Coffee does things to people. And by that, I mean it does more than just inject your veins with pure energy juice, making you feel less tired and more willing to cope with life’s greatest challenges.
Coffee, turns out, is also a way of life, and if you don’t strictly adhere to the very specific rules and etiquette of what it means to experience coffee, then you don’t deserve it. Or something along those lines. If you want to feed the absolute snobbishness of the idea.
And this one Redditor explained just how drastic it can get with coffee in an Am I The A-Hole story she shared a year ago, but has now provided an update of how the whole story was transformational for her.
More Info: Original Story | Update
Coffee is many things, but taking it to an extreme is never a good idea because it can cost you a relationship
Image credits: Arjun Shankar (not the actual image)
Meet Reddit user u/Minaowl, a then 23-year-old living with her then 25-year-old fiance who was a bit of a coffee connoisseur… OK, not just a bit. Quite, or very much work better here.
You see, he was what Mina described as a foodie—someone with a particular interest in food—making him very particular about certain ingestibles, one of which was coffee. This means that their household had things like a manual coffee grinder, distilled water, and even an Aeropress along with a metal coffee filter.
This is besides all of the weighing the fiance did (using actual scales) to make sure the proportions were perfect and everything from the different coffee grinder settings to the usage, or lack thereof, of the Aeropress and other coffee brewing implements always had to undergo strict procedure as if he was a national symphony orchestra conductor preparing to perform Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.
A Redditor has shared a story of how her (now ex) foodie fiance turned coffee making into a reason for abuse
Image Credits: u/Minaowl
OP, however, was a casual drinker who would… well, play the guitar at home because the music’s just as good and enjoyable… so, use a scoop to measure beans, use any setting on the grinder, not let the coffee sit to brew, that sort of thing.
You can probably see, at this point, where the conflict is brewing.
This barbaric approach to preparing coffee didn’t sit well with the fiance, which led to multiple arguments between the two about how she was making her coffee wrong. Mind you, if she was making coffee for him, she would follow his instructions and use all of the necessities to make the coffee he wanted to imbibe, but she didn’t feel like going through all of the same trouble for her own cup of java.
Image Credits: u/Minaowl
This culminated when one day Mina was scooping coffee beans into the grinder and her fiance whipped out his scales and asked her to use them for it shall please the caffeine gods because he seemed bothered by this.
Despite them having had this conversation multiple times, it happened again, and you can guess just how frustrating it was for Mina at this point. She snapped out a “no” his way, to which he responded with a “you, too”, as if she had cursed him out. She wasn’t even thinking it.
This in turn led OP to share her story with the Am I The A-Hole community on Reddit. “I first posted [the story] because I needed validation. I knew that I wasn’t in the wrong on some level, but I felt like I was losing my mind. My ex really seemed to be hurting watching me make my coffee wrong and had so much contempt for me when I didn’t comply, I just needed someone to tell me I wasn’t insane,” Mina told Bored Panda in an interview about her now-viral post.
Image Credits: u/Minaowl
What sets this AITA post apart from others is that it came with an update a year later, turning it into a happy ending kind of story
Image credits: Olle Svensson (not the actual image)
And this is where it started to get really interesting. Saying that Mina is not wrong in this situation was to be expected from the AITA community, but many folks were actually pointing out that there was a bigger underlying issue at play here, and that was abuse.
The way someone prepares their coffee is, at the very least, nobody’s business, if anything because it’s a taste, and everyone has one. But to start bossing someone around made everyone wonder what else he was bossing her around about, leading to very serious conclusions from the audience.
The AITA community gave Mina some perspective on what was really going on, which pushed her to make some serious conclusions of her own. What makes this AITA story unique is that there is an update. A year later, Mina came out with an update, explaining the happy ending this experience led to.
In her update, OP thanked the community for helping her make the difficult decision of leaving her snobby coffee-loving fiance
Image Credits: u/Minaowl
Image credits: Star5112 (not the actual image)
Mina told Bored Panda that she decided to post an update because she herself always remembers posts where people seem to be in an abusive relationship and would often wonder whatever happened to them.
In her update, she explained how she saw how everyone caught on to the bigger issue here, and while not everyone’s response was eye-opening, it was certainly the push she needed to make the right choice.
She also explained that she is doing just fine now, working as a caregiver, thinking of going to grad school to study social work, and with a new partner who doesn’t even attempt to turn coffee making, or anything else for that matter, into an elaborate project. And she had the AITA community to thank for helping her make the decision.
While it was clear that OP was not the bad guy here, folks pointed out more than just that
“I’ve always known that abuse isn’t just physical, but I think I always conceptualized abuse as calculated and intentional. My ex doesn’t believe that he’s abusive, just that he’s always right, and the fact that he wasn’t as calculated as some people I’ve heard about delayed me realizing that what had happened was abuse. I didn’t grasp it until a few months after I was out,” elaborated Mina.
She also explained that this whole experience gave her a newfound appreciation for the freedom to make coffee, or anything else, her way without the prospect of a fight hanging over her. In light of this, she now partakes in pre-ground coffee, and it’s amazing.
Some folks commented on her update, saying how they remember reading her original post a year ago. “I have some perspective now that I’m out, but the idea of having to fight almost every morning just to make my coffee how I want to still feels kinda normal because it was my normal. Seeing that so many people read it and were struck by how messed up it was really surprised me,” concluded Mina.
Her original post garnered a bit over 4,000 upvotes, but, as you know now, has been significant in her life and that means something. But her update blew up way out of proportion with 32,200 upvotes, and it made folks happy to see a happy-ever-after.
But what are your thoughts on this? Or if you don’t have any, share your coffee opinions in the comment section below.