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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to have finally snapped?

595 replies

ChilliWillies · 11/02/2021 13:35

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?

OP posts:
QueenPaw · 11/02/2021 19:13

I cook every single meal for myself living alone and frankly if someone made me beans on toast I would be over the bloody moon let alone a nice meal
It's fine to express a preference such as having the stew on the side or beans in a bowl but otherwise you eat it and say thanks for cooking

Blacksheepcat · 11/02/2021 19:14

Keep on making your lovely food, dish some out for yourself and leave the rest in the pan. If he wants it, he can help himself or he can make himself something. Freeze whatever’s left for you to have another day.
He sounds sooooo ungrateful and he should not be showing this behaviour to your son.

Beforethetakingoftoastandtea · 11/02/2021 19:16

Absolutely unbelievable you still think it is your job to do all the cooking

harknesswitch · 11/02/2021 19:21

Well done for changing your attitude towards making them food. I hope it works. Tbh I'd be telling my dh I'm not good king for 3 nights a week and it's his responsibility to do it. If it takes him 3 hours then he has to make sure he starts cooking at 3pm.

buckeejit · 11/02/2021 19:23

Yabu to get the beige stuff for dh. He is big enough to fend for himself

I think your dh needs to sort himself out. I absolutely wouldn't have him & his ungrateful shitty attitude at the table influencing Ds so tell him to have his dinner that he makes himself elsewhere & ensure ds doesn't see what he's doing.

Summersun2020 · 11/02/2021 19:26

Wouldn’t cook him so much as a piece of toast from now on.
Also wouldn’t tolerate such bad behaviour and manners from my child-he’d have been read the riot act if he behaved like that at my table!

katy1213 · 11/02/2021 19:26

Good for you - but tomorrow let him make his own ham sandwich. Then sit down and enjoy your lovely dinner in peace - and let him faff over his for as long as it takes. He can do his own washing up while he's at it!

MojoJojo71 · 11/02/2021 19:26

Each time I’ll be explaining that if I cook him nice food, I expect him to sit nicely, try it properly, and if he really doesn’t like it, stay at the table and he can have bread and butter instead. And if he starts saying yuk again, he’ll go back to beige food and no spaghetti Bolognese or his other favourites.

You should be saying this to your DH not DS!

Five67Eight · 11/02/2021 19:31

@LannieDuck

So.... you still haven't said why your DH can't be left to make his own lunches?
Yes she has - from the OP:

he can cook, but gets ridiculously stressed by it and also takes 3 hours to make anything.

Come on, the poor darling can’t possibly have to do it himself - even if he’s rude as fuck, it’s still absolutely the OP’s job to shop and prepare his food.

Honestly - there aren’t enough 🙄 in the world.

Five67Eight · 11/02/2021 19:32

@harknesswitch

Well done for changing your attitude towards making them food. I hope it works. Tbh I'd be telling my dh I'm not good king for 3 nights a week and it's his responsibility to do it. If it takes him 3 hours then he has to make sure he starts cooking at 3pm.
How has she changed her attitude?

She’s still completely pandering to the two of them.

billy1966 · 11/02/2021 19:41

He gets ridiculously stressed out but thinks it's ok to be rude to you who can do it.

I find it so strange on MN how some women accept such rudeness from their partners.

Your son is being taught that it is ok to be very rude to women.

You clearly have accepted awful behaviour for a long time.

Having finally snapped I would take this time to run a cold eye over how you are treated generally by your rude husband and take the opportunity to recalibrate your relationship and the status quo.

The disrespect your husband has for you is a very poor environment for your son to grow up.

Your son needs to see you as an example of a woman with self respect who won't accept such rudeness.

Flowers
Morgoth · 11/02/2021 19:42

What’s he like when you go out to restaurants or functions or to a friends house for dinner and they serve him food? Does he kick up a fuss then too?

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 11/02/2021 19:44

@ChilliWillies - I hope you have read your dh the Riot Act about how his attitude is rubbing off on your ds, and how it is his job as a parent to control his behaviour and words so as to encourage your ds to have a good relationship with food.

FortunesFave · 11/02/2021 19:45

I am not a fussy eater but hate the idea of lamb stew over baked potato! Blegh.

WildfirePonie · 11/02/2021 19:47

I wouldn't even bother making two sets of lunch/dinner. You make one meal - take it or leave it. Bloody ridiculous.

00100001 · 11/02/2021 19:56

@FortunesFave

I am not a fussy eater but hate the idea of lamb stew over baked potato! Blegh.
Yes but would you turn around to the person who cooked it and go " that's disgusting"?
steppemum · 11/02/2021 19:57

Simply stop.
Stop cooking for him at all. Don't discuss it, apart from one sentence - you ar e too hard to cook for, and too ungrateful.

Leave him to go to the chip shop, cook his own nuggets - whatever.

Continue to cook for ds, but have strict rules - never allowed to say Yuck! or its disgusting or anything like that. He is allowed to say. I don't like it thank you, and then he is allowed bread and butter. Don't stress the food side of things, stress the manners around how you politely decline.

After a month at least, sit down with dh and make him an offer.
Under these circumstances you will cook.
Give him rules.
eg, no words like disgusting. No comment on how to cook anything he isn;t prepared to cook himself, no negative commentas AT ALL.
Set an example to ds by politely trying everythign and giving it a god and making nice comments.

Stop making him lunch forever (one cooked main meal only per day)

he cooks and cleans up once a week every week, no matter how stressed, because he needs to understand that food doesn't just appear, it IS stressful cooking every day.

00100001 · 11/02/2021 19:57

There's fussy eating.

And then there's plain rudeness

Her DH is being fucking rude.

Fembot123 · 11/02/2021 19:59

Ohhhh hell no! YANBU and he is a dick.

ChestnutStuffing · 11/02/2021 20:01

I am really easygoing compared to a lot of MN wives, but this would make me livid. Not just the fussiness - it seems to me he has some kind of weird food issues that he needs to work out - but the rudeness. Like - you don't say rude things about something a person has cooked for you. You just don't.

ScrapThatThen · 11/02/2021 20:04

You are my hero OP. I am sympathetic to his selective eating (because I know that it's like asking me to eat mud the disgust response can be so strong) but he was so rude, and he is not engaging with planning or cooking. Keep on cooking yourself lovely food.

Oblomov21 · 11/02/2021 20:05

I bet this isn't the only issue with your Dh. Is he detached? Depressed? Nasty in other ways?

GabsAlot · 11/02/2021 20:05

thats a bit pa isnt it

here some flowers because youre upset-er no if because youre a dick

i dont understand why youre still cooking for him at all tell him to do his own dinners from now on

not your ds of course

Oblomov21 · 11/02/2021 20:07

Have you sat down and talked to him?

If you told him everything that was on this thread, what would he say?

BettyBooth · 11/02/2021 20:09

I don't understand why anyone asks what the family wants for dinner. I've always just served it up.
What's with acting like staff at meal times?

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