Most people in the world are fans of humor. However, what we find funny can vary quite a bit. For instance, some folks absolutely love practical jokes, while others deeply loathe them. And there can be a very fine line between pranking someone and bullying them. In some cases, things get taken way too far, and you’re forced to pick sides between people you love.
One anonymous redditor, who recently got married, shared how he felt forced to call out his wife for being a bully for how she ‘pranked’ her mother-in-law during their wedding. Read on for the full story, as well as how the AITA online community interpreted the situation.
Some people have a very hard time getting along with their in-laws. In some cases, this can lead to a lot of deep-seated resentment
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An anonymous man shared how he called out his wife for her mean behavior toward his mother at their wedding. He asked the internet for their take
Image credits: ASphotostudio / Envato (not the actual photo)
Image credits: [deleted]
Loving someone does not mean automatically siding with them if they overstep boundaries on decent behavior
Being forced to pick between your partner and your mother would be a nightmare scenario for many people. Unfortunately, in the anonymous redditor’s case, this was reality. His girlfriend and mother did not get along, but he stood by the former over the years out of principle.
However, he finally felt like he had to stand up for his mother, too, after learning how his wife and her friends pranked her at their wedding recently. This, however, didn’t stand well with his wife, who called him a “mama’s boy” and felt betrayed that he wasn’t fully supportive of her actions.
The author of the post ended up deleting his Reddit account after his post went viral on the website and in the media, so we were unable to reach out to him for further comment.
Love—true love—does not mean that we automatically approve of every single thing that our partners do. We can be supportive. We can be flexible, patient, and tolerant. However, we cannot and should not keep silent when our partners do something flat-out wrong or overstep common sense boundaries. We can share constructive criticism while still being on the same team.
Mutual respect is a huge part of any happy and healthy marriage. That also means respecting each other enough to admit that we may have made a mistake and being humble and self-aware enough to apologize.
The difference between pranks and bullying lies in power dynamics and whether the victim is in on the joke
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The BBC writes that one well-known ‘rule’ of comedy is to ‘punch up, not kick down.’ What this means, in practice, is that pranks should not be aimed at people who are less powerful than the person making the joke.
If there’s a vast imbalance in the power dynamic (e.g., someone has more status, resources, and knowledge), this borders on bullying rather than pranking. Even if there’s little to no inequality of power, it doesn’t automatically make a prank funny.
Child Psychologist Rachel Melville-Thomas, the spokesperson for the Association of Child Psychotherapists in the UK, said that when victims find pranks funny, they usually haven’t` been harmed—they immediately grasp the setup and can join in the laughter.
"What we want to do is laugh together—laughing together creates cohesion in social groups. If you're the victim of a prank, [for it to be funny], you have to very quickly join in and go, 'Ah, that was such a clever prank.' It's hard to see how that happens if you smack someone on the head,” she told the BBC.
Social Psychology Professor Madeleine A. Fugère, Ph.D., points out that people can overcome their difficulties getting along with their in-laws by trying to convince them that they’re a good mate for their child.
This means showing how much you care for your partner so that your in-laws have fewer reasons to be critical of you. Something else that can help, according to research, is having more one-on-one contact with the in-laws before marriage. That can lead to a healthier relationship after the wedding happens.
The author shared some additional context in the comments of his story
Most readers were on the man's side. Here's what they had to say about the entire argument
Others, however, had a different interpretation of what happened
