Three years ago, my wife (who was born in a former Soviet country and raised with Russian language and culture—Russian is her first language) and I were in a group chat with my family. We were talking about our dog, Laika, and my dad asked what language the name was in. When we said it was Russian, he responded: “I thought so. You know, all things Russian aren’t too popular right now.”

My wife was immediately hurt. The name Laika was a meaningful and personal cultural reference for her, and to have it dismissed like that—right after identifying it as Russian—felt xenophobic and invalidating. My initial thought was that it was a funny comment or just a comment on current events and I responded with a joke not realizing how hurtful it was. To her it wasn’t just a comment on “current events,” it felt like a subtle message that her culture, language, and background were undesirable.

She later told me how hurtful it was that I didn’t immediately say something in that moment. She felt exposed and unsupported. After she asked me to, I did follow up in the chat and said something like, “Current events don’t reflect on Russian culture or its people.” But the fact that I had to be prompted to speak up made it feel too little, too late to her. And I understand that.

This comment became a recurring point of pain in our relationship. She kept bringing it up and I would respond that the comment was insensitive and inappropriate. But what she wanted me to say was that the comment was inherently racist and she wanted me to agree with the direct or direct implication that my dad was a bad person because of it, and while I agreed to an extent I felt that I couldn’t agree with that exact characterization because I know my dad to be a good, kind and selfless person. My wife repeatedly told me that not just the comment—but my reaction and defensiveness of my dad—felt like a betrayal. It took me three years to fully acknowledge that what he said was, in fact, xenophobic (once she changed the language from describing it as racist) - and my wife felt my reluctance to validate her experience for that long made it worse.

Today, she wanted me to more fully acknowledge how she felt about the comment. In the conversation I used a hypothetical that I thought would help me relate and understand better . I said something like: “How would you feel about the same comment towards a Muslim person naming their dog Mohammed after 9/11?”

I intended it to better understand how intensely she felt about it when she was more emotionally detached from it because the hypothetical was less directly relevant to her. However, the impact was awful. My wife was horrified. She said the analogy was bigoted, reductive, and felt like a manipulative “gotcha” meant to corner her into admitting her feelings were exaggerated or misplaced. She thought I expected her to react differently to a culture she doesn’t have ties to, but she said she would call someone out for that immediately and everyone should have a right to honor their culture. She also said I was using another group’s trauma to invalidate her own. At the time, I apologized for being insensitive and admitted it was a poor choice, but I stand by the fact that I was just trying to understand her better by asking that question.

Was my Muslim analogy bigoted, manipulative and invalidating?