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Original poster

What's the most insensitive thing anyone has ever said to you?

147 replies

whatathingtosay · 16/10/2017 08:13

Was at BIL's wedding on Saturday - lovely day, popular couple, huge guest list, big party. It was basically the opposite of ours, which was family-only, small, quiet, over very quickly.

On the dance floor, MIL comes stomping along (out of time) and says: "It's lovely isn't it. Do you now realise now how staid your own wedding was?"

Now, my own wedding was going to be quite big and friendly. But it got cancelled and had to be replanned. One of several reasons it got cancelled and had to be replanned was MIL's domineering behaviour! By the time we got to organising it a second time, I didn't have the emotional energy to invest in anything big, so I just had the simplest wedding possible.

I think pretty much everyone who knows me well realises how hurt and humiliated I felt by the whole thing, and how much DH and I struggled through that period. So for her to bring it up in the middle of a happy day celebrating BIL was just staggering. I honestly didn't know where to put myself - I just physically froze in the middle of the song 'We Are Family' (oh the irony).

OP posts:
EdmundCleverClogs · 16/10/2017 08:43

When I was a teenager, I went through a stage where I completely gave up on myself. Stopped going to school, put on a lot of weight, lost all my friends and just couldn't see a good future. My mother said that it was ok because I was 'the lowest rung of society, keeping everyone else up' and she wasn't surprised I had no friends because 'who'd want to be friends with someone like you anyway?'. In hindsight, I've (unsurprisingly) come to realise she was the primary cause of my low self esteem.

My MiL suggested I wasn't supportive enough of my partner's 'creativity talents'. I was quite insulted due to the fact in the previous year I had 100% supported one of his ventures that spectacularly fell through - I had to basically fix it before we lost everything. I would still support any dream he had, but of course we're both much warier now. It stung that she obviously thinks any 'failure' he has is on me.

Lime19 · 16/10/2017 08:44

Father in law: "how do you feel about your husband working with all these lovely and beautiful women"

Am I not pretty then?

Stranger in lift, whilst looking at my newborn "are you feeding him properly?"

Slow hand clap for making me feel guilty with the fewest words and fucking mind your own business

Original poster
whatathingtosay · 16/10/2017 08:44

mamasiz - I know, but these things in childhood really hurt, don't they?! I can remember my mother saying "Your sister has beautiful chestnut hair, but yours is about as close to green as it's possible to get naturally". I have had a complex about it ever since going grey now, though, so less of an issue.

fakename - Flowers I had something scarily similar. My medical records make it really clear I've had anorexia and was in recovery. Nurse (a size 18) kept saying to me "we larger ladies", "we big girls". I was only just a size 10-12 at the time. It was deliberate and unbelievably cruel and I changed my surgery immediately. She was exactly like that vicious character, Pauline, in League of Gentlemen.

lazydM - How utterly and completely insensitive!! Shock

wobbly - That's so sad. Sometimes the absence of positive regard can be so awful.

OP posts:
Welwyncitydweller · 16/10/2017 08:46

Lots of little things down the years. My older cousin was drawing caricatures of us all and said mine was hard to do because my face is so plain. I knew it was but it hurt as a kid.

Squirmy65ghyg · 16/10/2017 08:48

Also my dad saying I would be a lawyer and it sister would be a model. Garraavagagagga.

ShotsFired · 16/10/2017 08:50

This sounds ridiculously trivial, but... waaaaay back in primary school, I had asked to join some boys in whatever game they were playing, but was told that I couldn't because I was "too rough".

Given the fact I can still remember exactly where I was stood on the playground and the burn of humiliation it caused some 40 years later, it seems like it had quite the effect on my confidence and self-esteem.

As I said, ridiculous. But lasting nonetheless.

Suze1621 · 16/10/2017 08:50

Less than 3 months after being widowed in traumatic circumstances, 'friends' telling me I was young enough to meet someone else! Wanted to punch them at the time and their crass insensitivity still hurts.

Chocolou · 16/10/2017 08:53

I told my mum I was pregnant with my first child and her first grandchild. Her response was oh you're joking. Was it planned?

Hate the woman. I have along list of her comments including telling someone I was a bitch just because they said I was pretty!! She really was something else.

Tinksee · 16/10/2017 08:54

“You are so ugly!”

A horrible boy at school said this. I was fourteen.

morningconstitutional2017 · 16/10/2017 08:57

There are some horrid people about. OP, if you're still in contact with MIL (and why would you be?) I'd suggest giving her a taste of her own medicine. What's the betting she'll find it indigestible? Remember these bullies only get away with it because we're too nice to give it back.

Trailedanderror · 16/10/2017 08:58

@Welwyncitydweller
Drawing caricatures is easiest with strong features so your cousin meant plain as in no 'startling' bits! It wasn't a dig Flowers

Bitsandbobsalot · 16/10/2017 09:00

My mil is a absolute class act at hurtful comments but here are a few of her best

“Isn’t it a shame you had youngest dd” (8 at the time and the sunshine of my life)
“I love bil and sil and there kids more than you and yours”
“I wish you’d of let me talk to your mother when you first got pregnant things could of bring do different “ aka I wish I’d of got your mum to talk you into a abortion and eldest dd wouldn’t be here.

I think anyone who thinks like this is a vile human let alone say them out loud to intentionally hurt someone. I have very little to do with her now. Also my response to her have changed. I used to stand there dumb struck or get shitty with her but I ended up looking crazy for re acting. So now I just say. Well me and the kids didn’t pick you either. Or my favourite is “that’s not nice. Are you not well? I’ll keep you in my prayers “ 😂

What I’ve learnt op is when people say mean hurtful things to you it actually says nothing about you and a lot about them. You should feel sorry for her that even on a very happy family event she’s so bitter that she wants to upset you.

MoosicalDaisy · 16/10/2017 09:00

My sister got adopted, the following year she sadly passed away 11 months after her terminal diagnosis. Then MIL said "Well you didn't know her very well anyway"

Bitsandbobsalot · 16/10/2017 09:01

*could of being so different
Stupid spellcheck

TonicAndTonic · 16/10/2017 09:02

"Are your family problems all sorted now?"

Said by my then boss - I had just returned to work after a couple of weeks off because my mum died. It was actually kindly meant - he was trying to ask how I was - he was just so socially inept that I don't think it really came out how he intended it to sound. Sad

CherryChasingDotMuncher · 16/10/2017 09:04

“You’re not as shit at parenting as I thought you were gonna be” Hmm said by SIL when my first was about 1 and I’d REALLY struggled with motherhood.

When pressed further she based her assumption on the fact that I once got the nappy the wrong way round on her DD (I’d never changed a nappy before).

Sparkletastic · 16/10/2017 09:04

OP pleeeeease don’t spend Christmas with your in-laws. Your MIL deserves no consideration from you at all.

EdmundCleverClogs · 16/10/2017 09:05

Oh remembered another one. Bumped into a family friend when out shopping with my sister. 'Wow what a beautiful young woman you've become' they said to sister (not wrong, she is gorgeous). Followed by 'oh Edmund (as if I just appeared out of fat air), you look... just like you mother'. Ah, cheers for that. Guess I can only hope I'm not as ugly on the inside.

Welwyncitydweller · 16/10/2017 09:13

Thank you Trailed. Happily I didn’t hold it against him and we’re great drinking buddie now Smile

NuttyMcAlletun · 16/10/2017 09:16

Oh, you are pregnant!
Not anymore, but thank you.

Oh, you are pregnant!
Nope, just medical problems/ infertility that make me swollen, but thank you.

Original poster
whatathingtosay · 16/10/2017 09:22

sparkle - She really used to upset me, but DH and I have better boundaries now. He was horrified by what she said. It will be a flying visit at Christmas - it's actually a fairly easy time of year to see them because MIL is absent for most of the time. She insists on decorating the tree, house, cake on Christmas Eve not in advance, even if that means she doesn't get any time to spend with her two sons - then again, it is clear that they are really only there as ticks on the Christmas bingo, not as individuals in their own right with whom she might want some kind of relationship.

OP posts:
oxcat1 · 16/10/2017 09:31

I had been struggling to get pregnant for a long time, and finally got a positive test. Very cautiously, I put a few baby bits aside: I had been running a very small business buying and selling baby clothes on eBay so didn’t buy then specially, but just didn’t resell them.

I lost the baby, and was told by the doctors that my own health meant I would probably never be well enough to have a baby. I asked my best friend at the time to get rid of the stuff: I couldn’t bear to look at it but found a refuge that would take it all.

She cane downstairs and told me, in all seriousness, that it was probably a good job I wasn’t going to be a mum as, given the clothes and bits that i had put aside, the child would have been ‘the freak in the playground’ and everyone would have teased him/her because of my choice of clothes.

That really hurt.
She then took my husband a couple of years later anyway....

threads123 · 16/10/2017 09:32

My personal favourite (trigger warning)-

When at 40 I finally plucked up the courage to tell me mother that my brother had abused me throughout childhood, she said "Oh thank God, I thought you were going to tell me you had cancer". I've never forgotten

WhatwouldAryado · 16/10/2017 09:32

So many things. "Of course you'll do everything right this time though" during my pregnancy after 3 miscarriages. From my mum. Possibly not her most thoughtless comment. But a very painful one. She really does think miscarriages are the fault of the mother Hmm

Shodan · 16/10/2017 09:36

My mother has come out with some corkers in her time...

She and my sister, after my first divorce and before I met my 2nd H, agreeing that I "couldn't afford to be picky as a lone parent ".

Another time I was laughingly relaying a comment made to me by a male friend at my hobby, that I was "Posh Totty", Mum turned to me with an incredulous look on her face and a loud, disbelieving "YOU?".

And perhaps the most hurtful, for some reason- she always described my sister as a "honeypot" while leaving a deafening silence about my own attributes.

Strange woman Grin