Woman asks if keeping family recipes from condescending daughter-in-law is wrong

Isn't there always one family member who just knows how to push everyone's buttons? Though many families ignore such troublesome members, sometimes things go too far and it starts causing distress in the family. Particularly, when one member consistently tries to outshine the others, it becomes a long-term source of annoyance. That was the case for a mother-in-law u/OrganicHighlight5741 who shared her woes on Reddit about her one-upper daughter-in-law. Seeing her daughter-in-law's behavior, the mother-in-low chose not to share her family recipes with her and now wonders if she was wrong for that.

Though the mother-in-law didn't notice the one-upper trait of the daughter-in-law (whom she referred to as Kelly), at the beginning, it became evident with time. Everyone in their family had a knack for something like cooking or buying thoughtful gifts. The mother-in-law mentioned that her daughter was so good at making pies which she often brought to family events. "One day daughter-in-law asked for the recipes and my daughter gave them. She (daughter-in-law) started to bring pies to every family event, kind of kicking my daughter out of her thing." The one-upper didn't just stop with the copying but also went ahead and asked other family members to compare which pie was the best. "My daughter wasn’t happy," the mother-in-law shared.

Another incident where Kelly's insensitive behavior was obvious was during Christmas. This time Kelly went for her mother-in-law's youngest daughter who was just 14. In their family, the kids were supposed to get their own gifts for celebrations and the youngest daughter had a thoughtful gift planned for her mother. "My youngest wasn’t hiding the fact that she was giving me a knitted scarf for Secret Santa. She was 14 and was very obvious about it. The whole family knew," the woman wrote. "On Christmas, my daughter-in-law got me a very nice scarf as a bonus gift and gave it to me right after my youngest gave me hers." This time the mother-in-law straightaway decided to put an end to it by having a conversation with the one-upper. However, her daughter-in-law denied it and even the woman's son couldn't see his wife's fault even if the whole family noticed it.

At one point, almost every woman or girl in their family was one-upped by the daughter-in-law. "This brings me to the point of this post. I have really good Italian recipes from my mom. I bring them to events. My daughter-in-law asked for the recipes and I told her no," mentioned the mother-in-law. She added, "She accused me of not giving her the family recipes since I don’t see her as family. I told her it was due to her behavior." Consequently, the mother-in-law faced criticism from her son and daughter-in-law for her perceived dislike of the one-upper and for gatekeeping the family recipes. So, she sought the Internet's help and she received nothing but overwhelming support.

"NTA. I would keep every family recipe to myself. She is doing this to one-up everyone. You’re nicer than I am. I wouldn’t allow her to bring anything to events anymore. If it continued after that I just wouldn’t invite her to events anymore," said u/Artistic_Tough5005. "They are your recipes to keep or share as you see fit. No one has any claims on them," pointed out u/Liu1845. "Keep that recipe from her. Tell your other daughters to be more mindful and secretive of recipes and gifts in the future when your DIL is involved," suggested u/Shichimi88.