Husbands food issues - I need help

This. My MIL spent her life running round, excusing and enabling late FIL. She has a strained relationship with both her children, neither of them were that keen to visit her once they had left home until FIL died. It has largely contributed to my STBX DH's own MH problems.

OMG he sounds like a nightmare! You cannot fix him or change him. As I know from bitter experience, people pleasing and enabling are very close to each other. You are not helping him, he needs to get help himself but instead he has you running around him and making suggestions after suggestion, basically validating his beliefs and behaviour. Why should he get help? Also your responsibility is to your children and they are being harmed by this. Let him eat frozen pizza. Cook meals for yourself and your children and eat in peace.

@sunnypalmtrees He obviously has no idea what "healthy eating" is, he's full of bullshit. I'm so sick of reading about various brands of "male depression", the major symptom of which is invariably making life totally untenable for their wives and kids. You will spend the rest of your life trying to please him and constantly fail. Then one day you will either explode or have a breakdown. So stop it now. Let him eat frozen pizza or go to Wetherspoons or shove it all up his arse because this is beyond ridiculous.

Gosh it's like you have you have an extremely fussy child to deal with
In your shoes id stop giving it attention..produce a family meal .if he chooses to eat it , lovely,if he doesn't it's not your problem and don't engage with him about food.
He's being a dick ,tying you up in knots over his issue .
I absolutely wouldn't pander to this with a child or an adult
The more you try to help ,the more he makes it your problem
It's not your problem or your responsibility
You are going to have to get tough with him
Just stop any talk about food ,produce a meal.leave it on the table and stop any talk about food especially when you have spent time preparing it .
He's using the situation to control you ,and control the mood of the family

I have aphantasia, and don’t visualise food but I know what meal suggestions will taste like. I don’t reject DHs ideas out of hand- he cooks. All your meals sound healthy and he is being controlling.

Completely agree. Why should you pander to this nonsense.

For someone who claims to have no interest in food he certainly has a lot of opinions about it.

I'd put this back on him. Until he can clearly set out what he does want to eat/what he considers a healthy and acceptable meal then you don't want to hear another word about what he doesn't want to eat. If he's not happy with what you've made, cool, that means you've got leftovers and he can sort himself. No comparisons with takeaways/pub meals that would be significantly more expensive and less healthy than the home versions. Leave him his portion of the uncooked ingredients that went into the meal so he can construct his own "acceptable" version.

You need to tackle this now so his ideas don't affect your kids, and so that you afford yourself the same respect with which you're treating him. If you don't demand it, he won't give it. So, time for some rules and some tough love.

Longer term, it feels like he's using food as a proxy for broader dissatisfaction and would probably benefit from some therapy to get to the bottom of it.

But in the meantime, zero tolerance. Stop pandering. If he can't engage positively and constructively on food and meal planning, he doesn't get to engage negatively.

I had this problem for a while. This is how I fixed it:

”This is what I’m cooking tonight. Do you want some or are you sorting yourself out?”

Also works for other areas of your life.

I am not quite sure why being able to visualise a meal on a plate helps ? We keep a list of dinners and just try to do something different to yesterday as it were

He's a competent adult, I would treat him like one. He can take responsibility for himself.

Shortly after DH and I moved in together I had a moment of clarity. I was doing all the planning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning up. He would always say it was up to me what we had, then he complained a few times. When I was constantly trying to guess what he wanted.
Fuck that. I told him he could sort himself out and have never looked back. Its not my job to feed him, or fix him, and its not yours either.

And it is all because they are so desperate to be liked

The more threads I read on here, the more I realise what shit women are willing to put up with. Just stop shopping and cooking for him. Who cares if he just eats pizza?

And if he gets moody related to food, he’s being emotionally abusive. You and the dc should not be walking on eggshells because of his ED/depression/whatever.

He’s not helping himself, and he should be.

This.

He’s not another child; he’s an adult and he’s responsible for his own food intake. even if he can’t imagine what food will look like, there are photos for every recipe.

He’s got you running around after him, dancing to his tune and using up so your energy on him.

I’d stop that right now.

What’s the rest of your relationship like? Do you run around after him generally? does he share 50% of the load?

I’d be putting a stop to this pronto on the basis that I do not want his bonkers and incorrect disordered ideas about food being passed on to the kids.

And yes, he sounds rude and controlling Fuck him and his “moods”

I couldn’t be doing with this crap. He’s acting like a toddler. Does he function in other areas? Does he work?! How does he choose his lunchtime sandwich?

That was painful to read. I'd be tempted to just tell him to fuck off!

When i was a kid my dad suggested to my mum that he didn't need a meat and 2 veg meal every night, he would be happy with beans on toast. After the 5th consecutive day of beans on toast, he changed his mind.
As others have said, it's no big deal to shop and cook separately. OH has been veggie for years, I'm not, so we've always eaten a bit differently to each other. For the last couple of years he's preferred to eat 5 or 6 small meals a day at what, to me, are weird times so we rarely eat together. The sky hasn't fallen in, it's fine.
Opt out of feeding him altogether. If he chooses daily frozen pizza that's on him, he's an adult and is responsible for his own health.

I have aphantasia and it in no way prevents being able to 'visualise' healthy meals - just look in a recipe book/online, they have the pictures for you!. Just because I don't think in pictures, I still know what food looks like and tastes like even if I can't fully see it in my head. I still know what vegetables exist and how to make a bechamel sauce and that I like Chinese and Indian food. My mum has it too and she makes the best cakes.

Neurodiversity also runs through our family and a lot of ND people have aphantasia (or the opposite where they only think in pictures ie Temple Grandin).
Is this more an ASD thing perhaps where he wants to eat healthily but actually just prefers the consistency of beige food and would like to live on pizza?

Whatever the case it is not your job to solve this for him. You are not his therapist and it is not up to you to control his moods. If you're doing the cooking then cook whatever healthy meal you like, if it's not up to his bizarre standards then he can make himself something. This is not your issue to try to solve.

I find it hard to visualise things, it has absolutely no relation to meal planning! You don't need to see a meal in your mind to know what it consists of. If you said to me visualise a roast dinner, I would find it very hard to hold a picture of it in my mind (although I can very much imagine the texture and taste). But that doesn't mean I can't say it contains carrots, gravy, potatoes, meat, stuffing...or that I like it.

Make mince with mash, carrots and cabbage for a week or two every day until he grows up

or say what you plan and if he objects just make 3 portions

short term pain perhaps but either there is something else behind this that he needs to sort out or he’s a spilt brat who hasn’t got over the fact that life often sucks and isn’t perfect every day

it affecting you, it’s affecting the children , if he won’t fix this it’s on him

note I say it’s up to him to come on here as ask where he should go for help.

partly because if he expects you to sort it he won’t change and partly because it’s not your role

He sounds insufferable and I agree with a PP that this is not about food. He wants to pull you down with him. The answer lies solely with you. Only you can stop this abusive behaviour (and it is abusive). You have to be prepared to say no to him and deal with the consequences. If you can’t do that you will still be in the same miserable situation 5 years from now.

People like him only behave like this because someone enables it. He sounds like a manipulative arsehole.

Stop pandering to him. Tell him he either eats what you prepare, or he sorts himself out.

My autistic teenager often wants to eat something very specific but doesn't know herself what that is. I tolerate this from her and do my best to help her work out what she wants to eat on days like this (it's not every day). I'm not sure I could tolerate it from a partner though on an indefinite basis. It sounds like it's starting to effect your mental health and wellbeing. My DH doesn't like everything I cook but he likes not having to cook himself may of the time so he's never critical.

How about getting him a cook book with pictures of the meals ( or he can look on line) where he can find a list of meals he classes as meals. ( I would get him to cook his own meals).