Dear Libby,

I am a stay-at-home mom and housewife. Every morning, I get up extra early and cook breakfast for my family so they can eat before work or school. My kids love scrambled eggs, egg sandwiches, and omelets, and they often want egg salad for lunch. My husband used to love my eggs, too, but lately he’s been refusing to eat anything I make with them. It’s almost like he’s disgusted by the mere sight of anything egg-related.

This has been really confusing for me, since he only stopped liking them about a month ago. He won’t give me a straight answer when I ask him about it. He just insists that he’s never liked eggs, and he doesn’t understand why I keep insisting he did. Even my kids act like this has always been the case, even though I know that’s not true. I feel like I’m going crazy here, and I don’t know what to do! Please help me, Libby!

–A Frustrated Housewife

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Dear “A Frustrated Housewife,”

This is an egg-cellent question! It seems you have a truly egg-regious problem here. If I am to egg-secute a proper answer to your unfortunate situ-egg-tion, I must first egg-spel all these egg puns from my system. Okay, I think that was all of them. So, onto your question. I get the feeling that you’re taking your husband’s change in preferences as a personal attack on your abilities as a wife, but that’s simply not the case. Sometimes, people change. Not just their tastes in food or music or anything else like that—I mean they literally change.

It’s entirely possible that this isn’t actually your husband anymore. But don’t worry, because the thing inhabiting your husband’s soulless husk has all of his memories, so he will more or less continue on acting like your husband. As long as you can live with that knowledge, and maybe find out what he’ll eat besides eggs, you can have a long and happy life together.

In all seriousness, our memory is a crazy thing. Your brain can make you believe things with all of your heart that just aren’t true. I have a very vivid memory of my wedding day where my ex-husband smashed cake into my face. For years, I resented the fact that he ruined what should’ve been a wonderful memory.

Then a year or two ago, when I was feeling really vulnerable and nostalgic, I decided to watch my wedding video. I think I’d watched it once before, way back right after I got married. As the video got closer and closer to us cutting the cake, I felt my entire body tense up. I knew what was coming, and I wasn’t thrilled about reliving it.

There I was, standing by the cake in my beautiful wedding dress. My ex-husband and I held the knife together, both of us grinning like idiots. We sliced the first piece of cake, and I handed the plate to him. That was the moment he grabbed the cake and shoved it in my face. I just remember how mortified I felt at the time. It was awful!

Well, as I’m watching the video with bated breath, something happens that I didn’t expect. My ex-husband hands the cake off to my mom. I cut another piece and put it on a plate. I figured I’d just mixed up which piece he smashed into my face. With how horrible I felt when it happened, it wasn’t surprising I wasn’t sure exactly which piece was the offender.

I watch as piece after piece gets doled out to the guests. We were quickly running out of cake. I hand off the final piece, which my ex-husband takes with him as we sit down to eat. And then the video moved on to the next part of the night. He never smashed cake into my face. I couldn’t believe it—how could I have remembered something that obviously didn’t happen?

The answer came to me a few days later. As I was showering, another memory suddenly popped into my head. The night before my wedding, my sister had shown me a video online of a woman in a beautiful dress very similar to mine getting cake smashed into her face by her husband. I remembered us talking about how mortified I’d feel if that happened to me. I actually felt sick just imagining it.

And there it was. This memory I was so sure had happened was actually a memory of me imagining what I saw in the video as happening to me. For years I’d held onto my anger about it. Even when my ex-husband insisted he didn’t smash cake in my face, I knew with absolute certainty it happened! It’s not like that would’ve been the first time he lied during our relationship.

So when everyone in your family is telling you your husband never liked eggs, they’re probably right. I can’t say exactly why your mind would try to convince you otherwise. Maybe you’ve been thinking a lot about a guy from your past who loved eggs, and your brain conflated him with your husband? Whatever the reason, I wouldn’t get too worked up about it. Look at it this way: now you don’t have to spend half your life cooking eggs for him. Good luck, my friend! I wish you all the best!

–Lovingly, Libby