NEED TO KNOW
- A woman is questioning whether she’s right to feel upset after her partner made a “crude” joke at her expense
- She said on Mumsnet that her partner made a joke about her doing something risqué while his friends were present
- “He has given a half apology but said he was joking and didn’t mean anything by it,” she explained
A woman is upset after her partner made a “crude” joke at her expense.
She explained on the community forum Mumsnet about feeling “humiliated” after meeting her partner’s best friend — and his wife — for the first time after they’ve been dating for nearly a year.
The couple live “a few hours away and had a baby around the time I met my partner, so they haven’t been free to meet up,” the woman said
“We went to a restaurant followed by a couple of bars in the city they are from, so were all a bit tipsy,” she recounted, before sharing that they got into a conversation about some of the friend’s wife’s strangest encounters at work.
“My partner’s friend’s wife works in the National Health Service and was talking about some of the strangest things she has seen,” the woman continued. “She mentioned people turning up at the [emergency room] with items lodged in their bum.”
Her partner’s friend commented that he “he doesn’t know what would posses anyone to do that sort of thing” — and then came her partner’s unfortunate joke, the woman said.
“My partner then turned to me and said, ‘You should see what she’s like when she gets home from bottomless brunch with her friends,’ and burst out laughing.”
“I pulled him up on it last night and again today but he doesn’t see the issue,” she continued. “He has given a half apology but said he was joking and didn’t mean anything by it, and his friend/wife will know it was a joke.”
Soon after the interaction, the woman admitted that she stills feels unsettled by the joke, and turned to the online community to ask whether she was “over the top” with her reaction.
Many Mumsnet users shared that they felt that her husband was simply making a joke — albeit somewhat in poor taste — and questioned why she felt so uncomfortable about it.
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“I don’t think he meant it as anything other than a silly comment,” one reply stated. “Only you will know if it’s something to worry about. It sounds misplaced but benign enough to me.”
“If you’re upset enough to raise it last night and again today then there’s something else at play here isn’t there?” another user questioned.
Other users said that woman’s issue may be quite simple — she and her partner may have different senses of humor.
“I think you just have mismatched humor. My husband and I would say things like that all the time about each other,” one person wrote. “Whoever comes up with the quickest joke would make it first! Is it maybe because you don’t know the other couple well that you couldn’t just laugh it off or give a similar joke back to him? Or do you just not find that sort of thing funny?”
“Give as good as you get and you’ll come out on top,” another person advised, “instead of going in a mood about a jokey comment.”
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