In a relationship with a man who can’t cook AT ALL

I do think it's partly about nurture. My parents and grandparents were interested in food and my father and grandfather were from different European cultures and wanted to recreate meals from their childhoods.

Despite having men in the family who could cook, women in the 60s were expected to be the main cooks. Aged 19 I did a cordon bleu Cookery course.

MIL was never interested and never learnt . To her it was a boring chore and food was provided as cheaply as possible. No love of food was nurtured in her children oddly they are all rather greedy

I agree with this.

I think that you are a particularly good cook and you think it is easy.

I really struggle cooking and can't do scrambled eggs or saute veg either.

I don't eat upfs but I eat basic food like boiled eggs and steamed veg.

I don't like cooking like you do.

He has to want to.

No he doesn't. He has to recognise that if you live together you help each other and share responsibilities. The alternative is that he thinks he can just sit on the sofa while OP does all the work involved in the meal every day.

Tell him he needs to learn or you're off! He's taking the piss. If he's an intelligent adult then he's perfectly capable of mastering a few basics. He's acting like a man-child. That would give me the ick.

I can cook but generally choose not to as I find it incredibly boring. DH is the same. We don’t have children though so basically just fend for ourselves.

I eat lots of toast, yoghurt with fruit, frozen veggies, soup, sandwiches ramen, maybe pasta, frozen jacket potatoes, beans on toast etc.

I do like food and will eat all sorts in restaurants but I’m just not remotely interested in cooking.

Teach him! I taught my DH though he only does fairly basic things.

Nowadays 'cooking' isn't necessarily required - it's more about heating it for the right length of time. I'm sure many people have no idea how to cook really. My mum was a great cook but my dad's now widowed and he uses the just heat up method.

He has to want to. So he has to realise it’s important. When I met my now dh, he was newly divorced and could hear stuff up. So he could get a meal on the table …but it was quite beige or, sometimes, odd. He loves food and had 3 kids to feed.

he can now cook, we had lamb chops, quinoa with herbs and roasted veg last night. I’m a good cook, but I refused to cook all the time, ….he had to learn and did. I still do most of the thinking about food….but it’s all fairly evenly shared the rest o& it. He also does most of the clearing up.

What are all these people who don't/can't cook doing, whole their partner is preparing a meal? Sitting in front of the TV?

Learning to cook isn't about formally being taught what to do. It's about mucking in and helping. If a meal needs preparing, then why is it not a shared task, at least some of the time? Just playing a part in the meal prep is how we all learned surely?

As I said in an earlier post, cooking together and chatting as you go is a positive thing for a relationship. So if you're the non-cooking half of a relationship, get off the sofa and lend a hand. And if you're the cooking half, call your partner in to give you a hand.

I'll repeat my advice to OP. If your planning to live together, you need to set out your stall. "If we're going to live together, I'm not going to be your full time chef. You're going to cook with me at least some of the time, and I need to know that you can step up in the kitchen too"

There's also no excuse for women who don't know how to put oil in the car or hammer a picture hook in the wall etc. Life can end up with us being alone, so everyone should have some basic skills in all areas of running a home and a car, and feeding one's self (and possibly kids) nutritiously..

Imagine you are too unwell to even move. He comes to you and says, "can I get you something to eat. How about a yogurt?". How would you fancy that if you became bedridden? Living on yogurt? Not even a piece of toast that isn't burnt, white, dry, soggy or cold.

Can't cook, won't cook. It's rare for them to change.

How can you even stand to let somebody come at you with tomato sauce pasta on their breath. There aren't enough 🤮s in the entire world to describe my feelings on that one.

Yes this. He wants you to do it for him.

⬆️ this is your future, OP.

Ask him how he feels about you cooking for yourself from now on and never him. See his reaction and then dump him.

Been together over 20 years and have kids . If he couldn't cook i would now be so resentful for being responsible for the thousands of meals I would have had to cook for all of us .
It's definitely something that would wind me up . we just naturally take turns. we both have set meals we are better at doing and love .
The simple recipe boxes sound like a good idea. They do make it all so easy to follow. Maybe he will get a real taste for it once he starts

Pasta and ketchup is grim. How do people get food like thar past their lips, or am I missing something? Is it secretly delicious?

Personally I'd be happy to cook every meal in return for the other person doing all of the dishes.

But if you plan on having kids, presumably there are occasions where he'd have to be the one to cook (if you're out, or if you work late for whatever reason, etc). You'd have to be happy to cook something ahead of time, or for him to serve a crap meal to your kids.

If it were me I'd jump on the opportunity to negotiate - I do all the groceries and cooking, he does all of the cleaning. My idea of heaven.

But at the end of the day you have to decide if this is a dealbreaker for you or not.

Does he not have parents? Why was he not taught to cook?
He won't start now, you're on a hiding to nothing. You'll be doing it all if you live together.
Wbat if you have kids and are incapacitated? Who would feed them?
Does he do any housework, or would you be doing all that too?
I would not be moving in with such a person!

Just teach him. If you don’t want to, then more fool you. I bet someone else would love to marry him, so set him free if he doesn’t meet your standards.

I have a sister that can’t cook. She still manages to put together simple, nutritious meals for her children. She has learned to make a few simple things that require actual cooking, but she sticks to quick basics. She is perfectly happy eating that way.

I don’t think we should try to change people to make them fit us. You need to accept this or move on.

if you have children, he will surely be able to make them a sandwich. He will figure out how to cook them pasta with jarred sauce and he can buy pre-cut fruit and vegetables at the store if he wants. Those can be delicious, especially with a dip, which again, doesn’t have to be homemade it can just be some store bought salad dressing. He can figure out how to make a quesadilla. Basically, he can parent and feed your children perfectly well without having cooking skills that extend much past his current abilities.

If you can read then you can cook.

He just can't be bothered.

wouldn't be a deal breaker to me, but obviously it's more important to you

before moving in, you need to seriously discuss splitting up the chores and responsibilities, ask him directly how he sees the cooking situation. If it's all on you, make it clear this is a no go and he has to step up, even if it's small steps at first, like something better than ketchup with pasta.

DH could only cook 1 meal when we met but he tried really hard for the first year or 2 we were dating to learn recipes and impress me.

It’s not the cooking but the total lack of effort and the fact he hasn’t dialled into the fact this matters to you. You need someone who can listen and work on themselves so you can both grow together as a couple.

I think nobody is perfect, I’d take someone who is clean and tidy over someone who can’t cook any day. My DH doesn’t cook but does all the washing up (I loathe washing up) it works well for us, I’m a bit of a feeder and get joy from cooking for loved ones. We get a takeaway once a week that he organises so I get a break and when I’m unwell my DD is happy with some fish fingers and frozen veg 😊

You can demand he learns to put some jar sauce and pasta together as a bare minimum but you are unreasonable if you think you can make him love something he just doesn’t.

Two more things:

Whenever you talk or think about this (including when bringing it up with him) you need to drop the "can't cook" and replace it with "a man who is unwilling to make even the slightest effort at cooking." He's not lacking in ability, he's making a choice not to participate in this aspect of standard adult life, and that will have real impacts on anyone who chooses to form a family with him.

And don't gift him anything cooking related for Christmas or his birthday unless he requests it. Gifts should always be about what you think the recipient will like, never about what you think they need to change about themselves or coded messages. Weaponizing "gifts" in this way is nasty and absolutely not the route to a healthy, happy relationship; don't let this frustration turn you into a person who behaves like that.

I couldn't think about having children with a man I couldn't leave in sole charge of children for an extended period - like if I were to go on a trip or be hospitalised, I need to know that my children's father has the basic competence required to provide a good standard of care for them without any help.

That involves making them dinner. Yeah you don't need to cook for children every day, but you need to feed them good proper food a lot more often than you feed them takeaway pizza.

I would just straight up tell him look, I can see a future with you but only if you learn to cook a handful of proper meals.

Stop saying he can't cook.

He WON'T cook. Focus on that - which can change. If he wants to and considers you worth changing for.

This has so far failed to happen.

You want him cooking? You're going to have to teach him.

Start with eggs. Scrambled, fried, omelette, poached etc. Also the mysteries of toast.

Then add in the rest of the full English.

Then 'how to open and heat a jar of pesto or a Lloyd Grossman etc, bung in some drained olives, boil filled pasta for 3-4 minutes, then chuck parmesan over the lot and open a bag of salad.'

If he whines, tell him what you've told us. It's a turn off.

There are two compounding but different things here - you wanting a romantic partner who shares your priorities and preferences around "real cooking" and food, and the practical implications of what raising children or forming a partnership with someone who will not share in this daily household task.

The first thing is a valid preference and a compatibility issue. You see cooking as a part of a life well lived and want someone to share in this thing that brings you joy, and he does not. Neither of you are wrong, but you'll have to decide if it's a compatibility deal breaker.

But providing meals as a parent is not a fun hobby or a preference. It's a significant daily responsibility that takes time, planning, and work. No, I would not consider having children with someone who showed zero sign that they will contribute to this any more than I would a man who said "I don't do housework" or vowed to never change a diaper or have a car that could hold a car seat. You're setting yourself up for decades of resentment and conflict.

I would talk to him openly about this before splitting, but seeing him make a real commitment to participating in that part of running a family home would be necessary for me not to move on.