When this twenty-five-year-old man was just five-months-old, his father tragically died after getting into an accident at work.
So, he was primarily raised by his mother from infancy to early tweenhood. But even then, tragedy struck again.
At the age of twelve, he lost his mother after she suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. And at that point, he was forced to spend the rest of his childhood in foster care since the only remaining family he had were his paternal grandparents– both of whom had Alzheimer’s disease and were living in a nursing home together.
Despite all of this trauma and hardship, though, he has emerged as an optimistic and accomplished young man.
He is even now engaged to his twenty-four-year-old fiancée, named Jessie, who he claims is amazing.
He and Jessie met about six years ago while they were attending the same college, with their relationship starting off as just friends.
If you could not have guessed, though, their friendship quickly turned into more, and they finally got engaged about three months ago.
Now, he has known Jessie’s parents and siblings for a long time– about four years at this point– and he has honestly grown very fond of them.
“Especially in the last year when we got to spend more time together,” he added.
Jacob Lund – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual people
Recently, though, he came face-to-face with some pretty cruel future in-laws, and he felt inclined to put Jessie’s family members in their place.
It all began following their engagement when Jessie’s family really wanted to throw them an engagement party.
And in the planning for this event, he got to meet some of Jessie’s extended family members– who he thought seemed nice at the time.
Well, then, the engagement party actually happened, and everything turned upside down.
Apparently, during the celebration, he overheard some of Jessie’s family members talk about how “silly” his name was. For context, his real name is Beau or Bowen, but he goes by “Bowie.”
And the fact that everyone calls him “Bowie” struck his future in-laws as really juvenile and immature.
In fact, they even claimed it was “crazy and cruel” of his parents to “saddle a man” with a name as silly and juvenile as Bowie.
However, the rudeness did not stop there– because then, one of Jessie’s aunts even had the nerve to ask him if he would be changing his name to “a more mature and masculine” one following marriage!
“And I said of course not because it would not be my name,” he responded. Duh!
That aunt of Jessie’s just did not quit, though. According to him, she actually went on to ask if he felt “strange” bearing the name his parents picked.
The aunt even claimed that his parents probably picked the name “Bowie,” thinking it would be cute for a baby but not a grown man.
So, at that point, he understandably had enough of dealing with all this judgment at his own engagement party. In turn, he kind of told Jessie’s family members off.
“I said they would need to head to the grave and ask my parents, seeing as I could not speak for their thought process and how it might not be easy to get an answer with them being in the ground for twenty-five and twelve years, respectively,” he explained.
“But, I am sure my dead parents would love to hear their criticisms of my name.” Yikes!
Thankfully, Jessie was by his side the entire time, and she completely understood his feelings. In fact, Jessie was mad at her family and wanted to confront them first. However, he told his fiancée to calm down and took care of it himself.
The interesting part about this situation, though, is that after making those remarks, he did not continue freaking out or start a huge argument.
Instead, he was actually cheerful and just continued on with the engagement party as if nothing had happened.
Despite that, though, Jessie’s family was apparently very uncomfortable with how he addressed them. Moreover, how he kind of “played dumb” and acted like nothing had even happened after the fact.
So, following the party, the family members apparently told Jessie that he had acted really rudely by making them so uncomfortable.
Jessie did not stand to hear that, though, and told her family members that they had acted like straight-up judgemental jerks.
He also spoke to Jessie’s parents afterward about the situation in hopes that they would understand how inappropriate their family’s comments were.
He also thought that how he handled the comments and questions gave everyone a chance to move on and drop the situation.
To his surprise, though, Jessie’s parents did not take his side– even knowing his family history.
“They said I was rude and had clearly enjoyed it when I played dumb as I did,” he vented.
On top of that, his future in-laws claimed that he needed to apologize for reacting that way. In private, though, he told Jessie that hell would literally have to freeze over before he apologized for standing up for himself.
So now, with the wedding quickly approaching and him in the doghouse with much of Jessie’s family, he has been left wondering if making his fiancé’s family “feel uncomfortable” and “acting dumb” afterward actually made him the jerk in the situation.
Is it ever okay to comment on someone’s name to their face? What about at their own engagement party? Is it better that he “played dumb” and allowed everyone the chance to drop the topic instead of causing a massive scene? If you were in his shoes, would you apologize for standing up for yourself or not?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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