A woman has opened up about how she got petty revenge on her in-laws, who kept purposefully mispronouncing her name.
She admitted that her name isn’t “super common” but isn’t “that hard to pronounce,” but for some reason, her husband’s parents just can’t pronounce it properly. “Think something like ‘Leena,’ but my in-laws keep saying ‘Lana’,” she shared, saying that she’d been with her husband for “five years, married for two,” but they still “can’t get it right”.
“At first, I thought they just needed time to adjust. They’re in their 60s, and I get that learning a new name might take a second. But we see them often, and I’ve corrected them so many times,” she seethed on Reddit.
The woman explained that her husband had told her to “let it go” because it was “not intentional,” – “But at what point does it stop being accidental and start being just…dismissive?” she asked.
She continued: “It’s not like they generally struggle with pronunciation. They can say names like ‘Giovanni’ or ‘Schwarzenegger’ just fine. My husband’s mum even talks about how much she loves learning about different cultures, but when it comes to my name, she always shrugs it off with, ‘Well, you know who I mean’!”
But things came to a head during a family dinner when her mother-in-law introduced her to one of her friends and mispronounced her name again.
She fumed: “The last straw was at a family dinner last weekend. His mum was introducing me to her friend and said, ‘This is our daughter-in-law, Lana’. I laughed a little and said, ‘Almost! It’s Leena.’ She sighed and said, ‘Oh, you’re so particular,’ in front of everyone.
“It was embarrassing. I just smiled and let it go, but later, I told my husband I didn’t think it was fair. He got defensive and said I was making his mum feel bad over something ‘so small’.
“I honestly don’t think I’m being unreasonable. I’m not asking them to learn a new language, just my actual name. But now I feel like I’m being that person—overly sensitive and nitpicking. My best friend says I should just answer to it because ‘older people don’t change,’ but I don’t want to set the precedent that my name doesn’t matter.”
She then asked whether she would be unreasonable to continue to correct them, even though she’d shown her husband’s mum up in front of her pal.
In the comments, someone asked: “What are you being particular about? That people know your actual name after five years? They’re almost certainly doing it on purpose, right?
“Your husband sucks. How can he say you made his mum feel small by this one incident when he doesn’t give a s**t that they can’t get your name right after five years? Like, of course, that will make you feel small! Have you discussed this with him over the years? How is he okay with this treatment of his wife? What is he doing about it?”
Some said that they’d be even pettier, penning: “I’d also request that my parents start calling my husband by the wrong name. Really up the petty game until the point is CRYSTAL CLEAR.”
Another fumed: “If you’re planning to have children, tell your mother-in-law very pointedly that she better learn how to pronounce your name if she wants to spend time with her grandchildren.”