A woman was confused about how her boyfriend’s family Thanksgiving went so wrong and why her boyfriend was so angry at her about it. She turned to Reddit to find out if she was at fault.
A 30-year-old woman was dating a man who had broken up with his high school sweetheart just a year before they had begun dating. While he had put that relationship behind him, it was not the same for his family members.
The woman’s boyfriend’s mother was heartbroken that he and his childhood sweetheart had broken up. The older woman felt like the woman’s boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend was part of their family as she had grown up with them.
The breakup was amicable as the couple grew apart as they got older and decided it was time to end their relationship. However, this didn’t stop the woman’s boyfriend’s mother from taking it out on her.
How Did the Woman’s Boyfriend’s Mother Treat Her?
The woman entered the relationship, understanding that it might take his family some time to get used to him being with someone else. She thought his mother needed her to know her, and things would improve.
However, that was not the case. The woman said her boyfriend’s mother would call her by his ex’s name for the first year of her relationship. She shared:
“…until [my boyfriend] got angry once and told her to be nice. She laughed it off and said it was just a habit.”
When the woman’s boyfriend’s mother eventually stopped calling her by the ex-girlfriend’s name, she still didn’t call her the correct name. She would call the woman Jenny instead of Janet, and so on.
The first few times this happened, the woman corrected her boyfriend’s mother. However, she soon realized it seemed that the older woman enjoyed hurting her, so she stopped correcting her when she called her the wrong name.
Apart from everything the woman endured with her boyfriend’s mother, she was once again put in a difficult position over an important holiday, leaving her feeling confused and upset.
What Happened At Thanksgiving?
A few weeks before Thanksgiving, the woman was at her boyfriend’s sister’s home for a barbecue. She was in the kitchen with her boyfriend’s mother, one of his two sisters, and her husband.
As they stood there, the woman’s boyfriend’s sister spoke of how her brother had talked highly of his girlfriend’s cooking to his brother-in-law. The woman’s boyfriend’s mother was listening and sarcastically suggested that she should cook the turkey for Thanksgiving. However, she again used the wrong name, calling the woman Janet, not Jenny.
The woman noticed that her boyfriend’s sisters giggled at their mother’s suggestion, but the woman remarked:
“That’s a great idea!”
The woman knew what she would do next to make her point once and for all that her boyfriend’s mother could no longer call her by the wrong name. Things came to a head at her boyfriend’s mother’s house a few weeks later on Thanksgiving.
The woman and her boyfriend arrived with the usual wine and dessert, and everybody was shocked when they saw the woman hadn’t brought the turkey that had been discussed weeks before Thanksgiving.
The woman said that she thought Janet was bringing the turkey because her boyfriend’s mother had used the other woman’s name weeks before when discussing the day. She confessed:
“There was yelling, crying, and then we got kicked out.”
The woman then said that her boyfriend hadn’t spoken to her since that night, and she figured their relationship might be over, but she wanted to know from netizens whether or not she was wrong for what she had done.
She soon found that instead of thinking she was wrong, many people thought she was a hero for how she had handled the situation and said the way she got back at her boyfriend’s mother was nothing compared to what the woman had done to her, like calling her the wrong name.
Others thought she should have confronted the older woman, but many said that the woman had tried to no avail and doing what she did was the only thing big enough to make her boyfriend’s mother see the error of her ways.
