My wife (33f) called me from the car and asked if I (32f) could check if my Spotify app was working. She said hers wasn’t working and that it was acting like she had no service at all. I asked if she tried closing the app and reopening it already. Long pause. “Did you really just ask me that? Of course I did!” I explained that I figured she had but didn’t know because she was driving and I would hope she isn’t doing too many troubleshooting steps while driving. And she said she tried closing the app like 14 times and it still wasn’t working. Then she expressed that she was offended that I asked the question. I said that her frustration was with Spotify, not me. Then she said. “No my frustration is with you. You should assume I knew to do that.” I kept trying to explain that it’s just the first troubleshooting step to ask, and she just got really quiet and then hung up.

I then checked if my Spotify was working, and it was. So I texted her to let her know that my Spotify was working and that sometimes the app doesn’t work at all for seemingly no reason.

Please tell me if and where in the conversation I am the AH because I really feel like I’m being gaslit into thinking that asking this troubleshooting question was offensive.

Below I pasted the text exchange that followed. She was using voice to text in the car, so don’t judge her spelling or grammar!

My wife:

All I'm asking is that you don't talk to me like I'm an idiot and I don't think that's a lot to ask. I brought it up several times but you can be very condescending and honestly I get talked to like that a lot at work and I really don't want it to happen when I'm home.

And if you really think that, I'm intelligent, then please talk to me like you assume that I would try intelligent like things

Me:

I don’t assume things. We were talking about troubleshooting steps. You should not take offense when someone asks you in a neutral way if you have done a troubleshooting step. I didn’t say “you’re a dumb ho so I know you haven’t tried this already.” I was just asking if you have already done a step.

I don’t accept this because I always speak to you with respect. I don’t talk down to you. I think you need to view the conversation from a more neutral place and less emotional and think about the facts. You called to ask if my spotify was working. You said that yours wasn’t working at all. I asked if you did one troubleshooting step. You got upset because you interpretted my first step of trying to help as talking down to you.

My wife:

OK noted I won't ask you for help anymore

If you can't be open minded enough to see that you don't come off condescending sometimes, and that it is hurtful when I mention it multiple times I don't really know what else to say, but I would hope that you respect me enough to listen and think about what I'm saying without assuming that the problem is me and that I need to be less emotional because I take things how they feel and I'm not gonna be less of who I am because you don't like my response

Me:

I’m not going to keep a text argument going with you. Just have fun today and we can talk later. I will reflect and consider your point. I always do when we argue. I ask that you also consider my perspective in the same way I am yours. There is no way for me to have known for certain if you had done that step already or not, and me asking was not asked in malice but to know for sure that you had.

My wife:

You’re honestly being so unemotional and hateful right now. I don’t know what’s wrong with you but I’m not coming home at this rate. I’ll stay at my sister’s.

Me:

You are blowing this way out of proportion. I am approaching this with the same level of no emotion that is attached to the question I asked about if you closed the app already. You can acknowledge your emotional response to the question. It hurt your feelings. Okay, I’m sorry what I said hurt your feelings. I won’t say that again. But you turn it around and then say what I was doing by saying that I’m talking down to you. I simply was not talking down to you. At worst I was being direct to get right down to troubleshooting steps. But I said nothing offensive and I won’t say that I did.