When dating someone who doesn’t speak the same language as you natively, some difficulties are bound to pop up.

What would you do if your boyfriend told you it was rude to talk to your own dog in your native language because he couldn’t understand it?

That is the situation the woman in this story is in, and now she is upset that her boyfriend is trying to control the way she speaks.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for telling my boyfriend that if he wants to understand what I’m talking about with my dog, he should learn the language?

Background: I (32F) have a dog (6F).

My dog is noise-sensitive, and when she gets upset, I calm her down by talking to her about silly stuff in my native language.

It’s quite a rare language, and fewer than 5 million people speak it.

Language barriers can be difficult.

My boyfriend (38M) moved to my country 3 years ago for work and is a native English speaker (not from the US). We met around a year ago, and have been dating for 5 months.

Recently, we had our first argument that started with me speaking to my dog in my native language, and escalated from there.

The situation: we were hanging out in my living room, and there was a sudden bang outside. The dog startled and came to seek comfort.

I told her that they must have been thinking that it’s a New Year and started fireworks. And I giggled about my not-so-good joke.

He asked what I was giggling about, and I explained.

Really? She can’t talk to a dog in her own language?

He then told me that I shouldn’t use my language when he is visiting, because he feels left out.

I told him that I was helping my dog with her anxiety, and he didn’t have to understand what I was saying.

And then the argument started.

He expressed that it’s an unwritten rule that if someone, who doesn’t speak the local language, is in the room, everybody must speak English.

My counterargument was that we are not at work or a networking event (this is how we met), and if he wants to know what I told my DOG, he could just ask.

Ok, so it sounds like this is more of a pattern.

Carl said that he didn’t need to ask if I was making him feel welcome in my home, and pointed out some recent situations when I spoke my language with him present.

I told him that he only feels left out because he hasn’t made any effort to learn the language.

He then doubled down by saying there’s not much to do with the language outside our country, and he’d rather learn Spanish because 600 million people speak it.

And I doubled down by asking if he wants to speak with 600 million Spanish speakers or to understand what I’m talking about with my dog, a random classmate I don’t even want to talk to, or that I told my sister that the cake I brought to a party is still in the car, and if she takes my bags, I’ll bring the cake in (the situations he referred to previously). And if understanding these conversations is not worth his effort to learn the language, then these conversations are not worth my effort to speak English, too.

Is she just doing this to upset him now?

And then he was sullen and quiet the whole evening while I refused to give up and spoke to my dog in my native language.

But now I wonder if I was the AH, because his main issue was that he feels left out.

But I feel that it’s entitled to ask me to speak to my dog in English.

However, from the dog’s point of view, there’s no difference in what language I talk in outside the normal dog-human interactions, such as “do you want some dinner”, “bring me the ball” and “let’s go for a walk”.

But for me, it would be extremely strange to talk to my dog in English.

AITA?

To me, it sounds like there are more serious issues in this relationship than talking to a dog. These two need to work on working together rather than against each other.

Let’s see what the people in the comments on Reddit think about it.

Yeah, he has some major red flags.

Here is someone in a similar situation.

This commenter says her boyfriend is being unreasonable.

It’s not like he is only there for a few weeks.

She is putting in all the effort here, is he worth it?

This guy is the definition of entitled.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.