AIBU to ask DH to cook/prepare a meal one day a week?

[BubblinTrouble]

I am currently on maternity leave and at the moment doing all of the cooking and cleaning whilst looking after DD. This is fine for now as I appreciate I am at home and when DD is napping I can get bits done. At the moment I will be prepping 2 different meals - DD and I will eat the same thing but DH will want something else. It’s frustrating and I won’t lie I feel resentful that he’ll swan in and have lunch prepped for him. Probably me being unreasonable - so let me know if I am on this one.

I’ve asked DH if he can take responsibility for one meal at the weekend. He says he won’t cook and doesn’t want to. I’ve said he can get a takeaway twice a month as we’re trying to be healthy and money wise. But he won’t do this either. His mum was a SAHM and his sister and SILs are too. I don’t know if this has impacted his outlook.

He’s pretty hands on with everything else… he cleans dishes, makes bottles, feeds the cats, loads washing from time to time, put clothes away. Most of the time I have to tell him to do some thing and he’ll do it. It’s just cooking he won’t do at all. AIBU to ask him to take over one lunch at the weekend?? It would be nice to have a meal prepped for me once that’s all.

DH does not cook. But here are the crucial differences between him and your DH:

1. He wouldn't dream of expecting me to cook him something different to what I'm cooking the rest of us. If he doesn't want to eat what we're eating (unusual), he figures something out for himself.

1. If I decide I don't feel like cooking, he will prepare a meal of some sort. It will be basic - egg and bacon/pasta pesto/ crumbed chicken breasts from the freezer - but he will do it. He is grateful every single time I cook. Every. Single. Time.

1. He does LOADS of other stuff from washing, bins, DIY, kids, childcare, cleaning, beds etc etc etc .

Plus, I like cooking and am a bit anal about it. And yet, here's a truth: Sometimes I still feel a bit resentful that I have to do all the cooking and shopping and meal planning.

So this is going to build to epic proportions in your head any time now....

Wow!!! He can eat the same meal as you have made for yourself or cook himself something else (every day) and I have always worked on the basis that everyone (including children from about 5 upwards) sort prepping their own lunch (from salad, meat etc in the fridge).

Is it can't cook or won't cook? If he's not confident that might explain why.

But that aside, as others have said, you cook one dish and he eats it or fends for himself.

Whatever you do, don’t give up work and become a SAHM to this caveman. He sounds awful. Have some self respect and tell him he can start making his own meals from now on if he doesn’t like the look of what you’re preparing. And that if he wants to eat at weekends he can do 50% of the cooking.

So you cook a hot lunch and dinner every day?

Just say no and make yourself and dd a quick sandwich.

My husband does most of the cooking now because I just don’t like doing it (perfectly capable cook, just don’t enjoy it, whilst he does).

Can he actually cook? Does he maybe feel a bit stupid because he doesn’t know how? Can’t think of any other plausible reason why he just refuses.

I’d stop making him separate meals.

As for his hatred of cooking, my DH is like that only with laundry. He’s only doing it now for first time in almost 30yrs because I am sick with pneumonia. However, I did a trade. Laundry for bathrooms. I haven’t scrubbed a toilet in almost 30yrs. Bliss.

So, as others say, you can rightfully push for him to do a bit of cooking or consider the approach I took and that was to broker a trade where if you do all the cooking, he will in turn to all of something equalish.

What a prick.

Nothing else to add. He’s pathetic.

Blimey! I would stop doing separate meals for him. I would also have a few nights a week where you don't cook because you 'don't want to' either.

DH was a bit rubbish when we got together but gradually he started doing things like bunging jacket potatoes in the oven with quiche and chopping some salad. He is often responsible for these types of meals and does chop quite a lot of veg. Put it this way, if I popped my clogs tomorrow he wouldn't starve!

I would be very unhappy to be with someone so useless.

He says he won’t cook and doesn’t want to

Being a SAHM doesn't mean you become another functional adult's personal chef.
I cannot believe you are prepping a separate lunch & dinner for him every day. Stop cooking for him full stop, & leave him to it.

Presumably he knows how food shopping happens, & how to put food in his mouth. If he has the cheek to complain about loss of service, blithely inform him that you "won't cook for him, & don't want to."

Tell him the 1950s called and they want him back.

Nah, don’t bother! I’ve been through periods when I’ve thought I wish someone would cook for me once in a while but it’s never worth it! Every pot, pan and utensil is used and the process takes bloody hours, we get dinner at bedtime! It’s easier to do it myself, he can wash up!

Why are you coming separate meals for a grown man?!

I am a stay at home mum with a toddler and I don't cook DH a separate meal. He either has what we're having (with us or kept aside for him) or he cooks for himself.

But my DH also wouldn't refuse to cook 1 meal a week, even when he worked full time out of the house and I was at home with the baby!

Sorry he gets different meals to you?

Well that stops. You make one meal for all of you. If he doesn’t want that he sorts himself out

And but him a cook book for Christmas, time he learnt

God men can be shit.

More to do... don't get to do less.
Beggers belief.

How they justify it.
You've not just stopped working so you've got loads of free time. You're on maternity leave.
You've swapped working in your professional job for looking after a baby. Not gone on vacation.

Yeah stick a load of washing on, great do some extra chores here and there, but you're not primarily now housekeeping. Pisses me off so much that usually men, let's be honest, think it's absolutely fine to do less than previously did, because you're at home...with a baby.
How's it any different from the men who now work from home. How come they can't get all the laundry done, clean, cook, wash up, sort out pets ...all while they do their job?
Oh that's right, it's different... It's a proper job. I forget

I wish 'being hands-on' wasn't always trotted out on here as a mitigation for crap behaviour. Do women refer to themselves as 'hands-on'? No, we just parent and do what we have to do, as should our partners. He had to do housework and cooking before baby presumably, so why does he get to stop now? Why has his life become easier with a new baby? That shouldn't be how it works.

And if he wants different food, he can make it himself. My DH is a picky eater but knows I don't pander to it, so if I'm cooking something for him and DD that he won't eat, he cooks something else for himself.

@Fanacapan

Nah, don’t bother! I’ve been through periods when I’ve thought I wish someone would cook for me once in a while but it’s never worth it! Every pot, pan and utensil is used and the process takes bloody hours, we get dinner at bedtime! It’s easier to do it myself, he can wash up!

Yeah. Dh whiny whined about cooking. Whoopi doo. I get the clean-up of it so it's hardly like I just roll down to dinner to a 5* dining experience them have my chair pulled out and dishes cleared away for me while I retire to the fucking smoking room to swing cognac. It's a simple meal, half of it is on the floor, every utensil is out, dishwasher full of clean items that could have been used but new stuff hoiked out instead. I Then clear table, pick up floor scraps, clean benches, unstack and redo dishwasher etc.

But yeah. He gets the congratulations and sympathy for doing the meal. Poor man. Having to cook.

I certainly wouldn't be prepping two different meals. Make a meal, and if anyone doesn't want to eat it they can make themselves something else. You're running a home, not a restaurant.

Why are you cooking for him? Why are you prepping two different meals?

Just stop. It's the easiest way to get the message through. He sorts his own food until he's willing to share the load.

There is NO WAY I would be making DH a separate meal, ever.

On Maternity leave I did do most of the cooking, so would discuss meal plans, make things we both like, sometimes him more than me, sometimes me more than him. But never a separate meal.

He's a grown man and you're not his mother. He either eats what you cook or makes his own. His attitude is deeply unattractive and I would probably stop cooking for him anyway. Adults cook or they don't eat.

As pp suggested order yourself a takeaway every week in the short term, but in the longer term I'd be thinking very hard about life with a man who expected me to wait on him, and that it was ok to declare he would 'not' do something as fundamental as cooking.

Either he eats what you do or he goes hungry. He'll soon start being able to make food himself

If he wants something else then he should cook it himself. You aren't running a restaurant. And its not unreasonable for him to prepare a meal a week.

I probably only cook 2 days a week, I'd cook more if he didn't interfere😁, Friday's when he's in the bath and Wednesday when he does the Tesco order. Tonight were having boiled gammon.

1. Stop cooking him a different meal. He can either eat it or starve, his choice.
2. Stop making him lunch. He can make a sandwich, he has arms and hands I assume, although even people without aren't as useless as him.
3. Get yourself a takeaway once a week and ignore him. If he wants one, he can either get one himself or make his own food.

He's either too stupid to get the point by now, in which case do you really want to be stuck with a man child, or he'll get the point and stop being a dick.

Stop cooking for him!! He's being a prick!