Dear Prudence,
I and my wife have a toddler, and my wife wants our toddler to call her close friends “aunts” and “uncles.” We both have siblings already, and I think close friends should just be called by their first names because they’re not actually family. I specifically do not want her friend Brenda to be an aunt.
When my wife and I first got together, I admit I did not treat her the way she should have been treated. The thing she always talks about is when she wanted to take a community college course in my field to “connect” with me, and I told her that it was a silly idea because she wouldn’t understand what I do in enough depth to talk about it with me. She’s not stupid, but my field is scientific and that’s not her strength. There’s other things she brings up too, like when I didn’t intervene when our mutual friend made her uncomfortable and how I always had to be right. I went to therapy and I’m better now.
Brenda and my wife are very close. My wife has low contact with her parents, and when my wife graduated from college, Brenda helped her adjust to the adult world. She helped her job search and was basically a mentor to her. Brenda cannot get over how I treated my wife at the beginning of our relationship, and even though my wife forgave me, Brenda never did. Every dinner with her that my wife makes me go to is full of unnecessary tension and not enjoyable at all. I know Brenda and my wife are good friends, but I don’t want her to be an aunt to my child. She hates me, and it feels like my wife isn’t taking my feelings into consideration. I told her that I didn’t want any of our friends to be “aunts” or “uncles,” especially Brenda. Am I being fair?
— She’s Not an Aunt