She said: 'You finally understand what it's like!'

[Sunnygirl1]

Hello, my friend who is originally from Ukraine and has lived in the UK for 15 years asked me to ask some lovely objective impartial people on here about this situation.

Her friend has applied for a refugee help UK - Ukraine Scheme and is waiting for her UK Visa in Poland since the beginning of April.

Some Ukrainians have already arrived in the UK and had a lovely welcome from their hosts and are very grateful to Boris Johnson & the UK government for this chance to escape this awful war and to save their and their children's health & lives. My friend A asked her friend M how they liked it here in the UK.

М: It's lovely for them here in the UK but, of course, they miss Ukraine and their usual peaceful predictable home life there.

A: Of course. It wasn't a planned holiday for them. They miss their daily home life and peace in Ukraine. It wasn't a planned holiday for them to enjoy, to feel relaxed and calm. They are very stressed about their houses/flats not being bombed, burnt, or destroyed by rockets, shelling, or fire.

M: Now you finally understand it!

А: Do you think I didn't understand it? Are you serious or are you joking?

My friend A felt like it was a passive-aggressive sarcastic answer & totally unfair towards her.

1. My friend A encouraged her friend M to leave the dangerous war in Ukraine with her 2 children (her husband wasn't allowed to leave as well as all men between 18 - 60 in case they are needed for a full national mobilization).

2. My friend A and her British husband were helping her friend M & her 2 children to apply for visas online while she was going on a very dangerous journey by train (during a risk of shooting, shelling, and God forbid rockets killing people etc) from Ukraine to Poland.

3. She offered some financial help and was planning (and will help) to help her morally & financially how/with everything she could while she is waiting for this horrible war to end (hopefully this year) so she can live in peace in the UK where her children can start school within 1 month or so after they finally receive their refugee visas & get here.

How do you see this situation? Was it just a very inconsiderate thing to say during a very stressful time or is there more to it than just being unkind?

My friend A let her friend's M words go but told me what her friend M told her was totally unacceptable, rude & wrong.

What is your opinion on this and how would you feel if you were told that by your friend in a similar situation? Thank you.

Everyone is cutting M slack, fairly, but A deserves a little too perhaps. A is from the Ukraine too. 15 years is not that long. She has her own place in the UK and was not in danger but her home country is still burning. She is allowed to have feelings about that - if I moved abroad for 15 years I would still be very emotional if this was happening to the UK, wouldn't most of us? - and being excluded from those feelings by M on the grounds that she can't possibly understand may be hurtful to her. She may not be completely rational, and may be being oversensitive, because something upsetting is happening to her too, though not AS upsetting as what's happening to M, but it's still hard.

Easy for everyone to say A can't possibly understand M but most of us on here can't really understand what it's like for A. Easy to judge and put her down for what must be complex feelings.

A has a saviour complex that she really needs to rein in. It really, really isn't about her.

“Now you finally understand it” = very rude if said by a native English speaker who isn’t stressed. But said by a Ukrainian speaking her second (or fourth?) language, who’s just fled a war zone and presumably is distraught over the danger her husband is in?

A needs to back off, do some reading on PTSD etc and stop being nit-picky or these two are going to fall out big time.

I am sorry but living through a war is not something that an average Brit understands. So your friend should get over it. Wars are extraordinary events that thankfully most of us will never have to go through. It is trite to say that empathy gets you there - if you are an empathetic person then you should be able to understand that some things are just not something you will ever truly understand (thank god) and get over it.

Fleeing a war zone is not the same as living with an abusive man. Both are terrible events but not comparable. Your friend should stop trying to make it all about her.

'Now you finally understand it' in most circumstances to me would imply that the speaker felt the other person hadn't understood it before, but now they get it.

In this situation I think we have to be aware of the language barrier and how we might not be able to intuit tone and meaning as well as between two native speakers.

Regardless, a woman has had to flee her country with her children and is no doubt a tiny bit stressed so you'd think A would be able to let a perceived slight go and move on.

I don’t think it’s particularly rude to be honest and think A is extra over sensitive.

Neither M or anyone has said that A can't be emotional about what's happening in Ukraine.

A thinking she can understand what M went through on a journey where she could have been shot or bombed to death is the issue here.

A thinking she can understand what M went through on a journey where she could have been shot or bombed to death is the issue here.

I think that's the real issue too, and M has left her husband behind in a war zone.

Being emotional about something still isn’t the same as understanding.

no one suggest A couldn’t be concerned or upset. That’s not what the conversation was about or what M (or anyone here said)

It appears you, OP and A all have the same problem of hearing what people say, but not actually listening. or are you the OP?

No one is judging A for having complex feelings. They are judging her for her trying to make everything about her, wanting the focus of a refugee to be on her, the focus being on communicating gratitude. A wants her feelings to come first. And is also reading things into that we’re not said.

You home country being destroyed be war, must be hard on A. It’s not harder or the same as fleeing the war that’s tearing ir apart with your kids and having to leave your husband behind. And watching your home….your every day residence and town be destroyed.

2 completely different experiences.

Jeez, how many posters missed the explanation in the original post that both the friends are from Ukraine? The only language barrier between them is if one is Ukrainian-speaking and the other Russian-speaking.

Now you finally understand it! does imply that M had interpreted A's previous comments/actions as not fully appreciating the difference between moving to a another country voluntarily rather than fleeing a war zone. Has A reflected on their interactions and can think of a reason why that might be?

I really can't see what M has done wrong.

And would put money on OP being A...

I disagree with this. Any person with empathy can understand any traumatic life event and doesn't need to necessarily go through them themselves.

And I disagree entirely with this - you can intellectually understand what a traumatic life event is like, but you cannot understand the emotional impact of it unless you've lived it yourself.

I've never lost a child, for example. That means that while I can understand what a catastrophic event it must be for those experiencing it, I can't understand what it's like to live through that particular trauma. I've had other traumas, I can extrapolate a little, but I can't really claim to understand it from a insider's perspective.

Similarly, M may not be able to deeply understand A's childhood traumas and the lasting impact on her now at anything other than an intellectual (and empathetic) level; similarly A cannot understand on an experiential level what M has been through recently. A saying she'd know how she'd behave after such a situation is a sign that actually, she doesn't get it. She might hope she'd behave in a certain way, but she doesn't know for sure.

You've asked a few people how they'd think/feel if this had happened to them. From my own perspective, I hope I'd be concerned about whether I'd been insensitive previously to give the impression that I didn't get it, and examining my own behaviours/words. I would want to go 'oh, M's been so rude!' I'd want to say 'oh shit, I think I may have accidentally upset M, I probably need to be more sensitive.'

PP are missing the fact the both parties are from Ukraine.
As an immigrant… people back home seem to resent me for ‘getting out’. They think I don’t know anything about my home country. And don’t care about it. it’s not war-torn but certainly very poor and lawless.

M’s comment reads like one of ‘those’.

There’s an extra layer at play here that nobody will really understand without the context.

I do wonder if there was a little bit of well-intentioned 'well, when I first arrived I found this strange' or 'oh yes when I first got here I couldn't figure out how to do y!' or whatever - which didn't really recognise their very different circumstances.

You are working on the presumption we all live in the country we were born in. We aren’t.

In ordinary circumstances it would be rude. But this is not ordinary circumstances. M is very understandably going to lash out. She’s suffered trauma and just recently had a terrible shock and upturned her whole life and her kids lives. Her husband is still there to maybe fight and maybe killed.
In all honesty anything she says right now is justified and should be met with sympathy. She’s in shock and fear for her and her families future.
I really do wonder if A has proper empathy to be making it all about her?

Yes this. I would worry if I was A that I had put my foot in it and would be apologising.

@Andromachehadabadday I was merely highlighting that most pp hasn’t considered the immigrant angle.
not just any immigrant, being from a ‘worse’ country.

I agree, I think A is the OP.

She needs to get over herself and stop expecting her Ukrainian guests to be overcome with gratitude at her kindness and generosity, and try to see the situation from their point of view.

Also adding being from the same country is especially relevant because A might have shared HER feelings about the war. She’s not there, but obviously has relatives, etc.

M might be peed off because A’s daily life still isn’t affected and seeing it as making it ‘all about A’ when A is just trying to share her feelings.

In the end life isn’t a move with GOOD and BAD. People are being harsh on A. We don’t know if the comment hints at underlying resentment. But people say things all th time. I’d just say that nobody’s wrong

I think it's a really hard one. We are conditioned to expect gratitude when we help someone (even if we say that's not why we're doing it). We're also conditioned to find taking help really difficult. I think that if Britain was being bombed and a British friend helped me escape to Poland (just for example), leaving my DH behind, I can totally imagine that I'd be traumatised, lost, hating having to depend on others just to stay alive and might well snap at the person who is helping me because I'd feel jealous of their life and also awkward at depending on them, even though I'd also be very grateful for their help. This would be especially true if they made an insensitive comment like "well how are you enjoying poland" because they should know i'd be hating every minute and wishing myself home with my husband, because it is not, in fact, a holiday.

Friend A is weird and the kind of person I’d only want help from if I’m desperate (which unfortunately friend M is), as Friend A sounds like the type of person to hold their kindness over you and place all sorts of expectation and conditions on it.

In real life, people make mildly insensitive comments quite often... particularly if they're traumatised. I can see that A might feel briefly hurt or irritated but she should try to get over this ASAP.

Yep!