...about the ****ing risotto?

[marvik]

At the moment the household consists of 21 year old daughter (temping), self (freelancing from home and elsewhere) plus husband (retired)

Yesterday I was working at home and had planned to make a slightly fiddly risotto and pesto dish in the evening - to be served some salad. I'd got some stock out of the freezer in advance. My husband was around, my daughter had gone to her job, when a text came in asking if I could do a small piece of work elsewhere in the city and if so how quickly could I get there. Though it was badly paid I had reasons for wanting to say yes. So I told my husband I was off, flung crisps and a cereal bar in my bag and said I'd do the risotto the following day.

I got back after a difficult day to find my husband having a meltdown, going on and on about how the recipe book lied etc etc. He'd decided to do the risotto - because 'he knew how to d it' - but it was taking longer than he thought and the rice was 'refusing to cook'. (Suspect he hadn't fried it properly at the appropriate stage and was adding the stock cold.)

He'd thought our daughter was going to help but she wasn't back. Who was going to do the pesto? I said not me, as a) I'd been out at work and b) had advised him not to do the dish but c) suggested one or two things he could do that were quicker and easier than home-made pesto that would mean he could get the meal done.

Eventually my daughter came back and made him some pesto.

I was seriously hungry by the time we sat down to a plate of undercooked starch plus my daughter's pesto. No salad - or other veg. I then had to hurry out to see friends

This morning I said I was annoyed at being asked to help/his inability to cook independently when my daughter and I had been out at work. He'd had plenty of time and I'd made it clear that I'd been happy to cook the more complicated dish when I was around. I felt that he was trying to communicate that he couldn't cope with changes of plan and wanted support at all times.

He said no, no I was quite wrong and all he'd wanted to do was make something 'really special' as a 'treat' for me when I got back - 'because I'd been working'...

I can cope with the odd cooking foul-up, but I just feel so fed up with him today.

I get where you're coming from OP. Why is it that when you do it it's a solo experience, but when he does it's suddenly expected to be a team effort.

Plus I bet there's a chunk of looking forward to the nice risotto you'd planned to cook, and now DP's ruined that.

DP is a fair cook - but when I do dinner for us, I call them to the table when it's done, serve up the food + veg + condiments + table laid - all they have to do is bring a drink. When DP does it, he calls us 10 minutes before it's done, so now I have to keep the kids at the table (or let them go and call them back), and he won't have put out cutlery, or any kind of veg. At least these days he can get it all to the table actually cooked, and roughly at the same times, so you're not sitting there with cold meat waiting for the rice to be cooked.

And don't get me started on the cleanup after.... mind you, that's swings and roundabouts - an old boyfriend believed in 'washing as you go' which meant that if I put a spoon down in the middle of cooking it would suddenly disappear - and woe betides you if you got up to wee mid-dinner, because 50/50 he'd have cleared out your plate before you got back!

I would then feel I was living with an adult..

I think the problem is the opposite. I think you feel as though you’re living with a bumbling old man. While you rush about being active and competent, he fucks up risotto and is slow and makes stupid mistakes.

I’ve seen it play out in age gap relationships that there can come a point when a previously rather admired older male partner suddenly seems to be a silly old man the woman is stuck with.

Have a think about this, OP. Because it’s not great to have a husband you think is irritating and a fool.

OP, I would then feel I was living with an adult.

Adults do not magically acquire the ability to cook, it is a learned skill, which you say you previously had been doing the bulk of.

By saying "just leave that dear, it's too hard for you to do" and riding to the rescue every time he messes up, you are just infantalising him.

Next time you come in and he is flapping, just say you'll keep out of his way until he is finished, and go and watch TV. Allow him to own his failures and he will (probably) figure out how to improve.

Well, that's an interesting one. There's just over 10 years between us in age. In many ways he's in excellent health, though obviously a bit of wear and tear sets in.

It's hard to know whether I see him differently simply because now he's retired rather than working full-time, being the father of three, keeping an eye on his elderly Dad.

In some ways he seems more crotchety and fussy, than he used to be. It may be that he is worrying unduly about an almost certainly minor health-related problems at the moment, and that the worry is making him less good at making decisions and listening to others

I also don't want to be unkind to him simply because he is changing in the ways that are a natural part of the ageing process. So if I think he's screwing up, I want to give him clear manageable solutions.

I am not sure that leaving him is really an answer. Learning to tolerate him more readily by focusing on doing things that I enjoy seems preferable.

@StarryUnicorn no he won’t figure out how to improve. That is actually what the OP is saying. She has long ago stopped coming to his rescue especially since his retirement but he hasn’t improved. That is what she’s angry about and it feels justified to me.

Oh and he's been retired for 5 years. Plenty of time to learn to cook as he's been doing half the meals all that time!

@marvik oh god that must be arduous. Five years of coming home to him screwing dinner up and flapping his arms about in meltdown mode. No wonder you’ve had it. This was the last straw for you. It’s funny how the seemingly pettiest things actually belie huge issues, isn’t it?

I think this can happen to a lot of men on retirement. They are used to being listened to and taking up space. While (mostly) subconsciously assuming that housework, cooking and childcare are easy tasks. It's a horrible surprise to them and their wives that they can't just do them half as well as their wives.

They go from important to incompetent in a second. Which is emotionally difficult. For them and their wives.

I see many women coming into their own when older and men slumping into decrepitude. More equality would be better for men in this case.

Maybe he needs to learn a repertoire of say, five basics (like risotto - which is fiddly, but still a bloody basic.) You will need to laboriously teach him the steps as though you are teaching an eight year old how to play Für bloody Elise on the piano. You know he will tune out after the first bit, but they are some pretty nifty skills to have anyway. He will have to learn how to adapt the rest.

OP, this: So if I think he's screwing up, I want to give him clear manageable solutions.. Is just you parenting him, adult behaviour is him figuring it out himself.

The same as eating the crappy risotto, if you had messed it up you would have slung it in the bin and made something else, so do the same with his shoddy efforts.

You have every right to feel annoyed, but getting dragged into flappy drama just makes you more annoyed, and eating crap food even more annoyed. So don't do things that make you annoyed, otherwise things are unlikely to change.

Well, I didn't have a second helping - and only a small first.

I think you can give a bit of feedback, without going into micro-managing. So if he says 'What can I do?' I go, 'You can do this?' And repeat if necessary. Then go into another room.

I've only skimmed the thread, but can empathise with the OP. It doesn't have to be this way...

My DH retired a year or two ago. We'd had the him working FT, me working PT and doing most of the cooking deal before that. Last Xmas he asked for the Jamie Oliver '5 ingredients' book, from which he picked some dishes which he could confidently shop for and cook. He then started adapting, adding more veg etc.

Maybe your DD (not you!) could get this or something similar for your DH?

He just sounds like a bit of a shit cook. Plenty of people are. But if he's been doing half of the meals then I presume he can do some things ok. Being bad at cooking isn't a character flaw.

Sorry you are being horrible to your dh, who could see how busy you were and tried to help by cooking for you, ok he didn’t get it right but instead of being such a bitch about not helping him you could have been nice and done so, or supervised him and had some time together in the kitchen.

Sound some time teaching him what to do and he may just make all the meals for you as he is retired

No, the weird thing is that he's actually a reasonable cook some of the time. We have lots of books and even when he was doing full-time work he'd always cook something at the weekend.

I think it's partly that when he's worried/preoccupied something goes wrong and he cooks without paying attention and that's when things burn or go raw. It's like someone who is an erratic driver - fine one day, but if they get anxious much more accident prone.

The other thing I'm thinking is that a lot of these disasters/incidents of not happening occur when I'm busy or absent or suddenly get called away on something.

(The last time I went away to visit a friend for the weekend he made a great point of ringing up to say he'd cut himself with a knife while separating frozen fish fillets and had driven himself to A and E. He just thought that I 'ought' to know this...)

When I'm working for home his cookery is usually fine.

So I'll say something like. 'I've got to go to X city. I won't be back till 10pm and will grab a snack somewhere. I won't need anything to eat.'

or 'I might nip home between meetings around lunchtime. But I'll have had a sandwich. I just want a bit of peace and quiet on my own - rather than having to be polite to people'

And find that he's opted to cook me an elaborate lunch or dinner and is waiting for me to return and this is 'to be nice' and 'caring'.

So that's probably why I'm pissed off because I said, 'I'll do the risotto tomorrow' - because I'm looking forward to doing that dish which is one of my favourites. So he purposely opts to cook it 'for me.'

He's also endlessly disorganised about what I'm doing when - though I put it all in the diary and tell him. So will sometimes do things like arrange to use the car we share on a day I need it. At which point I've caught myself thinking is going out and working worth it...

I'm honestly not sure how aware he is of these slightly sabotaging actions.

He had a complicated childhood which involved being sent a very long way from home at a very early age, and I sometimes feel that he tries to keep me to close. He's not conventionally jealous or possessive. But there are way in which - since he retired - that I find him stifling.

a lot of these disasters/incidents of not happening occur when I'm busy or absent or suddenly get called away on something.
(The last time I went away to visit a friend for the weekend he made a great point of ringing up to say he'd cut himself with a knife while separating frozen fish fillets and had driven himself to A and E. He just thought that I 'ought' to know this...)
When I'm working for home his cookery is usually fine.

I think he's doing it deliberately to 'punish' you for something, or at least to make a point. I think you need a good talk.

I get the feeling the OP's DH won't be offering to cook any time again soon.

darlingnikita might be right, but marvik, reading your posts, I wonder if he's actually not quite well? Sorry to raise a grim possibility, but now you explain how he is, it sounds like a possible slight worry. I've seen a couple of family members with Parkinson's (including early-onset) and early-onset dementia, and while it's very unlikely he has these and I don't want to worry you, they did slightly spring to mind. Do you think he is worrying/overreacting because he feels something isn't right?

I think he's worrying about potential prostate cancer at the moment. He's got a urinary problem which is very unlikely to be this. (Reduced/slower flow.)

He's one of these very bright people who also while concentrating on one thing - the wrong thing - will make a complete balls up of other stuff.

Also he doesn't 'offer' to cook. We share the cooking. It's a joint responsibility.

Sorry you are being horrible to your dh, who could see how busy you were and tried to help by cooking for you, ok he didn’t get it right but instead of being such a bitch about not helping him you could have been nice and done so, or supervised him and had some time together in the kitchen.

She's working and he's a grown man. 'Supervising' my DH is not how an adult relationship works. And he didn't cook for her, he's cooking because he lives there, and eats there too!

Risotto

marvik

I think you really need to have a good think about your relationship and what you want. You sound really unhappy and like you don’t even like him anymore. You don’t have to stay together if you’re not happy.

Yes, it would be hard to get a divorce, but it’ll be bloody hard being unhappy for the rest of your life too.

He would probably be very upset, but if you’re just tolerating him for the next 30 years he’s not going to be happy either.

You’re allowed to be happy 🌷

So how old is he, OP!? If he's been retired for 5 years, he could be around 70 ish?

Oh no my dp does this the "helping with out actually being helpful"
Drives me mad. If he doesn't no what he's doing he should leave it.
Otherwise it's not helping just creating more work.