Someecards Logo
ADVERTISING
'AITA for refusing to change my daughter's name cause it hurts my FIL's wife's feelings?'

'AITA for refusing to change my daughter's name cause it hurts my FIL's wife's feelings?'

ADVERTISING

"AITA for telling my husband's dad and his wife that I will not change our daughter's name because it hurts the wife's feelings?"

ElectricalLeague1580 writes:

My husband's (29M) parents divorced when he was 2. His dad remarried two years later. My FIL's wife is Sharon. Sharon and my late MIL, who died when my husband was 8, were on very bad terms.

Sharon claimed my MIL made her life hell, wished her dead, laughed when she suffered three back-to-back miscarriages, tried to get CPS to take custody away from her and FIL, and tried to get her out of the picture for good through CPS. Sharon said the only reason my husband never called her anything other than Sharon and has always seen her as an outsider is because of MIL.

FIL's own siblings have said this is not accurate and that Sharon and MIL simply disliked each other. They admitted that MIL could be dismissive of Sharon's role at times and didn’t regard her as an equal parent, but they insisted she was nowhere near as bad as Sharon and FIL claim.

When my MIL died, my husband's relationship with FIL and Sharon deteriorated significantly. He forbade them from attending the funeral and said that if they tried to come, he would run away until he was placed with other family members.

My husband told me this himself. FIL and Sharon said they feared my husband would start lashing out at them, and since Sharon was pregnant at the time, they gave in. They claim my husband hates them for not being there.

He said their decision to stay away was one of the better ones they made, though he hated that he had to yell and threaten to run away for them to stop insisting on attending. By the time we met in college, he had very little contact with them. In the last couple of years, there has been slightly more contact, but still barely any. I got the full story from him about how rocky things were, and I knew he never planned to be very close to them.

Sharon calls my husband her son. She actually introduced herself to me as his mom and was shocked that I knew she wasn’t his mom. I haven’t met her or FIL much. I know my husband’s extended family far better; he’s much closer to them than to FIL, Sharon, or his half-siblings.

I recently gave birth to our daughter, and we named her after my MIL. My husband did not invite FIL or Sharon to meet our daughter, but they found out through social media about the name we chose. They reached out to ask him why, and a couple of days ago, they approached me at the mall to talk.

They told me they had learned her name and wanted to know why we would do that to Sharon. They asked how I could be okay with using my daughter’s name to hurt Sharon’s feelings. They said I should insist on a different name, maybe something after Sharon, because she’s “been here all this time.” But they were adamant that it should not be a name that hurts Sharon’s feelings so much.

I told them I would not change my child’s name to spare Sharon’s feelings, and that her feelings were not even on the list of things we considered. I didn’t want to hear more, so I left. Now we’re being inundated with texts from them, calling me rude and disgusting for dismissing Sharon’s feelings. AITA?

Here are the some of OP's responses to the top rated comments.

Financial_Bear_5071 says:

NTA and hand this back to your husband to deal with. He's done a great job of putting them back in their place throughout his life.

OP responded:

He's weighing what he does now but he thinks cutting all contact is likely the best way forward because they don't bring joy to us.

cutie_likes_bag22 says:

Why did FIL and Sharon felt it was appropriate to approach a newborn's mother and demand a name change is the actual question. Unquestionably NTA.

OP responded:

Guess they saw me as an easy person to force this idea on.

What do you think?

Sources: Reddit
© Copyright 2024 Someecards, Inc

ADVERTISING
Featured Content