“You look like a sack of potatoes when you ride a horse. My sisters look like real cow girls” “You couldn't hike 20 miles in a day, my mom and sisters can.” “You could never go camping with a 6 week old baby like my sister just did.” “My family is able to keep a house clean and things put away, you don't know how to keep a household.” “If my sister lived in this house she would keep it spotless, you just don't know how.” “The children look homeless, you don't know how to dress them.” “My sisters look like movie stars, you look like a man half the time.” “I am not attracted to you, you look like a roommate of mine.” “I should just go find a woman whom I would rather be with.”
The list goes on, all insults thrown at me at different times and there are many many more and some that were worse. Some I can't yet write because the wound is still too open.
If I tell my MEM that what he said hurt, he will say, sorry. But a sorry that isn't real. It doesn't go deep. It does not touch the pain. It is not meant to heal, just to placate. It is simply a memorized response, most likely learned behavior from an overbearing mother who expects an apology for any stupid little thing and who forced her children to apologize to anybody even if the child didn't mean it or was in fact in the right. MEM, if they say sorry, don't even know what that means. They are never truly sorry, the kind of sorrow that changes your heart, that makes you feel the pain you just inflicted on someone else. The kind of sorrow that makes you not want to hurt the other person again because you feel how you hurt them. A healthy person means it when they are sorry and they will do what they can to reestablish the close connection felt before instead of being okay with the gulf they are creating and expanding with every insult and put-down they hurl at their partner.
MEM do not know what being sorry is, it is simply a word to them.