The Luv Doc: Secret Traditional Family Birthday Cheesecake

Dear Luv Doc,

My wife and I have been married for 26 years. About 10 years ago my mom finally gave my wife the original secret family recipe for the traditional birthday cheesecake. A few years back my wife used the recipe card to make my birthday cheesecake. When my son's birthday came around, she couldn't find the recipe card to make his cheesecake. Instead she made a cheesecake from scratch and memory of the original recipe. It was outstanding and delicious. Sometime later I was cleaning out the kitchen and found the secret recipe card in a stack of old papers. I put it in a safe place so it would never get lost again. I didn't tell her about doing that. She wouldn't need it anyway, and I forgot about it. A few days ago she was going through my personal stuff without my permission and found the recipe. She said I should say sorry for causing her years of humiliation and embarrassment for letting her believe she lost something so valuable. She hasn't spoken to me for days. I never gave her a hard time about the recipe while it was "missing," and I definitely didn't think she should be going through my personal stuff without asking. I really don't think I should be sorry about keeping the recipe safe, especially since she had misplaced it in the first place. Who should be sorry?

– Recipe for Disaster

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Here's my first thought: You only had one copy of your mother's secret family recipe for the traditional birthday cheesecake and instead of making a second copy you decided to hide that copy in your personal stuff? That would maybe make sense if the incident in question had occurred during the Middle Ages, but by my most generous estimate, this happened sometime after AD2013, a year where the two top-selling cellies – those being the iPhone 5s and the Samsung Galaxy S4 – both had rear-facing cameras with over 8 megapixels of resolution, the Samsung, of course, per usual, smoking the iPhone by an additional 5 megapixels. The iPhone 5s even came with a fingerprint scanner on the home button. So, I am guessing there is a decent chance that when you found your mom's recipe that was – correct me if I am wrong – given to your wife (and I will get to this later), you probably had in your pocket a device that could have recorded that recipe in exquisite detail, and secured that image with a digital scan of your fingerprint, thus preserving your mother's cheesecake recipe digitally (no pun intended) for eternity – or at least until Apple makes an iPhone that digitally prints a better birthday cheesecake than your mother, but a slightly shittier birthday cheesecake than Samsung's phone makes. I'm pretty sure I got that correct, did I not?

I don't remember the pot gummies being super potent in the teens, but I'll admit it's been a minute. Maybe you were gumming hard and it never occurred to you that you had a scanner/copier/photographic device burning a hole in your pocket. There are probably some other reasonably legitimate excuses for hiding the recipe your mom gave your wife. Jealousy, for instance. I know I would be a bit insulted if my mom gave my wife the traditional family birthday cheesecake recipe instead of me, even though I am a little bit relieved to say my family doesn't have a traditional family cheesecake recipe because we are already blessed – with a history of heart disease. Also, if I am being totally honest, my wife is the Samsung to my Apple when it comes to baking. Don't get me wrong: I'm a decent cook, but if I can't whip it up on a grill or in a frying pan in under 20 minutes, I am probably not interested. That probably also explains the heart disease thing.

Anyway, what's at issue here is not that your wife is cocking up your mom's cheesecake, it's that you both feel like your significant other betrayed your trust. That's basically true. Just because you have a reason for hiding the recipe from your wife doesn't mean it's a good one. Truthfully, it's kind of insulting. If you feel like your wife can't be trusted with important documents, you should talk about it instead of hiding stuff from her like a kindergarten teacher. Also, I will agree that your wife probably shouldn't go rifling through your personal stuff without asking, although, to be honest, I am not sure what should be considered personal stuff in a marriage. Dick growth cream? Anal beads? Unmailed love letters to Greg Abbott? It's best to get all that stuff out in the open from the get-go. The hidden stuff festers. Tell your wife you're sorry. If you're able to tell her what you were thinking, tell me too, because I would like to know that even more than I would like to know your family's secret traditional birthday cheesecake recipe.