AIBU to have finally snapped?

[ChilliWillies]

Strap yourself in, this will be long. I’ve also name changed as what I’ll write is so identifying if you know me.
DH is a fussy eater. He claims he isn’t and that I’m the ‘weird’ one as I eat almost anything. DS6 is also going through a phase of saying he ‘hates’ the food I’ve made. For the record, I’m a good cook and am often complimented on my food.
I have managed to expand DH’s very limited palate over a lot of years so we can have less boring food, but any new recipe is met with suspicion. I can almost accept this, but what is CANNOT handle is that he changes his fucking mind! Something I made last week that he really enjoyed, this week ‘tastes awful’. I never know if he will like something that week or not. He also has form for getting annoyed about how food is served - I served curry and rice in big pasta bowls once and he made a big performance of tipping it all out onto a plate before he would eat it. I am the only cook - he can cook, but gets ridiculously stressed by it and also takes 3 hours to make anything.
Last night, I put dinner on the table, DS said ‘yuck, I hate this’ (he doesn’t, he loved it last week, getting this behaviour from his dad 😡) and left the table. DH poked at it dubiously, tried a bit and said ‘this is really bad’. It was some Sicilian Lamb Stew, leftover from the week before, that I’d frozen and then defrosted yesterday, served over a jacket potato. I explained he had liked it last time, and he said ‘what, with a jacket potato?’ I explained last time I’d served it with mashed potato and he literally said ‘oh that will be it then, you shouldn’t serve it with a jacket potato’!!!! 😡🙄. As if that would change the taste of the stew completely.
So, I actually lost it, stormed out, went to the shop and bought crappy white sliced bread, (he will moan if I buy unsliced bread, or anything with healthy seeds and grains in it) cheap ham, burgers, chicken nuggets and chips. When I got hone, I told him that’s what they were getting from now on, I give up.
He clearly didn’t believe me, because when I made lunch just now I made them plain ham sandwiches and made myself a new chicken story fry with peanut noodles recipe I’d been wanting to try. He’s got the right hump and is now not speaking to me.
So, we’ll done for getting this far. AIBU for subjecting to them to ham sandwiches and beige food for at least two weeks until they realise how good they had it?

I'm sorry OP but you sound like such a mug!

Stop letting him walk all over you! He's brought you some flowers so now you're going to make his favourite meals again?! He obviously likes beige food and you're completely giving in. Have some self-worth OP as your son is witnessing all of this!!

I did this, I got so incensed with four children and their different food complaints that I went to Iceland, bought as much beige food as I could and served it every night for an entire month.
I'm a good cook, I enjoy cooking and make an effort to provide a variety of meals. But God, the moaning! They were fed up with freezer food after day 4 but I stuck to it for the whole month. It really showed them I had my limits and they've all been much better since.

@MadameButterface

DS is getting beige food until he’s seen me having a few of the things he really likes and isn’t getting.

I really think that in making food into a punishment for your ds, you will do more harm than good in the long term. you made your point when you got cross, which is fair enough, but I think serving up punishment meals and deliberately eating something nice yourself in front of him is asking for trouble down the line. the problem is your dh, not your ds, he was only doing what little kids do, which is to copy the behaviour he sees from adults.

I agree with this completely. Your ds is 6. Food should not be a punishment or an emotional battle. Make a normal dinner for him, tell him your expectations about manners, enforce them and continue.

Your dh is already reared (badly imo) so not your circus. Easiest thing to do is to say to him that clearly food cooked by you is a trigger for him so there are plenty of frozen things he can stick in the oven if he doesn't feel like cooking himself.

By the way, the flowers weren't an apology since they weren't accompanied by one.

Just serve him up. He says, 'Yuk' he is dismissed from the table, up to his room and he can have bread and butter for supper if he apologises.

I agree. He sees his dad being bad mannered and rude so he thinks it's okay. He needs to get the message short and sharp, it's not okay.

As for the adult, I would leave him to sort out his own food.

oh that will be it then, you shouldn’t serve it with a jacket potato’!!!!

Where does he think he is, Downton Abbey with the maid serving up his meals!

Op

This is who it’s going to go.

He won’t change and will continue to be rude and picky. Over the years it will grind you down and by time retired (if still together, probably will be) you will despise every inch of him.

Your son will grow up having seen this rudeness and thinks it’s ok. And repeat the above with his partner.

This attitude is one of the reasons my husband is now an ex. Entitled twats

You are too nice OP! Just think what your son is learning about food, and for that matter how to treat female partners in all of this!

I think that once lockdown is over you should start taking your son out for an exciting lunch every Saturday, to a range of different restaurants and market stalls from all over the world, as a weekly treat for Mum and son. Have him learn to love different foods and love the experience of trying things. The husband stays at home and eats his ham sandwich (made by himself).

Please listen to the many posters who have suggested your plan with your son isn’t great and is a bit vindictive considering he’s just a young child copying his dad’s behaviour.

You made your point to your son last night. Fine if he’s a teenager to drag it out a bit but he’s very young and doesn’t know better.

Also I still think you’re being a doormat by continuing to make your husband’s meals. Beige food is still food and still more effort than he’s making.

YABU on the grounds you made OH lunch still. Make him cook his own food and you enjoy your new recipes you can try out 😀

I could not live with this.

Still cooking for the rude twat. Still planning, still shopping.

Seriously, fucking doormat.

At 6 years old, DS needs to learn that if he doesn't eat what's put in front of him, he's going to get really hungry waiting for the next meal time

Seems your DH needs to learn this too.

Totally OK (for both children and adults) to have a handful of food items they can't eat (mushrooms, celery, cabbage or whatever)
Totally unacceptable to not try new things.

Oh and beige meal plan won't work with a 6 year old - he'll just be thrilled to only eat bread and chicken nuggets forever and then he'll get scurvy.

YANBU. He can cook for himself. But have a word with DS. Say he can eat what DH makes or what you make but he is old enough to know that it's more fun, more interesting and more grown up to try new foods and not make a fuss.
Then never mention it again. Don't allow food to become a power struggle in front of DS. (DS2 has Aspergers and was horrifically fussy for years - eating only about 5 foods. I learned the hard way that the best approach is to say OK, fine, to keep offering interesting food but not react at all if he lives on spaghetti hoops. Which he did for a decade. But now, having had good food presented to him 1000s of times, he has eventually tried it and has as varied a palate as most adults.

I am angry on your behalf as your DH is teaching your son to be rude! You sound like you put in so much effort into making nice food. It must be very hard.

Why can't your dh cook, sounds like the 1950s

Do they have any other signs of Asperger's/Autism/sensory issues?

I feel like the punishment to the ds is overly harsh and is a transference of op's desire to take a harder line with her rude grown ass adult of a dh. be angry and firm, but be angry and firm with the right person, and never mix negative emotions with food when raising dc because this is setting them up to see food as a battleground (within themselves, and with any future dc) for the rest of their lives. let dh get on with fending for himself and eating by himself and keep his weird food issues as far away from ds as possible.

One strategy I used with my DC, when they were being beige about food choices (interestingly mainly because of friends not eating certain foods), was to prepare things they liked but also make either an interesting side - or main course - but for just me. When they expressed interest I would just use a bit of reverse psychology - "well you can try a tiny bit, but you won't like it, the taste is too grown up, and its one of my favourites so I am not going to let you waste it". Inevitably they would say "no, I like it, I like it" and I'd "grudgingly" give them a bit more.

But I didn't have to cope with a dh being an arse about food in that way! He was arse in so many other ways though,.....

I’m the world’s fussiest eater. I still think yanbu. I do basically all the cooking (which frequently involves alternatives for me), but if dh is cooking I eat whatever he serves and say thank you, or sort myself out.

He is being a dick.

Adding my voice to the crowd - OP, making crap beige food for DH is clearly what he wants you to do. You're giving yourself twice the work, and he is learning that he gets to treat you like shit and you won't do anything.

My goodness you've the patience of a saint! MIL has spent 60 years pandering to FIL, who is otherwise lovely but will only eat beige food. No spices, sauces, any kind of flavour. I don't know how she does it he takes the joy out of every meal.

I'd tell your DH that if he continues to criticise rather than politely decline to eat something you'll stop cooking for him and just cook for you and the kids as you've had enough of being disrespected. And then follow through with it.

That's what I did with DP when he started complaining about how I did all the laundry but didn't then put his clothes away like his colleagues' wives did and his colleagues all thought I was mean! Fuck that, he didn't get so much as a sock washed for six months and has never complained again.

I think my dp would have ended up with a plate of food over his head years ago with that behaviour!
I think your DH needs to start doing the cooking to make him appreciate that it can be hard work to plan and cook meals every night.

Good for you op!! He sounds like a spoilt brat. Stick to your guns l.