The scent of stale cereal hung in the air, a stark contrast to the usual delicious aromas that filled our apartment. It had been days since the infamous PowerPoint presentation, and the silence between my boyfriend, Mark, and me was thicker than any sauce I’d ever made. He was still sulking, convinced I was “ruining the joke,” and I was still reeling from the sheer audacity of his “critique.”
I was in the living room, trying to distract myself with a book, when Mark shuffled in, a defeated look on his face. He plopped down on the couch opposite me, a box of instant noodles clutched in his hand.
“Look,” he began, his voice surprisingly subdued. “I know I messed up. The PowerPoint was… stupid. I truly didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It was just… well, it was a really bad idea for something I thought was funny at the time.”
I raised an eyebrow, waiting for the inevitable “but.”
He put the noodles down. “There’s actually… a reason I did it. A really dumb reason, but a reason nonetheless.” He hesitated, then took a deep breath. “My dad, he’s a chef. A really good one. Like, Michelin-star level. He’s always been incredibly critical of food, of everyone’s cooking. Growing up, dinner was always a performance review. Every meal, he’d have a detailed breakdown, complete with notes, sometimes even actual diagrams on napkins. He called it ‘constructive culinary feedback.’ He did it to my mom, to his colleagues, even to me when I tried to make toast.”
My eyes widened. “So… this is a learned behavior?”
He nodded, a flicker of genuine embarrassment in his eyes. “Yeah. And he always told me that if you really care about something, you ‘critique’ it. You push for perfection. He said it was a sign of respect for the craft. And honestly, it’s just how he’s always communicated love, I guess. He never said ‘I love you,’ he’d say ‘Your risotto was acceptable, but the rice-to-broth ratio needs work.’ It was messed up, I know. I always hated it when he did it to me, but somehow, it just… stuck.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “When you started cooking, and you were so good, I genuinely loved it. But then, this stupid voice in my head, my dad’s voice, kept telling me I wasn’t ‘appreciating’ your cooking enough if I wasn’t ‘critiquing’ it. Like I wasn’t showing I cared enough if I wasn’t giving you ‘feedback.’ The PowerPoint was my messed-up, subconscious attempt to show you how much I valued your cooking, to ‘engage’ with it on the level my dad would. I truly thought I was being… thoughtful. Because that’s how he taught me to be thoughtful about food.”
I stared at him, the initial shock giving way to a strange mix of pity and disbelief. It wasn’t about him being a condescending jerk, not entirely. It was about a deeply ingrained, warped understanding of communication and appreciation, handed down through generations of a highly critical, culinary family. His “critique” wasn’t a personal attack, but a bizarre, misguided attempt to express… value? It didn’t excuse his actions, not by a long shot, but it certainly twisted the knife in a completely unexpected direction.