AIO To my wife’s “pranking”?
My wife and I have been married for 14+ years. 3 kids, high-functioning marriage, love of my life, but her response to something tonight is really bothering me.
For context, I HATE pranks. I have hated them for years, anytime anyone has ever played one or asked me to be a part of playing one, I state my displeasure and opt out. My wife knows this, as she has been told this many times. In our first year of marriage, she played this prank that ended up scaring me, and I literally ended up crying (I’m a baby I know), mostly because pranks just make me so mad. Specifically, I hate how pranks take advantage of people’s (read: my) trust in others. Still, in 14 years, she has played them from time to time on ms or on one of our kids. I always shake my head, restate my feelings, and often just move on. (By the way, it’s never anything super dramatic. Usually just something relatively harmless like…)
A couple of weeks ago, my wife saw this Instagram video where someone said there was “something going on with their jaw” and to ask someone to touch it because they think they have “dogjaw,” then when the person touched it, they snap at the person’s fingers. She showed it to my youngest daughter, who, when I took her out for ice cream, did it to me. I was frustrated, told her I was, reiterated my feelings, and she apologized. I said it’s okay, just please not again, and boom all good. However, she told my wife what happened a couple days later, and for some reason, my wife then successfully pulled the prank on me AGAIN (yes, I am a gullible and naive person!!), and I got mad at her. I stepped away so as to not blow up, and she followed me after a few minutes, and I (relatively) calmly reiterated my feelings on these kinds of interactions. She apologized, I asked her to please not do those kinds of things, she agreed, balance restored.
But tonight, we were eating dinner all together and my girls and I were being goofy and laughing together. My wife, who is a genuinely funny and creative person, said she had an idea and asked me to put in some noise-canceling headphones to play a game. I said sure, and she put on music and asked me to lip read what my middle child was saying. Fun enough, right? I do this for a minute or so, and my wife is dying laughing holding my phone. She had called my Dad and was having me “converse” with him based on my largely unsuccessful lip reading. When I noticed, I pulled out the earbuds, explained what was going on to my Dad, apologized, and hung up the phone.
We didn’t say much after that immediately. I told her that I wish she hadn’t done that, and she got quiet. When she rose from the table a few minutes later, I followed her, and, out of earshot of my kids, said, “I know that you know I don’t like pranks, and it makes me feel used for entertainment when you do them. I don’t understand why you continue to do them to me. Please stop.” And she walked out of the room (literally grunted “huh” as a response) and has yet to apologize or acknowledge what I said.
So…AIO? Am I being too sensitive to some thin that is relatively harmless and my wife is trying to be playful with, or am I justified to set and expect this boundary and my wife is being negligent to my request?
TLDR; Wife continues to play little “pranks” with on me despite multiple requests to stop, and refuses to apologize when they happen.
UPDATE: Got home from work today and my wife and I connected on this. Loved having worked through what it was really about here, and owning some of my strong feelings about it. When we talked, she ended up sharing that part of her “huh” response was responding to feeling like a relational bid that was silly and funny was not received well (she and I joke around a lot, contrary to what responders might believe) and feeling rejected. She apologized, and we came up with a way to skip the fight next time and go straight to sorry, with me trying to be more graceful and her owning the misstep. Thanks for being a sounding board Redditors!!