To rant about DH re dinner responsibilities?

[Clarabell33]

I should mention that I have had a shocker of a day and am in a foul mood so quite possible IABU but I need to vent a bit. Please bear with me.

Most nights, including weekends, I get dinner for DH and I (no kids). I used to cook a lot, especially when I was single, but now I cook 'properly' once a week or less as I'm usually the last home (by quite some time), tired and DH is 'starving' so it's often just whatever I can throw together quickly. He has never had dinner ready (I have, if I'm the first one home) and never offered to make it. If I ever say anything about his turn to cook, he says takeaway. He has never cooked since we moved, which was over 18 months ago. Usually I don't bother and just make our dinner and he eats whatever appears in front of him, but today I am just really fucking pissed off at the 'so you've had a shit day, that sucks... what's for dinner?' attitude. I do all the food shopping (it's a calamity if I so much as ask him to pick up milk - and no, he wouldn't do it without being asked as the level of milk is not on his radar unless he wants tea/cereal and there isn't enough) so he claims he doesn't know what we have in (although I have stopped padlocking the kitchen so he can get in there to find out if he wants) and it's definitely not that he can't cook - he would be the first to tell you how much better a cook he is than I am, although I do think it's slightly unfair to judge me when half the time it's cheese on toast or equivalent just because it's quick and he wants fed now.

Anyway, today I said I didn't know, what is for dinner, and he mumbled something about a takeaway. This has worked in the past but today I nodded and retreated upstairs so as not to scream at him. He came up a little while later to ask what I want to do for dinner as he's hungry. I said I didn't know, but that I am hungry too. He hovered a bit and suggested takeaway again - fine. Which one? Anything is fine by me (yes, I am aware that I was being arsey). He then said he'd have a look in the freezer - and without even leaving the room, announced that he supposed he could make pie (obviously has acquired a psychic connection to the contents of the freezer) but it would take ages from frozen (again with the psychic powers) and he's hungry now. I agreed.

He's now stomped off downstairs and I've heard the front door go once or twice - perhaps he's hiding food in the garage, or foraging in the garden. Or possibly he's managed to locate and unwrap the pie, and locate the oven, hack the controls and make heat happen although not sure why he'd need to go outside for that. It obviously is too much to ask for one night off from being mum even after a seriously shit day (which he knew about earlier as I'd texted him). So AIBU to be this pissed off? AIBU to think this expectation that I am solely responsible for all food-related areas isn't normal, especially as we don't even have kids yet, both have fulltime jobs, and are pretty equal as adults? WIBU to say something now, or should I wait til I'm in a less shit mood (not that that will make any difference to how he reacts)? AIBU to be this arsey about it or should I just stop moaning and mum up and make his sodding dinner?

Whew. Thank you for reading. Ready to be told to stop being such a shite wife and cook his dinner now.

should it really come to this? A white board with a rota? THese are presumably two people who love each other and thet can't vome to an agreement about preparing food.
So what? "Should it really come to this"...? Let's not be over-dramatic. People in relationships disagree, especially when they have different temperaments or expectations. People in healthy relationships find strategies for coping with their differences.
It's a pretty snotty attitude that says there is something wrong with that...

Funky- should it really come to this? A white board with a rota? THese are presumably two people who love each other and thet can't vome to an agreement about food

Well, usually having the list up makes the lazy one realise that actually, there are about a gazillion things that the other partner does...it's a means to an end really.

I menu plan and write out shopping lists, these days my OH does the shopping, first one back always starts dinner and we both do cleaning when it is needed. But I haven't started a thread whingeing about him, the OP has. Shopping without lists is great fun, until you actually want to behave like a grown up.

I have this vision of using being pregnant (and later having kids) as the catalyst for serious, long-term change

Yeah, that always happens.

In the movies

Tomorrow I am teaching DS how to cook. I was going to anyway, but this just reinforces it.

Yes, definitely don't have kids until this has been sorted and is ancient history.

My suggestion: you cook one week, he cooks the next. That way, he shops for his week, you shop for yours. He checks milk and bread for his week; you check for yours.

And maybe on your non-cooking weeks, you each take care of the cleaning.

Trouble with all this, is if you have to monitor it and nag him, you've achieved next to nothing. You have to switch off totally on your off-weeks - and not offer to pop to the shops when he inevitably runs out of milk.

And he has to take responsibility and stop acting like a teenager.

Sorry, finding it hard to get past the contention that housework such as mowing the lawn and fixing the car is more valuable as you don't want to do it! By that argument cooking is the most valuable chore to him as he really doesn't want to do it.

He is being an entitled twat. This will only get worse unless you take action. You both work full time, you both need to decide about household duties and what is/is not an acceptable standard. It sounds trite to say it but those who are equal partners in the home have a better sex life. It is about respect and valuing what you do. Stop picking up after him. stop filling in the gaps. That way resentment and eventually divorce lies. If he is reasonable in other ways and as hard as it is (I say this as a person who reverts to sarcasm as a default position) present it in a non emotional factual way. Turn the argument around to him. explain clearly how his behaviour makes you feel. If he truly loves you he will assess his behaviour and do something about it. If he doesn't he doesn't want you, he wants some sort of mute superwoman who believes the 1950's housewife crap!

I think I have this vision of using being pregnant (and later having kids) as the catalyst for serious, long-term change.

Nothing seems to take life back to the 50s faster than pregnancy and kids, I'm glad you've realised you need to sort this before considering children.

Pay it forward fellow Mums. I have FORCED DS to sit through all Masterchefs (well, not the UK one, because that's sh*te) but Australia and Canada and New Zealand and even Junior Masterchef Australia (highly recommended) and he's done a cooking course and I'm making him do a meal a week while he's home from Uni. And he's got his own recipe books.

Some of this is filtering down. Some. He seems to mostly specialise in Vietnamese Summer Rolls, of all things. Which I have to buy the ridiculously expensive ingredients for. But the intention is there. He has been known to utter surprising things when I'm dragging him round the shops like 'fresh sardines are very cheap, aren't they, given they taste nice.'

He still hasn't grasped the concept of the dishwasher quite yet. But I am DETERMINED that the poor girl who marries him is going to get at least one tea a week, even if it's an omelette or spag bol. And he will be able to navigate a supermarket and understand that in order to have clean plates you need to, er, clean them.

We've got to ensure the next generation are halfway decent. This should all have got better years ago. But, given it hasn't, let's do what we can.

I pointed out to DMIL the other day about 'your son' leaving a trail of spoons and Diet Coke cans in various stages of being drunk round the house, and she replied 'you make me laugh, saying 'your son' like that.' I remained silent. She then continued 'I suppose it IS my fault, isn't it. I let his Dad get away with it.'

Quite. This has to be the last generation that is shacked up with men who never learnt how to pull their own weight, and have to receive the discipline and talking to from their partners that they should have got from their parents.

There are obviously many exceptions to this, before you jump in!

As far as me saying takeaways is okay, I just meant if you could afford it, and it depends in where you live as I know people (my aunt and uncle, who lived in NYC when they were childless) who ate out every meal, basically. But you could get any kind of food there, obviously! It's not like it would be in my teeny town, where it would mean McDs or Subway :)

Stinking I'm with you wholeheartedly! I told DS that he can make simple meals now as he is seven.

I can't believe that in July 2014 women still put up with this nonsense.

YANBU. If this was me, being the immature person that I am, I would probably bugger off and get myself a takeaway and eat it in the car, or go to a supermarket and get myself something to eat and eat it somewhere other than home and let him sort himself out.

Then I would act all miffed for a bit, and then have a proper, adult discussion about the fact that as equal adults, equally busy it is BOTH of our responsibilities to feed ourselves and seeing as it makes no sense to do it separately, we should share the task, taking turns making the most sense. Pick your nights and stick to them as it doesn't sound as if the arrangment you have now where It's decided on the night, is working!

I have just mentioned this post to my DP and he stated "It is a woman's prerogative to prepare my meal for me in the evening". It is coming up to our 10 year anniversary on Thursday. AIBU in wanting to throttle him right now?

I feel compelled to point out that it's not exclusively or necessarily a gender issue. My BIL could have written this same post about my sister. Whereas while my DH and I have very different expectations about cleanliness and completely different organisational skill sets and interests (I plan, he doesn't) - he is no Neanderthal - he's not even a Don Draper.

Good couples are not always good roommates; sometimes its that simple.

animal, was he serious? Is he throttled?

That is annoying.

My DP has zero interest in cooking, so if I don't want to cook we generally get take away or eat out. Sometimes he would make stir fry or pasta and sauce, something easy like that.

But then DP is also pretty 'on it' for picking up basic food items that we always use without my input. And he doesn't expect me to make dinner, more of a bonus of I do kind of thing. He doesn't do the big tesco monthly shop because he wouldn't know we had run out of but he does nearly all the top up shops off his own bat.

Not sure how you can improve the situation really? Maybe by making him responsible for good 3 nights a week or sow thing?

stinking I agree. My kids have been able to cook a family meal from the age of 12 and now in their teens can cook just about anything. And they enjoy it. But this has come from a lifetime education from both me and OH. Not just about baking cakes- about frying off spices, learning about the importance of sauteing onions, how to make a roux, how to joint and skin a chicken, proper knife use etc.

whois- how can you put up with that? I apprectiate your OH is helpful in other ways, but I assume he has an "interest" in eating?

Can you imagine if a mother said she had "no interest in cooking" and was only relying on take aways to feed her children?

She wouldn't get much sympathy here would she? I think if you have children you have a responsibility to cook for them- whether you have an "interest" or not.

Regardless of gender- a diet of only takeaways would be very unhealthy.

Glad you got fed in the end.

You need a long serious conversation about this and it absolutely must not be when you're 'hangry' (great word!). Can you prearrange it - say we need to talk about the cooking arrangements, we will do so after dinner tonight (and just do something like cheese on toast so you have plenty of time to talk after)

whois- how can you put up with that? I apprectiate your OH is helpful in other ways, but I assume he has an "interest" in eating?

Not really actually, which I find quite strange. One giant batch of pasta and a veg and bean sauce would be cooked and the eaten every evening for the next four nights if he had his way! He likes the food I make, but would be just as happy with something more boring and quicker.

Plus if we eat together, he tries to get home early for 9 to 9.30 (own business) and no way am I waiting any longer than that to eat - so either I cook, we eat separately both, or we eat out. Live in Central london and lots of tastey cheap places to grab some dinner within 5 mins walk of the flat.

When I say I generally do all the cooking... That's probably only 2 or 3 nights. Last week I ate out with friends twice, at work once, with my family once, with his family once and I cooked twice. One of which was was stir fry straight out of the packet.

This week I cooked on Monday, cooked yesterday for a friend but DP didn't make it home until gone midnight so wasn't involved. I'm out today, tomorrow I'll need to stay late at work and on Friday I have dinner plans. I'll probably make something at the weekend.

These are quite typical weeks.

I think I have this vision of using being pregnant (and later having kids) as the catalyst for serious, long-term change

Yeah that won't happen, don't be naive. There have been several threads recently by people in that exact position, nothing has changed.

Only you'll be looking after a baby and still doing all the cooking.

"This has to be the last generation that is shacked up with men who never learnt how to pull their own weight,"

My in his 80s dad always pulled his own weight!

He was one of 7 kids & had to pitch in even though his mum didn't work.

My mum didn't go out to work when we were young, but dad still didn't sit on his arse when he got home.

OP is your partner by any chance an only child/son?

My husband is an only & was totally waited on by his mum!

I don't see it as generational, more circumstantial.

whois- do you have children?

combust22 plus I actually like cooking - at the moment it's no chore, there is no pressure. Cook if I want to, don't if I don't. Cost isn't a huge issue at the moment.

Probably very different once children are on the scene.

Xpost!

No, no children!