There’s a handful of people in my circle of friends that have partners that continuously talk about everything they do. Whether it be around the house, daily tasks, helping with kids, worrying etc etc. The most significant example is my friend 42F and her partner of 21 yrs 45M. They have 3 kids under 12. She works fulltime as an overnight RN and he has been out of work since 2020.
But the reality in all of the scenarios is that they aren’t actually doing much at all.
The worst part is that they are so adamant about what they contribute when, they are talking to the person who’s actually doing all the things. I was looking at self-persuasion but in more of a negative way but that doesn’t really check all the boxes. In my friends dynamic, the lengths in which her partner goes to while claiming they do so much is beyond comprehension. It really appears that he genuinely believes that he does all these things that he speaks about. I think that they’ve now spent so many years talking about “all that they do”, that they’ve no longer deal with reality. You can’t tell them differently, they don’t accept any factual proof that dispels their narrative.
Is there a better term for this?
TL/DR
Can people convince themselves they do a lot but in reality they actually do nothing?
Comments
Yeah, people can totally convince themselves they do more than they actually do. It’s more like self-delusion than gaslighting unless there’s intentional manipulation. It’s frustrating when they ignore the facts