Boyfriend won't say my name

[YellowRose08]

Very random annoyance... might seem minor to a lot of peoples problems on here but it is driving me round the bend!!

I'm in a new relationship of a few months, lovely guy, honeymoon phase, very happy ect..
However, he continues to mispronounce my first name even after I have told him and corrected him multiple times. When I first told him, he was apologetic, said he hadn't realised and he would try and get it right. However, he is still saying it wrong all the time, he's getting defensive now and saying that his way is easier for him to say and that I will 'have to accept that he cannot say it'.
I would accept it if he had a genuine speech impediment(he doesnt) and he can say it right because I've heard him! I think he's just got into the habit of saying it wrong and can't get used to the different way.
It's really getting me down though. It makes me cringe everytime he says my name. My friends give me awkward looks when they hear him say it wrong and he's introducing me to his friends with the wrong name!!
I've told him several times how annoying it is but he doesnt seem to be listening??
Am I overreacting to think it is very disrespectful?? I feel like he can't be bothered to get it right- why should I be with someone who can't make the effort to get my name right?!?!

What should I say to him?? I feel like I will explode if he says it wrong again!

Note - my name is not difficult. Its an English name, there are 2 different pronounciations and ive had it said wrong by 50% of people I meet, but its very easy to say!!

Given the rest of your posts it's super weird that the sister and mother he is super close to aren't the ones he's off loading all his problems and insecurities to rather than you.

Also he isn't sleeping with them so they can be firmly on a Madonna pedestal. You...well who are you really?.. your name isn't even enough to make you real...

You need to leave. He is not well. You cannot fix him.

AnotherEmma - I'm not sure. I think I come across as quite confident- I am chatty and bubbly so I dont think so. Maybe I am fragile though and giving him more lee-way than I normally would.
I suppose because I've only had 1 other relationship, I don't have much to compare his behaviour to.

Thankyou so much for everyones replies btw. I never expected all this support!

And not just because of his bizarre refusal to pronounce your name correctly either - and while we're there, what's with that shit? Cba to say our name properly and you're being petty to insist? WTAF?

But yeah the neediness, the self loathing, the perving on Instagram...all of it. He's an albatross. Save your own neck.

I wouldn't text back anything tonight.

I think you, quite reasonably, aren't ready to walk away from a relationship in the say-so of a bunch of strangers who have never met either of you.

You need to stand your ground with this and see how far he is prepared to go to get you to back down.

You should now be very clear in your mind that expecting him to pronounce your name correctly is a very basic requirement in a respectful relationship. I think you've made it clear to him that this is a deal-breaker for you and not the innocent little foible he is trying to make it out to be.

I would wait until you are face to face again and, immediately, bring up your concern that he appears to be dismissing your feelings in favour of his own. Make it very clear that the problem has not gone away as far as you are concerned and that you won't accept him 'trying' but failing. Also make it clear that, although you will support him when he is feeling down, you won't allow him to use it as an excuse to treat you with such a lack of respect. Then leave the ball in his court and take control by moving the conversation on.

He will then have a clear choice and which route he takes will tell you clearly what to expect from your future relationship. If he persists in getting your name wrong or refuses to move on and tries to make you feel bad for making this very reasonable request, you'll know that this is what you can expect from your relationship in the long term.

Don't, whatever you do, consider having children with this man unless he does an awful lot of growing up and you are certain it is permanent.

OP, please feel free to decline to answer, but I'm curious, in what ways is your new BF better than your ex, and in what ways is he worse?

You are seriously over investing in this relationship - just leave him, don't analyse every comment, every thought, every reaction.

Relationships are meant to be fun & enjoyable - you admit you've only known him a few months - why is taking over your life? I feel sorry for both of you - you both sound equally needy.

When I first read this I had nothing really to offer probably still don't.
But I read the four suggestions for names and wonder if it is the one I think it is. I reckoned some of them were just down to regional variants. But reading his reaction to your expressing how you feel about him getting your name wrong makes me think he is just an arse. It is manipulative and a way of keeping you in your place. It may well be the thin end of the wedge.
I don't know him but how often do posts on here remind women that abusive men don't start out abusive. Nobody would stick around. Then they introduce little tests to see where your boundaries lie and how much you'll put up with. Once they know that they push a little harder ramp it up a bit. He knows this bothers you. You have told him repeatedly and now you've spelt it out. It almost feels impersonal opting not to use your proper name.
Keep your boundaries on this one firm. Don't settle for a nickname. Don't settle for anything less than your name. But please consider ending this. He is now trying to rewrite history by totally ignoring anything had happened. Oh and Dp had mental health issues. He doesn't use it as an excuse to be a duck. In fact when it was causing problems and he was being a duck he listened when I told him it was affecting the rest of us and did what needed to be done to stop it.

OP, I actually think if you ended the whole chat on good terms and "going forward you HAVE to say my name correctly" and you believed he would, you would simply text back.

If you're not going to dump him before Sunday, I would text back, because otherwise he will say "what's wrong" and you will say....what? After you've made your point and it's been properly taken on board, in theory things should be normal.

but if you are dumping him before Sunday, then it's different.

So, he's playing safe and calling you "honey" now instead of the wrong your name at all?

One day, you'll (hopefully) look back at this and say, incredulously, "God, do you remember that arse I went out with who couldn't get my name right?"

Every post you've made OP, he sounds worse and worse.

Look, you hardly know this man. (You've been with him for 5 minutes). But now he's starting to show you who he is. Cut your losses now.

You are still fragile from your previous breakup (that only happened 4 months ago?!?!) and the last thing you need is all this grief. You should be healing yourself right now, not dragging yourself through the mire again

Drop him now. Before this gets worse

You know that just because a guy likes you, and you find him attractive, that doesn't mean you have to work on a relationship, take on his problems or spend 50 years married to him?

Re read the conversation. He tried everything to dismiss you. But you are being petty. But I've cooked you dinner so I should be able to call you whatever I want. But my ex cheated on me. But I feel depressed. But I'm tired. But if we break up you'll regret it. But - making you feel unreasonable. But - making you feel guilty. But - making you feel insecure.

Text him "I'm unhappy about our discussion. I would like to take a week to think about whether we should continue this relationship. Please don't contact me for a few days"

Without a doubt his reaction to this will be telling..... But - I don't want to not talk to you. But -I feel depressed. But - you are bring unreasonable.

He won't say "I'm sorry, I was completely wrong, I'll talk to you when you are ready".

Try it. He won't respect your boundaries. I'll bet you!

"I don't think we are right for each other. Good bye" would be even better.

It doesn't matter what he or anybody else thinks about why you end it. No good friend of yours will judge you and say you treated a mentally ill person badly.

He may say that, but that's OK, too. Because you will know the truth, that you had a spidey sense about him, that all was not well.

He reminds me of my XH, who was and still is narcissistic. The only time I felt he listened to me, enough to alter his behaviour a bit (rather than do the same as before in secret), was when I said I was leaving. That was after twelve years of marriage. I kept thinking, about so many things, I haven't said it the right way to explain this is important to me. And then gradually, well, I suppose it's not so important. More important to have peace, no?

He thought I'd come back once he started changing. But how can you commit to a relationship where your only chance of being heard is to threaten to leave? He would've listened less the second time, in any case!

Token Ginger
"This would piss me off. My name ends in an "A" and so many people call me the variation ending in "E" and I hate it"^
^^
^I think we have the same name. People do this to me all of the time. Midwife once called me through with the 'e' version and I genuinely had no idea she was calling me until she added my surname! I detest the version ending in 'e' and I just don't associate it with me at all. Would be a total deal breaker if my OH couldn't say my name right

" I feel bad just giving up someone because they have mental health condition??"

That kind of thinking is very dangerous to you.

You should give up on him, now, and not let him take up any more brain space. This man has reg flags galore.

You are in danger of letting him treat you terribly because he has given you an excuse for his behaviour. His excuse is bollocks though.

You should give up on him not because he has depression, but because:

1. He won't say your name right. (No need to analyse it further. He can. He is choosing not to, it's not on).

1. His behaviour is making you cringe in public. This is not good for your self esteem, it will damage you. Do not accept it.

1. His response to you pulling him up on the name thing was not good enough. Not by a country mile. Why are you still with him after that?

1. He doesn't know how to resolve issues. If he does something that hurts your feelings, his response to being told about it is to shut you down, not work with you to resolve it. This is major and is not going to change. He is not partner material, he will keep doing this to you.

1. Even though you can't see it, he is manipulating you. That horrible night did not happen because of his depression. That happened because of his manipulative personality. He is trying to make you feel responsible for his feelings, and it is working too. "" I feel bad just giving up someone because they have mental health condition??" This is what he wants you to feel. He wants you to feel you have to stay with him, that it's your job to deal with his shit. He doesn't care whether it's a good or nice experience for you. And this will happen again and again. It won't get better, it will get worse.

1. Having said that it doesn't matter really whether the horrible night is down to depression or manipulation. Yes you can leave someone you have been with hardly any time at all because of a mental health condition, especially if that condition is hurting you. As a poster said above "He is not well. You cannot fix him." This x 1,000. You cannot fix him, you really can't. It is not your job. It is your job to protect yourself. Please run!

And anyway, why should you stay with someone you don't want to be with just because they have issues, isn't that actually quite patronising?

Please, for the sake of your own sanity, leave!

It has been a few months.
He is acting in a controlling way over your name.
He has told you he is controlling and that he has problems. You are starting to see them.
It has only been a few months.
He is telling you and showing you who he is. Listen to him.

Don't act as his saviour. Don't put up with abuse because you feel sorry for him.

I'm sorry if any of my post above sounds harsh, but you sound just like me a decade or so ago. Very naive indeed, and actually a danger to yourself around manipulative arseholes as you are too kind, too accepting and too willing to assume other people think like you.

I too was very confident and outgoing. You don't have to be a shy mouse to be an easy target for abuse. But naive, trusting and caring? Check. You may not think you are naive. I didn't either, and I was worldly wise in some areas. But you are making yourself a target for abuse by doing these things:

• letting him treat you in a way which makes you cringe but thinking of his feelings (not wanting to embarrass him) instead of your own. This shows him very clearly that he can manipulate you by making you think poor him.

• taking his good behaviour in one area as evidence of overall good character. My psycho ex was a very considerate lover, and seemed very caring towards me. Didn't stop him being an abusive lowlife. It just blinded me to it for a while. Just because your BF is nice to his mum and sister does not mean he doesn't objectify women. To think so is naive.

• worrying about whether breaking up is fair to him. Stop it! Stop thinking about him. Think about your feelings. Someone needs to and he certainly isn't going to.

• not running a mile when he treats you badly. Please change this, please run for the hills!

Please be aware that when you try to split up with him he will probably try very hard indeed to manipulate you into staying. Please don't feel bad about splitting up by phone or text if you find he won't let you do it face to face, or even if you simply don't feel like doing it face to face. I used to think you had to dump someone face to face, that it was the right thing to do. But that only applies if they are a decent, stable person. If you are dumping them because of how they have treated you, you owe them nothing. A text is fine.

I was much further down the line than you are when I first started trying to split with me psycho ex. But trying to split up with him was exhausting. He had several "suicide" attempts. (Looking back they were nothing of the sort, it was just him manipulating me again).

He once threatened to beat up my friend if I dumped him there and then. (He didn't quite put it like that, but that was the gist of it).

Another time he got blind drunk and turned up having been attacked (I have no doubt he deserved it, whatever he did), sent to hospital and discharged himself in only a hospital gown. I came home to find him sitting on my doorstep in broad daylight, with blood all over him from a fairly serious wound on his neck, half naked in a hospital gown and no shoes. It was a horrendous sight. I should have called the police, but yet again I took him in and vowed to myslef to ask him to go (again) in the morning. But what did he do the next morning? He got up and acted as if nothing had happened. He did this a lot and it was a very effective tactic, as often I would be too emotionally drained to bring it all up again, and so it would go on.

"I never expected all this support!"

Many of us have wasted many too years with manipulative men, and we now recognise the behaviour for what it is. We don't want you to go through he same it really can be devestating. It is over 7 years since I finally got away from my psycho ex (after being with him for 5). I still haven't managed to repair all the damage he did. My self-esteem still hasn't fully recovered. I have lost friendships I will never get back. I don't make friends as easily as I did, my association with that man has changed how I feel about myself.

We can see what danger you are in, and I'm sure I'm not alone in saying I wish there had been somewhere like mumsnet for me, or some other person who recognised the signs and could explain to me what I was getting into.

I hope this is helping. You are a lovely person, that is obvious from your posts, and you deserve much, much better than this

As somebody said earlier on in the thread -

When a man shows you who he truly is, believe him.

Massive red flags here. If you stay with him you are setting yourself up for an abusive relationship

Excellent posts, mother , very well said.

One last thing - my tales of my ex above may sound far removed from your DP. But the thing is he didn't start acting like that at first. It took a long time to get there.

It started off with him revealing a difficult past and his issues, and me feeling sorry for him and like I could help him. The fact that we clicked sexually and enjoyed each other's company helped too of course. People are complex. The wolves can come in sheep's clothing, and it can take years to see them for who they really are, and by that point you're so far in it can be hard to get out, particularly if you are the kind of person who tends to put other people's feelings first.

"He always says he 'likes a strong woman'" (Quote)

That's what my 2 violent abusive exes would say to me. Perhaps it's some kind of sick challenge to themselves to beat/wear you down? One of them called me by an incredibly offensive "pet name". According to him, twas meant "affectionately".

If only these boards had been around then.

There's enough of us singing the same tune here to start a choir!

I'm in the process of divorcing a man whose reactions to MY need for respect mirror what you have been getting from your soon to be ex BF. The abusive relationship between his parents, objectifying women, deflection onto other petty matters when I'm upset with him, and putting his own feelings above mine- there are many more you'll discover if you stay. He's not awful all the time, they never are but 13 years down the line I've truly reached the end of my tether and have questioned my sanity far too often. If these threads had been around back then, I'd never have stayed with him never mind marry him.

Please please listen to the many posters here that have been down this road before, you don't need to learn the hard way. We all think 'but he's different'. He's not.

By the way, I don't use my first name as it's awful and old fashioned. He was on the phone yesterday sorting out something and had to give my name. He pronounced it wrong! 13 fucking years later. I thought of you and had to post. Run run run

yellowrose it must have been a blow to your self-esteem when your partner of 6 years told you he wasn't in love with you and left cos he was in love with somebody else. I remembered this detail when you say you are chatty and confident because this is not the same as an healthy self-esteem!

You can be an extrovert who can go about her business confidently but still have damaged self-esteem wrt personal relationships.

After a man dumped me with a character assassination (15 years ago now!!) I didn't realise quite how deeply he had damaged my self-esteem, because eventually I 'got over' it, went out with somebody else...... but it was a somebody else who didn't respect me and on one level, I'd settled for that because of the damaging hit to my self-esteem that being dumped with an unfair character assassination had caused.

what I mean is, don't confuse being an extrovert with real self-confidence. People can be confident introverts.

The comment about liking a strong woman, ha, well, that just means they can drama bait you. it's a strong reaction they like. A strong woman would walk away. Sticking around to (strongly) react to all the injustices in the relationship isn't strength. Another thing I didn't see clearly at the time.

I know an abusive acquaintance of mine (not my x actually) who said something very drama-baiting to a man I was dating. When the man I was dating very sensibly didn't react but said in private to me that he was a knob but he wouldn't respond, and then the abusive character said that he ''had no mettle'' and in defence of a drama bait he said he wanted to test his mettle, I realised, ok, reacting isn't strength. Walking away or ignoring it is the strength.

I hope that doesn't seem totally irrelevant. I recognise types!

Right. You said on the first page that your name was one of the four that had already been mentioned. All of those names are perfectly ordinary, easy to say names and so of course he can pronounce it properly. He just won't. It's a (not so very subtle actually) way of undermining and dismissing you, and giving you the message that you are not very important.

He is now putting a great deal of effort into ensuring you back down and accept this. Just fuck him off for christs sake! Any issues he has are not your responsibility, although he will try to make them so.

For what it's worth, I have a reasonably common English name, but spell it differently to most people. I decided at the age of around ten that this is how I would spell it as I wanted to be "different", and it's just stuck throughout my life. It's now my name and part of my identity. My parents were absolutely lovely and accepted the new spelling and adopted it immediately, despite my young age. But there have been two men that I've known who repeatedly would spell it wrong in their correspondence with me, despite being reminded multiple times. It wasn't any coincidence that both these men showed signs of being potentially abusive. Luckily I was familiar with these red flags and got out in time on both occasions. I suggest you take the same tack.