A Reddit user** shares his pain on finding out his son was name after his wife’s first love
About two days ago my wife and I were out shopping when we ran into one of her high school friends.
The pair were chatting, and it came up that we have a 5-year-old son. When the old friend asked his name my wife hesitated, so I stepped in and told her. My wife’s friend suddenly had a strange look on her face and said, “What, you mean like your ex-boyfriend?”.
Our son’s name is very unique to the point that I’ve never met another person with the same name, there is no way this is a coincidence.
When we got home that afternoon, my wife refused to talk to me about it. To be honest, I felt betrayed and disgusted with her. I just couldn’t look at her the same way.
When we first discussed the name five years ago, I had no idea it was her high school ex’s name. I knew she had one boyfriend in high school, but she had never told me his name. Instead, she’d said she remembered somebody from school who had the name, and we both instantly loved it.
I will always love my son and I would never – and I mean never – treat him any differently.
But I needed to talk to my wife about how much this had affected me.
One week later, our son’s aunt took him for a sleepover, and we sat down to chat.
I straight out asked her why she hadn’t told me our name came from.
She said she was sorry, but she hadn’t thought it was a big deal.
I told her that it was my choice too and she took that away from me. I asked her if she would feel the same way if we had a daughter and named her after one of my ex’s and she said that’s different I wouldn’t let that happen.
After a heated discussion, she left to see her mother, and I stayed the night with friends.
The next day I returned home, and she was sitting on the couch waiting.
She asked what it was going to take for us to get back to normal. I told her that we would need to see a marriage counsellor first off and consider changing our son’s name to his middle name.
My wife looked at me, dead in the eyes, and told me that was never going to happen and stormed off.
I knew what had to be done and made us an appointment to see the counsellor that worked with both our work schedules.
I’m still pushing to change our son’s name, but I’m waiting to see what the counsellor says.
** Reddit user BillNyes-InnerThigh. Some edits have been made for readability.
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