Unwritten Rules leave you sad and cookieless

In marriage, never, ever assume that something is an unwritten rule.

For two years, two full years I have always assumed that we had a standard dessert protocol. If one person makes or buys a delicious dessert dish, the other person is free to partake but not to finish! So when Zach makes some pastry, I have more than a few pieces, sure, but never, ever, the last one. Always. And things always went the same way with my treats. I just assumed it was one of those normal things we had just settled into. You didn't explicitly say, hey don't eat the last cookie. It was just understood, the same way we just naturally assume that I always get the mail and Zach always takes the trash work. You just do it because we both know that's how things work.

So this morning I went over to a plate of cookies I'd made a few days ago. Last I checked, there were quite a few left, but apparently Zach had enjoyed them too. But, per our custom, the last cookie was there and waiting for me. I made an after dinner date with that cookie and went about the rest of the day looking forward to it. It wasn't that great of a day, so once dinner wrapped up I was looking forward to that cookie more than ever. I poured a glass of milk for dipping and pulled open the curtain on the shelf where the cookie had been sitting on it's plate, the last of its kind. Only to find no plate and worst of all no cookie.

So I come out of the kitchen, dessert plans foiled and splattered in a mug of milk that had been deprived of its cookie dipping destiny and had to be carefully poured back into the milk jug, and ask Zach why oh why he ate the last of my cookies? The cookie he had so sweetly saved for me? He just stared at me like I was a crazy person. So I told him the previously unspoken rule. He had no idea what I was talking about. None what so ever. Apparently it is just sheer luck that he's never gotten the last bite before now. 

He was just completely flumoxed that I had some sense of ownership over a cookie. Why didn't I just eat it if I wanted it? Because I didn't think I had to! Precedent told me that we both understood that was my cookie.

So now I have a nasty case of betrayal hiccups, all because someone didn't understand the rules. Or because we never actually said anything and I relied on assumptions and an awful lot of apparently coincidental precedent. But since he got a cookie and I didn't, I think it's only fair that he gets the blame.