Your partner mocks you when you cry.
Let me say that again, because I think sometimes we say things like that so matter-of-factly, like we’ve already made peace with something we absolutely should not have made peace with.
Your partner mocks you when you cry.
That is not a small thing. That is not a quirk. That is not “just how they are.” That is someone responding to your most vulnerable, most human moment with contempt. And contempt is, in my 16 years of doing this work, the single most corrosive thing I see in a relationship.
Here’s what I want you to understand about what happens when you cry. You are doing something incredibly brave. You are showing someone your insides. You are saying, without words, “I am affected. I feel things. I need something right now.” That is not weakness. That is the raw material of real intimacy.
When your partner mocks that, they are communicating, whether they know it or not, “your vulnerability is a problem for me.” They are not meeting you. They are pushing you back behind the glass.
Now, I won’t sit here and tell you your partner is simply a bad person without knowing more. Sometimes people mock what makes them uncomfortable. Sometimes someone who grew up in a home where crying was punished or ridiculed learned to treat tears as something to be defended against.
That doesn’t make it okay. But it might mean it’s not the whole story.
What I need you to ask yourself is this: Have you ever told your partner, directly, clearly, not in the middle of a fight, that when they mock you it makes you feel unsafe? That it makes you want to disappear? Because sometimes people genuinely don’t register the impact of what they’re doing until someone names it plainly.
But here’s the other thing. You deserve a relationship where your tears are held, not ridiculed. Where your pain is witnessed, not weaponized. That’s not a high bar. That’s the floor.
If your partner, when shown clearly how much this hurts, continues to mock you? That tells you something important about whether they’re willing to do the work with you.
Mockery doesn’t just hurt in the moment. It teaches you, over time, to hide. To shrink. To stop bringing your real self into the room. And that’s not a relationship. That’s a performance with an audience of one who doesn’t even like the show.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: Emotional Safety in Relationships: What It Means and How to Build It
