to think I didn't make a "smug" comment?

[DeepEndOfTheOcean]

It was a colleagues last day on Friday (as she is leaving to go traveling). I have recently announced that I'm pregnant (pfb)

Colleague was asking me about the future, due date/scans/maternity leave etc and I asked her about where exactly she was going to travel to. I said to her -

"I'd have love to have done something like that, but I guess I chose love over travel"

Apparently this was a smug remark?

Aibu to think it wasn't?

I suppose its odd because the normal way of saying things would be,

""I'd have loved to have done something like that, but I guess getting pregnant makes that a bit difficult..."

BTW welcome to MN op.

Sounds very smug, kinda like "Oh you're going travelling? Well I'm in LOVE and having a BABY!"

QUite an odd thing to come out with.

I clearly think differently to everyone else which would explain a lot because I honestly would have thought "Sad Cow!" if someone said that to me and I was going off travelling, I thought it when I read the OP!

I think it was just badly worded. I'd have said something like:

'Wow, Lucky you! and there's me choosing to have baby sick over me for the next year! I'm really envious!'

I honestly don't think op intended it to sound smug...I hope...

PrincessBabyCat Apologise for being thoughtless?

If someone called me up to apologize for a comment made during a string of good byes, I most likely wouldn't even remember it. Even if I did, there'd be far too much going on during the last day to dwell on it or think about it longer than a minute or so.

It was a faux pas, let's not blow it out of proportion. Too much time has really passed to do anything about it. It's too trivial a comment to warrant a phone call or email to discuss with the person.

If it was the friend in question calling her smug, I'm sure she apologized to her to save face. If it was someone else calling her on it, who cares?

The sentiment was okay, but you should have said something like "I chose this over travel". Or just, "I probably won't be travelling for a while". You must be able to see that saying she has chosen not to love or experience love is a nasty thing to say, even if you didn't really mean that! Even "babies"/"family" would have been really rude.

That's a very insensitive thing to say if she's single. Quite amazingly so. Cringe.

I think it was not smug and i think that traveling the world would be equal to choosing love as you can travel gain various perspectives and experiences of different cultures and then have a family.

Ick cringe worthy and so smug. Yuck.

I'm not suggesting that she should, just saying it's an option if she does listen to the prevailing MN wisdom and wants to. It may be a trivial comment, but if someone has been hurt by it (as in some of the more extreme examples given) then apologising would be nice. It might also give the OP some insight into how her comments could be interpreted by others, which is always useful.

I agree that it's the reaction of the person to whom she said it that's important though - if the traveller didn't care, then it matters not a jot whether a third party thought the OP was smug, but seeing as it doesn't look like she's coming back, even in sackcloth and ashes, I suppose we'll never know...

This thread has been on my mind since earlier because it sounded familiar and I've just realised why.

It's like that episode of Frasier, where Daphne and Niles meet another couple from their Lamaze class in the coffee shop.

The other man claims to have all the pregnancy symptoms his wife has and rushes out feeling sick. Niles says he has Couvade Syndrome (yes I did google the name) and the woman says "oh…we just call it love."

When she's gone Niles says he doesn't like them but then he's jealous and he pretends he's having the same symptoms and repeats her "we call it love" comment when Frasier mentions Couvade Syndrome later on.

I'm sure she and you will have forgotten all about it in a day or two OP. It's just one of those things that can be taken either way and just came out sounding wrong to your colleague. It happens to us all.

I wouldn't have taken kindly to that comment either!

I think it sounds smuggy McSmug, but I am sympathetic because once, on a work night out, I finished my drink, stood up and said 'Well, I'd better be getting home to my husband and children' to a table of single people. Only after one of them said 'Well all RIGHT then!' did I realise how it had sounded.

They forgave me after I had spluttered out an apology and backtracked into details about my snotty little monsters and the carnage that awaited me at home

My SIL would say something like that, probably in a baby voice

Maybe the coworker has lots of loves in the different countries she is traveling to.

I feel sorry for you op. There was obviously no malice behind your comment but first your work colleague and now lots of strange old bats on the internet are determined to see the worst in your comment.

I'm going to remember this comment next time someone is droning on to me about her "travelling experiences" and several "gap yah"s. Hilarious op.

Yeah, 'cos disagreeing with Mintyy makes you a 'strange old bat'

Where the heck is that OP???!

Oi Mintyy I am not strange

I'm not seeing the worst in the comment itself (as I said in my first post, so assume I am not among the strange old bat brigade ), but I do think that it shows a lack of self-awareness to not even consider that a comment such as this could be taken in a negative manner, even when someone tells you that they thought you sounded smug.

I think most of us would gladly forgive someone a remark that later makes them cringe when they realise how it could have sounded, but to not even consider how it could have come across and insist that it wasn't smug even after thinking about it for a whole weekend does sound a bit like the OP isn't seeing things from anyone else's perspective. I can't speak for everyone of course, but that is my take on this.

No Gordy! She will come back...she will...won't she...no, I'm sure she will...definitely coming back...definitely soon...anytime right about....now....or NOW.....................maybe now.....or really soon anyway....

Oh don't say that gordy

If the OP doesn't come back then Gordy gets to be not just any old smug but right fucking MN smug.