Most awkward things people said to you

amother

Seashell

Sat, Feb 15 2020, 10:51 pm

My (very few) kids are not babies anymore. I said something about when I was pregnant with my oldest and someone asked how long I was married then. I replied, huh, what does it matter? She said oh I was just wondering if you were newlywed but you were probably married a few years then
(Yes, I was. I was going through infertility, still am. But it's none of your business and you should definitely not ask such a question)

dessara

Sun, Feb 16 2020, 3:56 am

amother [ Wine ] wrote:

What I was trying to explain is that someone vulnerable who experienced being deeply hurt by an insensitive comment just wants to be validated. They don't want someone to try and validate where the *other* person was coming from, it makes their pain feel doubly overlooked.
And apologizing after *if* you hurt them doesn't do anything for their hurt feelings, instead it makes you feel ok about what you said. And if you are thinking it might be hurtful then it probably is. So better not to say it in the first place then you don't need to add in a conditional apology.

Another wine, maybe we should start a spinoff because I don’t want to derail this thread. But you completely misunderstood the point of my original post. I was not trying to validate where the other person was coming from. I was trying to show that her comments might be interpreted differently. The original poster wrote

Quote:

She responded by telling me that her daughter had it worse than me, and explained how she had it worse.
I guess she thinks she’s G-d and she knows exactly what I went through.
Instead of feeling better, I went home in tears.

She took the comment to mean that her relative thinks what she went through is not so bad. And of course this caused her a lot of pain. But perhaps her relative thought that her situation was actually quite bad and painful and made this terribly insensitive comment as an attempt to comfort her by pointing out that it could have been worse, in a terrible effort to say something, anything that would mitigate her pain. The whole purpose of my post was to offer her comfort from the pain of the comment, not to defend the person who made it. I ended with an apology in case my post didn’t achieve that goal and somehow despite my intention of easing her pain I somehow worsened it. But if I thought that was likely, I would not have posted. I took the time to post because I thought it might help her. It was not an apology like you think it was, I.e, I am saying something hurtful so I’m sorry if I hurt you.
I was hoping my post was actually helpful to her. And unless she comes back on to comment, I guess I’ll never know.

amother

Wine

Sun, Feb 16 2020, 10:36 am

dessara wrote:

Oh I understand your post, no need to explain. I've been in similar situations where I was venting about extremely hurtful comments or actions done/ made to me, and the listener, instead of validating my pain tried to explain "why" and where the other person was coming from in a very misguided attempt, thinking it would make me feel better knowing the person didn't really "mean" to be hurtful. But, actually the attempt to explain was just as hurtful and made me more upset.
In the moment of someone expressing deep pain is not the time to explain or elucidate or anything like that, unless they themselves bring it up and want to discuss it. It is not helpful or comforting. It will cause more pain and anger every time the person thinks about it, for years. And the painful things I was venting about was nowhere near the horrible, horrible tragedy of losing a child, lo aleinu. That is just a time to stay silent. Period.