"AITA for making my partners drinking water too warm?"

Here's the original post:

To set the scene, I(35M) like to drink cold or chilled water and my partner (33F) likes room temperature preboiled water. To accommodate for both our needs, we have a kettle for boiling water, after which it is transferred to 2 water jugs, which are either left at room temperature or used to refill the dispenser in the fridge.

Onto the situation, 3 months ago I emptied both room temperature jugs into the fridge and boiled more water at night before bed. Partner came down, was furious she had no room temperature water to drink and we came to an agreement - dont fill up both jugs into the dispenser and leave her one.

Fast forward to today, there was going to be some burst water main repairs outside by the utility company so in the morning before my partner woke up, I decided to make sure we had enough water to drink. I filled the dispenser with 1 jug, then halved the room temperature water in the other jug into both

(we had previously shattered a jug on a cold day when we poured boiling water in, so I thought I'd temper this by making sure the boiling water would enter lukewarm water reducing chances of shattering the jugs). I went back to work and thought nothing of it. Partner wakes up and goes down and she is furious. She doesnt have any room temperature water.

I try to placate her by mixing the lukewarm water with water from the dispenser to make "room temperature" water but its futile. She wont relent. She tips the entire bottle of water I mixed out into the sink and tries herself and cant get the temperature right either. She is absolutely raging at me at this point for not listening to her or caring about her needs. She storms out of the house in a huff.

So AITA here or is perhaps this being blown out of proportion and mixing water to a specific temperature is not as big of a deal?

Edit: Okay wow, this really blew up. Who knew water would be so polarising... never thought this post would start Lukewarm Watergate. Just got off work and reading through all the replies. Looks like theres lots of questions so I'll do my best to answer them and provide some clarity.

Thank you everyone for the comments, the stories, the judgements, and everything in between. Appreciate all the input so far and theres been some great takes that I'll take to heart and consider properly. Including how best to communicate post watergate with my partner.

So more INFO:

Who boiled the kettle and filled the jugs the previous night? I did.

Why did you touch all the water? Firstly we dont have one jug for her and one for me, we have 2 jugs for the household (me and her).

I forgot about the water mains being repaired until early this morning when the trucks showed up and they started working. I rushed down and made sure there was enough water for both of us. Not just me.

On top of filling all the jugs and the dispenser and boiling another kettle full of water, I also filled a few sinks so we'd have extra water to flush the toilet if need be. I honestly thought the water would cool enough by the time she woke up since it's a cold day, but I guess I was wrong? I didn't expect her to react the way she did.

Is she OCD? No, shes just pedantic about certain things and needs them to be a specific way. But I dont think it's any more demanding than any other person who is neat and tidy and has certain idiosyncrasies.

Why don't you drink from the tap?/Are you Asian? Yes, we are an Asian couple. Many of you have guessed that. Drinking boiled water is cultural, and a preference. There is nothing particularly wrong with the tap water in our country (Australia), but it "tastes" better to my partner after being boiled. Warm, but not boiling water tastes different than cooled to room temperature boiled water to her.

So it's a preference. I preferred chilled water but I'd happily drink room temperature water or even warm if there wasnt any chilled water. I drink what we have, but preferred to have chilled. It doesnt affect me in any big way. This morning I just filled everything I could, including the dispenser.

Why dont you use ice? I can definitely use ice but our fridge has a built in dispenser (that we have to manually fill) so I do that from time to time with water from the jugs. Normally I will only ever use one, and leave one for her. This morning in my haste I used both as I wanted to make sure everything was full - dispenser, both jugs, and kettle.

Why dont you have more jugs? Trust me this is definitely our next step. As well as the brita water filter, but worried she might not like the taste... plus she might insist we boil it first before it goes into the Brita.

Why did you pour half the water into an empty jug and fill both with boiling? As previously explained, we shattered a glass jug on a cold day previously pouring boiling water directly into it, because... science I don't know the physics here. Anyways I was trying to avoid that and thought the boiling + room temperature water would cool sufficiently by the time she woke up. I calculated wrong.

Anyways hope that clarifies most of the questions. Will post an update once we've reached an amicable resolution. My guess is that it's not about the water as some people have already said but theres other underlying issues and this was a trigger.

Thank you for taking an interest and for all the comments!

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

drejac said:

This has to be one of the greatest AITAs ever because everyone is just…so confused

MontanaPurpleMntns said:

Simple solution. Buy 2 more water jugs. Mark who they belong to. You fill yours, she fills hers. Under no circumstances do you ever touch hers, and she does not touch yours.

denofdeth said:

i can’t even give judgment i don’t understand what’s going on

And Jerratt24 said:

This is one of the best AITA posts I've seen in ages. Simple solution. You are only responsible for the water you want to drink. Don't touch the other persons setup. If she flies into a rage over drinking water, you should absolutely remove yourself form having anything to do with it. Also you're both nuts. But she seems to be way more nuts. NTA.

Two years later, he shared this update:

So 2 years on, I thought I'd make an update to the original debacle that confused everyone and polarised the community. There was so many comments, some incredibly empathetic and helpful, some racist and mean but generally I don't believe there was ever a consensus reached. Despite all that, I was incredibly grateful to all the comments received from everyone.

Whilst I didn't take the time to reply, I actually did read through them all.

On to the update...

So as some people pointed out, our argument was not really about the water. Generally in every relationship, every person just wants to feel seen, heard, important, understood, and loved. My actions that day did not make her feel that way, and in of itself was more indicative of a longer running issue between us in our relationship.

For a bit of background, we both have (had) childhood trauma and the beginning of our relationship was quite volatile. Defying the odds we stayed together and got married, however marriage doesn't solve those issues.

Over the last 2 years, we've continued to stay together - Yes - We are still married (much to the chagrin of those who were advocating our divorce *side eye*) and continued to grow together. Believe it or not the incident involving the water was a bit of a catalyst to us having better conversations regarding how we are going to resolve our own trauma and improve our communication.

Long story short, she got therapy, I got therapy, we did some marriage counselling, she got more therapy, I got more therapy and it's been a journey, but a worthwhile one. When two people really do love each other, and want to work it out, they'll find a way to. I'm so genuinely grateful for my wife, who she was, who she is now, the strength she has and the belief she had in us, and more so in me.

Our communication is better than it's ever been, our intimacy is stronger than it's ever been and we are at such an amazing place. The future looks bright. It took a lot of work to get here, and there's a lot more work left to be done, but we have each other's backs and we'll keep going together. Thank you again! This update might not be what some of you were hoping for, but it's where we are at now!

TL;DR - Worked on ourselves, got therapy and counselling, worked through underlying issues individually, and as a couple, improved our communication by leaps and bounds, we are now closer, stronger and better than ever before!