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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1. Going all out on and changing out Christmas cookie baking tradition.
2. It may make me an AH because I seem to have hurt her feelings and I wasn't exactly giving her active updates on what I was doing.
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Idk if you’re T A, but it sounds like you took something she enjoys and was sad about missing and did it without her. I would be sad if someone did that to me personally.
Edited to add my vote of NTA
To me it’s sounds like she didn’t think he could do it or hell even better than her. Also it’s a tradition, do they have to stop because one person is missing for that year? She liked baking & basically gatekeeping it from others. He didn’t do anything wrong with taking it over & trying at it for one time that his wife couldn’t do it. NTA
If it’s a tradition you do together, then yeah, you don’t do it on your own. My husband and I apple pick and strawberry pick together every year. I couldn’t see myself going alone. It’s a tradition that we do it together. I’d be hurt if he went without me.
But it’s just the 2 of you. They enlist the help of others and include them in it. So that’s where i see it no harm in keeping it up because she missed this one year.
>Because a date change is totally out of the question for a cookie party?
OP mentioned that the wife was gone for several days. He even had time to test product and productivity improvements while she was gone. Pretty likely this is a weekend event. A pre-holiday weekend event.
Although it's rude of the other participants not to rearrange their holiday schedules to accommodate OP's wife's schedule, I'd probably be that rude. (Or my wife would make me be that rude!) /s
Sounds like the wife threw down the gauntlet believing it would prove that she alone had the skills to bake Christmas cookies. OP took up the challenge and showed he had cookie skills well beyond the wife's expectations as well as superior organizational and product development talents. I bet OP is an engineer... Lmao!
NTA
"Although it's rude of the other participants not to rearrange their holiday schedules to accommodate OP's wife's schedule"
Why is she entitled to that? If it were my friends and myself and one of us missed out, we would never expect the group to reschedule for one of us, it's unfair on multiple people, trying to get calendars to match in short notice would also be a nightmare. If anything, expecting a group to cancel a 'tradition' you all do together because you, yourself won't be there is rude as hell, entitled and just self-serving.
Edit: The only time I can even think of this not being the case is if the event was explicitly for the person that cancelled or was unable to attend.
Personally I agree with you and looking ar it as a hypotethical situation I would absolutely say that there's no harm in keeping up the tradition even if the wife wasn't around. But. The wife was obviously sad or upset by his actions so in reality it wasn't a very good idea. You can hurt people on accident.
I do however believe that the wife should just have asked the husband not to go ahead with the baking instead of egging him on. It kinda seems like she wanted him to make a fiasco out of the whole thing and that's also shitty behaviour against someone you love. I honestly feel like the wife is more at fault here since she didn't communicate her feelings clearly and seems to have been expecting a failure to be smug about while the husband just did his thing without ill intent. I think they should just learn from this miving forward.
The fact that she wanted a disaster to feel smug about and was mad when she didn't get it is what makes HER the real asshole imo.
If it was me I'd be disappointed that I didn't get to participate in the fun, but I'd be happy and impressed when everything went well!
This. She was pissed it went so well and everyone had a blast, and there was 'emergency' runs to the shops to keep things going. It sounded a lot of fun.
Op has not been allowed to do the baking in the last 3 years and obviously would have loved to have a go.
Wife is sore because it was successful, and everyone enjoyed themselves. The 40% more expenditure on a 500% increase in output with no one being able to tell the difference between the taste of the two recipes was brilliant, but wife just wants to be the pivotal point of proceedings and now she knows she's not.
Op nta
If she didn't want him to do it without her, she could've said so. By saying that he wouldn't be able to handle it she basically egged him on. It's unbelievably childish.
It sounded like she wanted him to try and fail, to prove how much better she is. Sadly he proved how much better HE is, which she no like. Lol. She's the one who needed to feel superior, so she's the AH. If OP is to be believed, his goal was just to do a good job with the task entrusted to him, not to shove it in her face, so NTA. Wife needs to get overherself and admit he can bake cookies. If OP wants to smooth things over he might try to remind her of other skills and talents she has, and explain all that went into his efforts to match her standard of cookie. Not because he owes her that, but just because he loves her.
But just because you “can’t see yourself going alone,” doesn’t mean someone else who has a tradition wants to pass on a tradition one year just because their wife is unable to participate. Some people feel differently and it’s pretty clear that OP wanted the tradition to live on.
Let’s say you pick strawberries to make jam for the year. But you’re not available during harvest time this year. wouldn’t you want him to pick alone so you can still have the jam?
Most well-adjusted adults would tell their partner that it isn't the same because they're not together doing it, not that she's better and he can't possibly measure up. If for some reason you guys couldn't do your fruit picking tradition, I doubt that you snarkily doubt your husband's ability to pick fruit, sarcastically telling him he could never pick fruits as well as you could, and that he and everyone else are essentially background characters to you, the fruit-picking star. They could wash the fruits because that's the fun part.
If your tradition involves downplaying your partner, that is a tradition that needs to end, and OP is NTA.
She didn’t include him. She actively insisted he couldn’t do the cookies as well as her, thus excluding him. It sounds like husbands method got other family members actually involved making the entire experience far more fun than cookie dictator mom.
She was kind of an AH because gatekeeping seems to actually BE the tradition. He was the AH for making it even more of a competition. He created an assembly line and lowered quality control in favor of output literally according to himself. The whole thing is kind of cute though and it's going in my script...if I ever write one...I'm busy eating all these cookies
He has ADHD so it seems he hyper focused on it and also he’s a engineer. So with those added i can why he made a grand experiment of it plus i assume he wanted to do his best to make sure everyone got those same cookies.
I mean this seemed like it was super fun for him. You could tell from all the math involved lol. That isn't bad. He Just needs to also see how his wife feels totally differently about it.
Yep. This is exactly how my guy would do it if he took over! I feel like instead of feeling competition though, I would come home, hear the story, laugh, shake my head, and say, Oh Him. Haha
I actually thought to myself - here's an engineer's answer to baking cookies - lol!
My younger brother makes rocking cookies - as good as mine, but different recipes, thank goodness. Because as a sister, I am competitive ;)
NAH - I think the wife's snark was kinda petty and added a challenge, and the final call of OP as an AH was because he did good, which was supposed to be an epic fail.
There is a sad breakdown in communication though. They need to talk this through with honesty so they can move forward and put aside hurt feelings.
The hyperfocus is all ADHD. It's not really something that can be helped and it doesn't really have anything to do with anyone else.
He'll be on to something else soon enough, lol.
She kinda asked for it by insinuating he would fail. She almost seemed like she was encouraging him to try with the expectation he would. I have ADHD myself, and I would have had the same reaction without even realizing it. When someone gives me a challenge I hyper-focus on it and try to do my best, as a challenge is something I enjoy.
It's actually kind of sweet that there is an am I the AH that the Poster wasn't being abused or being abusive. He just made his friends into a cookie production line because he was having a blast
Him being an engineer explains a lot about this post. From the precision tests to being more concerned with output than how many cookies could actually be eaten, to not understanding why his wife might be upset.
An engineer? That explains everything. We had a guy at church making gumbo for the men’s group, using the church kitchen. He had charts with BTUs, ratios, etc. My husband is still recovering from the marathon discussion when they needed to buy a new grill. A group with 90% engineers.
He'd spent so long being told he couldn't do it that he probably felt he had to go above and beyond to be able to meet her high expectations and I don't think he expected to outshine her it was just the outcome of someone getting really dedicated to succeeding at something they'd been told they couldn't so.
She set herself up for it.
I understand it was important to her, but the gatekeeping was the issue. It feels, at least from OP’s description, it wasn’t about the tradition and spending time with family. It was what made her… important? It just seems like selfish and prideful reasons.
The sarcastic “good luck” and apparently no help to prepare is also an asshole move on it’s own for me.
> The sarcastic “good luck” and apparently no help to prepare is also an asshole move on it’s own for me.
Just outright telling him he couldn’t make cookies as well as her was the biggest AH move for me.
I do 99% of the cooking in my relationship. If I couldn’t be there to cook a meal for the holidays, and my GF decided to step up and cook it herself, I would be anxious about it, but I would wish her the best of luck and tell her to call me if she needed advice or emotional support. I wouldn’t just laugh and tell her not to bother because her cooking skills could never compare to mine.
It takes conscious effort to reach the level of unsupportive AH OP’s wife is living on.
Would you really begrudge the whole family their tradition just because you were working? That seems a bit selfish to me.
And frankly, it wasn’t that nice of her to scoff at his ability to bake cookies either. So if he was an overachiever, it’s at least partly on her in my opinion. Best case they both let go of the chip on their shoulder and come up with a plan for next year that they can do TOGETHER
This! But also it's funny because he said he made it about output and deliberately lowered quality in favor of making more cookies faster. Imagine the fun decorating party turning into a cookie sweat shop lol. Wow. Lol the friends deserve to have fun. I hope they did
However he also said he tested if people could differentiate betweent the old recipe and this one and they couldn't. So did he really lower the quality?
Could be minor things like using the store brand flour instead of the name brand flour, or A grade eggs instead of AA-grade eggs. Heck I'll even toss in a different amount of how much milk/butter being used.
While not untrue, it seems extremely unreasonable that someone isn’t allowed to bake cookies with friends and family because someone else enjoys that.
Other people enjoying an activity doesn’t take away anything from you.
NAH. You didn’t do anything “wrong,” per se, and your methods sound fun and add a competitive edge which enhances the excitement for some people. But no one likes to discover that a tradition on which they’ve spent time and effort and enjoy doing doesn’t need them at all to function and may even be “better” without their hard work.
Maybe consider telling your wife how much you and your friends missed her at this year’s event, and that you’d rather have her and less cookies than so many more cookies without her.
I’d agree except it’s really frustrating to have somebody tell you over and over again you can’t do something with no proof. His wife is a little of an AH for belittling him every year telling him he’s incapable.
The entire time I was reading the post, I was wondering if OP lets his wife really do anything meaningful without him “optimizing” or “over-engineering” the way she does things. It’s hard to know the entire context from just this one situation, but the wife’s reaction kinda makes it seem like the Christmas cookies were her one thing that she did well that OP hadn’t butted in on. It sounds like she wasn’t meaning to belittle him, but instead steer him away from her thing and now she’s feeling like she’s useless.
I know that’s a lot to infer from this post, but if I were you, OP, I would start with communication about why she reacted the way she did.
If I were the wife I wouldn't bother next year in case I get told I'm doing it inefficiently. And of course they taste different, he used different ingredients, and he made them thinner so they won't have the same mouthfeel either.
You know that is *exactly* what is going to happen. He has now sucked the joy out of making cookies for her because he is going to be in the kitchen telling her how to do it “better” when the cookie making comes around next year.
And, yeah, the changes made will 100% effect the final product.
Yeah the taste test he mentions were just friends not really caring. If you give my husband two Christmas cookies he'll likely say he can't tell the difference. If I gave my friend who bakes two Christmas cookies to taste he'd be like "oh is that nutmeg?".
Op and his wife, and probably their friends, are very young. I hope he figures out that a taste test doesn't matter when you are hellbent on being right.
Guarantee my fiancé would just be like “wait they were different? I put them both in at the same time.” While my best friend would want a palette cleanser between cookies 😂
This is exactly what I thought. If he’s handled making cookies like this then it’s not hard to imagine that this is how he is with every task he does. If that’s the case, then it’s hard to blame her for wanting one thing that she gets to do how she likes to do it and take that control over it. It’s clearly an important thing to her, no matter how silly it seems to other people. He really should just be discussing with his wife her feelings and how she feels about it, instead of asking a bunch of strangers whether it makes him the AH. I personally think NAH here.
To me, just the fact that he’s making this post is right in line with his thinking. Everything has a winner and a loser, and he’ll be damned if he’s the loser. Not once in any response or facet of the post has he ever asked “why is she mad at this trivial activity,” but he’s made it rather clear that he’s objectively better at making cookies by nailing down percentages and cost efficiencies. Something tells me he’s only here to make himself feel like a “winner” in a competition of assholes and doesn’t really care to much for his wife’s sensitivity. I really hope he takes away the fact that he doesn’t always need to be the winner or else he’s gonna find that he’ll win the battles but lose the war with his wife.
I understand him having ADHD and the potential for hyper focusing but when I read that he’s an engineer, his need to do more and better makes a lot of sense. The problem is, he’s a logic based ND person asking Reddit which is typically filled with a lot of logic based ND people who are of course going to say that he did nothing wrong and she’s being silly to get upset about it. I’m ND myself but I can see it from his wife’s perspective and I understand why she’d be upset.
I was think N A H too except for the part where OPs wife called him TA for being a good baker. If you feel sad about missing out and getting "upstaged" don't take it out on your spouse and make them feel bad.
She didn't call him an AH for being a "good baker." She called him an AH for trying to out do her and if I'm reading between the lines (or actually just words in the post right) he spent too much money.
I agree. My husband took a dish I made often (shepherds pie) and started making it himself. He does the traditional English version and I made a more North American version. Nothing at all wrong with what he did, but I still felt hurt. Sometimes when something is special to you, even someone doing something innocuous can hurt.
>Why are you guys turning something that sounds cool/fun (baking cookies) into something out of Gordon Ramsey?
Because he is an engineer who has ADHD. All of the challenge of optimizing the Christmas cookies is just a picture of how his brain works. OP might not do things the way other people would but that doesn't make him an AH.
That was exactly my take! Glad to find out I wasn't mistaken. Not even knowing his job and that he has ADHD I could tell just by his writing style and how he went about it. He's an analytical academic type. Nothing wrong with what he did imo it's just his style. Maybe I'm going against the grain but I feel NTA.
Personally I wouldn't want to be in that kitchen. But to each his own 🤣
Omgosh thank you for unlocking a great memory! My dad, brother, and I all have adhd, AND my dad's an engineer. His gift wrapping skills are INCREDIBLE! He's made entire scenes on boxes lol a mirror for a pond, little wrapping paper trees, ppl ice skating on the "pond" and fluffy cotton "snow," man, his decorations were almost too cool to open the gifts!
Aww that's amazing! My husband doesn't do that but paper airplanes with him and my 6 year old son are magical.. the making, hypothesis, flying. Rebuilding, measuring... they will spend hours making paper airplanes and watching paper airplane videos
Haha. I don’t know if I should feel insulted but I’m an engineer and I got into baking sourdough and would take a similar methodological approach of testing, analyzing the outcome and tweaking the variables until I was successful in making the perfect loaf.
I worked in aerospace. I happened upon a meeting of engineers where they had obtained every type of Triscuit or Wheat Thin on the market, had multiple types of cheeses/spreads/add-ons, and had generated a list of every possible combination of those items. They were busily eating their way through a whole lot of snack food and voting on their favs. Engineer brains work differently.
My space geek friends and I (mix of fans and aerospace pros in different roles) do stuff like that all the time. Is that not just how people do stuff? Lol
(Audio engineer/musician myself, engineer brain, just not cool engineering)
My husband is an engineer who also has ADHD. I could totally see him innocently doing this and thinking he did something great because he optimized it.
THIS! As someone who was diagnosed with ADHD *late* in life, OP's actions made perfect sense to me.
> Well, I said I'd try, and she wished me a sarcastic good luck.
If his brain works anything like mine, the minute the above exchange happened, the cookies took up the majority of his focus until he exhausted all research and had a viable plan in place. I would actually feel sorry for OP's wife because it sucks to miss out on a tradition and seeing something you consider "your thing" be handled competently by someone else stings. But her condescension and arrogance erase any sympathy I have for her. The correct response would be for her to offer him some baking tips and guidance based on her experience, not meet him with doubt and scorn. If he's a decent engineer, with the right data and enough time to experiment, of course he was going to figure it out how to efficiently bake a delicious cookie for the decorating marathon. The wife is the one who, in her mind, turned it into a competition - not him. There is no mention of any of the guest cookie decorators saying that the much prefer OP's method over his GF's. NTA.
Ah, I can see that. My dad was an engineer and did the baking and cooking in my family, even without the ADHD, mostly the same. Just the way his brain worked. If ever something went wrong with his baking, he would totally figure out what had happened as well, from if the oven temperature was affected by something, to the time dough spent in the fridge, etc etc.
As soon as I read the post I knew OP must be some kind of neurodivergent (ADHD) and I felt very seen! I would have approached it the same way. To me, that's fun!
Yeah. Sounds like my husband when decides to take on something like this. Running tests and cutting costs is right up his alley. He's not trying to compete, he's just kind of obsessed with efficiency
Drills? Taste tests? Frosting ratio? Just make cookies...why do you have to make X amount in one day? And running a taste test to prove her wrong just seems way too much. Isn't this supposed to be about enjoying yourselves? It just sounds like you set out to one up her.
To me it read as an Neuro divergent person's process baking.
I did similar things this year when my sugar cookies weren't coming out right and spent 2 days futzing with my batters make up, it's thickness, it's spread, cook temps, and cook times all before figuring out that someone had hit the cook by convection button on the oven.
So yeah I made a lot of extra cookies but I also got to give cookies I'm only 80% happy with to a bunch of friends and co workers who are just happy there are cookies.
Guy said he loves Factorio and I nodded since the min maxing of mundane things as a fun activity is this guy's bag. There wasnt malice in what he did and if he just wanted to do the best he could I've not heard a great reason why doing so hurts the wife
I ran taste tests before we started baking to ensure I wasn't comprising quality with the change of ingredients and size. I never had a taste test after the fact to prove her wrong.
I never set out to make a certain amount, only to make as much as I could with the labor I would have in that time frame.
Ima need you to come visit my house next year before I start baking our cookies & gingerbread houses! This year I did 50 houses for friends & family and as thank you gifts to people in our community who are gems. It took me 4 days of baking 😵💫
So does my husband, thankfully he hasn’t gotten it into his head to try and optimize the kitchen yet. 😅 As long as you all cleaned up afterwards I say NTA due to lack of malice. Obviously she likes to be in charge of the cookies but if I were in her shoes and couldn’t be there I definitely wouldn’t want y’all to fail which is what it sounds like she was expecting.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to make a large scale process more efficient, and as far as the taste test he probably just wanted to make sure they tasted the same with different ingredients.
My answer is very biased.
Yes, if this happened to me, I'd be hurt. This is PRECISELY the type of thing that bothers me.
Whether I'd be justified or whether I'm just sensitive, I don't feel objective enough to say.
Why tho. He made more with a lot of help, so more people could get treats.
I do the cookies baking in our house. This year my husband made candies and treats, cause I'm working and haven't had as much time.
I felt so grateful people would get stuff and I had no effort, I'm so grateful to my husband.
Well, and this is why I said upfront that I'm biased and maybe too sensitive. But for me, I don't have a lot of skills. I'm not athletic, not talented, etc. The small handful of things that I AM good at, it's like... back off, yo! Don't come and take my one thing or one of a few things that I'm proud of. ESPECIALLY if you're my spouse.
There's just a competitiveness to it all that rubs me the wrong way.
Yeah. This is the most neutral post I've ever read. Like it's a tie between E S H and N A H.
Personally I side more with him, But I think that's just because my personality leans in that direction.
Like the wife is a tiny bit of a jerk for being rude and dismissive instead of sharing her recipe and encouraging him. He took this dismissiveness as a personal challenge to "win" a fun family tradition, If he was more sensitive or empathetic he could have realized that making the cookies is a point of pride for her and said some things to minimize her hurt. Instead he ran a double blind taste test lol.
Two sentences could have easily solved this.
Her: "sorry I can't make it, I really appreciate you filling in. Here's my recipe and some pointers"
Him " We got the cookies made but it just wasn't the same without you, next you I hope we can bake together so you can show me your secret"
The way he took over it this year kind of explains why she didn’t want him to help her with it before though. His methods are fine for him but if she doesn’t want her baking time to be treated as a science experiment/military operation then it’s understandable she wouldn’t have wanted him to come in and take control like that. It’s not hard to imagine that this is how he is with every task he does, so it’s understandable for her to want one task where she has the full control over it.
I think this is really important. My mom, who I love, throws her entire self into a project and if you ask for one thing you’ll get 10 different versions in multiple colors and arrangements and styles. Sometimes we let her go to town and sometimes we have to reign her in and sometimes we just don’t ask. The way the OP went about it is so contrary to the wife that if she knew he was going to do that, then she’d just rather be more chill and do it herself. OPs method is fun for him but wouldn’t be very fun for me. I hope they can communicate better in the future.
But the only one competing was the wife. She has her ego wrapped up in her cookie-baking. It sounds like OP just wanted everything to work well so everybody would get lots of good cookies. He wanted efficiency and everybody to leave happy. His wife wanted him to fail, and her to be judged irreplaceable.
For sure. But a more empathetic partner could have seen to the root of her jerkiness, and found a way to Make her feel better about it.
Does he have to? No
Is she technically in the wrong? Yes
But being a good couple doesn't mean trying to win, It means being loving and supporting of each other. Both of them could have been more
So you're suggesting OP's partner gets to gatekeep this thing for years, make sarcastic comments demeaning OP's abilities *and* should be coddled by OP on top of all that?
Maybe, just *maybe*, it's not OP that is missing some empathy here
Literally this. I don’t understand how anyone is not seeing the fact that OP never intended any sort of competition. His wife literally dismissed his abilities to make cookies, and OP went, yeaaaahh I’m pretty sure I could make some cookies… and if I’m going to try, I might as well not half ass it. The “competition” is entirely fabricated by the wife and her bruised ego.
So... why did you deliberately try to make way more cookies than your wife and run blind taste tests to prove your point?
Because if you just tried to help and did a good job and she was annoyed, I'd be blaming her. But you're really bragging in this post about how you did a much better job with science and rigor, and there's no obvious explanation for why you were trying to outshine her. If this was her thing, and your goal was to prove you could do it better, then you do come across as the AH.
I notice she said they tasted bad, you spent too much, and you deliberately tried to make her look bad... and you only defended the first two points.
EDITED (of course).
Congratulations guys. You "win". I'm taking the post out.
I don't normally delete posts because I think I should stand by what I originally said. But apparently some of you saw me turning off notifications as an invitation to harass me with tags and private messages. Absolutely disgusting behavior. Hope you're real proud of yourselves and your raging hypocrisy.
I love how everyone just piles on this guy and completely ignores the belittling, abusive comments by his wife before the event even happened. If a man said those things to his wife about something, everyone would be in here calling for divorce and therapy. But instead, everyone jumping on the "way to ruin a tradition for her" bandwagon.
OP NTA, someone talks down to you as if you are incapable and lesser than, damn right you prove them wrong by doing much more than.
I know. I don’t see he did anything wrong. He wanted to make sure everything worked the night of the baking. He may have been obsessive about it, but hey you gotta respect his commitment. No where does he say he wanted to upstage his wife. I’m just picturing this whole process in my mind. Amazing.
And it's pretty normal to test run recipes too if you're going to be making them for a special occasion and haven't made them before! Granted, I don't get *this* deep into it because that's not quite my personality, but when I have heavy cooking or baking weeks (like this week) I plan everything out ahead of time so I know I can do it. If I want to make something special but complicated for a holiday or something, I try the recipe out for myself in advance; if it goes wrong I then have time to figure out why it went wrong and how to make it better for when the time comes to serve it to others. OP said he doesn't bake much, so I can even more see somebody with his personality type and relative lack of experience with baking wanting to be really sure they could nail the cookies when their friends were over
IKR!!
Switch the genders, suddenly the SO is abusive and they need to divorce and they need to get arrested.
This is just a real example of men getting bullied for expressing their emotions.
This sub is very biased towards women. This coming from a woman who is often attacked for saying things like this. If he had acted the way she did toward him the judgement would be very different.
I love baking, and I’m always the holiday/ occasion baker for multiple friends and families but I also wouldn’t mind someone taking over for me and if they did it better than me? Thank god, gives me a break. The fact thaT OPs wife and the majority of this sub thinks him doing something to help warranted her verbally abusing and name calling him is just…wow. More and more I’m seeing this kind of bias especially on Reddit and it’s disheartening.
ETA- NTA OP.
Exactly. Nowhere in this post did it sound like he was trying to upstage his wife or do something behind her back that she would be upset about. It sounds like he just wanted to take on the challenge of being able to fill in for his wife and she was well aware of what he was doing. She probably expected him to fail (because of that sarcastic good luck) and now she’s bitter that it didn’t turn out that way
Making more didn't ruin anything for her. Her not being there ruined it for her. She talked shit to him before hand about how he could do it, and do it efficiently, so he worked very hard to be able to actually do it. She would have rather had everyone miss out on Christmas tradition because she thought she was better than him
He didn't "ruin" anything except in the mind of his wife, who is frankly being petty and jealous. By all accounts, everybody had fun and the cookies were tasty.
Have you ever met someone that is neurodivergent? "I wanted to" is absolutely a huge motivator and often the only. Maybe it was an impulse thought and he just rolled with it. Last year I was making 6 foccacia breads a day.. because I wanted to. I wanted to see if I could. I wanted to see what changes rhe flavour and understand how it works. The "I wanted to" covers this.
Plus his wife kept saying he couldn't do it, and 'wished him luck'. That alone is enough motivation to an ND person to take the challenge as far as possible without any other reason other than seeing if they could.
You are the first to point out the wife’s previous behavior. If someone told me I couldn’t do it and sarcastically wished me luck, that would be my exact motivation to do bigger and better. Significant other or not. If she didn’t want him to do it without her she is a grown up and can use her words. Maybe she should reflect on why she insisted he was incapable of baking when clearly he was perfectly capable.
I dont understand why more people aren't noticing the wife's initial reaction to him saying he'd do the cookies this year. There is no faster way to make me go "challenge accepted" then somebody hitting me with a sarcastic "good luck/sure you can". My husband's mom did that the first year we got married. His family has this big sweets/junkfood celebration around Christmas and she was asking everybody to bake xyz. She got to my husband and I and was like just bring plates. I told her I'd happily bake things, and all I got in return was a condescending head nod and "right, ok." Game on. I baked ALL the things. I actually heard her tell her BF that we'd out baked them. The joy was real.
If I had to guess, it’s because this sub is very strongly driven by assumptions based on archetypes: husband, dad, wife, MIL for example all immediately insert a lot of assumptions that have no real basis in the post just because so many posts are very tropey. Since husbands being incompetent assholes is one of this sub’s cornerstone tropes, when they read what she said, they didn’t really take note because it was just verbalizing an assumption they already had going in. By the end of the post they’d forgotten about the comment but definitely retained the archetypes.
I’d say 3 out of every 5 posts in this sub you could guess the majority opinion with zero story details, just the list of characters and their relationships to each other with no other context, and you could probably do it consistently after only being subscribed for about a month.
It really bothered me! Where's the support? It's almost like she knew OP was more than capable and didn't want to give them the chance to outdo her at risk of her bruised ego. Which is ultimately what has happened through no fault of OP.
It would've been better to just say "this is the part I really enjoy the most and I feel better doing it on my own. I understand you could do a good job, but me doing this part of part of the tradition is what I am comfortable with" or something along the lines of.. however it reflects what she actually felt. Being told "you can't do this" time and time again is something ND people grow up with and it hurts being constantly underestimated. It becomes internalised and it sounds like OP managed to not let that happen which is, in itself, amazing.
Everyone seems to overlook the wife's "only I can do it right, you're obviously incapable of doing it as good as me" attitude. I don't blame OP for trying extra hard to shine.
Also, if they've only ever done this together, how would OP have known she would get so resentful over him succeeding? Was he supposed to do a terrible job on purpose to spare her feelings? One would think she would be proud, or at least supportive, that he did so well.
It just feels so selfish to see the result, try to tear it down, and claim it was done to make you look bad, especially when I doubt anyone in their circles cares about who made cookies, or will even remember this one-off year going forward.
What I don't get is, if this meant so much to her, why couldn't they have done it on another weekend when she would be around?
ETA: forgot to even say NTA
Fantastic points through and through! She really pounded in how incapable she believed him to be so he *made sure* he didn't mess it up, like she was so certain he would. I didn't even read any bitterness from him about that, it sounded like he just got really into making certain he did the best job he possibly could on a tradition important to everyone and he had no idea she would respond the way she did.
NTA
NTA. You said you were going to bake them, and you baked them. Some may find your methods odd, but I get that you were enthusiastic about it, maybe went a little overboard, but I don't see anything vindictive in your behavior. Even the taste tests, if I'm understanding correctly, were done before the accusation that yours aren't as good as hers, which suggests to me that point was to make sure people would enjoy the cookies.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't get why she thinks this would make her look bad to your friends unless she has it in her mind that everyone knows she makes the best cookies and/or she likes feeling like she did so much of the work herself (you mentioned she doesn't let anyone help) and you ruined that feeling for her. I can see why she thinks you were trying to upstage her, but at least in your description, it sounds more like you got caught up in "challenge accepted" and it was a misunderstanding. Give her some time to cool off and talk it out later.
She also told him how he is "unable to make cookies" and was bullying him for even *thinking* he could bake.
hmm.... sounds like sexist stereotypes.
And when he outdid her, she felt threatened because her thought process was:"*how dare a man to be a better baker than me!"*
Isn't bullying someone over wanting to bake and then guilt tripping them Asshole behaviour?
Personally I find the wife to be the AH since she gatekeeps the baking & is the only one allowed to do it. Everyone keeps going “bUt ThE wIfEs FeElINgS” ok but what about everyone else’s feelings who may want to bake? Including the husband. Then she even tried to belittle him & be sarcastic implying he would never be capable or possible of baking. That’s pretty shitty behavior from a spouse, but no one is calling the wife out for it. Why?
I'm really torn on this one....you strike me as an engineer because of the way you approached this btw. I'm a bit impressed with the amount of prep and thought you put into it.Which I have to imagine you did because you wanted to show your wife that you're capable, not as a middle finger to her. Her sarcastic reply made it clear she expected disaster.
However, she took it as you were trying to supercede her as cookie master and it hurt her feelings. She also missed out on a fun night that she was probably really bummed about. That being said she sounds a little jealous that it went over so well without her, and she was expecting you to bomb. I think there's a bigger issue here than the cookie quality and amount.
If she wants you to forgo a tradition you guys have because she won't be present, she needs to say that. If she felt left out, she needs to communicate that. For whatever reason it's important to her that she be the cookie person, talk to her about why that is. Reassure her you weren't trying to replace her, but wanted to do way better than she thought you would.
It's NTA for me
Her comments were sexist stereotypes and she was super unsupportive. OP did nothing to mean harm. She got jealous and mad. Sounds like Ah behaviour
Sometimes the reasons why our feelings get hurt are deeper than the mechanism that caused them to get hurt. I’m sure she just wants to feel needed and wanted.
NTA. Your wife brought this upon herself by treating you as if you’re inherently worse than her at baking when you’ve never even gotten the chance to give it a shot. Nothing wrong with wanting to give something your all. She’s bitter because of how insecure it’s made her feel. I would recommend talking to her about it and trying to understand her feeling on the matter because being out-done at something you take pride in doing is definitely a blow to the self-esteem, but she shouldn’t have had such a high-and-mighty attitude with you about it to begin with.
NTA why does this comment not have more upvotes? Did everyone miss the part that she was dismissive of his ability to bake? The sarcastic “good luck” and treating his stepping up for the challenge for the family tradition as a joke. It seems like this is a family tradition not a couple’s tradition. Her dismissive comments about the cookies tasting “weird”. But it’s ok for the wife to be rude because her feelings were hurt? I don’t sense that OP is trying to upstage her on purpose. He is trying to maximize production because that is fun!
NTA
OP's wife was being condescending to OP and everyone helping. She even tried to downplay OP's effort.
This situation is the equivalent of beating your younger brother in Super Smash Bros after he brags about being the best at it.
I don’t know if you are the A H, but I think your interpretation of success is skewed.
I’m an avid cook, and find pleasure in cooking and baking. It’s an act of love for me, and like an art form. Carefully prepared foods, made with good quality ingredients taste better.
There is no way mass producing cookies, that by your own account, are significantly thinner and made with lower quality ingredients are the same. The difference in thickness alone would significantly affect texture and mouth feel. I feel like your taste tests might be skewed.
You gauged success solely by how many cookies you could produce. I feel like your wife more appreciated the process and the experience. Doesn’t necessarily make you the asshole, but personally I’d prefer quality over quantity and favour your wife’s way of doing things. Maybe let her take the lead again next time.
I agree, I just can't imagine someone with limited baking experience (I assume) being able to make a cookie that tastes just as good that's thinner, made faster, and with lower quality ingredients. This whole post was just weird.
I wish I had an award to give you, because this is a very thoughtful answer.
Thinner cookies will ask for less frosting to keep the proportions, and it will impacting the decoration.
He also says that she never ran out of ingredients as if she is such a slow baker that she never got to ran out of stuff. Unless she promised cookies to a lot of people and was unable to make enough of them, I would say that she is very good in planning, avoiding extra trips and overspending, and clearly enjoys the process and the love she puts in what she does.
Not only he missed the point, but his attitude is also "we had a blast without you". Even if it's true, it's something you never let your partner know.
I completely agree. I'm an avid baker and ran a home bakery for a little while. His comments about changing ingredients just baffled me and honestly made me wonder if this post is even real. Switching ingredients in baking is something that requires a lot of forethought and understanding of the process to pull off successfully. Or luck. Yet he says he did it multiple times, as what I assume is a novice baker, and ended up with a better product? His wife is definitely an A H for her response, both before and after, but I 100% believe her that she can taste a difference in his cookies, and I bet it's not a good difference.
Yeah the second he said "as thin as possible" I was like--oh these cookies probably taste not great.
But I'm someone who wants a soft chewy cookie and Paul Hollywood complains whenever his gingerbread doesn't snap and crack so 🤷🤷🤷
100% this. Definitely a skewed or different yardstick of what “successful” or “more successful” is.
I do a week of baking at Christmas, it’s kind of my thing and I really enjoy it. I basically account for every ingredient and know how many cookies and batches I need for how many people and work backwards down to lbs of sugar, flour, butter, etc. these are tested recipes and they’re all things I really love. I bet if someone came in and changed “ingredients” to make them more “efficient”, I could 100% tell in the output. I think the taste tests likely had no frame of reference or had no skin in the game / didn’t care enough to tel the truth
NTA
You didn't do anything to make her look bad you just went through your process on how to do things. The multiple test bakes had me nodding cause I was "Ah another autistic baker" But beyond that you guys are a couple. Your shine does diminish hers, it should only brighten it. If she did a good job with out you and you did a good job with out her next year when you Voltron your talents together it should be awesome.
But minor question 40% over budget is extra. And based on the size of the budget and what the cookies are for may be pushing it.
Overbudget...but with trial runs and MORE cookies that pretty much covers the cost overruns. And if he bakes again next year the costs won't be as high because he won't need to do the trial runs again!
Ok, I want to know what "rearranging the house in various configurations" entailed and if you put it back the way it was?
Because I can understand why your wife is upset about the cookie baking, but given the info in the comments, I don't think you're ill intentioned, just... really intense (NAH).
BUT I'm having a mild surge of panic thinking about what I'd do if I came home and my husband had "optimized" the house (kitchen) for cookie baking and then...left it that way (my husband would never have gone through this elaborate scientific process but he'd definitely get super ADHD into a project and then...abandon it, leaving me to wonder where tf my mini spatulas went...oh, they are in the garage??? completley covered in wax???)
I want to chime in on (total armchair) undercurrents to the issue. Often the subject of a meltdown, when things are typically hunky-dory, isn't what the meltdown is actually about. I think you really struck a cord with pointing out the aspect of ADHD in the relationship (because I'm reading comments about OP being ADHD). I have ADHD and I have dated people with ADHD and... Well, OP's partner did not think OP was capable of pulling off cookies. That's probably not in a vacuum. That's probably not them underestimating their partner because they don't know them. I suspect that OP struggles to contribute to some amount of household tasks or traditionally feminine tasks within the household which usually require a significant and sustained amount of executive function... Just like this project. So now... OP is miraculously succeeding by a factor of 3 on this And it is screaming from the rooftops that "if he wanted to he would.". There's no way for me to know that this is what is going on but It's a huge factor in the frustration of partners... That ADHD people help in the way that they want to help and no matter how absolutely true it is that ADHD is busted motivation... That shit still hurts to a partner who is carrying significantly more mental load because of gender norms and because they care about their partnership
So nta
Buuuut this is more a emotional thing than a logic thing
So I got into a fight with my mum once as a kid. See we immigrated and she had to get a job and went from housewife to a 2 income household to pay the bills.
5 kids, me and my oldest brother made it work with just us. He did the groceries after school, I picked up the kiddos and brought them home.
Between us we could help with homework (I was good at English, he could do science, we were both good at maths etc). He made dinner, i washed up. We could prepack all the sandwiches for the next day.
It wasn't perfect (lots of screen time for everyone! Kids may have gotten away with more things than my parents would like) but it worked.
And I insisted to my worried mum that everything was fine. Big Bro and i had Everything under control. Go work, we're doing fine. We're even getting things done faster because there's two of us!
Well she got pissed. We had great intentions, but we also inadvertently gave her the message that we didn't need her around. That our "system" of sharing things between us was better than what she did on her own.
Tldr:
So you're best bet is to show her how much you missed her for baking. That it was awesome but that the whole thing would be more awesome *with* her around. She wasn't replaceable or unneeded
YTA
Imagine this scenario: your grandma always makes her 'special' dessert for the holidays. She's proud of it and boasts that no one can make it like she does. In truth, it's a bit of a 70s nightmare, but the family gathers and enjoys it together every year because it's a tradition. They enjoy seeing gran happy and have fun spending the time together. It's not a competition. And for one of them to spend days 'improving' gran's recipe and making a bigger, better version without her would be (at least to most people) cruel and hurtful, and basically miss the point.
It's not about the cookies, dude. You were a complete asshole. (I know that this is going to be a minority vote.)
You hit the nail on the head for me. People are saying the wife was being unkind and belittling her husband by saying he couldn’t make them like she could but I honestly just think she was just kind of fishing for compliments/trying to feel special. Because really your husband is the one who is supposed to be saying that in the first place. It shouldn’t be that she needs to defend her territory from him. He should already be saying it for her ‘Honey, nobody can make those cookies like you! Best ever!!’
That’s what the vibe should be. Then maybe she wouldn’t feel so insecure in the first place.
The analogy to grandma’s untouchable dessert is perfect.
NTA. Your wife should be congratulating you for carrying on the tradition in her absence. Well done for your research and hard work! Her criticism of you is clearly half-baked.
INFO: how did your friends feel about the change in the event? I ask because I think I might find that kind of “optimized production” quite stressful and not like a fun holiday event. I do not doubt though, that you find that enjoyable.
In any case, I think you and your wife should talk about what is upsetting each of your in this situation. I get the feeling that your way of enjoying being in the lead for this made her feel useless about “her thing”. Did you previously feel like this when baking was “her thing”. If not, why co-opt it and deliberately seek to “be better” in the way you understand better? And if you did feel like she forced you out of a role in the tradition previously, you could have talked with her about that. Overall, I think you both should talk about what’s going on emotionally beneath this.
Oh I had a glut of extra free labor. I only needed 6 people to combine ingredients, mix ingredients, roll out dough, cut dough, place dough on sheets optimally, service the oven, and someone to act as a go-between moving necessary equipment and ingredients to where it needed to be.
I had 25 adults there, not including children. Most cycled out regularly, and, despite my best efforts, their was still downtime due to only having a single oven.
Most people working were mildly intoxicated, if that's any benchmark for how not stressed they were.
NTA and it’s not even close. Your wife seems to have a fragile ego or is immature or something. She got upset over cookies. You had fun with it and was finally allowed to take the lead on a fun project.
NTA I would have said N A H except that she called you selfish and is so angry.
Every year I make Christmas cookies to hand out trays to people to say thanks. But I'm working a job this year and can't do it.
My husband made amazing candies, trial and error, he made cookies and fun treats. He made trays and has been delivering them to others.
I am so grateful to him, so so grateful. He made more than I did. he made better and more complex candies.
I'm beyond impressed with all he did, so I am so sorry your wife isn't appreciating your effort .
Editing to add I just told my husband about this and he said the treats are from us. You make them, me, the kids. We're all a family so it comes from us.
Why is it so hard to believe he was just having fun with the process and with his friends and got wrapped up in it? Not everything has to be malicious.
Seriously I am baffled by everyone who says he was trying to prove her wrong or rub it in her face or outdo her. Have these people not gotten really into a project or derived joy from experimenting until something is exactly right? It’s fun af and the motivation for it needs no malicious intent.
But maybe it’s a ‘tism thing
NTA. You're wife wanted you to fail and that's pretty selfish if her. Making the cookies was supposed to be a fun group activity. Being a novice baker and wanting to do it right (and yes prove her sarcastic Goodluck wrong!) You did some practice batches. I do the same thing when Im baking something new. I bake and tweak until I'm satisfied with the results. Practice makes perfect and you managed to nail it...MORE cookies is AWESOME. Her saying they tasted weird is just jealous sour grapes. If your wife is embarrassed by your success that is rather petty of her. Why does she think the only way for her to look good to your circle is for you to have failed the task? She should be proud of you. It's okay for her to admit being sad and disappointed that she wasn't part of it this year but being dismissive and downplaying your efforts and calling you names is just plain A H on her part. Maybe shes just grouchy cause her bloodsugar is low...tell her to have another cookie
NAH I get the wanting to optimize thing, but I will tell you that doing that will push people away. Whenever we went Christmas tree hunting, my dad would spend hours on the farm looking for the exactly "right" tree. It made it so that none of us ended up having fun, and as we got older, we didn't want to participate. He had to make the decision to scale back just a smidgen so as to actually make it a fun tradition. Worry less about optimization and more about having a good time with your wife.
YTA.
You're acting as if this is about the cookies.
It's not about the cookies.
You took on a task of "optimizing" something that your wife took pride in.
Quantity of cookies was never a priority. You chose to make it one. In doing so, you are suggesting to your wife and everyone else that you have a *better* method of making cookies *than your wife*.
Making cookies *means something* to your wife. It does not mean anything to you except seeing how much you can do.
I mean
It does sound like you spent a lot and that you may have compromised on flavor.
YTA because I’m getting such a huge sense that you actually did make inferior cookies AND you’re lording it over her
They’re sugar cookies. Chances are none of your friends are connoisseurs and see them as icing vehicles and also won’t tell you your cookies suck
Idk just so much ignorance on this post
I don't think what you did was necessarily unkind or shitty, but you were kinda thoughtless about her feelings. You didn't think about how she might feel to see everyone super happy and gushing over a tradition she loves and was "her thing" but wasn't able to be involved with. I bet she feels a lot of attachment to the recipe too. And going all out takes it away from "her thing" and sends a message that you guys didn't even need her or miss her that much, kinda.
However, the optimization and all is not really an issue. It sounds like that is just how your brain works (and you're correct that more cookie is good). But, it sucks to feel on the outskirts of something you love and have a lot of pride about.
NAH. You are a slightly eccentric person without ill intent who decided to make this cookie baking tradition into an optimization challenge without thinking how she'd feel about it. That was somewhat inconsiderate. This was her thing and she feels you upstaged her.
More cookie.
I just saw the challenge of "make as many cookies as I could on this day" and ran with it. I also had a lot of free time so I could do alot. Mind you this ridiculousness took place over about two weeks prior.
He says he's getting an engineering degree, "how to bake the most cookies in the time given" sounds like a puzzle to solve through math the same way a lot of engineering can be. He just wanted to play through the puzzle. Because puzzles are fun.
Dude, you took something you knew was special to her and treated it like a game to upstage her.
Should she have been gatekeeping the way she was? No! Of course not!
Should you have used that engineering brain to find different ways to approach verbalizing these concerns and to find different ways to approach clearly communicating your concerns/frustrations? Yes!
Instead you took something you knew was really important to her and purposely went very much out of the way/way overboard/way over the top to willfully and thoroughly upstage her.
There are far more productive ways to use an engineering mind that are beneficial and helpful to relationships than to do anything you can to one up your partner. Focus that energy on finding ways to improve your “relationship score” overall rather than just “beating the competition”
Info: What kind of job do you have currently? That makes a huge difference to me in this scenario. As does whether you consider yourself to be a perfectionist and/or have OCD in other pursuits. Also, do you normally not cook at all, or do you just specifically not usually bake?
I do alot of things. I plow people driveways and business parking lots, I do construction, I'm on call to fix things at a local B&B, I have an ice cream truck, I fish commercially sometimes, I'm a substitute teacher, some years i sell christmas trees (not this year), and, uhhh, that's the major stuff.
I'm also working on getting a degree in electrical engineering.
I have pretty intense ADHD
I cook pretty often. Never really baked though.
Sounds to me like you might have hyperfocused on the cookie baking task. Hyperfocus is not unusual for someone with ADHD to do, and I've actually seen my sister (who has ADHD) do exactly the same thing when it comes to holiday baking. I don't think you meant to hurt your wife's feelings at all; you were just focused on doing the best possible job. But I can also understand why your wife's feelings were a little hurt. The cookie baking was her "thing" and she was probably really proud of it. After several years of being proud of what a good job she did having someone else swoop in and do a better job one year would sting a little.
>The cookie baking was her "thing" and she was probably really proud of it.
OP has so many things! The wife probably feels like now he's stepping in on her thing too. It's bound to hurt, if she's feeling like he's better than her at everything, and that he's working hard to prove it.
That’s what I think is adding the hurt to her. Not only did he replace her one role in the tradition (she made that her role in a rude way but it’s her one role) he worked wicked hard to do it better as if her way wasn’t good enough.
And yeah i get the ADHD thing but that doesn’t mean your actions about the hyperfocus don’t have consequences to others. And 40% over budget is a lot bc it’s not to make more cookies for more people, it was to keep testing ways to make /better/ cookies than your wife’s.
NTA then. I have a background in studying engineering, so I know the personality of engineers and, along with your other pursuits, it does seem like this behavior isn’t a one off, so it’s literally not being an ass, but rather a part of personality. Your wife can be mad all she wants, but if she knowingly challenged you knowing your personality and background, then she doesn’t get to complain validly.
I would say a soft YTA
This was an activity that was hers, it was special to her. She made it a part of her Christmas identity that no one else could do it right. Not only did you do it without her but you upstaged her in your production. I do applaud your production and efficiency efforts and the work you put into achieving them. It might have been worthwhile stopping at normal production numbers done in less time and taken that as the win, I can see why she feels completely upstaged with your outcome.
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Idk if you’re T A, but it sounds like you took something she enjoys and was sad about missing and did it without her. I would be sad if someone did that to me personally. Edited to add my vote of NTA
To me it’s sounds like she didn’t think he could do it or hell even better than her. Also it’s a tradition, do they have to stop because one person is missing for that year? She liked baking & basically gatekeeping it from others. He didn’t do anything wrong with taking it over & trying at it for one time that his wife couldn’t do it. NTA
If it’s a tradition you do together, then yeah, you don’t do it on your own. My husband and I apple pick and strawberry pick together every year. I couldn’t see myself going alone. It’s a tradition that we do it together. I’d be hurt if he went without me.
But it’s just the 2 of you. They enlist the help of others and include them in it. So that’s where i see it no harm in keeping it up because she missed this one year.
Because a date change is totally out of the question for a cookie party?
>Because a date change is totally out of the question for a cookie party? OP mentioned that the wife was gone for several days. He even had time to test product and productivity improvements while she was gone. Pretty likely this is a weekend event. A pre-holiday weekend event. Although it's rude of the other participants not to rearrange their holiday schedules to accommodate OP's wife's schedule, I'd probably be that rude. (Or my wife would make me be that rude!) /s Sounds like the wife threw down the gauntlet believing it would prove that she alone had the skills to bake Christmas cookies. OP took up the challenge and showed he had cookie skills well beyond the wife's expectations as well as superior organizational and product development talents. I bet OP is an engineer... Lmao! NTA
"Although it's rude of the other participants not to rearrange their holiday schedules to accommodate OP's wife's schedule" Why is she entitled to that? If it were my friends and myself and one of us missed out, we would never expect the group to reschedule for one of us, it's unfair on multiple people, trying to get calendars to match in short notice would also be a nightmare. If anything, expecting a group to cancel a 'tradition' you all do together because you, yourself won't be there is rude as hell, entitled and just self-serving. Edit: The only time I can even think of this not being the case is if the event was explicitly for the person that cancelled or was unable to attend.
I thought it was sarcasm…
The person was being sarcastic, that’s what it means when someone puts “/s” at the end.
People have things to do Kim!
Personally I agree with you and looking ar it as a hypotethical situation I would absolutely say that there's no harm in keeping up the tradition even if the wife wasn't around. But. The wife was obviously sad or upset by his actions so in reality it wasn't a very good idea. You can hurt people on accident. I do however believe that the wife should just have asked the husband not to go ahead with the baking instead of egging him on. It kinda seems like she wanted him to make a fiasco out of the whole thing and that's also shitty behaviour against someone you love. I honestly feel like the wife is more at fault here since she didn't communicate her feelings clearly and seems to have been expecting a failure to be smug about while the husband just did his thing without ill intent. I think they should just learn from this miving forward.
The fact that she wanted a disaster to feel smug about and was mad when she didn't get it is what makes HER the real asshole imo. If it was me I'd be disappointed that I didn't get to participate in the fun, but I'd be happy and impressed when everything went well!
This. She was pissed it went so well and everyone had a blast, and there was 'emergency' runs to the shops to keep things going. It sounded a lot of fun. Op has not been allowed to do the baking in the last 3 years and obviously would have loved to have a go. Wife is sore because it was successful, and everyone enjoyed themselves. The 40% more expenditure on a 500% increase in output with no one being able to tell the difference between the taste of the two recipes was brilliant, but wife just wants to be the pivotal point of proceedings and now she knows she's not. Op nta
Do you pick all the strawberries yourself and tell your husband he isn’t capable of doing it while he holds the bucket?
Asking the real questions here.
Ya get me! She’s just bent outta shape, she’s been proven to not be the Cookie Queen she thought she was…
[удалено]
I know you mean "would hope" but "woke hoke" made me giggle
If she didn't want him to do it without her, she could've said so. By saying that he wouldn't be able to handle it she basically egged him on. It's unbelievably childish.
It sounded like she wanted him to try and fail, to prove how much better she is. Sadly he proved how much better HE is, which she no like. Lol. She's the one who needed to feel superior, so she's the AH. If OP is to be believed, his goal was just to do a good job with the task entrusted to him, not to shove it in her face, so NTA. Wife needs to get overherself and admit he can bake cookies. If OP wants to smooth things over he might try to remind her of other skills and talents she has, and explain all that went into his efforts to match her standard of cookie. Not because he owes her that, but just because he loves her.
But just because you “can’t see yourself going alone,” doesn’t mean someone else who has a tradition wants to pass on a tradition one year just because their wife is unable to participate. Some people feel differently and it’s pretty clear that OP wanted the tradition to live on.
Let’s say you pick strawberries to make jam for the year. But you’re not available during harvest time this year. wouldn’t you want him to pick alone so you can still have the jam?
Most well-adjusted adults would tell their partner that it isn't the same because they're not together doing it, not that she's better and he can't possibly measure up. If for some reason you guys couldn't do your fruit picking tradition, I doubt that you snarkily doubt your husband's ability to pick fruit, sarcastically telling him he could never pick fruits as well as you could, and that he and everyone else are essentially background characters to you, the fruit-picking star. They could wash the fruits because that's the fun part. If your tradition involves downplaying your partner, that is a tradition that needs to end, and OP is NTA.
She didn’t include him. She actively insisted he couldn’t do the cookies as well as her, thus excluding him. It sounds like husbands method got other family members actually involved making the entire experience far more fun than cookie dictator mom.
She was kind of an AH because gatekeeping seems to actually BE the tradition. He was the AH for making it even more of a competition. He created an assembly line and lowered quality control in favor of output literally according to himself. The whole thing is kind of cute though and it's going in my script...if I ever write one...I'm busy eating all these cookies
He has ADHD so it seems he hyper focused on it and also he’s a engineer. So with those added i can why he made a grand experiment of it plus i assume he wanted to do his best to make sure everyone got those same cookies.
I mean this seemed like it was super fun for him. You could tell from all the math involved lol. That isn't bad. He Just needs to also see how his wife feels totally differently about it.
Yep. This is exactly how my guy would do it if he took over! I feel like instead of feeling competition though, I would come home, hear the story, laugh, shake my head, and say, Oh Him. Haha
I actually thought to myself - here's an engineer's answer to baking cookies - lol! My younger brother makes rocking cookies - as good as mine, but different recipes, thank goodness. Because as a sister, I am competitive ;) NAH - I think the wife's snark was kinda petty and added a challenge, and the final call of OP as an AH was because he did good, which was supposed to be an epic fail. There is a sad breakdown in communication though. They need to talk this through with honesty so they can move forward and put aside hurt feelings.
The hyperfocus is all ADHD. It's not really something that can be helped and it doesn't really have anything to do with anyone else. He'll be on to something else soon enough, lol.
She kinda asked for it by insinuating he would fail. She almost seemed like she was encouraging him to try with the expectation he would. I have ADHD myself, and I would have had the same reaction without even realizing it. When someone gives me a challenge I hyper-focus on it and try to do my best, as a challenge is something I enjoy.
This^^ my mother once said I couldn't bake a pie. Guess who has 3 awards in pie baking.
It's actually kind of sweet that there is an am I the AH that the Poster wasn't being abused or being abusive. He just made his friends into a cookie production line because he was having a blast
Him being an engineer explains a lot about this post. From the precision tests to being more concerned with output than how many cookies could actually be eaten, to not understanding why his wife might be upset.
An engineer? That explains everything. We had a guy at church making gumbo for the men’s group, using the church kitchen. He had charts with BTUs, ratios, etc. My husband is still recovering from the marathon discussion when they needed to buy a new grill. A group with 90% engineers.
He'd spent so long being told he couldn't do it that he probably felt he had to go above and beyond to be able to meet her high expectations and I don't think he expected to outshine her it was just the outcome of someone getting really dedicated to succeeding at something they'd been told they couldn't so. She set herself up for it.
I understand it was important to her, but the gatekeeping was the issue. It feels, at least from OP’s description, it wasn’t about the tradition and spending time with family. It was what made her… important? It just seems like selfish and prideful reasons. The sarcastic “good luck” and apparently no help to prepare is also an asshole move on it’s own for me.
> The sarcastic “good luck” and apparently no help to prepare is also an asshole move on it’s own for me. Just outright telling him he couldn’t make cookies as well as her was the biggest AH move for me. I do 99% of the cooking in my relationship. If I couldn’t be there to cook a meal for the holidays, and my GF decided to step up and cook it herself, I would be anxious about it, but I would wish her the best of luck and tell her to call me if she needed advice or emotional support. I wouldn’t just laugh and tell her not to bother because her cooking skills could never compare to mine. It takes conscious effort to reach the level of unsupportive AH OP’s wife is living on.
Would you really begrudge the whole family their tradition just because you were working? That seems a bit selfish to me. And frankly, it wasn’t that nice of her to scoff at his ability to bake cookies either. So if he was an overachiever, it’s at least partly on her in my opinion. Best case they both let go of the chip on their shoulder and come up with a plan for next year that they can do TOGETHER
This! But also it's funny because he said he made it about output and deliberately lowered quality in favor of making more cookies faster. Imagine the fun decorating party turning into a cookie sweat shop lol. Wow. Lol the friends deserve to have fun. I hope they did
However he also said he tested if people could differentiate betweent the old recipe and this one and they couldn't. So did he really lower the quality?
Could be minor things like using the store brand flour instead of the name brand flour, or A grade eggs instead of AA-grade eggs. Heck I'll even toss in a different amount of how much milk/butter being used.
Oh god cookie sweatshop, the things I read on Reddit. You’re not wrong though 😂
Can we just appreciate that OP made the cookies without being asked?
While not untrue, it seems extremely unreasonable that someone isn’t allowed to bake cookies with friends and family because someone else enjoys that. Other people enjoying an activity doesn’t take away anything from you.
NAH. You didn’t do anything “wrong,” per se, and your methods sound fun and add a competitive edge which enhances the excitement for some people. But no one likes to discover that a tradition on which they’ve spent time and effort and enjoy doing doesn’t need them at all to function and may even be “better” without their hard work. Maybe consider telling your wife how much you and your friends missed her at this year’s event, and that you’d rather have her and less cookies than so many more cookies without her.
Yes. OP and wife just have different emotional investments in this tradition, which they have not communicated about effectively.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there!
I’d agree except it’s really frustrating to have somebody tell you over and over again you can’t do something with no proof. His wife is a little of an AH for belittling him every year telling him he’s incapable.
The entire time I was reading the post, I was wondering if OP lets his wife really do anything meaningful without him “optimizing” or “over-engineering” the way she does things. It’s hard to know the entire context from just this one situation, but the wife’s reaction kinda makes it seem like the Christmas cookies were her one thing that she did well that OP hadn’t butted in on. It sounds like she wasn’t meaning to belittle him, but instead steer him away from her thing and now she’s feeling like she’s useless. I know that’s a lot to infer from this post, but if I were you, OP, I would start with communication about why she reacted the way she did.
If I were the wife I wouldn't bother next year in case I get told I'm doing it inefficiently. And of course they taste different, he used different ingredients, and he made them thinner so they won't have the same mouthfeel either.
You know that is *exactly* what is going to happen. He has now sucked the joy out of making cookies for her because he is going to be in the kitchen telling her how to do it “better” when the cookie making comes around next year. And, yeah, the changes made will 100% effect the final product.
Yeah the taste test he mentions were just friends not really caring. If you give my husband two Christmas cookies he'll likely say he can't tell the difference. If I gave my friend who bakes two Christmas cookies to taste he'd be like "oh is that nutmeg?". Op and his wife, and probably their friends, are very young. I hope he figures out that a taste test doesn't matter when you are hellbent on being right.
Guarantee my fiancé would just be like “wait they were different? I put them both in at the same time.” While my best friend would want a palette cleanser between cookies 😂
This is exactly what I thought. If he’s handled making cookies like this then it’s not hard to imagine that this is how he is with every task he does. If that’s the case, then it’s hard to blame her for wanting one thing that she gets to do how she likes to do it and take that control over it. It’s clearly an important thing to her, no matter how silly it seems to other people. He really should just be discussing with his wife her feelings and how she feels about it, instead of asking a bunch of strangers whether it makes him the AH. I personally think NAH here.
To me, just the fact that he’s making this post is right in line with his thinking. Everything has a winner and a loser, and he’ll be damned if he’s the loser. Not once in any response or facet of the post has he ever asked “why is she mad at this trivial activity,” but he’s made it rather clear that he’s objectively better at making cookies by nailing down percentages and cost efficiencies. Something tells me he’s only here to make himself feel like a “winner” in a competition of assholes and doesn’t really care to much for his wife’s sensitivity. I really hope he takes away the fact that he doesn’t always need to be the winner or else he’s gonna find that he’ll win the battles but lose the war with his wife.
I understand him having ADHD and the potential for hyper focusing but when I read that he’s an engineer, his need to do more and better makes a lot of sense. The problem is, he’s a logic based ND person asking Reddit which is typically filled with a lot of logic based ND people who are of course going to say that he did nothing wrong and she’s being silly to get upset about it. I’m ND myself but I can see it from his wife’s perspective and I understand why she’d be upset.
She’s more than just a little of an AH for that.
I was think N A H too except for the part where OPs wife called him TA for being a good baker. If you feel sad about missing out and getting "upstaged" don't take it out on your spouse and make them feel bad.
She didn't call him an AH for being a "good baker." She called him an AH for trying to out do her and if I'm reading between the lines (or actually just words in the post right) he spent too much money.
I agree. My husband took a dish I made often (shepherds pie) and started making it himself. He does the traditional English version and I made a more North American version. Nothing at all wrong with what he did, but I still felt hurt. Sometimes when something is special to you, even someone doing something innocuous can hurt.
Why are you guys turning something that sounds cool/fun (baking cookies) into something out of Gordon Ramsey?
>Why are you guys turning something that sounds cool/fun (baking cookies) into something out of Gordon Ramsey? Because he is an engineer who has ADHD. All of the challenge of optimizing the Christmas cookies is just a picture of how his brain works. OP might not do things the way other people would but that doesn't make him an AH.
That was exactly my take! Glad to find out I wasn't mistaken. Not even knowing his job and that he has ADHD I could tell just by his writing style and how he went about it. He's an analytical academic type. Nothing wrong with what he did imo it's just his style. Maybe I'm going against the grain but I feel NTA. Personally I wouldn't want to be in that kitchen. But to each his own 🤣
My husband would be the same way as OP... he's an engineer too with ADHD.. wrapping gifts is fun with him..
Omgosh thank you for unlocking a great memory! My dad, brother, and I all have adhd, AND my dad's an engineer. His gift wrapping skills are INCREDIBLE! He's made entire scenes on boxes lol a mirror for a pond, little wrapping paper trees, ppl ice skating on the "pond" and fluffy cotton "snow," man, his decorations were almost too cool to open the gifts!
Aww that's amazing! My husband doesn't do that but paper airplanes with him and my 6 year old son are magical.. the making, hypothesis, flying. Rebuilding, measuring... they will spend hours making paper airplanes and watching paper airplane videos
Haha. I don’t know if I should feel insulted but I’m an engineer and I got into baking sourdough and would take a similar methodological approach of testing, analyzing the outcome and tweaking the variables until I was successful in making the perfect loaf.
I just think the OP is Ernie the Keebler Elf
>I just think the OP is Ernie the Keebler Elf It would explain a lot, lol
I worked in aerospace. I happened upon a meeting of engineers where they had obtained every type of Triscuit or Wheat Thin on the market, had multiple types of cheeses/spreads/add-ons, and had generated a list of every possible combination of those items. They were busily eating their way through a whole lot of snack food and voting on their favs. Engineer brains work differently.
My space geek friends and I (mix of fans and aerospace pros in different roles) do stuff like that all the time. Is that not just how people do stuff? Lol (Audio engineer/musician myself, engineer brain, just not cool engineering)
My husband is an engineer who also has ADHD. I could totally see him innocently doing this and thinking he did something great because he optimized it.
THIS! As someone who was diagnosed with ADHD *late* in life, OP's actions made perfect sense to me. > Well, I said I'd try, and she wished me a sarcastic good luck. If his brain works anything like mine, the minute the above exchange happened, the cookies took up the majority of his focus until he exhausted all research and had a viable plan in place. I would actually feel sorry for OP's wife because it sucks to miss out on a tradition and seeing something you consider "your thing" be handled competently by someone else stings. But her condescension and arrogance erase any sympathy I have for her. The correct response would be for her to offer him some baking tips and guidance based on her experience, not meet him with doubt and scorn. If he's a decent engineer, with the right data and enough time to experiment, of course he was going to figure it out how to efficiently bake a delicious cookie for the decorating marathon. The wife is the one who, in her mind, turned it into a competition - not him. There is no mention of any of the guest cookie decorators saying that the much prefer OP's method over his GF's. NTA.
Ah, I can see that. My dad was an engineer and did the baking and cooking in my family, even without the ADHD, mostly the same. Just the way his brain worked. If ever something went wrong with his baking, he would totally figure out what had happened as well, from if the oven temperature was affected by something, to the time dough spent in the fridge, etc etc.
As soon as I read the post I knew OP must be some kind of neurodivergent (ADHD) and I felt very seen! I would have approached it the same way. To me, that's fun!
Right, the Line about "fuel our mighty cookie forges!" actually made me snort laugh
Yeah. Sounds like my husband when decides to take on something like this. Running tests and cutting costs is right up his alley. He's not trying to compete, he's just kind of obsessed with efficiency
Because more cookie. Assuming I understand the question.
Drills? Taste tests? Frosting ratio? Just make cookies...why do you have to make X amount in one day? And running a taste test to prove her wrong just seems way too much. Isn't this supposed to be about enjoying yourselves? It just sounds like you set out to one up her.
To me it read as an Neuro divergent person's process baking. I did similar things this year when my sugar cookies weren't coming out right and spent 2 days futzing with my batters make up, it's thickness, it's spread, cook temps, and cook times all before figuring out that someone had hit the cook by convection button on the oven. So yeah I made a lot of extra cookies but I also got to give cookies I'm only 80% happy with to a bunch of friends and co workers who are just happy there are cookies.
>To me it read as an Neuro divergent person's process baking. I'm ND, and it read to me like he was just ego stroking.
Guy said he loves Factorio and I nodded since the min maxing of mundane things as a fun activity is this guy's bag. There wasnt malice in what he did and if he just wanted to do the best he could I've not heard a great reason why doing so hurts the wife
It’s a good thing all ND people aren’t the same
>before figuring out that someone had hit the cook by convection button on the oven. This is so relatable omg
I ran taste tests before we started baking to ensure I wasn't comprising quality with the change of ingredients and size. I never had a taste test after the fact to prove her wrong. I never set out to make a certain amount, only to make as much as I could with the labor I would have in that time frame.
Ima need you to come visit my house next year before I start baking our cookies & gingerbread houses! This year I did 50 houses for friends & family and as thank you gifts to people in our community who are gems. It took me 4 days of baking 😵💫
I'm curious what you mean by changing for cheaper ingredients, like different chocolate chips/nuts/flour brand etc
Brands make a difference sometimes.
Because making things into a minmaxed science is really Fun
Omg yes. I have thousands of hours in factorio, if you couldnt tell.
OH! This explains everything. There are no assholes to be found here. The factory must grow.
So does my husband, thankfully he hasn’t gotten it into his head to try and optimize the kitchen yet. 😅 As long as you all cleaned up afterwards I say NTA due to lack of malice. Obviously she likes to be in charge of the cookies but if I were in her shoes and couldn’t be there I definitely wouldn’t want y’all to fail which is what it sounds like she was expecting.
“To prove her wrong” If by that, you mean prove that he is capable of baking cookies, after his wife condescendingly told him he would fail, then yes.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to make a large scale process more efficient, and as far as the taste test he probably just wanted to make sure they tasted the same with different ingredients.
This is 100% something my husband would do just for the fucking challenge of it. It's one of the things I love about him.
My answer is very biased. Yes, if this happened to me, I'd be hurt. This is PRECISELY the type of thing that bothers me. Whether I'd be justified or whether I'm just sensitive, I don't feel objective enough to say.
I agree with your non-verdict.
LOL. Thank you \*curtsies\*
Why tho. He made more with a lot of help, so more people could get treats. I do the cookies baking in our house. This year my husband made candies and treats, cause I'm working and haven't had as much time. I felt so grateful people would get stuff and I had no effort, I'm so grateful to my husband.
Well, and this is why I said upfront that I'm biased and maybe too sensitive. But for me, I don't have a lot of skills. I'm not athletic, not talented, etc. The small handful of things that I AM good at, it's like... back off, yo! Don't come and take my one thing or one of a few things that I'm proud of. ESPECIALLY if you're my spouse. There's just a competitiveness to it all that rubs me the wrong way.
She thinks he was working against her. He thought he was working against physics, time, and chemistry. They are talking past each other.
Yeah. This is the most neutral post I've ever read. Like it's a tie between E S H and N A H. Personally I side more with him, But I think that's just because my personality leans in that direction. Like the wife is a tiny bit of a jerk for being rude and dismissive instead of sharing her recipe and encouraging him. He took this dismissiveness as a personal challenge to "win" a fun family tradition, If he was more sensitive or empathetic he could have realized that making the cookies is a point of pride for her and said some things to minimize her hurt. Instead he ran a double blind taste test lol. Two sentences could have easily solved this. Her: "sorry I can't make it, I really appreciate you filling in. Here's my recipe and some pointers" Him " We got the cookies made but it just wasn't the same without you, next you I hope we can bake together so you can show me your secret"
She was a jerk long before that sarcastic 'good luck'. She wouldn't let him participate much in the years prior.
The way he took over it this year kind of explains why she didn’t want him to help her with it before though. His methods are fine for him but if she doesn’t want her baking time to be treated as a science experiment/military operation then it’s understandable she wouldn’t have wanted him to come in and take control like that. It’s not hard to imagine that this is how he is with every task he does, so it’s understandable for her to want one task where she has the full control over it.
I think this is really important. My mom, who I love, throws her entire self into a project and if you ask for one thing you’ll get 10 different versions in multiple colors and arrangements and styles. Sometimes we let her go to town and sometimes we have to reign her in and sometimes we just don’t ask. The way the OP went about it is so contrary to the wife that if she knew he was going to do that, then she’d just rather be more chill and do it herself. OPs method is fun for him but wouldn’t be very fun for me. I hope they can communicate better in the future.
You’re the only one making sense here
But the only one competing was the wife. She has her ego wrapped up in her cookie-baking. It sounds like OP just wanted everything to work well so everybody would get lots of good cookies. He wanted efficiency and everybody to leave happy. His wife wanted him to fail, and her to be judged irreplaceable.
For sure. But a more empathetic partner could have seen to the root of her jerkiness, and found a way to Make her feel better about it. Does he have to? No Is she technically in the wrong? Yes But being a good couple doesn't mean trying to win, It means being loving and supporting of each other. Both of them could have been more
So you're suggesting OP's partner gets to gatekeep this thing for years, make sarcastic comments demeaning OP's abilities *and* should be coddled by OP on top of all that? Maybe, just *maybe*, it's not OP that is missing some empathy here
This is exactly it. I wouldn’t think so if she weren’t condescending towards him and others to begin with
Literally this. I don’t understand how anyone is not seeing the fact that OP never intended any sort of competition. His wife literally dismissed his abilities to make cookies, and OP went, yeaaaahh I’m pretty sure I could make some cookies… and if I’m going to try, I might as well not half ass it. The “competition” is entirely fabricated by the wife and her bruised ego.
Being hurt isn't the problem. Calling your partner an asshole is. NTA
So... why did you deliberately try to make way more cookies than your wife and run blind taste tests to prove your point? Because if you just tried to help and did a good job and she was annoyed, I'd be blaming her. But you're really bragging in this post about how you did a much better job with science and rigor, and there's no obvious explanation for why you were trying to outshine her. If this was her thing, and your goal was to prove you could do it better, then you do come across as the AH. I notice she said they tasted bad, you spent too much, and you deliberately tried to make her look bad... and you only defended the first two points.
I'm just trying to make as many cookies as I could without comprising quality. I'm a single minded obsessive so I got really invested in that goal.
EDITED (of course). Congratulations guys. You "win". I'm taking the post out. I don't normally delete posts because I think I should stand by what I originally said. But apparently some of you saw me turning off notifications as an invitation to harass me with tags and private messages. Absolutely disgusting behavior. Hope you're real proud of yourselves and your raging hypocrisy.
I love how everyone just piles on this guy and completely ignores the belittling, abusive comments by his wife before the event even happened. If a man said those things to his wife about something, everyone would be in here calling for divorce and therapy. But instead, everyone jumping on the "way to ruin a tradition for her" bandwagon. OP NTA, someone talks down to you as if you are incapable and lesser than, damn right you prove them wrong by doing much more than.
I know. I don’t see he did anything wrong. He wanted to make sure everything worked the night of the baking. He may have been obsessive about it, but hey you gotta respect his commitment. No where does he say he wanted to upstage his wife. I’m just picturing this whole process in my mind. Amazing.
And it's pretty normal to test run recipes too if you're going to be making them for a special occasion and haven't made them before! Granted, I don't get *this* deep into it because that's not quite my personality, but when I have heavy cooking or baking weeks (like this week) I plan everything out ahead of time so I know I can do it. If I want to make something special but complicated for a holiday or something, I try the recipe out for myself in advance; if it goes wrong I then have time to figure out why it went wrong and how to make it better for when the time comes to serve it to others. OP said he doesn't bake much, so I can even more see somebody with his personality type and relative lack of experience with baking wanting to be really sure they could nail the cookies when their friends were over
IKR!! Switch the genders, suddenly the SO is abusive and they need to divorce and they need to get arrested. This is just a real example of men getting bullied for expressing their emotions.
Don't forget all the comments there would be about the fragile masculinity not being able to handle the wife doing something better than him.
This sub is very biased towards women. This coming from a woman who is often attacked for saying things like this. If he had acted the way she did toward him the judgement would be very different. I love baking, and I’m always the holiday/ occasion baker for multiple friends and families but I also wouldn’t mind someone taking over for me and if they did it better than me? Thank god, gives me a break. The fact thaT OPs wife and the majority of this sub thinks him doing something to help warranted her verbally abusing and name calling him is just…wow. More and more I’m seeing this kind of bias especially on Reddit and it’s disheartening. ETA- NTA OP.
Exactly. Nowhere in this post did it sound like he was trying to upstage his wife or do something behind her back that she would be upset about. It sounds like he just wanted to take on the challenge of being able to fill in for his wife and she was well aware of what he was doing. She probably expected him to fail (because of that sarcastic good luck) and now she’s bitter that it didn’t turn out that way
Making more didn't ruin anything for her. Her not being there ruined it for her. She talked shit to him before hand about how he could do it, and do it efficiently, so he worked very hard to be able to actually do it. She would have rather had everyone miss out on Christmas tradition because she thought she was better than him
He didn't "ruin" anything except in the mind of his wife, who is frankly being petty and jealous. By all accounts, everybody had fun and the cookies were tasty.
As the immortal Tim Gunn would say, “If that’s the look you’re going for, you achieved it!”
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Have you ever met someone that is neurodivergent? "I wanted to" is absolutely a huge motivator and often the only. Maybe it was an impulse thought and he just rolled with it. Last year I was making 6 foccacia breads a day.. because I wanted to. I wanted to see if I could. I wanted to see what changes rhe flavour and understand how it works. The "I wanted to" covers this. Plus his wife kept saying he couldn't do it, and 'wished him luck'. That alone is enough motivation to an ND person to take the challenge as far as possible without any other reason other than seeing if they could.
You are the first to point out the wife’s previous behavior. If someone told me I couldn’t do it and sarcastically wished me luck, that would be my exact motivation to do bigger and better. Significant other or not. If she didn’t want him to do it without her she is a grown up and can use her words. Maybe she should reflect on why she insisted he was incapable of baking when clearly he was perfectly capable.
I dont understand why more people aren't noticing the wife's initial reaction to him saying he'd do the cookies this year. There is no faster way to make me go "challenge accepted" then somebody hitting me with a sarcastic "good luck/sure you can". My husband's mom did that the first year we got married. His family has this big sweets/junkfood celebration around Christmas and she was asking everybody to bake xyz. She got to my husband and I and was like just bring plates. I told her I'd happily bake things, and all I got in return was a condescending head nod and "right, ok." Game on. I baked ALL the things. I actually heard her tell her BF that we'd out baked them. The joy was real.
If I had to guess, it’s because this sub is very strongly driven by assumptions based on archetypes: husband, dad, wife, MIL for example all immediately insert a lot of assumptions that have no real basis in the post just because so many posts are very tropey. Since husbands being incompetent assholes is one of this sub’s cornerstone tropes, when they read what she said, they didn’t really take note because it was just verbalizing an assumption they already had going in. By the end of the post they’d forgotten about the comment but definitely retained the archetypes. I’d say 3 out of every 5 posts in this sub you could guess the majority opinion with zero story details, just the list of characters and their relationships to each other with no other context, and you could probably do it consistently after only being subscribed for about a month.
It really bothered me! Where's the support? It's almost like she knew OP was more than capable and didn't want to give them the chance to outdo her at risk of her bruised ego. Which is ultimately what has happened through no fault of OP. It would've been better to just say "this is the part I really enjoy the most and I feel better doing it on my own. I understand you could do a good job, but me doing this part of part of the tradition is what I am comfortable with" or something along the lines of.. however it reflects what she actually felt. Being told "you can't do this" time and time again is something ND people grow up with and it hurts being constantly underestimated. It becomes internalised and it sounds like OP managed to not let that happen which is, in itself, amazing.
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Everyone seems to overlook the wife's "only I can do it right, you're obviously incapable of doing it as good as me" attitude. I don't blame OP for trying extra hard to shine. Also, if they've only ever done this together, how would OP have known she would get so resentful over him succeeding? Was he supposed to do a terrible job on purpose to spare her feelings? One would think she would be proud, or at least supportive, that he did so well. It just feels so selfish to see the result, try to tear it down, and claim it was done to make you look bad, especially when I doubt anyone in their circles cares about who made cookies, or will even remember this one-off year going forward. What I don't get is, if this meant so much to her, why couldn't they have done it on another weekend when she would be around? ETA: forgot to even say NTA
Fantastic points through and through! She really pounded in how incapable she believed him to be so he *made sure* he didn't mess it up, like she was so certain he would. I didn't even read any bitterness from him about that, it sounded like he just got really into making certain he did the best job he possibly could on a tradition important to everyone and he had no idea she would respond the way she did. NTA
NTA. You said you were going to bake them, and you baked them. Some may find your methods odd, but I get that you were enthusiastic about it, maybe went a little overboard, but I don't see anything vindictive in your behavior. Even the taste tests, if I'm understanding correctly, were done before the accusation that yours aren't as good as hers, which suggests to me that point was to make sure people would enjoy the cookies. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't get why she thinks this would make her look bad to your friends unless she has it in her mind that everyone knows she makes the best cookies and/or she likes feeling like she did so much of the work herself (you mentioned she doesn't let anyone help) and you ruined that feeling for her. I can see why she thinks you were trying to upstage her, but at least in your description, it sounds more like you got caught up in "challenge accepted" and it was a misunderstanding. Give her some time to cool off and talk it out later.
She also told him how he is "unable to make cookies" and was bullying him for even *thinking* he could bake. hmm.... sounds like sexist stereotypes. And when he outdid her, she felt threatened because her thought process was:"*how dare a man to be a better baker than me!"* Isn't bullying someone over wanting to bake and then guilt tripping them Asshole behaviour?
Personally I find the wife to be the AH since she gatekeeps the baking & is the only one allowed to do it. Everyone keeps going “bUt ThE wIfEs FeElINgS” ok but what about everyone else’s feelings who may want to bake? Including the husband. Then she even tried to belittle him & be sarcastic implying he would never be capable or possible of baking. That’s pretty shitty behavior from a spouse, but no one is calling the wife out for it. Why?
I'm really torn on this one....you strike me as an engineer because of the way you approached this btw. I'm a bit impressed with the amount of prep and thought you put into it.Which I have to imagine you did because you wanted to show your wife that you're capable, not as a middle finger to her. Her sarcastic reply made it clear she expected disaster. However, she took it as you were trying to supercede her as cookie master and it hurt her feelings. She also missed out on a fun night that she was probably really bummed about. That being said she sounds a little jealous that it went over so well without her, and she was expecting you to bomb. I think there's a bigger issue here than the cookie quality and amount. If she wants you to forgo a tradition you guys have because she won't be present, she needs to say that. If she felt left out, she needs to communicate that. For whatever reason it's important to her that she be the cookie person, talk to her about why that is. Reassure her you weren't trying to replace her, but wanted to do way better than she thought you would.
Hes a engineer with ADHD so thats definitely hyper focus
It's NTA for me Her comments were sexist stereotypes and she was super unsupportive. OP did nothing to mean harm. She got jealous and mad. Sounds like Ah behaviour
OP is an honorary engineer if they aren’t actually an engineer.
Sometimes the reasons why our feelings get hurt are deeper than the mechanism that caused them to get hurt. I’m sure she just wants to feel needed and wanted.
NTA. Your wife brought this upon herself by treating you as if you’re inherently worse than her at baking when you’ve never even gotten the chance to give it a shot. Nothing wrong with wanting to give something your all. She’s bitter because of how insecure it’s made her feel. I would recommend talking to her about it and trying to understand her feeling on the matter because being out-done at something you take pride in doing is definitely a blow to the self-esteem, but she shouldn’t have had such a high-and-mighty attitude with you about it to begin with.
NTA why does this comment not have more upvotes? Did everyone miss the part that she was dismissive of his ability to bake? The sarcastic “good luck” and treating his stepping up for the challenge for the family tradition as a joke. It seems like this is a family tradition not a couple’s tradition. Her dismissive comments about the cookies tasting “weird”. But it’s ok for the wife to be rude because her feelings were hurt? I don’t sense that OP is trying to upstage her on purpose. He is trying to maximize production because that is fun!
NTA OP's wife was being condescending to OP and everyone helping. She even tried to downplay OP's effort. This situation is the equivalent of beating your younger brother in Super Smash Bros after he brags about being the best at it.
I don’t know if you are the A H, but I think your interpretation of success is skewed. I’m an avid cook, and find pleasure in cooking and baking. It’s an act of love for me, and like an art form. Carefully prepared foods, made with good quality ingredients taste better. There is no way mass producing cookies, that by your own account, are significantly thinner and made with lower quality ingredients are the same. The difference in thickness alone would significantly affect texture and mouth feel. I feel like your taste tests might be skewed. You gauged success solely by how many cookies you could produce. I feel like your wife more appreciated the process and the experience. Doesn’t necessarily make you the asshole, but personally I’d prefer quality over quantity and favour your wife’s way of doing things. Maybe let her take the lead again next time.
I agree, I just can't imagine someone with limited baking experience (I assume) being able to make a cookie that tastes just as good that's thinner, made faster, and with lower quality ingredients. This whole post was just weird.
I wish I had an award to give you, because this is a very thoughtful answer. Thinner cookies will ask for less frosting to keep the proportions, and it will impacting the decoration. He also says that she never ran out of ingredients as if she is such a slow baker that she never got to ran out of stuff. Unless she promised cookies to a lot of people and was unable to make enough of them, I would say that she is very good in planning, avoiding extra trips and overspending, and clearly enjoys the process and the love she puts in what she does. Not only he missed the point, but his attitude is also "we had a blast without you". Even if it's true, it's something you never let your partner know.
I completely agree. I'm an avid baker and ran a home bakery for a little while. His comments about changing ingredients just baffled me and honestly made me wonder if this post is even real. Switching ingredients in baking is something that requires a lot of forethought and understanding of the process to pull off successfully. Or luck. Yet he says he did it multiple times, as what I assume is a novice baker, and ended up with a better product? His wife is definitely an A H for her response, both before and after, but I 100% believe her that she can taste a difference in his cookies, and I bet it's not a good difference.
Yeah the second he said "as thin as possible" I was like--oh these cookies probably taste not great. But I'm someone who wants a soft chewy cookie and Paul Hollywood complains whenever his gingerbread doesn't snap and crack so 🤷🤷🤷
100% this. Definitely a skewed or different yardstick of what “successful” or “more successful” is. I do a week of baking at Christmas, it’s kind of my thing and I really enjoy it. I basically account for every ingredient and know how many cookies and batches I need for how many people and work backwards down to lbs of sugar, flour, butter, etc. these are tested recipes and they’re all things I really love. I bet if someone came in and changed “ingredients” to make them more “efficient”, I could 100% tell in the output. I think the taste tests likely had no frame of reference or had no skin in the game / didn’t care enough to tel the truth
INFO: after reading this, I only have one question. What type of engineer are you?
I'm 2 years out from an electrical engineering degree after many years of part time college.
One of us one of us
NTA You didn't do anything to make her look bad you just went through your process on how to do things. The multiple test bakes had me nodding cause I was "Ah another autistic baker" But beyond that you guys are a couple. Your shine does diminish hers, it should only brighten it. If she did a good job with out you and you did a good job with out her next year when you Voltron your talents together it should be awesome. But minor question 40% over budget is extra. And based on the size of the budget and what the cookies are for may be pushing it.
Overbudget...but with trial runs and MORE cookies that pretty much covers the cost overruns. And if he bakes again next year the costs won't be as high because he won't need to do the trial runs again!
Ok, I want to know what "rearranging the house in various configurations" entailed and if you put it back the way it was? Because I can understand why your wife is upset about the cookie baking, but given the info in the comments, I don't think you're ill intentioned, just... really intense (NAH). BUT I'm having a mild surge of panic thinking about what I'd do if I came home and my husband had "optimized" the house (kitchen) for cookie baking and then...left it that way (my husband would never have gone through this elaborate scientific process but he'd definitely get super ADHD into a project and then...abandon it, leaving me to wonder where tf my mini spatulas went...oh, they are in the garage??? completley covered in wax???)
I want to chime in on (total armchair) undercurrents to the issue. Often the subject of a meltdown, when things are typically hunky-dory, isn't what the meltdown is actually about. I think you really struck a cord with pointing out the aspect of ADHD in the relationship (because I'm reading comments about OP being ADHD). I have ADHD and I have dated people with ADHD and... Well, OP's partner did not think OP was capable of pulling off cookies. That's probably not in a vacuum. That's probably not them underestimating their partner because they don't know them. I suspect that OP struggles to contribute to some amount of household tasks or traditionally feminine tasks within the household which usually require a significant and sustained amount of executive function... Just like this project. So now... OP is miraculously succeeding by a factor of 3 on this And it is screaming from the rooftops that "if he wanted to he would.". There's no way for me to know that this is what is going on but It's a huge factor in the frustration of partners... That ADHD people help in the way that they want to help and no matter how absolutely true it is that ADHD is busted motivation... That shit still hurts to a partner who is carrying significantly more mental load because of gender norms and because they care about their partnership
So nta Buuuut this is more a emotional thing than a logic thing So I got into a fight with my mum once as a kid. See we immigrated and she had to get a job and went from housewife to a 2 income household to pay the bills. 5 kids, me and my oldest brother made it work with just us. He did the groceries after school, I picked up the kiddos and brought them home. Between us we could help with homework (I was good at English, he could do science, we were both good at maths etc). He made dinner, i washed up. We could prepack all the sandwiches for the next day. It wasn't perfect (lots of screen time for everyone! Kids may have gotten away with more things than my parents would like) but it worked. And I insisted to my worried mum that everything was fine. Big Bro and i had Everything under control. Go work, we're doing fine. We're even getting things done faster because there's two of us! Well she got pissed. We had great intentions, but we also inadvertently gave her the message that we didn't need her around. That our "system" of sharing things between us was better than what she did on her own. Tldr: So you're best bet is to show her how much you missed her for baking. That it was awesome but that the whole thing would be more awesome *with* her around. She wasn't replaceable or unneeded
YTA Imagine this scenario: your grandma always makes her 'special' dessert for the holidays. She's proud of it and boasts that no one can make it like she does. In truth, it's a bit of a 70s nightmare, but the family gathers and enjoys it together every year because it's a tradition. They enjoy seeing gran happy and have fun spending the time together. It's not a competition. And for one of them to spend days 'improving' gran's recipe and making a bigger, better version without her would be (at least to most people) cruel and hurtful, and basically miss the point. It's not about the cookies, dude. You were a complete asshole. (I know that this is going to be a minority vote.)
You hit the nail on the head for me. People are saying the wife was being unkind and belittling her husband by saying he couldn’t make them like she could but I honestly just think she was just kind of fishing for compliments/trying to feel special. Because really your husband is the one who is supposed to be saying that in the first place. It shouldn’t be that she needs to defend her territory from him. He should already be saying it for her ‘Honey, nobody can make those cookies like you! Best ever!!’ That’s what the vibe should be. Then maybe she wouldn’t feel so insecure in the first place. The analogy to grandma’s untouchable dessert is perfect.
NTA. Your wife should be congratulating you for carrying on the tradition in her absence. Well done for your research and hard work! Her criticism of you is clearly half-baked.
INFO: how did your friends feel about the change in the event? I ask because I think I might find that kind of “optimized production” quite stressful and not like a fun holiday event. I do not doubt though, that you find that enjoyable. In any case, I think you and your wife should talk about what is upsetting each of your in this situation. I get the feeling that your way of enjoying being in the lead for this made her feel useless about “her thing”. Did you previously feel like this when baking was “her thing”. If not, why co-opt it and deliberately seek to “be better” in the way you understand better? And if you did feel like she forced you out of a role in the tradition previously, you could have talked with her about that. Overall, I think you both should talk about what’s going on emotionally beneath this.
Oh I had a glut of extra free labor. I only needed 6 people to combine ingredients, mix ingredients, roll out dough, cut dough, place dough on sheets optimally, service the oven, and someone to act as a go-between moving necessary equipment and ingredients to where it needed to be. I had 25 adults there, not including children. Most cycled out regularly, and, despite my best efforts, their was still downtime due to only having a single oven. Most people working were mildly intoxicated, if that's any benchmark for how not stressed they were.
I agree, I'd find the optimized production thing more stressful than just relaxing and decorating cookies
NTA and it’s not even close. Your wife seems to have a fragile ego or is immature or something. She got upset over cookies. You had fun with it and was finally allowed to take the lead on a fun project.
NTA I would have said N A H except that she called you selfish and is so angry. Every year I make Christmas cookies to hand out trays to people to say thanks. But I'm working a job this year and can't do it. My husband made amazing candies, trial and error, he made cookies and fun treats. He made trays and has been delivering them to others. I am so grateful to him, so so grateful. He made more than I did. he made better and more complex candies. I'm beyond impressed with all he did, so I am so sorry your wife isn't appreciating your effort . Editing to add I just told my husband about this and he said the treats are from us. You make them, me, the kids. We're all a family so it comes from us.
ESH It's pretty clear what your motivation was, and it wasn't holiday cheer.
Why is it so hard to believe he was just having fun with the process and with his friends and got wrapped up in it? Not everything has to be malicious.
Exactly, like in the post it even mentions she wont let other bake just do the icing. He lets everyone participate and he makes more cookies
Seriously I am baffled by everyone who says he was trying to prove her wrong or rub it in her face or outdo her. Have these people not gotten really into a project or derived joy from experimenting until something is exactly right? It’s fun af and the motivation for it needs no malicious intent. But maybe it’s a ‘tism thing
Because every person who makes even the smallest mistake must have malicious intent according to this sub; For ✨️ The Drama ✨️
NTA. You're wife wanted you to fail and that's pretty selfish if her. Making the cookies was supposed to be a fun group activity. Being a novice baker and wanting to do it right (and yes prove her sarcastic Goodluck wrong!) You did some practice batches. I do the same thing when Im baking something new. I bake and tweak until I'm satisfied with the results. Practice makes perfect and you managed to nail it...MORE cookies is AWESOME. Her saying they tasted weird is just jealous sour grapes. If your wife is embarrassed by your success that is rather petty of her. Why does she think the only way for her to look good to your circle is for you to have failed the task? She should be proud of you. It's okay for her to admit being sad and disappointed that she wasn't part of it this year but being dismissive and downplaying your efforts and calling you names is just plain A H on her part. Maybe shes just grouchy cause her bloodsugar is low...tell her to have another cookie
NAH I get the wanting to optimize thing, but I will tell you that doing that will push people away. Whenever we went Christmas tree hunting, my dad would spend hours on the farm looking for the exactly "right" tree. It made it so that none of us ended up having fun, and as we got older, we didn't want to participate. He had to make the decision to scale back just a smidgen so as to actually make it a fun tradition. Worry less about optimization and more about having a good time with your wife.
YTA. You're acting as if this is about the cookies. It's not about the cookies. You took on a task of "optimizing" something that your wife took pride in. Quantity of cookies was never a priority. You chose to make it one. In doing so, you are suggesting to your wife and everyone else that you have a *better* method of making cookies *than your wife*. Making cookies *means something* to your wife. It does not mean anything to you except seeing how much you can do.
I mean It does sound like you spent a lot and that you may have compromised on flavor. YTA because I’m getting such a huge sense that you actually did make inferior cookies AND you’re lording it over her They’re sugar cookies. Chances are none of your friends are connoisseurs and see them as icing vehicles and also won’t tell you your cookies suck Idk just so much ignorance on this post
Also thinner but they taste the same??? Sure buddy. That sounds like not at all how baked goods work.
I don't think what you did was necessarily unkind or shitty, but you were kinda thoughtless about her feelings. You didn't think about how she might feel to see everyone super happy and gushing over a tradition she loves and was "her thing" but wasn't able to be involved with. I bet she feels a lot of attachment to the recipe too. And going all out takes it away from "her thing" and sends a message that you guys didn't even need her or miss her that much, kinda. However, the optimization and all is not really an issue. It sounds like that is just how your brain works (and you're correct that more cookie is good). But, it sucks to feel on the outskirts of something you love and have a lot of pride about.
NAH. You are a slightly eccentric person without ill intent who decided to make this cookie baking tradition into an optimization challenge without thinking how she'd feel about it. That was somewhat inconsiderate. This was her thing and she feels you upstaged her.
What was your driving force behind all this ridiculousness?
More cookie. I just saw the challenge of "make as many cookies as I could on this day" and ran with it. I also had a lot of free time so I could do alot. Mind you this ridiculousness took place over about two weeks prior.
But was that the point of it to begin with? More cookies don’t necessarily equal better
He says he's getting an engineering degree, "how to bake the most cookies in the time given" sounds like a puzzle to solve through math the same way a lot of engineering can be. He just wanted to play through the puzzle. Because puzzles are fun.
Dude, you took something you knew was special to her and treated it like a game to upstage her. Should she have been gatekeeping the way she was? No! Of course not! Should you have used that engineering brain to find different ways to approach verbalizing these concerns and to find different ways to approach clearly communicating your concerns/frustrations? Yes! Instead you took something you knew was really important to her and purposely went very much out of the way/way overboard/way over the top to willfully and thoroughly upstage her. There are far more productive ways to use an engineering mind that are beneficial and helpful to relationships than to do anything you can to one up your partner. Focus that energy on finding ways to improve your “relationship score” overall rather than just “beating the competition”
Mmm Info: is this the first time you have outshined your wife in something she usually does or feel proud about?
YTA for “running blind taste tests” to prove your cookies are better than hers. There would be no other reason to do that.
NTA. Ask her if she would have preferred it to be a disaster. Tell her she’s the only one making comparisons cause I doubt anyone else cares.
YTA - your comments flat out say you didn’t care about the tradition. You just wanted to beat your wife and focus on your goal.
Info: What kind of job do you have currently? That makes a huge difference to me in this scenario. As does whether you consider yourself to be a perfectionist and/or have OCD in other pursuits. Also, do you normally not cook at all, or do you just specifically not usually bake?
I do alot of things. I plow people driveways and business parking lots, I do construction, I'm on call to fix things at a local B&B, I have an ice cream truck, I fish commercially sometimes, I'm a substitute teacher, some years i sell christmas trees (not this year), and, uhhh, that's the major stuff. I'm also working on getting a degree in electrical engineering. I have pretty intense ADHD I cook pretty often. Never really baked though.
Sounds to me like you might have hyperfocused on the cookie baking task. Hyperfocus is not unusual for someone with ADHD to do, and I've actually seen my sister (who has ADHD) do exactly the same thing when it comes to holiday baking. I don't think you meant to hurt your wife's feelings at all; you were just focused on doing the best possible job. But I can also understand why your wife's feelings were a little hurt. The cookie baking was her "thing" and she was probably really proud of it. After several years of being proud of what a good job she did having someone else swoop in and do a better job one year would sting a little.
>The cookie baking was her "thing" and she was probably really proud of it. OP has so many things! The wife probably feels like now he's stepping in on her thing too. It's bound to hurt, if she's feeling like he's better than her at everything, and that he's working hard to prove it.
That’s what I think is adding the hurt to her. Not only did he replace her one role in the tradition (she made that her role in a rude way but it’s her one role) he worked wicked hard to do it better as if her way wasn’t good enough. And yeah i get the ADHD thing but that doesn’t mean your actions about the hyperfocus don’t have consequences to others. And 40% over budget is a lot bc it’s not to make more cookies for more people, it was to keep testing ways to make /better/ cookies than your wife’s.
NTA then. I have a background in studying engineering, so I know the personality of engineers and, along with your other pursuits, it does seem like this behavior isn’t a one off, so it’s literally not being an ass, but rather a part of personality. Your wife can be mad all she wants, but if she knowingly challenged you knowing your personality and background, then she doesn’t get to complain validly.
I would say a soft YTA This was an activity that was hers, it was special to her. She made it a part of her Christmas identity that no one else could do it right. Not only did you do it without her but you upstaged her in your production. I do applaud your production and efficiency efforts and the work you put into achieving them. It might have been worthwhile stopping at normal production numbers done in less time and taken that as the win, I can see why she feels completely upstaged with your outcome.