hobbies, husband and horrible halloumi supper

[albertatrilogy]

My retired partner has recently got a new hobby and is constantly finding new classes and events to go to.

The new hobby is one that I feel vaguely responsible for as I had wanted to find something we could do together. However, he has - typically - become hugely enthusiastic. One class with me isn't enough. He's started going to a second class, and going to related events, enrolling for weekend courses etc.

I have just started a new shift pattern at work today, and so we'd fixed that he would cook this evening.. This also the night when we would normally go out a bit after 7 to the class together. However, because I am now working later than usual - and as we're not doing the normal activity at the class, I said to my husband that I didn't feel like going.

He promptly decided that he wanted to try a different class - another teacher - in another part of town tonight. Which meant he would leave at 6.15.

I got home to find him cooking away manically so that we could eat quickly and early so that he could go to his new class.

Unfortunately the food he made was rather horrid. It was a pasta and halloumi dish featuring lots of greasy, bitter bits of onion. He'd also cut the halloumi wafer thin and fried it for some time at a very high heat. The result tasted like a kind of mixture of burnt toast and rubber.

I'm normally very fond of halloumi, but this was quite close to being inedible, and I just felt rather fed up .

Naturally, some Mumnsetters would be delighted if their husbands cooked anything ever. But I am wondering if other might feel this was a less than ideal homecoming after their first day in a new work pattern...?

I think you are Bu. Really petty to be honest!

Really OP? You honestly are definitely not joking?

If the problem is the food get over yourself and order a takeaway.

If it's the classes talk to him about it.

It's not a cooking class then? Perhaps you should suggest one?

I don't understand what the hobbies have to do with the crap halloumi... We all cook a dud every now and again, just wash it down with lots of wine and have done cheese on toast when he's safely out of the house.

This reads a bit like a down market Tim Dowling column.

Surely just knock something up yourself?

Jesus Christ, how petty! You talk about starting a new shift pattern like you've done something absolutely momentous! What would have been more befitting the occasion for you? Lobster?!

If you want to so more hobbies, do more hobbies! Don't resent your husband for getting out and trying new stuff, it makes you sound childish and jealous.

I imagine if everything else was fine, one badly done meal wouldn't matter. Is his enthusiasm for hobbies meaning you feel a bit sidelined and unimportant?

You sound difficult to please.

What a waste of good haloumi. LTB.

This has tickled me. Has to be a joke surely?

Either way, well done on getting through your first day of new shift patterns, OP! 🍾🎉

As a side note, I never understand people being all elusive about 'hobbies' and 'classes' on MN. Tell me what they are, dammit!

Actually, I never understand people having 'hobbies' at all- maybe that's why I am so damn nosy to find out just exactly what hobbies adults do

So what exactly has the poor bloke done wrong, 'cause I can't see anything!

Just because you don't want to go to class tonight doesn't mean he should stay home or no find himself an alternative. Perhaps he originally thought that you may want to go to,seeing as your reasoning was to do with tonights activity being different?

As for the meal, so? It happens to the best of us.

You changed shift pattern. You didn't just start a new job after an awesome promotion and deserve a big treat for an awfully long day..

Silentbob there's just something about the word 'hobby' that just sounds so wrong, isn't there.

'Doing my hobby' has to be one of the most idiotic sounding sentences going

I suspect the OP is resentful because she's still working and her husband has retired.

You sound cheesed off

No but really, he is retired and gallivanting about and you still have to work...you feel resentful and like he cares more about his hobbies than making you a nice dinner. You need to have a think about how you want things to be and avoid this in future, talk to him, be honest, you need a balance between time together and time separately that suits you both and a fair allocation of housework/cooking.

And don't either of you cook that recipe again it sounds disgusting!

Good luck x

Harsh responses here, I think. Obviously it isn't about an inedible meal - we have all either cooked or been served something less than fully appetizing in our lives.

Has he retired recently? It sounds like a lot of adjustments are going on here - his free time, hobbies which we supposed to be a joint endeavour becoming his "thing", changes for you at work. All of this will smart if you are feeling like he is enjoying freedom while you still have your nose to the grindstone. Is that you are feeling left behind, a bit?

As with all change, it takes time to process and needs lots of talking.

But you know that. Doesn't stop you feeling a bit left out and unsupported tonight though.

Thanks to those who have been less harsh.

There really are a lot of problems at work, in relations to cuts, restructuring etc - so things have been stressful, and the changes to my working hours and days are quite major. My line manager has also reacted to the upheavals by suddenly becoming very edgy. At the moment I am having to decide how to respond to an unscheduled appraisal on Saturday - my last day at work, in which some comments that seem to me to have been unfair/unjustifiable were made. (Normally the manager is very fair and well-balanced, and positive. I've been working hard during the recent upheavals so it was puzzling and distressing for there to be such a weird appraisal, and I spent some of yesterday considering what to do about this.)

I also spent Sunday helping my husband with activities relating to the small business he started after he retired - including helping a client with an enquiry that related to his area of expertise not mine, when he suddenly disappeared - so it wasn't really a day off.

It's really about time I looked at alternative possibilities, and I shall be spending the next couple of hours on a job application form.

And an evening when we had originally been either going to go out together or stay in together has become one when he's rushed off to do his own thing.

My husband really does become very fixated on special interests. His brother and sister-in-law who live abroad is making an unanticipated visit and my husband has turned down his brother's invitation for us to join them to dinner on the two nights when they'll be over here - because they clash with activities relating to the new hobby.

I've now made myself some better food - so at least that's out of the way.

It sounds like you have had a tough day and could have used a bit more support when you got home, don't dwell on it just move on and find something else to do together.

Next time it's your turn to cook buy some crispy pancakes
A dish best served for revenge

Frying halloumi with pasta sounds like a student dinner tbh :o

So he's embarked wholeheartedly on a life of leisure, which excludes you. You've lost your evening companion and sense of support. He's wasted some halloumi making a rushed 'eat to live' student dinner. You feel alone at a stressful time.

Yet you're still voluntarily sacrificing your rest day to help out with his hobby business. Stop that.

Get a new hobby that involves having your own social life or sitting in the garden reading a book, with a G+T. Write in your 'hobby' time on the calendar. Do not allow yourself to be moved (headphones could help).

Bon chance. (I'm easily won over by a bit of alliteration).

Sorry OP. You've drip fed updated with information to make you sound more reasonable, but I'm still struggling to see what your DH's done that's so awful.

But I guess that makes me 'harsh.'

I think OP would like to spend some leisure time together, as a couple. Her DH doesn't feel the same need. That's the issue, isn't it?

I think you may have been a bit hangry. I get quite irrational when I am overly hungry

So this is nothing to do with the halloumi? Good, because that would have been pretty unreasonable.
You're upset that you've had a lot of upheaval at work, are stressed and your partner is here there and everywhere doing his hobbies rather than supporting you? If so, that would be a completely different thread.

I would be miffed too. Halloumi and pasta doesn't go together and it was badly cooked and served ridiculously early so he could go out to his class, which he seems to be doing a lot of when you're at home and you want to spend time together.

Can't he find something to do when you're at work so he has free time when you're at home like a cookery class.