stopping jokes our friends dont know are hurting my wife (F-29) without letting them know she is hurting - (I am M-28)

A situation has come up in my marriage a few times now and I dont know what is the best way to handle it.

My wife hates playing games. Word games, card games, any game that involves speed, coordination, or logic/problem solving. It has nothing to do with her ability to play the game so much as it has to do with her insecurity that she is slow, incompetent, and that people think she is stupid. This is a very old insecurity stemming from childhood. I enjoy games but they aren’t important to me like they are to people who REALLY love games. I dont care about games and am not sad for myself or our relationship that she doesn’t like to play them. But we have a very close group of friends who LOVE games. And these friends are very “joke-y”. We make fun of each other and have a good time and everyone is the butt of the joke eventually.

The other night we were playing a group word game with those friends. My wife sat back most of the game because she didn’t want to play and she didnt want to feel like the stupid one. But she chimed in every now again and had fun and was good! This one moment came up when she jumped in the game and her answer flopped (her word was caterpillar). When the answers flop sometimes they are funny and we laugh for a second and move on. But with her everyone pounced on the flop. They laughed and kept poking fun at her the rest of the night, reliving the moment on and on. Even continuing on our group chat the following days by sending caterpillar pictures and emojis.

I know my wife and i knew how upset she was in this moment even if she never let on to the group how hurt she was. She didnt want them to think she was overly sensitive or couldn’t take a joke. When we got home she cried herself to sleep feeling like her worst nightmare had come true; everyone laughing at her and thinking she was stupid. I did my best to comfort her and tell her no one thought that, she was actually good at the game when she played (which she was), and that her friends wouldnt laugh at her in front of her face if they actually thought she was stupid. That would be mean and these are good friends and it would be terribly out of character to be mean like that.

We talked about how i could have been more helpful in the moment during the game. I said I didn’t stand up for her because that would have either showed how hurt she was which i knew she didnt want, or it would have only spurned on the joking even more.

I wanted to divert the joking or change the conversation every time, but I just didnt know what to do or how to do it. I want to be able to help her through that moment, to stand up for her even if its covertly so no one knows that what’s going on. Truthfully, what I want is for her to gain the confidence and grow past what is obviously just an insecurity. But if she can’t do that I need to be able to make her feel protected, loved, and seen. In this situation, I don’t know how i can do that without making the matter worse somehow.

What can I do in the future?

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TL;DR My wife is insecure that people think she is stupid. So she doent like to play games. Recently our friends were making a lot of fun of her when we all played a game and she got an answer wrong. She was hurt. I didnt stand up for her because i knew she didnt want them to know she was hurting and if i did it in a way that didnt reveal that, they would have ripped into her harder. What can i do next time to stop the joking and protect my wifes feeling?

Submitted May 05, 2019 at 10:38PM by drvonbooth http://bit.ly/2VfRCSu