How do you feel about crying in public?

In many cultures, emotions – particularly big emotions – are embraced, as a huge part of life and what makes us human.

But in plenty of our Western cultures we’re encouraged to shut away our emotions, to function without them, to ‘master’ them – meaning, to not be affected by emotions so as not to make others uncomfortable or – gasp – be unproductive for a moment while we take some time to feel.

The consequences of bottling up our feelings? Well they’re not good, leading to outbursts and sometimes even mental health conditions, all because it makes people a little uncomfortable to see us cry.

And for the woman in this story, her boyfriend’s refusal to let her embrace her emotions has led to perhaps the first serious impasse in their relationship – and he doesn’t come off good.

Read on to find out what happened.

AITA for crying when my boyfriend let his best friend’s wife alter the dish I made for dinner?

My boyfriend (28, male) and I (22, female) met at work two years ago. Technically I was working part-time during undergrad and he was a customer, but after a couple of months, we started going out.

He has a very tight group of friends. I am well acquainted with them, and their girlfriends.

One of them Dave, just is married to Ellie (fake names). Ellie is an excellent cook and often hosts dinners, and everyone brings a dessert to those dinners. I am the youngest in the group, so most times they brush off my requests for contributing or bringing in a dessert.

However, the last time I asked Dave and Ellie if they wanted anything extra like wine or some sweet dish for dinner, they said I could bring one of those sweet dishes I make for my boyfriend.

Let’s see what happened when she bought a dish to dinner.

I’m Indian, and even though I can’t cook as well as my mom, and I’m in a different country for studies, I called my mom up and had her teach me properly how to make a specific Bengali sweet which is my favourite.

I had my friends taste it and they said it was great. My boyfriend ate some and said it was excellent.

Except, last night, I greeted Ellie and kept the dish in the kitchen. When the food was brought out and my boyfriend told everyone I made it, I saw that someone had added cinnamon powder to the sweet.

You never have the sweet with cinnamon powder. The dessert tasted like cinnamon and I felt horrible.

Read on to find out how she reacted.

Though everyone said thank you and that it was good, I think my face gave it away, and my boyfriend took me aside and said that Ellie had told him that my sweet looked ‘too white’ and thought some cinnamon might bring some colour into it.

I don’t know, I just felt awful and I started to tear up.

My boyfriend then defended Ellie and said that his friends already think I’m a child and not make a big deal of this and that we will talk about it.

I told him Ellie asked him first, so couldn’t he have told her not to add cinnamon to the sweet?

Let’s see how her boyfriend responded to her question.

He told me he didn’t think it was a big deal and asked me to drop the topic on the way home.

I didn’t text him goodnight and this morning he said he was sorry and said my crying made him feel like an awful person.

I really love this man and nothing has happened on this scale before, so I’m very confused about it. I don’t know, now I think I overreacted.

AITA?

It really sucks that she wasn’t allowed to have emotions during a situation that undermined her contributions, simply because she’s younger than everyone else and her boyfriend was self-conscious about it.

But what sucks just as much is Ellie altering the dish she knew nothing about without the woman’s permission – and her boyfriend permitting the cinnamon to wrongfully be added.

It’s not only culturally insensitive, it’s personally insensitive too.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person thought that the boyfriend was the problem.

While others were horrified that Ellie decided to add cinnamon to make a dish that was supposed to be white less white.

Meanwhile, this Redditor validated all the woman’s feelings.

Sure, Ellie might not have been intentionally hateful, but what she did not only ruined a dessert from another culture, it also said a whole lot about what the group think of the younger woman too.

But the real problem is the boyfriend who, instead of standing up for his girlfriend, forced her to suppress her emotions, disrespected her heritage, and insulted her too.

She deserves better.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.