Words hurt no matter what, but there is nothing like the sting of hearing hurtful comments from family or close friends. Hurtful words can be detrimental to relationships and sometimes ruin them altogether– it’s up to you if you’ll forgive someone or not. People share the most unforgivable comment they heard a loved one say about them. This content has been edited for clarity.
Table of contents
1. Uncle John
“My parents, brother, and I were at home on Thanksgiving and a few of us were wrestling in the living room. I was about eight and my brother was about six. We were having fun with our cousins and ‘pinning’ each other but not trying to hurt anyone. Then my uncle got involved and that sucked.
He first grabbed my brother and almost tore his head off in a chokehold. Then he slapped my cousin so hard his whole body spun around and he crashed to the floor, out cold and snoring. He got to me and we started wrestling. He was was roughly 240 pounds and he got me on the ground while pressing my face into the carpet with both of my hands behind me. He was twisting my arms and I felt my shoulders were going to split.
It was excruciating but when I asked him to stop, he twisted harder. I started to cry and in the background, I could hear my Grandma saying, ‘John, stop it and let him go. JOHN, STOP IT AND LET HIM GO! JOHN!’ Then I heard a loud cracking sound.
My uncle said, ‘Hey, why did you hit me with that fire poker?’
‘You were hurting him and could have broken something. He’s not a full adult and you are. Stop hurting people,’ my grandma said.
He finally let me go and said to her, ‘Screw you. If you and his parents raised him to be tough instead of being a wuss, he’d be tough enough to handle REAL wrestling.’
He then turned to me with his finger pointing in my face and said, ‘You just need to toughen up and stop acting like a coward!’
Ever since then, if I have to deal with him, I ignore him. He’s tried to talk to me and ask what did he do that made me hate him so much. I don’t say a word. I just look at him, give him two middle fingers, and go on my merry little way.”
2. Golden Child
“I have never told this to anyone. My younger sister was supposed to be the star child– the model, the lawyer, the golden child. She instead turned to sex and drugs and it was me who ‘stole her place,’ her thunder. It’s been her lifelong dream to tear me down ever since. She does horrible things because the drugs have polluted her mind. I am afraid of her and even my parents don’t want to cross her so they kiss her ass instead. But I won’t do it.
What I did is get involved in art. I taught myself. I started getting attention for my art and the more I got, the bigger her threats were. I got into an accident and had to move into my parent’s to heal. I made 40-50 art pieces for them as a thank-you. My sister hadn’t been over in almost two years because I was staying there. The one time she did while I was away, I found this note on my desk:
‘Every day that goes by and I hear your name mentioned I just get more pissed off. You call yourself an artist? Is that going to pan out for you like college did? You’re mentally disabled and hopefully, it’s from me making your life hell. The only reason you were accepted to law school was because the college felt sorry for you. Take down the ugly paintings in mom’s stairway today or I will take them down and destroy them when I come out next.’
I’ll spare you the details of the rest of the letter. When I went out of town overnight, I came home to almost all of my paintings gone. I told my parents and showed them her note, but they’re afraid of her and did nothing.”
3. Mother’s Day
“It was Mother’s Day and my mom, sister and I decided we would celebrate together as we were all mothers. We were having dinner at our mom’s place and she made a special effort and got out the silver cutlery and her finest dinnerware.
I was going with my son, Max, and my sister was coming along with her three kids and husband, Andrew. Max and his cousin, Penelope, are very close.
They are the same age and are definitely on each other’s wavelength. When it was time for dinner, the two were laughing and joking around with each other about something they did earlier.
As we were all seated at the table, Max and Penelope were still giggling and Andrew was asking them to quiet down. They weren’t being particularly loud, they were just happy kids being kids!
Andrew likes to think of himself as the MAN of the family since my Dad passed away and I am a single mom. He also had a short fuse. When Max and Penelope didn’t keep quiet, Andrew snapped.
He banged his fist on the table and shouted, ‘HOW MANY TIMES DO I NEED TO SAY TO SHUT UP!’
That’s when everyone stopped. It was as if you could hear a pin drop. I said in a quiet, calm voice, ‘Hey Max, can you and Penelope please just be a bit quiet as Nanna serves the food?’
That’s when Andrew directed his anger toward me.
‘AND REBECCA!’ he roared, ‘YOU’RE NO BETTER! YOU ARE NO DIFFERENT! YOU ARE A TERRIBLE MOTHER AND YOUR SON IS A SPOILED BRAT!’
On that note, Andrew pulled his chair out from under the table and stormed out of the front door slamming it behind him.
The rest of us at the dinner table were speechless. We couldn’t believe how disrespectful that was, especially in my mother’s home and to top it all off, on Mother’s Day! What Andrew said about me was completely unforgivable as my family knew what he said was untrue. Unfortunately, my sister is still married to that ogre but I try to avoid him as much as possible.”
4. The Talk
“My grandmother raised me because my mom gave me up when I was three months old. When I was 12, my biological mother said we needed to have a talk. I really wanted her to like me and was hoping she was going to say she wanted me back in her life now that she was in a good place financially, but that wasn’t the case.
We had a 30-minute conversation with her giving a monolog about how she shouldn’t have gotten pregnant and that my father was the wrong guy for her. She said she wished she had gotten an abortion but she couldn’t find someone to do it, so I was born after she tried everything to have a miscarriage.
That was a lot to throw on someone, let alone a 12-year-old. She was shocked when I said I would rather stay with my grandmother when she sued her own mother to get me back for free labor on her farm.”
5. Toxic Aunt
“I was adopted at age eight but reconnected with my biological family at age 16. One of the people I reestablished a relationship with was an aunt who lived in California. She worked in the medical field doing great things for premature babies. I really looked up to her for that.
I used to be an Elvis tribute artist. I also worked at a big-box store that used orange as their primary color, so I took sewing lessons and hand-decorated an ‘Elvis’ jumpsuit in the closest shade of orange I could find. It took me months to make it and I was practicing daily to look and sound like The King.
One day, she took offense to a post I made on Facebook about how picking up the phone goes both ways and that when family calls, you should have an actual conversation instead of only talking about yourself. I didn’t mention her name, but I guess I hit one of her nerves because that is exactly what she did every time I called her.
She went on a public tirade so I responded in kind. As a result, she texted me a long and nasty message about what a bad person I was to reply in that way to her post and that she knew I was the kind of person she ‘expected I would be.’ Up to that time we had, what I thought to be, a loving and respectful relationship.
Then she texted, ‘By the way, you look and sound NOTHING like Elvis. You’re just a fat Mexican in a clown suit.’
I literally sat there with my mouth open when I read it. It was FAMILY saying that hateful, racist, comment to me. It really affected me and I spiraled into a deep depression for almost a week. After that, I told her she was dead to me and I would not respond to any further communications from her. She replied with more nastiness, claiming she wasn’t racist and I was just being sensitive.
I blocked her on everything and haven’t had any contact with her for the past 10 years. Sometimes toxic people have to be removed from one’s life, even if they are family.”
6. Critical Condition
“My daughter was born in December of 1979. When she was seven months old and me being a new mother, my daughter caught a baby cold. I went to get her up one morning and although she was giggling and being cute, there was a tinge of blood on her crib sheet where her mouth was and she was raspy.
I took her to the doctor and she had croup pretty bad. The doctor admitted her and placed her in an oxygen tent. I was scared and crying and called my husband at work. I was blaming myself and didn’t know what to think. In my mind, I was thinking she would not make it.
That night, I was still upset and called my older sister for support. I was 23 and she was about 28. When my sister answered the phone, I told her about my daughter. They kept her in the hospital and I was beside myself. My sister’s response while laughing was,’I know, Mom told me. Is she blue yet?’ I was so upset I hung up on her. I don’t know why but I’ll never forget that comment. It feels like it just happened yesterday.”
7. High School Drop Out
“My biological parents divorced when I was six years old and my sister and I were made to live with our mom. Both parents remarried and moved on with their lives. My dad married a toxic female who mistreated us. When she was confronted about it, she said we were ‘little lying bitches who needed to learn our place.’ We were no longer welcome in their home after that.
Our mom and her second husband split after I turned 15 and she went off the deep end. To say it was a midlife crisis would be like saying the Milky Way galaxy is a small cluster of stars. After he moved out, we lost the home I grew up in and the three of us became homeless. We lived in cars and motels up until my mother met a new guy. At that time, I was getting ready to turn 18 and worked two jobs while still going to high school.
My mom said the new guy was her chance to finally ‘be free’ and took off with him. There I was, barely 18, in high school, and working to support myself and my 13-year-old little sister. I was trying to make enough money to pay for a cheap motel room and a couple of items off the dollar menu. I knew I needed a better job so I ended up taking the GED and getting a higher-paying job without finishing high school.
Our dad divorced the toxic woman he was married to and was trying to get back into our lives on a more regular basis around that time. He had no clue what was really going on but we eventually told him almost everything and it quite possibly broke his heart to know even part of the truth. We became closer than we had been in many years. Then one day that all changed.
When I was a little girl, my dad would go scuba diving off the coast in California. He would tell me that when I turned 12, I could learn too. When my 12th birthday hit, I was so excited to finally get the chance to learn to dive, but that day never came. His toxic wife didn’t think I was ready or they didn’t have the money, there was always some excuse.
A few years ago, I asked him for some information about getting certified to dive on my own since it had been over 20 since I was supposed to learn with him.
He then proceeded to tell me, ‘Well, if you would have just graduated high school like you were supposed to, I would have taken you.’
‘I’m sorry, I was busy raising someone else’s child and working two jobs. I figured a GED was a better option than moving permanently into a car.’
He didn’t really have a response even though I was dying to see what could have possibly followed that. The next time I saw him, I handed him a large envelope with an index card that read, ‘Since this means so much to you, you might as well have it,’ and my actual diploma. I had gone back to a local adult school and finished high school.”
8. Ex-Sister
“My oldest sister is 12 years my senior and was instrumental in raising me when both parents were working. To me, she was the best thing in the world next to chocolate ice cream. Fast forward to adulthood. We all have life experiences that lead us down certain paths and my sister’s led her to become a born-again Christian.
I am a gay male who came out when I was 24 years old. That was in 1992 so you do the math. When my sister heard ‘the awful news’ from my mother, her comment to me is forever engraved in my memory.
‘You know you are going to hell for being gay?’ she said.
In addition to that comment, she cut off all contact between her five children and me. I will never forgive her for that. In fact, I do not even consider her family any longer. I am now married to the most wonderful guy and have been for 14 years. Yes, I may have lost a biological sister and her five children, but I feel as if I have gained so many new family members from all walks, ages, and religious backgrounds.”
9. “Friend”
“This past summer I was choking on some food at a restaurant and my son basically saved my life as it was not crowded and the servers were in the back. He smacked my back a couple of times and the food came out. I told my friend of 30 years about the incident. She was also my son’s godmother.
A few months went by and my friend asked me to stay with her for a couple of weeks while she had shoulder surgery. I told her I wouldn’t be able to as I had a dog and other obligations. She responded with, ‘It’s too bad your son saved your life while you were choking.’
I was so shocked that I went silent with the phone in my hand and had no clue what to do or say. The next thing I knew is that she had hung up. At that point, I had no idea if I would have been able to say anything anyway. She called and left voice messages and such but I was too upset to call her, so I sent her an email about the situation.
She denied it all, but I know what I heard. We are no longer friends.”
10. “Happy” Birthday
“I woke up the morning of my birthday to my mom giving me money for my birthday present because I like to pick things out myself. She gave me a hundred dollars and then my dad stopped by and also gave me some birthday money. When my dad left and I fully woke up, I was actually quite happy about the extra cash because my family wasn’t financially well off.
I collected the money I had gotten from Christmas and my birthday and showed my mom and my brother by spreading the money out like a fan and then fanning my face with it.
My mom then said, ‘You’re cold and heartless. You’re incapable of love and someone loving you.’
She said that ON MY BIRTHDAY. I can’t even remember what I did after that but I’m pretty sure I went to my room and put the money away where no one would see it. I haven’t forgotten it. It really crushed me. I felt my heart sink when she said it.”
11. Dirty Laundry
“My father was not a very nice person. He was verbally and physically abusive. He was a chameleon in that for the most part he was able to contain the worst of his rage and violence to inside our home. He had been hospitalized for a mental breakdown when I was 12 years old.
In those days, the electric shock treatments he received actually did more harm than good. It turned him into an even worse paranoid and angry person, who for decades afterward would refuse any type of medical or physiological help. As the years went on, his irrational behavior, fits of rage fueled by alcohol, and abuse became more and more frequent.
By the age of 15, my older sister had left home. Being 2000 miles away from any close family, it was my mother and I who witnessed the steady decline in his mental state. His treatment of me was nearly soul-destroying but paled in comparison to the daily verbal and mental assaults that my mother endured.
By the time I was 18 and out of home, we had relocated back to our home province of Alberta. Over the course of the next few years, I talked the ear off of my closest cousin about what exactly my father was like. I also tried on numerous occasions to bring forth my concerns to my aunts and uncles.
They were well aware of my father’s alcoholic rages at family gatherings and his irrational behavior. However, they didn’t comprehend how that was not normal anger from too much to drink and dismissed my tales of our home life as an exaggeration simply because my father and I were known not to get along.
For years, they chose to not confront it and merely tolerated my tales. Basically, they swept the family’s dirty laundry under the carpet. Inevitably, my mother was hurt to the point she needed to be hospitalized. It was now no longer possible to sweep his behavior under the carpet.
My dad’s oldest sister was the matriarch of the family and there was a family gathering at her home. She was in the kitchen with my dad’s other two sisters and I don’t think they knew I was within hearing distance of the conversation.
The statement that absolutely devastated me was hearing my aunt say, ‘Maybe Peter has had a reason for behaving the way he has all these years.’
What? They thought I was a liar all that time? It took another 12 years for my mother to finally escape. He took after her but thankfully she had the presence of mind to flee in the truck to a neighboring town that had a women’s shelter.
My father was sent to jail but did not receive any meaningful psychiatric treatment as I had requested in an open letter to the court.
I don’t know if I truly ever viewed what my aunt said about me as unforgivable, but it certainly crushed me. I lost any faith that older, and supposedly wiser people, would step up with help and do the right thing. Since then, my advice to any young person has been to believe and trust in themselves. If you know something is wrong, it is wrong.”
12. Surgery
“My sister-in-law called while I was in the hospital days after surgery for goblet cell carcinoma (this is where 1/3 of the large intestine is removed). It was common for the type of cancer I have. I told her that the doctors thought the cancer did not metastasize and that they thought I would be released soon.
She excitedly asked me if I had lost any weight. I was shocked. After being diagnosed with a rare and often fatal cancer, she asked about weight loss. I told her weight loss was not the reason for the surgery.
Note to everyone who reads this: when someone is diagnosed with cancer, think very seriously about the words that you say or write to that person. I was just happy to be alive. I would have preferred she not called me at all. She tried to get a dig in about weight, and I was not obese, but I did gain weight and was not at model-thin standards.
if someone you know has cancer, read online what to say or don’t say anything. Don’t offer to help if you don’t really mean it. I understand it can be confusing for everyone but there is plenty of great advice online.”
