AIBU: the half-cup of tea brigade

[Shedbuilder]

My late MIL used to turn every offer of a cup of tea or a biscuit or sandwich into a major performance. Just half a cup/ half a biscuit / a quarter of a sandwich not a drop or crumb more because 'I can't manage any more than half a cup yada yada yada...' Everyone knew she had a small appetite so we automatically gave her tiny portions — but if you were foolish enough to ask her if she'd like something to eat or drink you'd get the full performance. And once you delivered the tea/ biscuit/ sandwich there'd be a cheery telling-off. 'Oooh, this is far too much. Call this half a cup? I could drown in this sea of tea...' So no matter what you did with the intention of being kind and supportive, you were always in the wrong.

It irritated everyone, even though her family all loved her to bits. This evening I offered my DP some leftover apple crumble and got the full MIL treatment. 'Just a tiny bit: think half of what you'd have and then halve that. And don't go drowning it in custard, I know what you're like with custard...' So I served a teaspoonful of apple crumble in an eggcup with a tiny blob of custard and as I set it down in front of DP I said jokingly 'You're turning into your mother!' Cue a huge row about me insulting the sacred memory of MIL and doors slamming.

What's the half-cup-of-tea things really about? I have no problem at all with someone saying they're not very hungry, they'll just have a mouthful of whatever. Or a small cup of tea. But there's a point at which it slips into controlling behaviour. Or AIBU?

PS Perhaps I should add that my DP isn't on a diet or anything.

YABU to not appreciate that older people often have incontinence issues & constantly worry about wetting themselves.

My MinL was like this. I did think it was something to do with rationing as my grandmother could be like this and she had a hard war. With my MinL it was something else. We ended up being very controlled by her when we organised family meals out as she would not go anywhere with big portions. Or anything other than bland, bland, bland. Meat and two veg were her favourites and she would criticise anyone with a meal with any spice, garlic or onions in. We could reassure her that she could just have a starter but no, the whole event would end up being all about her and her anxiety.

I got wise to her in later years as I watched her sulk at family parties when she was not the centre of attention. She was immensely hard work but feeding her was easy. A piece of plain chicken and some over cooked veg and she was happy. I held her hand as she died as her flesh and blood were family were too scared her I had the measure of a scared and anxious woman. Don't underestimate the effect that your partner's mother will have had on her and the complex emotions that may be surfacing now she is dead. Maybe a large glass of wine to balance out the egg cup tonight. I did laugh out loud though and would always serve MinL on smaller plates so that she felt like she had had a proper dinner. I wish I'd done the eggcup!

@FizzyTango

I always ask for a half cup because I have a stupidly small bladder. I didn’t realise this was irritating 😁😁. Maybe I’ll just say yes next time and leave the tea I can’t drink!

Trouble is I then forget and of course down the whole drink before I head off to the tube etc. Best to just have a small drink from the start in the Morning pre commute (or last thing at night too!)

@greenleader

A syndrome that has been around for a long time, I'm always reminded of C.S. Lewis's description of a mother in The Screwtape Letters when I come across people like this:

"She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile ‘Oh please, please ... all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast’. You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance. In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, ‘Oh, that's far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it’. If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.”

Truth in that. I could never ever imagine my MIL pushing away her plate and saying “oh goodness, no!” if it was too little, or too hot or too cold or too spicy or not spicy enough or whatever. She would not dream of doing that. She would eat it without a word even if it was undercooked and cold probably. But if it’s too much, then horrified rejection of said plate and asking a new one to be prepared is just standard.

Mind you, she’s forever bringing me cakes and chocolates and so on that “I was given/bought by accident and I can’t eat it but I know you like this sort of thing.” Which makes me feel like a total pig but I don’t think is how she intends it, it just sits oddly with her horrified reaction to food.

The half cup of tea thing is nuts. I'd serve your MIL tea in an espresso cup to make a point.

With your h I would have told him to get his own crumble because "you always get it wrong" and enjoyed my human sized portion in peace.

Oh my goodness, I hadn’t thought about that in years but my grandmother was exactly the same.

“A cup of tea?”
“Only if you’re making one, and just half a cup for me.”

It used to drive my mum mad - she’d mutter to herself “I am making one if you WANT one, that’s why I offered” etc etc. And if she used a mug my grandmother would look aghast.

It clearly was A Thing back then because we found a novelty cup once and bought it for her. It was a teacup cut in half, and on the flat side it said “You Asked For Half A Cup”.

My grandmother took the hump but we all thought it was hilarious. (We took our fun where we could get it in the 70s)

Her sisters, my great aunts, were all the same. The other side of the family drank tea by the gallon.

Lol my 85 year old grandmother is the opposite. The other day she was ranting about people who only give you a half cup of tea when you go to visit them! This is my husband sometimes (or it was till I helpfully pointed it out!). Makes a great cup of tea but fill the cup up!!

I'd not thought about it before but my Mum can be a bit like this! They were over visiting recently & staying in a hotel so having a decent breakfast daily, but then if we were out and about for the day it was assumed that nobody would want lunch (including those who had a normal breakfast at home). When we insisted on stopping to eat Mum would be 'oh so you surely won't be wanting any dinner tonight now then?'

She's very keen on telling me how much of something she's had too, in a way that it wouldn't occur to me to count 'I had Moules last night there were 18 of them so 2 more than last time, but I only had one slice of bread this time' and so on. She can recall just about every meal out she's ever had and what everyone ate (Stepdad calls her Sheldon) and she's always been obsessed with weighing herself and updating me.

She does eat fairly well aside from the meal skipping on holiday (she eats lighter meals at home but 3 per day) and is a healthy weight so I suppose it's disordered thoughts around eating, if not actual disordered eating.

So to answer the OP, YANBU to find it annoying and try and nip it in the bud with your DP!

"So I served a teaspoonful of apple crumble in an eggcup with a tiny blob of custard"

Inspired!

Must be tempting to never offer to make a drink or fetch a serving of anything for her again!

@mathanxiety

It's nothing to do with rationing.

Your MIL was doing the 1950s version of female virtue signalling.

Women of a certain age were taught that a hearty appetite was unfeminine, and consuming full portions of anything marked them as uncouth, with out of control appetites. This was related to sexual appetites. A half cup of tea, half a boiled egg, half a slice of toast, or whatever, loudly announced as such, meant she was a good girl.

My mother goes on and on about 'rich' food.

Oh god, yes to the 'rich food'. I work with a woman like this - she's in her early sixties. We have cake for people's birthdays, and all you hear us her saying 'just a tiny sliver, It's so rich, I don't know how you all manage to eat a big (normal!) slice'. It's wearing. She's not slim, either.

Thank goodness everyone in my family loves eating (so do I, as my waistline attests). This competitive undereating and shaming of people eating normally sounds incredibly wearing.

On the half a cup thing, it's no issue at all if tea is made properly, i.e. in a teapot, rather than this newfangled dunk a teabag in a mug way.

[totters off to Centenarian Club]

Why not just have a starter?

Because I want an actual meal, not just some pate on toast or a plate of breaded mushrooms. It’s not difficult for restaurants to do smaller portions of most food. They often do it for a lunch menu but come 6pm, no sorry our evening chef can’t count out 5 pieces of scampi instead of ten.

It’s incredibly attention seeking behaviour, that’s why we all find it so annoying.

I have an in-law who barked at their fiancé he couldn’t have dinner now he’d had a second slice of cake. We all looked at each other and collectively thought “batshit” luckily for him they didn’t make it down the aisle.

It’s competitive under-eating by proxy.

My parents (late 80s) can't eat as much as they used to. They are very regretful about this but don't make a huge fuss about it. When out, they will ask for small portions (same price) and restaurants are usually happy to oblige. We used to have three courses if eating out, now it's usually one or two. All fine.

I’m a half a cup of tea person. I don’t think I’ve drink a whole cup in my life. Same if I go out for a coffee and pay for it. I usually just have the drink (well half of it) to be sociable but I don’t want it really.

I don’t think I make a big deal of it but people do comment and take it personally if I don’t drink the whole cup of tea/coffee that they’ve made.

It's nothing to do with rationing.
You don’t think those who lived with rationing for years as children were affected by it? We’ve heard people say that a few terms of school lockdown and wearing masks will affect our kids forever and yet this fundamental thing with food that kids went through at the point their attitudes to food were being shaped, had no bearing on how they think about it today? Go look at any thread about kids who are picky eaters, or kids who are eating pudding with every meal and somebody will be along to tell you you are forming their food habits of a lifetime.

Your MIL was doing the 1950s version of female virtue signalling. Women of a certain age were taught that a hearty appetite was unfeminine, and consuming full portions of anything marked them as uncouth, with out of control appetites.

My mother grew up in rural Scotland in the 1950s. Safe to say her attitude about not wasting food and only eating what you needed had nothing to do with virtue signalling. Indoor plumbing hadn’t even made it to their area at that time so safe to say those societal issues weren’t affecting them either. Incidentally my father is the same age as she is, and he has the same attitude.

And, as I said, I will ask for a small piece of something if I only want a small piece of something. It seems that people nowadays with food so plentiful that we can just throw it away, have lost sight of what a proper portion of food actually is.

@1forAll74

You perhaps don't know, but this kind of attitude regarding having a very small portion of food, and a half a cup of a drink, as in tea, was a very common happening with mainly older people in the war years when things were rationed. You had to eke the food out, to last for a few more days, and the loose leafed tea too. You may not have to do this now, but old habits stay with some people, including me ! I remember my late Mum, if she was lucky enough to get a packet of rich tea biscuits whatever, she said the packet had to last the family for a week. You could sometimes get a paper bag full of broken biscuits from some shops.It was quite good when my Mum brought these home, as it looked like we had loads of biscuits to eat then.

My own DM grew up in London during the war and I grew up with pained tales of rationing. She loved her food, particularly anything sweet and creamy, as did all the older women on my side of the family. There was no holding back.

My MIL was a similar age to my DM but MIL grew up on a large and fairly prosperous farm in rural Ireland during the war and didn't appear to have experienced rationing at all. In fact WW2 seems to have passed her by completely — understandable, really, because she was only a teen when it was all going on and Ireland was neutral. I can remember showing her photos of the bombed street where my mum grew up and having to explain the German bombing raids.

So in MIL's case, definitely not a case of rationing affecting her behaviour!

I'm more concerned about the 'huge row' and 'doors slamming' TBH.

@LadyMacbethWasMisunderstood

How long ago did your MIL die? My DM died in July and I can’t yet imagine a time when I’d be ok about DH mocking her (even slightly and in fun). Especially if it was to do with a trait that, when she was alive, people found irritating. Especially that.

What you describe is extremely annoying, but given your MIL is dead I’d really avoid the teasing comparisons. The serving of the dessert in an egg cup was amusing. You didn’t need to link it to his DM.

Six years ago and DP has led the eye-rolling on occasions when we've been out and about and have encountered other controlling eaters. 'The half-cup brigade' has been shorthand in our household for years.

This has reminded me that my DM late in life, well into her 60s, decided to cut dairy out of her diet. From that time on every offer of a cup of tea came with the instruction 'weak and black please, no milk, and half an inch of cold water on top.' We all knew this anyway and it got very tedious.

It became a bit of an obsession and even in tea rooms and cafes where tea was served in a pot with milk on the side she'd have to have long and anxious conversations with waiting staff about jugs of hot and cold water so that the tea would be weak enough and cool enough to drink. It never seemed to occur to her that if she poured it and left it for a minute or two it would cool down. We once held up the queue in the cafe at Wimpole Hall for ages while someone went to get a jug of cold tap water for her. There was some terrible tutting.

It is food shaming - my mother (in her 70s) does it. Its "I couldn't manage all that!" that gives me the rage - yes you bloody well could! Maybe less so now she's elderly, but she's always done this - as soon as I hit puberty she started with "shall we have half each" - with slices of toast at breakfast, and the "gosh that's a lot, that's masses, I couldn't possibly!"

Honestly it made me determined never to eat half of anything - I'd rather have nothing at all, or all of it. I couldn't possibly manage (psychologically) to ask for half of anything, I'd sooner go hungry and keep my mouth shut!

My sister on the other hand was admitted to an adolescent pschiatric facility when her anorexia nearly killed her, and although that was 30 years ago and she's supposedly recovered she's really a functional anorexic IMO.

She engages in competitive under eating with my mother - the time my mother put ot 6 sausage rolls, about 4 lettuce leaves and half an individual 30g bag of prawn cocktail crisps (half eaten and resealed with a freezer clip) as lunch for five children and five adults, and my sister unilaterally announced on everyone's behalf that it was far too much and started packing three of the sausage rolls into a tupperware box in front of my astonished children, is a running joke between DH, my kids and I now, but was so grim at the time as we'd been travelling since the early hours to visit and were properly hungry.

That sounds awful, UntilYourNext.

I have a friend who can be like this. She is gorgeous but pretty sturdily built (and I say that as a devoted friend who is also built for comfort rather than speed). She clearly eats well but whenever we go out she always carefully chooses something “good” instead of what she fancies or makes a bit of a thing about not being able to eat all of a slice of cake, etc. She will never make the decision about which restaurant to go into either. It’s as if she is embarrassed by her need to eat. It used to irritate me until I met her mother….

The woman was obsessed and all the comments about internalised misogyny by PP are bang on the money. She had to be delicate and bird like and couldn’t possibly eat X or Y was far too much or raising eyebrows at another woman ordering Z (never men). It was a complete performance and demonstration of her superior self control rounded off by boasting that she was exactly the same weight as at her wedding when she was 20.

She thought nothing of making vicious comments to her daughter about food and weight in front of people. The low point was a loud and public comment about my friend not deserving such a pretty wedding dress as she hadn’t made the effort to slim down before the wedding.

An utter cow but my poor friend has managed to internalise some of the need to not be seen as greedy or having “appetites” in public. It’s pretty grotesque really.

My dad was like this, just a half cup. Mum used to ask the top half or the bottom half !

God, I have no patience for food martyrs. My mother is one and has burdened me with a lifetime of disordered eating habits and low self-esteem.

I think my MIL must be permanently dehydrated. She drinks 3 tiny cups of instant coffee a day and a small glass of juice with her lunch. I've never seen her drink water.

When she realised that I prefer a mug to a dainty bone china cup and saucer that holds a thimbleful of tea, she bought a mug specially for me. It's still small though, not like the ones I use at home that hold 300mls. And she makes comments like "Oooh, you really do drink such a lot, Lakie, I don't know where you put it all".

She also seems to find it very odd that I drink pints of beer. "Oooh, I could never drink a whole pint of anything" as though it's some sort of weird aberration.

She's not funny about food though, she's constantly trying to get guests to eat stuff, have seconds, have another cake etc.