AIBU to ask what's the worst thing you've ever overheard someone say about you?

[Buttercup212]

Just that really. Luckily I haven't overheard anything about myself yet, but it occurred to me today that it must happen fairly often and I'm just curious to be honest! Also, if it happened to you, did the relationship survive afterwards or did you fall out?

You poor thing that hurts my heart and makes me so angry. Those two heartless selfish people dimmed your sparkle and possibly deprived us of a brilliant playwrite!
Although it's never too late to realize your potential. You could make them eat their words 🤞

My parents would argue then say awful things about me like ‘your fucking kid is xyz’
I was also seen as the problem child in my home and I’d hear my mum slagging me off to my aunties. I’m not experienced it as an adult- maybe because I have fewer pricks in my life 🤣 But honestly, I think my family aren’t my people and I suit my life and circumstances much better now Ive chosen who I spend time with

On separate occasions I overheard my mum telling her friend that she always wanted a dark haired girl (I don’t have dark hair) and that my outfit would look better on a skinny kid.

I was also the least conventionally attractive girl in my friendship group and though the girls were never mean, the boys would often say horrible things about me and how non of them would ever be interested. I mean, I was never that bothered that they didn’t find me attractive and the feeling was mutual. Now I’ve seen some pop up on Facebook I’m very glad haha.
Weirdly, once I was in my 20s one of the most popular boys in the group told me he’d really fancied me back then, as I had something different about me. I found that fascinating. He wasn’t ever mean to me but 15 year old me would have been gobsmacked

Large group of friends with one thing in common which links them. My husband is one of them. It would be Impossible to cherry-pick invitees for a party. The invitation is put in a WhatsApp group and everyone is invited.

When I was 14 I had 2 best friends. We would go to my cousins to see her baby. Her mum was there one day. We all went into the bathroom to wash our hands and as we were coming back in she said “gosh her friends could be models, shame about her really. What they’re doing with her I’ll never know”.

Honestly I have felt completely disgusting ever since

Overheard my then boyfriend and his mates discussing how I looked like chewbacca (I was 15 and had a lot of downy fluff on my face) 35 years on, countless shaving, waxing, electrolysis, tweezing, laser, PCOS treatments, etc. I'm still self conscious and hate my face.

I lament the years and years I spent wearing roll neck tops, and a scarf to try and cover my face.

I still hate them. Ive spent thousands trying to fix something normal.

My DS does this all the time. I give zero fucks and always dance like no one is watching. I have been told many times by others that I'm a good dancer.

A girl I used to be work with fancied a guy I was dating and she said to him 'my eyes were too small, my nose too big, my mouth too wide and I had too many teeth' (all true actually, along with a slight horse face aswell but its always worked for me haha). I said 'my eyes might be too small, my nose too big, my mouth too wide and I might have too many teeth but I'll always be more attractive than you and that's why you hate me'. Maybe not my finest hour but god she was a dick.

When I was getting divorced we had three court hearings. My ex told the judge that he didn’t see why should receive a settlement as I was really just the lodger.
The judge said he hardly thought that was the cases we’d been together for 20 years, married for 17 and had three children.

As a mum of a child with a stammer, this hits hard! Awful.

This is so shit. Fuck them.

I can't remember a single thing! BUT I heard a tip to let children overhear you talking about them positively. I now do this all the time at work and so hope it helps.

Not really sure it's as bad as it is a child who said it, but I remember when I was working in a shop as a teenager, and a child who was with a customer said "why do you sound funny?" referring to my slightly nasally sounding voice and dystharia and my lisp (as a result of my high frequency hearing loss).

It made me feel so awkward and self conscious of my voice. Ever since, I tried really hard to over enunciate and speak in what I hope is a (hopefully clearer) voice that sounds less nasally.

I know it hasn't really made much difference as a neurologist once wrote in a letter of diagnosis for my movement disorder that i had a "lisping speech and slight dystharic voice"...😵‍💫😔😳

In work a couple of years ago and I overheard a colleague tell her boss that I was, "a lazy c..t". I couldn't quite believe it and had to ask her boss myself if I had heard right. The thing was, I always worked way harder than her, and at least her boss knew this. I didn't speak to her for about 18 months, then her dad died and I messaged her to say how sorry I was (genuinely). We talked afterwards, but i didn't consider her a friend after that, she was made redundant earlier this year and I haven't been in touch at all, I can do without people like that.

Just out of university and working in a 2nd language.
Printed out on a printer that was next to my computer (it was this inventiveness that was so nasty) - an email to the previous person in my position with a lot of discussion about why 'I wasn't her'. Definitely only read it once and tried not to remember it, but many years on, remember (in original language) "She is very un-independent and gives up so easily."

Two that still make me wince:

At work, one male colleague told another that I should be “over” my termination for medical reasons by now, shouldn’t risk trying for another baby, and should “get a dog instead.”
I didn’t even overhear this - the second colleague thoughtfully relayed it to me, thinking he was being helpful, finishing with: “Have you thought about getting a dog?”
For extra irony, I’m allergic to dogs.

The other was at school. A popular boy never missed a chance to make comments within earshot - “why does she bother with lipstick, you can’t polish a turd,” “stuck-up swot who’ll be a virgin forever,” etc.

In sixth form, I crossed paths with him in a nightclub. When I went to the bar, he approached my boyfriend and asked him what he was doing with “a sad minger like her.” I never retaliated, despite him not exactly being blessed in the looks department - think Humpty Dumpty.

He’s now a police sergeant, and I had to laugh when he recently posted on our local Facebook page about cracking down on teenage bullying in the village.

And one more, courtesy of my late mother.

I overheard her on the phone to her sister when I was 12, saying my “nose looked like a piece of plasticine stuck on as an afterthought,” that you could “fry an egg on my greasy forehead,” and that I had “huge rugby-player thighs.”
I was right in the middle of puberty, had the usual acne, and had put on about a stone - though I was still a size 8.

I’ll concede the point about the nose, but I inherited it from her.

Not people I know. But I had a one night stand with someone when I was 16 at a music festival. I was drunk, but they had given me something to smoke which definitely wasn't cannabis.

I woke to him telling his friends what a dirty slut I was.

In my first year at university I went to the pub with my coursemates (mostly male), then back to someone’s room in halls. People gradually drifted off until it was just me and three men I considered friends. I wasn’t remotely attracted to any of them.

I went to use the toilet down the corridor and, as I came back, overheard them talking about me. One said, “She’s easy - I could have her tonight if I wanted to,” and the others laughed.

I replied from the other side of the door that he was completely deluded and a disrespectful little shit, then walked off. They called after me saying “come back, we’re only joking.”

I never found out which of the three said it, but I blanked all of them after that.

Overheard on my Dad’s ring doorbell my BiL describe me as the fat evil sister who is only interested in money and does nothing for my Dad that I can’t make something on leaving everything else to his poor wife. Absolutely not true and quite possibly a case of role reversal. I have the recording saved (playing the long game).

At work someone replied to a comment when I was working nearby but at the other end of the room, they were close by and would not see/hear me if you're quiet due to layout of the room, "Don't say that, ....... is lovely when you get to know her", I don't know what the comment was about but my colleagues reply is something that really got me thinking about my actions and how I come across. In the end, I've learned you can't please everyone so just be kind, caring and leave it at that, those people who aren't, weren't meant to be in your life. Now I try not to waste time on people who can't try to do the same.

So sorry that happened to you and sorry for your loss.
I ended up leaving my performing arts course early due to anxiety and panic attacks. I think the tutors just told people I was unwell. A couple of years later I found out that one girl on the course had told everyone that I left because I had AIDS. When I left she got given my part in the show we were doing, which was the leading role! So you’d think she would have been really grateful to me. I even went back to see the show, and I still cringe looking back, they must have all been looking at me thinking I had AIDS. Some people really are nasty pieces of work.

Overheard a cousin of Dhs (he was just a really good friend at the time) saying to his equally obnoxious wife, "Jaysus that one did really well out of her husband dying didn't she, must be delighted with herself and going around now as if she some shit hot entrepreneur"
Roll on several years later and he rocks up to an interview for a managerial role at my new business (he wasn't aware I had bought and was revamping said business) I wasn't sitting on the interview panel at the beginning, I was joining at the end of each interview so when I walked in he looked surprised and arrogantly asked what I was doing there, when I said I was sitting in on the last few minutes of the interview, the stupid arsehole asked "Oh right, so are you working for the new owner or just doing them a favour?
He was a bit lost for words when I told him I was the new owner.
I was sorely tempted to take him on, on a trial basis, and make his life a misery before not renewing his contract, but decided he wasn't worth the hassle.

Uncalled for. She's saying she's lucky she hasn't overheard negative things. Why be so unkind?