Man Asks If He’s Wrong For Being Disappointed With The Birthday Cake His Girlfriend Made Because It Wasn’t The One He Asked For
We all want and deserve what we want on our birthday. But should he have just eaten the cake and let it slide?
Anna Nahabed | Shutterstock Are you the "I want it the way I want it" type? Or the easy-going "eh, whatever's fine" sort? Either way, you're about to have a lot of opinions about this story, which has divided many into warring factions over something so innocuous that the argument could only happen on the internet itself. A boyfriend and girlfriend are in conflict because she baked him a birthday cake, and it wasn't what he asked for. Before forming an opinion for yourself, here are the rest of the details.
A man criticized the homemade birthday cake his girlfriend made him because it wasn't exactly what he asked for.
The birthday boy took to Reddit asking for advice after his response to said cake had his girlfriend furious. He just turned 34, and for his big day, his girlfriend offered to bake him a cake and asked him what type he'd like. He said chocolate cake with chocolate icing and "nothing fancy."
What he got was slightly different, and when I say slightly, I literally mean slightly.
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Instead of a fully chocolate cake, she made him a chocolate cake with a layer of vanilla in the middle.
"She is usually a great baker," he wrote, "and I guess she thought [chocolate cake] wasn't sophisticated enough or something." So she added the slightest spin to the old classic. "She baked me a chocolate cake with vanilla icing between the two layers of cake then surrounding in chocolate frosting."
Close enough, right? Not for this guy. "The cake was fine," he wrote, "but I was disappointed because it was not what I wanted." His girlfriend took notice he wasn't feeling the cake and asked if he was disappointed, so he told her. "Yes. I was disappointed. It wasn't the cake I asked for. I said, 'If I wanted vanilla in a cake, I would have asked for vanilla in the cake.'"
He said he was just being honest when he criticized the homemade birthday cake, but his girlfriend was furious.
"I didn't make a scene. I didn't pout. I even ate half of a slice — the chocolate part," he wrote. But his girlfriend was still hurt and perplexed, especially since she'd made him vanilla cake before and he loved it. "I pointed out that I don't mind vanilla icing, but it's not what I wanted for my birthday," he replied.
His girlfriend was hurt, "and she even pulled an 'I'm not going to make you any cake next year,' [to] which I replied with, 'I will order my own and get my money back if they don't do it like I want it.'" That was all she could tolerate. She kicked him out, scolded him for embarrassing her in front of her kids, and now, isn't speaking to him.
He doesn't really understand what the fuss is all about. "I think birthdays are important things, and I feel like I was honest with her when she asked me," he wrote. "I didn't want to lie about it." But his friends told him he should be grateful she made him a cake at all, and he wondered if he truly was in the wrong.
The internet has been bitterly divided over whether he was in the wrong to voice his disappointment with his cake.
Reddit is known for its outrages and uproars, but it's rare that a Reddit post sparks such a debate that it spills over onto another platform like X. Most people on both platforms seem to feel that the guy's response to his birthday cake was petty, insensitive, and ungrateful. Many, like the top commenter on Reddit, didn't so much have a problem with him not liking the cake, but more with the way he handled it.
They wrote, "the way you spoke to her. It’s so incredibly rude and disrespectful. 'If I wanted vanilla in a cake, I would have asked for vanilla in a cake' and 'I’ll order my own and get my money back if they don’t do it like I want it'??? That’s insane." They added, "You’re not 15 and she’s not your mom (not that anyone should speak to their mom that way either). She’s your partner who did something nice for you. If I had a partner who spoke to me like that I would be out the door immediately."
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On X, though, a lot more people were on the guy's side. After all, is it really asking so much to get the kind of cake you wanted when your girlfriend specifically asked you what kind of cake you wanted? It's kind of hard to argue that it is!
There was one thing everyone across the board seemed to agree on, though. A 34-year-old man getting so bent out of shape about a birthday cake he felt the need to take it to the internet for arbitration is truly mind-boggling in its ludicrosity. As one person on X put it, "[everyone stinks here] ... a relationship between children." Yeah, pretty much. It is fine to want and ask for what you want, not just on your birthday but every day. But this much sturm and drang over a layer of vanilla frosting on the inside of a chocolate cake?
Birthdays aren't always a cause for celebration, regardless of your age.
The truth is, this couple's interaction was obviously about a lot more than just not getting the cake you want on your birthday. Perhaps they are in the midst of relationship struggles. Perhaps his girlfriend has a history of taking what he wants and always slightly tweaking it to meet what she deems appropriate.
Perhaps, however, and this is highly likely, he is having a hard time with his birthday. The birthday blues are a very real thing, and you don't need to be celebrating a milestone date to feel the pain. Licensed clinical social worker, Lexi Nass, wrote, "Experiencing the birthday blues is very real and totally valid. Birthdays can bring up a lot of complicated emotions for people, no matter what your age may be. When loved ones and friends cannot understand or relate to how you feel, this can often lead to feelings of frustration and resentment. While the intention of wanting to celebrate your special day seems good and happy in their mind, they may not realize how it makes you feel, or consider how you may want to celebrate your birthday."
This guy could be going through any number of struggles that were suddenly compounded by the fact that there was vanilla icing in the cake that he wanted to be only chocolate. It was likely the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. It's so easy to point the finger and blame him for what seems like childish behavior, but the truth is, nothing is ever as simple as one person is wrong and the other person is right. Hopefully, he feels close enough to his girlfriend that they can talk this through and he can open up about what truly sparked his disappointment.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
