...To Think There Is Male Shopping Brain...?

I think some men just can't shop, my husband does the majority of the shopping and we both forget things we haven't put on the list.

Plenty of men like this about.

the app we use is called Bring! and it has been working out pretty well for us - we've used it about 3 months so far.

It is american though so you have to remember to write "garbage bags" or "laundry detergent" if you want the cute little icons to show. Or you can just add your own things (and in some cases change the icon too)

What there's another like me! You poor woman! Mind you I bet he doesn't whinge as much as me even though I know I should I put it on the list.

DH? I didn’t know you were on MN!

Ohhh what's the app? Sounds great. I forget to write things on the list and DC not always around to ask what they want.

I've had to ban mine from Aldi and Lidl, because he gets too excited by the middle aisle and comes home with the most random things!

This sounds like weaponised incompetence. Did he have a written list? Or was he winging it?

No I'm male and good at shopping, especially for womens clothing...a result of having lots of female friends and working in the city centre and wandering around the shops with them.

Re food shop my partner suffers from if it's not on the shopping list I won't buy it....so if ask for milk, if it's not written down, it's not bought

@Brefugee I try to avoid the relationships board, it’s just thread after thread of downtrodden wives complaining about their shitty husbands “but he works hard and he’s a great dad”.

I need to stop clicking on these threads but it can be difficult to avoid when they pop up in the active list, it just makes me angry and it’s never actually helpful for the OP having me sticking my oar in.

I don’t think it’s male brain. I think is masculine socialisation.

My dh is very domestically competent. But he swings between laser-focused shopping brain and rabbit-in-the-headlights shopping brain. Laser focus is when he feels in control, he understands what we need and he understands what’s on the list, regardless of who’s generated it. But spring something unexpected on him and he goes into a flap.

I’m far more likely than him to forget the milk, or to buy milk when we don’t need it!

Same here. Worryingly, there are boys - and girls - raised in this environment, and socialised to believe that it's acceptable.

i live in hope, but then i read the relationship board and the hope evaporates like morning mist

@Brefugee hopefully OP didn’t do anything and the big boy engaged in some problem solving all by himself with no prompting from mummy

I find it totally cringey when someone glibly excuses basic and obvious incompetence like this as "aw shucks, silly men amirite?!"

Either he is doing it deliberately or he cannot manage basic adult functions. Both are incredibly unattractive traits.

so what did you do, OP?
I would have just served up what he brought home and then sent him back to buy sensible things.

Instigate a shopping list system. Then there is no excuse.

How would we feel if it was said that female brains can't comprehend that when armies mobilised (the Huns, Romans, Hangers, Mauryan etc) they were all male and didn't starve to death because women weren't about to shop/cook and keep them clean? The grooms were responsible for the horses. The farmers took care of their animals. The Butler/Gentleman's valet, would alk be male. Ten years ago it was unusual to see women working, even as cleaners, in hotels in Egypt etc. Then men worked in hospitality/tourism. The women were at home, miles away. Or can our female brains not handle history and other cultures? Seriously, stop this shit. I want better for my granddaughters.

I recognise this. I think a lot of men really do think like this, probably more than we realise. This is why they lambast single mothers who buy cheap food - they don't have as much control as THEY would have if THEY were in the house... It is always men who haven't ever parented, too. Usually the co-parent who has grandiose ideas of parenting but has never had to actually implement anything.

I think OP has done a runner.

My Dh manages the monthly shop very well, he goes through cupboards the freezer and manages a list he is a "clever boy"😀

It's mainly habit.

DH was perfectly capable of buying himself a balanced range of shopping in his single days.
For various reasons, I do the food shopping and the core of it I do on autopilot with 90% of it the same each week. If I go into a supermarket with a different layout and different brands, I'm more likely to make mistakes.

DH is not in the habit of buying for the family and planning how to balance what they will eat against time commitments and nutrition, but if he had to do it for a few weeks, he'd pick up the routines and the autopilot thinking.

In the same way that I now get more 3s and fewer 5s at my daily Wordle than when I started. I haven't become a genius, my brain has just got more efficient and quicker at logically thinking through patterns of 5 letter words.

Unless your dh has a cognitive difficulty, he's perfectly capable of performing a normal household task. Does he struggle with basic competence at work? If not, he's choosing to behave like this, probably to control you into not asking him to do as much of the household labour. He's happy for your life to be worse, more restricted and with less leisure time, in order for his life to be better.

It's not a good look.

Yes, it doesn't surprise me that his functioning is "variable".
I strongly suspect that, when it suits him, it's actually quite high level.

That is exactly the problem.

your spouse is useless.
Mine is great. We used to have a list on the wall in the kitchen, and if you needed something, or opened a new pack of something, you wrote it on the list. DCs joined in when old enough and now do the same at their homes.

Now we have an app it is theoretically even easier.

I hate to "NAMALT" you here, but - meh

What’s sad is when these people bring up the next generation with exactly the same attitude and perpetrate the same cycle.