Overly critical relative

[Emilyaparis]

Does anyone else have a person in their family/life that is hyper critical? How on earth do you deal with it?

Mine is the type of person who will only point out if, for example, your haircut or dye job is poor, but will never say "Did you get your hair done? It looks nice!", only "Did you get your hair done? It looks a bit patchy" or whatever.

I never really noticed it for a long time, and then the glass shattered and now I notice it all the time and it drives me insane, to the point that I don't want to see the person, but sometimes I don't have a choice.

I want to tell them about their behaviour rather than avoid it. Other family members have noticed it too and I know it annoys them, but they're never directly said "Stop being so critical!".

I would say -

"It's rude to point out things about another person's appearance that you don't like. You do this a lot - would you stop please.'

Repeat it every single time, slowly and calmly.

Monica, is that you?!

I jest...my DGM was exactly the same. Hair, weight, clothes I wore. I let it go for a long time, but then one visit she said i was getting fat, despite losing over 10lb on WW (I didn't tell her I was doing it). I said my piece and she never mentioned it again.

Sometimes direct is the only way!

Yep. My mum, unfortunately, is actually most comfortable with me when I'm actively failing at something. If I'm doing well, she automatically knocks me back. I have called her on this but she's completely oblivious. I remember when I got my A Level results, my then-boyfriend's mum heard her response and was so gobsmacked she insisted on taking me out to celebrate. And my boyfriend's mum really, really didn't like me very much, so you can imagine how bad it was! (I got 5 As and my mum's first response was 'well, you didn't do much to deserve that, did you?' before going through all my modules and pointing out how close I got to Bs in some of them).