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?

@MrsDrudge

YANBU Let him do the meal planning, shopping, cooking and clearing up for a month and see how he gets on.

Oooh the poor lil mite would be a quivering wreck after an hour - he cant possibly cope with doing a meal - makes you wonder if the poor fully grown adult would just starve to death if the OP wasnt there?!!

Sounds a complete wimp

Oh, FFS! He does not have fucking ARFID or ASD or OCD, he's a rude and ungrateful twat. Bet he wouldn't dream of acting like that at work. OP thinks she's punishing him by continuing to cater for him, a fool's errand.

Oh, FFS! He does not have fucking ARFID or ASD or OCD

He will on Mumsnet, rawalpindi ... it seems to be almost obligatory

How is it having two children, OP?

Seriously though....

I'm normally the first to jump in and see both sides but he is being utterly ridiculous!

He "gets too stressed cooking", lol. Yeah, I bet. Fucking arsehole. How dare he be SO FUCKING RUDE about the food you just made!

@ChilliWillies

Update: he’s been and bought me some flowers (and my little DS bought me a single red rose too), to ‘cheer me up a bit’. I think he thinks that means I’ll be making nice dinners again...... (I won’t). To everyone who said they wouldn’t let their 6 year old get away with those manners - no normally he wouldn’t, but as I let rip at both of them and then stormed out, I think he’s got the idea that it wasn’t a good plan to act like that. I do understand that DH’s behaviour is not good. I don’t mind (much) if I make something completely new and he doesn’t like it, that’s fair enough, but it’s when he says he does like until I cook it again, and then he doesn’t! I think I’m going to hammer the point home with beige meals until he’s bored (won’t be long) and then force him to engage with meal planning. Maybe I’ll make it a family activity on a Thursday night 🤔. DS is getting beige food until he’s seen me having a few of the things he really likes and isn’t getting. 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.

I don't understand - do you cook with your vagina?

Why aren't your DH and DS contributing to meal planing an cooking? Do their penises disable them in some way?

Sound like he has ARFID , my SIL had this

www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/types/arfid

( DH that is ) beige palate seems to be common theme

Firstly, I have experienced all of this. My eldest is now taking after her dad and not liking things. I genuinely don’t think they are making it up though, I’ve seen her on a few occasions over the years turn white and be physically sick. It’s almost like a strange food phobia that he has passed down somehow. My youngest doesn’t have this problem and will eat anything!

We’ve been together a long time and I just accept it, but that’s probably due to personal experience as a child being made to eat food I didint like and called a fussy eater. Dinner time as a kid was a time of overwhelming dread!

I hate food being piled on a plate. If I cant see everything it literally runs the otherwise perfectly yummy meal. Especially roasts I love a roast, but pile it up potatoes under meat under veg and I hate it. Completely ruins the taste. I also cant stand anything soggy next to chips and a few other oddities like beans on meat.

DD doesn't like stuff mixed, well some stuff but not others. I can add peas to a rissotto for example but not broccoli, broccoli goes on the side. She like both broccoli and rissotto but mixed no. She also has form for picking out when I have changed the brand of a specific ingredient.

I can't explain these oddities but for us they both ruin the taste of the food.

So I have some sympathy for you DH. Just cos you dont understand it doesn't mean it isnt real. Doesn't mean its copied behaviour either. DD had no idea that I had oddities over food until she admitted her own, our family always dish our own or I dish at home. Often there's genetics to these things too.

But yes, doesn't mean you should be cooking all the time either.

[quote stevalnamechanger]Sound like he has ARFID , my SIL had this

www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/types/arfid[/quote]
🙄 🙄 🙄 No, sounds like he’s a rude arsehole.

^So I have some sympathy for you DH. Just cos you dont understand it doesn't mean it isnt real. Doesn't mean its copied behaviour either. DD had no idea that I had oddities over food until she admitted her own, our family always dish our own or I dish at home. Often there's genetics to these things too.

But yes, doesn't mean you should be cooking all the time either.^

@Hazelnutlatteplease As a grown up, I imagine OP's husband could say how he feels in a way that isn't quite as rude/nasty as he is doing. And that behaviour /attitude to his wife and her efforts his son is copying.

@ChilliWillies Has he always been this bad, or has it got worse? At least in terms of how he talks to you? It sounds like maybe he thinks he can talk this way because he takes you for granted.

I don’t think you went far enough. I’d let him starve.

I stopped cooking for my DH years ago. Now that DD has an ASD diagnosis and similar food issues, I understand his pickiness a little better, but I still won’t cook for him on a regular basis. It’s just not good for our marriage. Even when I make him things he loves, He can’t hide his reactions to the natural variations that come from cooking real food.

ARFID doesn't explain why he enjoys something one week, then not the next, or why he is so bloody rude about it.

As a grown up, I imagine OP's husband could say how he feels in a way that isn't quite as rude/nasty as he is doing. And that behaviour /attitude to his wife and her efforts his son is copying.

Yes I certainly did learn to put up and shut up. It did not serve me well in life. I enjoy food far more now.

It does sounds like the DH has tried to explain but without an awareness that you can have these oddities. If you dont know that texture and plate arrangements can "change" the taste of food, its natural to assume it's the food itself you dont like. If someone keeps feeding you food you think you hate I can imagine it could be rather confusing and frustrating. Doesn't mean he shouldn't be cooking, even if it does take 3 hours.

And it really isnt necessarily learnt. It wasnt so long ago doctors were telling parents the chances of having two kids with ASD in the family was very low so behaviour of the second child is learnt.

We now know its genetics.

It doesn't at all surprise me that a texture sensitive Dad has a texture sensitive child

And it really isnt necessarily learnt.

@Hazelnutlatteplease How he talks to his mum or about something his mum's made an effort to make, could very much be something the son is copying from his dad, as he's seen him doing it first.

@Snowymcsnowsony

But did you fart??

Classic!

Is your husband a child too? He certainly needs to grow up with an attitude like that. Don't pander to his awful behaviour and stop making him lunch.

You didn't need flowers you needed an apology (PP has already nailed this point).

I wouldn't cook for him again until he has apologised for being rude and ungrateful.

I wouldn't sleep with him again until he has demonstrated that he does respect you, appreciate you and love you.

Please do not use food to punish your child. It's fucked up. You need to be undoing the 'issues with food' that your H has already installed.

I was going to choose YABU for preparing him any food at all.

Cook for yourself and DS, as MsMarch suggests.

Let your 'picky' H prepare food for himself.

You need to tear rashers off him for his lack of basic civility. He has a sense of entitlement big enough for its own zip code.

If you haven't done this already, wait until he can see you doing it, and throw the flowers in the bin. Tell him you've changed your mind about them and you actually hate them.

I am so outraged by your DH's behavior, and what he is teaching DS, that I'm almost incoherent. My sons tried that at one point, however, removing their plates to the fridge, allowing them to go without a meal, and presenting that plate again at the next meal got them over that pretty quickly. And now, as adults, they'll eat pretty much anything at all. LOL, come to think of it, it worked pretty well on DH, as well! I simply told them, "Food is expensive. It takes time and effort to prepare. In this house, we will not waste food." Now, that said, if they had tried something and really did not like it after an honest attempt, I made sure that the food in question was not a frequent part of meals. However, each time it did, I expected an honest attempt. And always got it. Green beans, which they swore they "hated" became favorites. Grew on them, I suppose.

I think the OP has missed a vital point in this discourse.
She's said that her H CAN cook, but takes 3 hours to do so.
What I want to know is, does SHE get landed with having to clear up after he's cooked, or does he do ANY clearing up?

My DH takes turns with cooking, and takes turns with doing the washing up - however, we do not "do each other's washing up" as he will use 3x the equipment that I do, every time. He cooks well and in a timely manner but I'll be fucked if I end up doing 3x the amount of washing up just because he has no idea how to rinse or reuse something.

If the OP's H is similar in how much stuff he uses (as well as the length of time he takes) AND he doesn't clear up, I can see why the OP isn't keen to have him do his own cooking.
Obviously the OP should NOT be clearing up after him either, but that may be a battle too far at this stage, I don't know.

I do agree that OP's plan to mess with DS's food isn't ideal. I think he should be taken out of the battle between OP and her H - he should eat WITH the OP, and eat what she cooks. 6 is too young to understand all this stuff - he's just copying what he sees, so it's about time he copied a better example of how to eat a more expanded diet without whinging. H can eat on his own and beige food, yes.

It's also been said, somewhere, and I don't know if it's still true that it can take 7 tries of something new before it's accepted - so really, OP needs to work on that with her DS, not immediately reduce his meals back to beige. His manners need work too, of course.

@Puzzledandpissedoff

Oh, FFS! He does not have fucking ARFID or ASD or OCD

He will on Mumsnet, rawalpindi ... it seems to be almost obligatory

Indeed. These people who 'can only eat' beige rubbish are never simply picky and childish eaters, they must always have a life limiting condition.

We'd all like to eat exactly what we like with no thought for health or budget, without having to eat boring vegetables and we'd all like it to magically appear in front of us with no thinking or effort.

Hell, I'd like to have gin and crisps for dinner every night, but I don't most of the time because I'm a grown up and I know it's not an actual meal.

@Whitecup4

Firstly, I have experienced all of this. My eldest is now taking after her dad and not liking things. I genuinely don’t think they are making it up though, I’ve seen her on a few occasions over the years turn white and be physically sick. It’s almost like a strange food phobia that he has passed down somehow. My youngest doesn’t have this problem and will eat anything!

We’ve been together a long time and I just accept it, but that’s probably due to personal experience as a child being made to eat food I didint like and called a fussy eater. Dinner time as a kid was a time of overwhelming dread!

I do understand what you are saying, and I would never force a child to eat anything they did not like.

But in our house, the expectation is - have a taste and see (not rigidly enforced, juts encouraged)

and then POLITELY say - I don't like it thank you.

My dh has roundly told off any of my kids for saying - yuck or disgusting, since they were old enough to understand.

No need to force anyone to eat anything (he is a grown man, if he doesn't like it, make a sandwich)
But ansolutely no need for rudeness, nasty comments or this childish behaviour either.