To be called lucky an insult?

[newmum2018385]

I think I am overthinking this too much but just wondered what others thought. Do you find the word lucky insulting? As in you don't deserve what you have. Two examples a man at my work use to tell me my DH was lucky to have me. I didn't like it as I felt he was saying DH was not good enough for me. This man has since been sacked btw nothing to do with me he was a sleaze with a lot of women.
Also recently someone who clearly wants a baby told me I was lucky to have my baby. Again it kind of felt like she was saying I didn't deserve my DD somehow.
AIBU to find the work lucky insulting?
Know this is abit of a non issue.

Pegashush there are lots of 'bloody good' mothers who have children who cannot do the things your children can.

I think people are meaning fortunate rather than lucky in the OPs example. The two words are often used in the same way but there can be more of a sense of undeserved to the word lucky. So saying your DH is fortunate to have you is congratulating him on the wonderful benefit of having lovely you as his wife - its a compliment to you both. Saying he is lucky to have you can have the connotation that he is punching above his weight, that you are better than he deserves , which would be a slight on your husband and therefore a slight on you by choosing someone lesser. It doesn't have to have been intended that way at all and doesn't have to be taken as such.

There's masses of luck involved in children sleeping through and it has sod all to do with a good routine. My DD didn't sleep through until she was 2. My DS is only 9 weeks and doesn't yet sleep through but does do a 7 hour stretch, which DD didn't manage until she was about 18 months. I'm lucky that, unlike DD, he was born at term, a healthy weight and has no reflux or other medical issues. I had a good routine with DD but it made no difference.

Recently my husband told me that a lady from his work told him I was 'lucky' as he was a hands on dad and helps with cleaning in the house.... I did feel insulted. I work full time as well as my husband so I would not say I'm lucky! We are equals... Ah well I ranted for a long time to hubby about this. Just annoys me that men get praised for doing what they should be doing anyway where as I'm 'lucky' to have a man that does his fair share!

I enter competitions as a hobby. I do this after work and over weekends and it takes hours and hours. Wins are fewer and farther between nowadays and I get frustrated when I win something and people say “arent you lucky? I never win anything”. When I ask them if they actually enter competitions they say “no”.

I see how it can be shitty. Depends on the tone it's said in, I suppose. "You've done well!" might be a nicer way of saying it.

What I really dislike is: "It's alright for some!" / "You paid HOW MUCH!" / "Some people really have more money than sense" (the last two complete with very bitchy/amused looks). It's not a stealth boast. One was in response to my buying a 50 quid camera in the late 90s and another in response to a 30 quid rice cooker in the mid 2000s.

I appreciate it depends on tone etc as words can be loaded as a op said.

But generally, I think there is an element of luck in most things in life, whether you think it about yourself or not.

It doesn’t take anything away from your hard work or anything to recognise that there is an element of luck. Eg, “I’m slim because I work at it”. Ok, yes and maybe genetics, having a good knowledge about your own body and what helps you stay slim, enjoying good mental health or at least not having any MH issues which lead you to overeat or comfort eat, no binge / overeating disorders, access to healthy food and being able to afford to buy it, general resilience and will power, or a whole host of other things might play a part too.

Ditto things like, “I’m a self made man”; are you really? Or is it that you had a loving supportive family and access to education? Yes, you made the most of it, but you probably had a good start in life. Or, if not, then maybe you were lucky enough to be born, (blessed with ), the necessary personality traits to succeed and overcome certain obstacles.

As I say, it doesn’t mean you’re undeserving, it’s just that you are probably lucky, (or luckier than some), in some respects.

And using your example of having a baby being ‘lucky’; who has children because they ‘deserve’ them? It’s not as if only deserving people get to have babies. Luck has a lot to do with it imo. That doesn’t mean you don’t ‘deserve’ to have a baby at all .

I don't think you should tell someone they are lucky unless they are behaving in a crass way about their fortunate position.

People always say it to me , I believe you make your own luck to be honest ( obvs fertility issues aside )

I don't believe in luck. The good things that happen to me are huge blessings and I am very fortunate but don't perceive it as "luck".

Well, you can believe what you want, but don’t be surprised when other people use words correctly.

Lucky means ‘having or marked by good luck/fortune’. I think I had good luck to be born in Australia, not, say, Syria. And not to be born infertile. And many other things that I had no input into. Don’t you?

I think you’d have to be supremely arrogant and/or shortsighted to think you 100% ‘made your own luck’.

You are blowing it up massively. I think it's more an achowledment that they would like what you have (or by the sounds of it, what you husband has).

I have been told more than once that i am "lucky" because i "get to stay home all day every day doing what you want". No, i'm disabled to the point of being housebound and unable to do any of my hobbies and stare at the same four walls day in day out, sitting on the same knackered old sofa, struggling like hell for money and with no future prospects, wishing i was "lucky" enough to be healthy to the point i could do some mediocre 9-5 job!

This cartoon is about privilege but it's the same concept.
digitalsynopsis.com/inspiration/privileged-kids-on-a-plate-pencilsword-toby-morris/

I think you’d have to be supremely arrogant and/or shortsighted to think you 100% ‘made your own luck’.

Agreed.

Although I notice that a lot of people quote this line when it comes to their career. You need hard work for a good career, it doesn't just fall into your lap. And you need opportunities. The hard work you can take care of on your own, the opportunities are not within your control in the same way.

I agree re hard work and opportunities but putting in the hard work makes you better placed to seize any opportunities that might come along. There are no guarantees, of course.

Being born with a good brain is luck, but so to a great extent is being born with the abilities to maximise your potential, like drive and focus, and without things that can hold hold you back like ADD.

I think if it like this you are lucky to have a baby lots of people desperately want but can't have children it's not something you have total control of if your child is well and has no health concerns then your lucky but your children being well behaved because you have put time and effort into them isn't lucky.

It would depend on the context. If somebody said I was lucky to have got a job I knew I deserved then I would read in to it that the person felt I didn't deserve it through hard work or merit and had got the job more through 'luck'. That would annoy a saint.

But lucky to have kids, yeh, I do feel lucky I guess because fertility and conceiving is pot luck and nothing to do with longing for a child or how good a mother you could be. Plenty of people who deserve a child don't end up having one and plenty of shit people who don't deserve a child have one, or five.

I've been lucky in some respects and unlucky in others but trying to gain enough control over my life now that bad luck doesn't affect me. So much.

I don't like the MN attitude that everything's down to luck, and no ones wealth can be attributed to bloody hard work.

I know I didn't make the most of opportunities over my 20s, so we aren't as rich in our late 30s as others who did.

I was feeling terribly jealous of a friends Facebook photos of her snowboarding trip last week. She's very wealthy and "lucky", but then when we were in our early 20s, we were earning roughly the same, but she was working much longer hours in a much more stressful job, perhaps I was "lucky" to never have to stay more than half an hour late. Perhaps I was "lucky" my weekends were my own and I never got a call to go into the office.

We got roughly the same GCSEs and A levels, did the same degree at the same uni, she just worked a damn sight harder and picked a much harder career path. And now she earns around £80k a year, even though she's part time. We were both lucky to have roughly the same opportunities and good health, but the fact she's succeeded and I didn't isn't down to luck.

(Disclaimer, I'm perfectly happy with my life, posh snow holidays aside )

I feel lucky to have my kids. As it was down to luck and not anything else.
I went on holiday to Switzerland last week with my family and got told how lucky I was, well yes I do feel lucky to be able to see the world with my kids but it's also because I work full time and go without other things in order to afford going abroad. So in that sense, I'm not lucky, it's down to life choices etc.
Depends if it was meant in a malicious way or not.

i know someone who has a daughter, beautifully behaved, well mannered and a delightful girl. The mother would look at me dispairingly as i would repeatedly tell my kids to sit down, hold my hand, listen and I felt her judgement keenly.

Friend went onto have a second child, more wilful, challenging and less attentive. She now understands that children with the same experiences and upbringing can be entirely different. Its not just the way we parent that determines how our children behave, I do believe some children are easier to parent than others, I see this in part as luck!

I don't like the MN attitude that everything's down to luck, and no ones wealth can be attributed to bloody hard work.

No, that's not what I was saying at all. It is bloody hard work but it's also getting the opportunities in the first place. Lots of people work very long hours in the hope of it leading to greater opportunities and the work keeps coming but the opportunity to rise up the ladder doesn't come with it.

I suspect that the types of organisations people have worked for would inform their views on this as well. If you have left university and taken a graduate job in a company with a training programme and a defined career trajectory if you put the work in and prove your worth, and you have then moved to different organisations with similar values and plans, you will find it hard to believe that other people can slog away doing 80 hour weeks but with nothing to show for it, because they aren't getting to take on extra responsibilities or have something to add to their CV, and they aren't getting mentored by someone more experienced.

I think as in he is lucky to have you is a little rude, like you said it's like saying you are above your OH, our it could have been meant in a nice way as in you are a really lovely person and isn't your DH lucky to have found someone so nice (not because he isn't just finding his soul mate kind of thing) the baby thing especially if the couple are trying to conceive well that is purely down to luck when you fall so I think there is nothing in that and it's just a way to congratulate and perhaps a little bit of sadness from their side that they haven't been as 'lucky' yet.

I think perhaps you are over thinking, but at the same time can see why it may cause offence, like PP have said it's a saying I don't think people think before they say it.