AITAH for confronting my mom about an inside joke my family had about me that I didn’t know?
My boyfriend (28M) and I (26F) attended my family’s thanksgiving this year after not going last year because we went to his family’s house. My whole extended family was there and we had a lot of fun at first but a ton of my older relatives kept saying how big the ham was last year and laughing. This was kind of weird to me because we’ve always been turkey people but one of my younger cousins did start helping cook two years ago so maybe he introduced something new and no one liked it.
They were kind of making the same joke at Christmas Eve, my uncle’s 60th birthday party in August, and my little cousin’s graduation party in May. However, the ham jokes reached a new high at Thanksgiving.
So finally I turned to my cousin Jenny (25F) who I’m pretty close with and asked her about what happened last year with this ham. Jenny immediately said it wasn’t that funny, but she looked uncomfortable about it. In fact, when I looked around most of my cousins sort of looked uncomfortable about it when they would say the ham line again. When I went back for more food I saw my brother (30M) in the kitchen and asked him about it but he was at his wife’s family’s house the year prior as well, so he didn’t know either. I had a really hard time brushing it off but I assumed it was some weird inappropriate joke that the older people in my family found funny.
It wasn’t until after dinner that Jenny ran into me going out of the upstairs bathroom that she finally broke out crying and told me what it was they were saying. Basically, last year my uncle had commented to my mom about how much weight it looked like I gained in a recent instagram story where my boyfriend and I were lifting up the huge ham his family made. My mom then said something about how that ham (me) has been the biggest one in the family for a while. The whole family heard and all the aunts and uncles laughed. For context, not that it’s really needed, I had gained some weight last year and some more this year but I know I am certainly far from overweight despite my insecurities about my body. Jenny then piped up about how they shouldn’t say cruel things when I’m not around to defend myself. They all came down on her telling her to learn to take a joke. Later that night my mom rounded up all of my cousins and told them she shouldn’t have made the joke and to keep it between them. They all sort of agreed and didn’t expect the joke to come up again. But it did. At every family thing. All year.
Jenny told me she couldn’t take me not knowing anymore but begged me not to say anything. She’s never very big on confrontation. I said I would keep it to myself for now but I was pissed and my boyfriend and I left early without a lot of goodbyes. I told him in the car and he insisted I couldn’t just keep that to myself, but told me to cool off a bit before I say anything to my mom.
Fast forward to the next day and I call my mom to confront her about it. I told her how upset that I was that she would not only make a joke like that to my family but also let it keep going right in front of me. She knew I’ve been having some serious insecurities about changing weight and freaking out over needing to buy a whole new wardrobe over the past year because none of my old clothes fit me anymore. She immediately asked me who told me. I told her it didn’t matter, what matters is what happened and what she said. She insisted she tried to shut it down but she can’t control her siblings and their spouses, they’re free people and they can say what they want. Then she asked again who told me. After this same back and forth of half-assed non-apologies and insisting I say who told me about the joke for 30 minutes I ended the call.
For a week I had been avoiding the whole family except for my brother, who was also outraged on my behalf when I told him about it. It wasn’t until two days ago that I got a call out of nowhere from Jenny after work. She immediately started laying into me the second I answered the phone. She was pissed I told my mom that I knew because she had just gotten off the phone with my mom who was pissed at her for breaking her promise and telling me! Apparently, over the last week between work and her activities my mom has been systematically calling my entire family to find out who squealed. She hadn’t sherlocked her way into finding out it was my cousin, but Jenny broke the minute she got on the phone with my mom and heard she was angry. Now my mom is extremely mad at Jenny and Jenny is even more mad at me for confronting her and getting her in trouble. Now everyone in both of our families (except my brother and his wife) is telling me I ruined Christmas this year because now they can’t spend the holiday with us because of the tension.
So AITAH? Because I just don’t even know what to do at this point! I thought I was doing what was best for me by confronting my mom but it’s turned into this whole big thing and I’m so confused and angry.
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