The Most Heartbreaking Things People Have Overheard Someone Say About Them

Content Warning: Child Neglect, Child Abuse, Body-Shaming, Affair, Mental Health, Diagnosis Shaming

Whether or not we want to admit it to ourselves, there are always two sides to every story: the version they tell you to your face, and the version they tell someone else behind your back.

The thing people fail to understand is that they aren't always as stealthy and sneaky as they think they are, leading us to overhear some unfortunate information, and quite honestly, sometimes the truth is downright brutal.

Bracing themselves, Redditor AstonishingVanguard asked:

"Redditors, what's the most heartbreaking thing you've overheard someone say about you?"

Too Bad There Isn't A College Degree For Compassion

"My now ex-wife said to my face, 'I never loved you, I was just at a bad spot in my life and knew if I married you, you would pay for my college, and I could either fall in love along the way or just divorce you after.'"

"For context, I’m pretty sure she intentionally had tried to pass on an STD from her affair partner so she could paint me as the one being unfaithful."

"I followed her comment up by saying, 'Wow, I didn’t think you’d come right out and admit to the whole being a gold digger.'"

"She replied, 'I knew you would accuse me of being a gold digger, but I was not, because I really tried to actually love you.'"

- TheFirearmsDude

Not The Right Look

"In high school, one of my best friends I grew up with told another friend that people that looked like me didn’t belong in (a high-class mall we were going to go to) and he was embarrassed to be seen with someone who dressed the way I did."

"Which, admittedly, what I wore wasn’t cool for the year 2000. All black, trenchcoat, band t-shirts, long hair, that kinda thing. He was preppy as they come."

"I stopped being his friend when I heard and I still won’t be his friend 20 years later. I even tried to forgive him and add him on Facebook but he ran his mouth AGAIN and that was that."

- Vegas-Buckeye

...Breeding Stock

"I heard that I was 'broken.' I had just had my sixth miscarriage. My father-in-law said it to my stepmother-in-law, not realizing I was standing behind them."

"My stepmother-in-law kept going with it and made a quip that even the two kids that my husband and I do have aren’t 'okay' (our son has an autoimmune disease) and that she wasn’t surprised because I’m such terrible 'breeding stock.'"

"Nothing was more fun than my husband yelling at them and explaining to them that HE is the carrier for this disease and it comes from his DAD."

- TheKnottyMama

The Girl Had The Right Idea

"I was a server in a restaurant and we f**ked up badly. This was in Times Square in a packed restaurant full of tourists who needed to make it to the Broadway shows in time, and our kitchen completely crashed. Nothing was coming out, simple apps and salads took an hour to reach the table, and the customers were rightfully p**sed off. Management was not on the floor because they were all in the kitchen screaming at the cooks to go faster."

"One of my tables, two women and two preteen girls, had enough and had to run to make their show. They left, but not before yelling every horrible thing they could think of at me."

"One of the girls caught my eye and mouthed, 'I’m sorry,' as her mother was berating me."

"The mother grabbed her arm and took her aside, and as I walked past I could hear her saying, 'Don’t ever, EVER apologize to someone in service,' and the girl was crying."

"I felt so bad for the girl and it was just so dehumanizing for me. Like sure, don’t apologize to me in this instance, I understand. But anyone in service? What’s so wrong with us?"

- MelissaOfTroy

"The girl was a class human being, but her mother was TRASH, no matter how much money she had. And these people wonder why the 99% hate them?"

- North_Photograph_850

Not A Burden At All

"When I was a teenager, my dad and mom were divorced (for the second time), and I was not able to maintain healthy communication with either one of them. I always thought they loved me but they just did not know how to communicate."

"I was living with my dad, and his wife disappeared for over a week. My dad never said anything to me, but I knew something was fishy. One day, I secretly went through his messages to understand what was happening, and I found an SMS from his wife. Turns out she left the house because I invited my friends to stay during the weekend when they were away."

"Throughout the messages, she referred to me as the boy no one accepted and 'got stuck with them.+ She said things that were not real, such as me causing endless problems in the house."

"Due to my childhood traumas, I never expressed dissatisfaction or demanded a thing, and I was an extremely introverted, almost never-speaking guy. I almost never communicated with them."

"My dad never denied it in his messages and even implied that he was agreeing with her. They later made peace somehow and she returned home, but I left the house soon after because I knew I was the biggest burden in their family."

- FBrandt

What A Rotten Thing To Say

"I jokingly said that I’m pretty and I deserve a handsome man to my mom and uncle."

"When I left the room, I heard them laughing so loud and mocking me."

"'She thinks she’s beautiful. I don’t think she's ever seen her face in a mirror,' said my mom, and it broke me."

- la5y_411980

That's Not Desperation; It's Neglect

"I overheard a conversation between my mom and grandmother when I was a teenager pretending to be asleep. My mom said, 'She's so desperate for love and attention, I'm worried she's going to get knocked up or end up with someone bad.'"

"My mom literally never said, 'I love you,' to me in my life. I once asked her for a hug and she told me she found it 'disgusting' to touch me. I told her I needed to feel loved and her response was, 'I thought you'd have a boyfriend by now.'"

"When I overheard that conversation, I wanted to run out of the room and scream in her face. I had been begging her to even slightly fulfill her role as a parent for years and her takeaway was that I was f**king 'desperate for attention.'"

- 40_degree_rain

"That's horrible. I cannot imagine not hugging my own child."

- fanny08850

"Chr**t, there’s a saying, 'Someone who was never fed love from a spoon will learn to lick it from knives,' and your mom is literally the embodiment of that."

- TheFirearmsDude

Family Is Family. Period.

"That I wasn’t REALLY family because I was a stepkid. My father confessed this had been said by someone in my stepmother’s family after I asked why said person was not at my high school graduation."

"It has since been explained that this is not exactly what was said, and that this was only how my dad took it at the time, and that he was still mad when he explained it to me."

"But still. At 17, when I was already struggling to figure out who I was… that hurt. And it did a lot of damage between me and my stepmom’s family."

- Zandycrush

No Support Network

"When I was 12 or 13, I spent a summer with my aunt in another state to give my single mother 'a break,' I guess."

"Back then I adored my aunt and just thought it was a fun, exciting summer getaway. Like camp or something."

"My mother was neglectful and extremely abusive. I told my aunt and her boyfriend about things my mom had done over the years and they listened but never really made any comment."

"One night, they were on the porch, and I was supposed to be sleeping in a room that had windows that opened onto the porch. I heard my aunt’s boyfriend say I was 'the biggest bulls**tter' he’d ever known. My aunt agreed and said, 'Someone needs to keep an eye on that one, she’s manipulative as h**l.'"

"Two years later, I was in foster care because of the abuse (and because my mother simply disappeared), and to this day, over 30 years later, I still think my family holds me responsible somehow. Not that I’ve spoken to any of them in several years."

- TheLakeWitch

"I’m so sorry, your aunt really let you down. So many so-called adults would rather believe that kids lie, than that people would hurt kids."

- MichaSound

Absolutely Heartless

"This just happened yesterday. I walked into a boutique, but well, more like shuffled into one."

"An old guy standing outside said, 'Hahaha! I didn't know they had plus-size clothes here! Also if she lost some weight, she'd walk better!'"

"I have MS (Multiple Sclerosis), and since I can't move well, I gained weight. I just wanted to get something to feel a little prettier again."

"After that, I cried all evening."

"Please do not comment on other people's looks unless you're asked."

- Shniddles

So Disappointing

"A girl I liked in school in the 90s but hadn’t actually met after seeing my pic said to my friend, 'I wish he looked how he sounded on the phone. He sounded so much better looking on the phone.'"

"We’d been chatting for a while. She didn’t know I could hear her. I died a little that day."

- Groffulon

...Disgusting

"'That one is going to be in heat soon,' was said by a friend of my grandfather to him. He agreed. I was 12 and the only thing I was interested in was horses. They were well into their eighties. I felt so disgusted, being talked about and viewed like that."

- MobsterLobsta

Such a Kind Woman

"My granny had dementia. One evening she saw the trailer for the movie, 'Armageddon,' on TV and thought it was the news."

"She was in her bed crying while my parents were trying to comfort her, and I overheard her say to my parents: 'You need to protect her (me). Go hide and take care of her. She is such a nice little girl. Leave me behind, I'm old I'll slow you down. Please take her to safety and tell her I love her.'"

"I was really moved by that, she was ready to sacrifice herself and face the end of the world alone to keep me safe."

- BB-biboo

Devastating Realization

"'We'll get ice cream later if you just play with her for a little while. She's like that because her mom just died. You won't have to deal with her forever.'"

"A mom said that to a girl who I thought was my friend and had appreciated up until that point because she was the only one who (I thought) wanted to play with me after my mom died, even though I would sometimes start crying out of nowhere and had severe anxiety."

"I was nine and didn't play with anyone for over a year after this because I assumed I was making people deal with me by being around."

- True_Panic_3369

A Call To Do Better

"I wanna send some love out there to everyone here because you guys, damn. We as humans really need to start being better to each other."

"My answer: I was homeless as a teenager, and so was my dad, and at one point instead of payment for his work on an empty house, his boss let us sleep in it on the floor. Since my dad wasn’t being paid, we couldn’t get any food."

"So a couple of my friends OFFERED to feed me a few times. I refused and then I'd ask if they were sure out it if they pushed, multiple times every time, and they always insisted and wouldn’t drop it until I ate."

"Then I heard one of them say how they wished I didn’t eat their food, because they were sick of it."

"They also still offered and pushed it on me after that and I refused. I never told them I knew they said it. Also I stopped accepting food from anyone, period, for a really really really long time."

- MephistosFallen

It's always a terrible feeling to find out that people don't feel the way about us that we thought they did, and some of these Redditors have really been to heartbreak and back.

But maybe if we take a page out of this last Redditor's book and try to be kinder to each other, fewer people will find themselves going through tough situations like this.