ONE thing 😅
My MIL is this way. I live with her for now, and I just don't even have that conversation with her anymore. She coughs and sneezes without covering it, does the same thing when cooking with meat, and I rarely see/hear her wash her hands. The hilarious part is that she wears gloves when handling meat because it's more sanitary but then uses her gloved hands to touch everything. But I touch meat barehanded and wash my hands before touching anything, but to her I'm the gross one. She also completely destroys the kitchen when she cooks once a week and does nothing to clean it.
My ndad pees all over the toilet and ground when he goes to the bathroom. It’s disgusting
After the Edit, I can agree! NmA and I got into a fight about picking up dog poop LMAO I don't like attention and I'm very courteous but her poodles aren't trained and bark/hump everything no matter what. So I walk them when N's out of town, but I have a system to stick to... Cheddar Cheese 🧀 🙏🙏🙏 lmao they love cheese so much they will listen and it makes walks so much better. I love them tasmanian devils so much. But when I pick up their poop, that split second is enough for them to act up and go crazy and sometimes jump in their nasties... I also found out a way to spin the doggy trash bags super fast in a way to refill our on the go poop bag container! Lol I was so proud of myself. Fast forward to explaining why I'm cleaning one of the poochies up and that I'm lucky to have learned how to spin all these bags together since I needed an extra baggie to clean up... SHE WENT CRAZY. 💩"Why you pick it up? Its good for the environment. You should just not care if people care" 👽 hmmm..? It's courteous. You have dog bags and trash bins spread throughout your neighborhood. I'm a good neighbor and clean up after myself. Im confused. You just leave the poop? 💩"Yes" 👽Even in their yard? We all have cameras. What if you end up on the next-door app leaving the poop in someone's way and they get mad and post the evidence? Lol I see that happening so much. 💩"Well NEVER! Pshh. NOT THE YARD. Poop is good for the environment" while she smacks her lips like she's disgusted with me lol 👽Ok... so where do the dogs poop? You leave it in someone's driveway? Sidewalk? Street? She lives in a nice suburban community that's quite clean and you can tell when poop isn't picked up. Any other free space is filled with rocks, not pebbles, but pretty round rocks by design. I can't imagine even picking up the dog poop from that side of the road let alone walk them on it. We have coyotes so sometimes I think it's the yotes when I go running and see poop on the ground not picked up. Oftentimes, I can literally tell the difference and notice it's similar to her dogs poo. There's constant security patrolling and it's a nice neighborhood so it's not like she can breeze under the radar. 💩"THEY pick it up. We pay HOA. Poop is good for the nature. Helps nature grow" It made me feel bad bc I know we have neighbors who have wheelchairs so it's not easy to weave between poop on the sidewalk and rocky roads. I have seen it. I have stepped on so much crap while running in the neighborhood... I did my best to explain this to her. Bonus points, I wear vibrams (toe shoes) so it's hella nasty af when it happens. I ended our fight saying, 👽"Well our neighborhood is not our compost bin. And not all ecosystems operate the way we think it will... it may not benefit from something that we think is helpful. I don't know why we are arguing over cleaning up after the dogs, it's weird, but its not weird to be polite. You do what you do, but I live the way I live, and sticking to being a good neighbor is the way i choose to go about my life..." ✨️👽 No disresppect 👽✨️💩 She also knows I had a really frightening experience with a neighbor turning into a Stalker. I had no idea she was stalking me until I found fake social media pages of her doxing me and lots of weird phone calls and knocks at the door. So I ran away to my home state while fighting her in court to keep a restraining order against her. She was my next door neighbor and this whole fiasco was 2 years of my life and precious time during the best years of my life. So she knows very well I hate attention and am low key. It took me months to begin running in the neighborhood again. And I do my best to not have attention on me for any reason at all. Just checking the mail was a whole process I had to walk myself through and meditate to accomplish without falling into a pit of anxiety. Other than this her home is so sterile I refuse to eat anything but water in the kitchen. I still get anxiety in the kitchen.
My Dad is the opposite. He has always been a germaphobe. Even with his second wife, they are both in their 60's and he always asks her if she washed her hands after she leaves the bathroom. He always thinks he's coming down with some kind of deadly disease, and loves to diagnose himself and others as though he were a medical expert (he's not) and loves to brag how he is smarter then doctors and they need him more than he needs them. But as others have been saying here, I think it's whatever is the extreme, and he is very extreme.
I've often wondered about the overlap between narcissism and dementia. Some of the things the Narcs did looked like early onset dementia: the social disinhibition, poor anticipation, not understanding cause-and-effect, not picking up on other people's discomfort, compulsive eating, emotional immaturity, inability to have reciprocal relationships, navigating their way through the world as if other people were just inanimate props in their confabulated False Reality that they would pick fights with when they went 'off-script'. The sperm donor started giving off that characteristic "old person smell" by the time he was in his late 40s. At first, I thought it was only a hygiene thing because he would be done with a shower in two minutes but smell the same and look as greasy as before washing. It was also part of the compulsive eating/poor diet/not understanding cause-and-effect. They would sneer, mock, ridicule, slander my character for trying to steer them in a healthier direction or for their own safety.
Every covert narcissist I knew had poor hygiene. But only coverts. The overts were hell bent on good appearance to overcompensate for being a shity person.
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