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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/shawty_got_low_low on 2023-09-18 17:52:20.
My (40m) very pregnant wife (36f) is one of the purest women I know. She doesn’t have a mean, or malicious bone in her body. My mother and my aunt are second generation immigrants, as my grandmother and Grandfather met in a concentration camp during WWII and were liberated and came to America. Both my maternal grandparents are deceased, leading to a close bond for them.
My wife bakes on the side, and my family asks her to bake for them all the time, they pay her, and they get their baked goods. Mom and Aunt have asked my wife to re-create my grandma’s carrot cake recipe on many occasions. My wife has done this, down to perfect detail, and even my mom and aunt have said it might be better than my grandma’s.
On to the blowup. Aunt was having a birthday party at her work and asked my wife to bake cupcakes. Afterwards, my aunt said, “They were a hit, and probably your best batch yet! But did you do something different? They were lighter, and even more moist than the last couple times you have made them for us.” My wife, “Nope. Followed the recipe on my fridge as I always do.” Aunt – “No. I know my mom’s cupcakes, and you have made them perfectly before. This time you had to have used a different recipe, or ingredient. Did you use cake flour this time?” Wife – “No. This is even the same bag of flour I used the last time.” Aunt – “No. I know you did something this time. I know my mom’s recipe, and this is not her recipe.” My mom texted us later, “What did you do to the cupcakes? We want to know so that the next time we make them, we know what to do to make them taste just as good.” My wife responded with everything she had said before. I told my mother to drop it, said my wife followed the recipe, as she always does.
Later my wife was reading the recipe from the fridge, I could see she was upset, so I messaged my mom and aunt that they needed to apologize to her, because I felt they were calling my wife a liar. Mom, “We didn’t say those words. That’s rude and upsetting you would think we’re calling her a liar. Apologize to us.”
I felt I was being gaslighted and told them “Well. Until you can apologize to her for calling her a liar, don’t expect to see our daughter. We are not telling you the day we’re going in for delivery until you do.” This has set a chain of events off in my family.
I keep being told it’s petty to have this much of a blowup over a cupcake recipe, but I feel that it’s disrespectful to my wife. She says she’s not that upset, but as I said above, I catch her reading the recipe on the fridge and talking to herself about it throughout the days. I don’t want my mom and aunts behaviors to continue through to our daughter, and I fear that they may do something similar to her down the line. This is how they’ve always been. AITA?
Dude, your wife is just trying to figure out what she might have varied inadvertently in the recipe. These three women are having a disagreement not a bout of gaslighting. Perceptions can be funny, memory can be funny, and it’s normal for humans to not only disagree with one another’s perceptions but also occasionally to trust other humans when the other human’s perceptions differ.
I suspect your aunt may have swayed your mother’s perceptions a little unfairly, but I don’t think this is gaslighting or that your wife is even doubting her own sanity with this recipe review, so much as she is closely examining the way she made the cupcakes to determine what the different factor is.
YTA for perceiving an ambiguous situation as so it’s war then and escalating based on that perception.
Remember: tit for tat with random forgiveness. You escalated too quickly.