AIBU calling DH atrocious for not wanting to 'cook' anything more than frozen oven food.

[BeingHappy]

I'm 20 weeks pregnant, feeling nauseous throughout the day and the smells of raw meat/the fridge/cooking smells eg onions frying, veg being steamed really sets me off.

Anyway an argument with DH really spiralled tonight. I asked him to help me out after he gets home from work (he is usually home by 6.30pm, not a.stressful job) he said yes he would and what would I like help with. I was in the wrong when I replied with 'use your initiative' to which he said that was rude.. which made me cry and I sort of spiralled. Anyway, eventually said I needed him to step up and do the cooking but it needs to be something more than frozen fish and chips. And he said that's all he knows how to cook, he doesn't know how to cook anything else. And I called him atrocious.. he said he would never say anything like that to me. AIBU for calling him atrocious?

By the way, his cooking is generally awful and the most he's ever usually managed to 'cook' is sticking frozen stuff in the oven.

@FFSLTB I just meant I could be in another room whilst he cooks in order to avoid the smells..

YABU. Some of it is hormones of course.

However it sounds like your DH isn't really interested in food, hence he CBA with cooking. You presumably know that. If you are more interested then you cook the meals you want to eat.

If he uses his initiative and prepares what he likes (freezer food) then it's not good enough for you. But that is your problem not his.

I'm sorry you're not feeling well OP. I hope it passes soon. Gently, I think you're being unreasonable and very unfair. Cooking is a skill that takes work and practice. People who were taught to cook growing up or who are good at it tend to not realise this and assume its instinctual and easy. For a lot of people it isn't and many cook books are confusing. Also cooking is extremely soul numbingly boring and the worst way to waste a chunk of your evening (IMO 😁). I think just assuming he'd want to start doing this and then being furious he doesn't isn't necessarily the right approach.

I think he might try make basic stuff but I suspected maybe he was in 'fight mode' too, which annoyed me because I felt he should be more understanding given the baby/me being pregnant

Not everyone can cook further than following the instructions on a packet/box.

Maybe worth looking at one of these subscription services like Gusto, as you mention how he’ll go off piste with ingredients- at least that way everything is there, so no risk of cinnamon instead of coriander. It would also be a good way of learning to cook from scratch/appreciating how long different things take to cook.

A grown man ought to know how to cook proper meals. But he has obviously never learned, so a bit of time spent teaching him to cook would be well invested.

YABU and you were very rude. You’ve behaved very poorly, started a fight over nothing and need to apologise.

He doesn’t cook, and he doesn’t need to. If you want to, go ahead, but you can’t demand do some else does and then insult them for it when they don’t do it how you want.

@Amandasummers I've always tried to be really encouraging whenever he cooks. Like he thinks he's rubbish at it, but I've said things like "when you follow a recipe, you cook really well" or "I love your potato salad' etc

But why?

I can cook but hate it. I much prefer a bean salad and bread or beans on toast followed by fruit. You can get all the nutrients you need without actually cooking.

@ChillysWaterBottle thank you for that perspective. I never really considered it like that. My family are huge foodies, grandparents have a few restaurants, and so I think cooking was something I learned really young.

Oh dear, my poor DH. I can hear him snoring in the next room. Maybe I should go give him a cuddle...

Thank you everyone for your responses. I appreciate it and I am fine to be wrong,.feeling a bit sad for DH myself now. I do think I would have appreciated him expressing he would like to try more but I am suspecting he didn't say that because they way I spoke made.him grumpy.

I get it, it is infuriating - my DP had to learn to cook in the end as I no longer can, but it was an absolute fucker of a job, because as you say with your DH, he could NOT put flavours together, and yet would insist on deviating from the fucking recipe!

Add to that if the meal did not taste delicious, he'd act like we'd all called him a cunt and shit on his pillow (no matter how politely we ate it!), because he cannnnnnnnot take failure of any kind...

Instruction is interpreted in his brain as a personal insult - i dont know why (he does have a ND dx though but i didn't know that then), he instinctively pushes back against any directive/instruction etc, oh and on top of no palate, he also makes no link whatsoever between 'golden brown = delicious' and 'black = burnt' and 'no colour at all = possibly raw'...

He can do it now. And he has learned, but through necessity, not choice. I did have to draw flow charts for things at times. And put up a 'is this raw, cooked or fucked' colour chart...

He doesn't like much of the frozen to freezer stuff, or ready meals and I think that helped me enormously though. I think we'd be buggered if he was happy with that.

Also thank you to the person who said babies are unaffected by crying mummas. I keep reading stuff about being calm and happy etc when pregnant and assumed babies get uncomfortable/agitated if I cry or stress

Not everyone is a “foodie”. I fucking hate food and cooking and everything to do with it. It’s just a necessity.

Has he heard of YouTube?

He can find step by step recipes for anything on there.

@WiddlinDiddlin what is ND DX? Your DP sounds lots like DH with respect to the instructions etc. Bizarrely he's got an extremely successful career and has somehow got to the top by being like that. I only mention this because I'm guessing ND DX is some sort of medical thing, but if DH has something like this, it's not really manifested at work for example.

@YellowTreeHouse yep, that sounds.like DH

@emptythelitterbox he once tried to make me prawns using a YouTube video. The video used maybe a couple of spoons of oil. I came in to the kitchen to find half a saucepan full of oil smoking and about to catch on fire. It was terrifying.

It seems that cooking just isn't his thing. Can he help you out in different ways instead, such as vacuuming or doing the laundry or washing up? Or is he not good at those either?

I think as PP have said, YABU - by the sounds of your replies I think you see why!

Practically, Charles Bigham do some really nice bung in the oven ready meals, two or three of those a week would help? If it's the cooking smells that you're feeling the aversion too, why don't you pre prep some one pan meals, like stir fry / bolognese / fajitas / chilli con carne etc by prepping all of the veg and raw bits in little plastic bags in the fridge, group them together by meal - then all he has to do is take one, put it in a pan and add tinned tomato's / cooked pasta etc? That might help ease him into it. Means he can't make weird cinnamon based substitutes too!

I had a flat mate at university who sounds similar, family never ever cooked (mum was terrible at it, dad not present, siblings no hope) and little things like making pasta sauce were totally foreign - they'd never grown up around cooking, had no clue about all of the little hints and tips that people pick up on by watching parents cook. Took a year but by the end of it they were able to do basics! I think we sometimes take for granted things like simple cookery skills, it's hard to understand why someone can't just make a pasta sauce when we inherently know how, but it's like riding a bike - some people learned as children, but if someone didn't - you wouldn't put them on a bike one morning and expect them to commute to work right away!

I can see how this escalated, but personally I made it really clear to my Dh in the very early days that adults cook. And adults who don’t know how to cook do know how to read so they can cook- they just need to use simple recipes. And if they decide they don’t need recipes and it tastes like crap, that’s because they do need recipes until they age a bit more experience. And it is completely totally unacceptable to think your cooking contribution can be takeaway, because you want children and they need healthy home cooked meals regularly so you are saying that’s all my problem not yours about a very very very basic aspect of parenting, and that’s an instant dealbreaker. And now I have an amazing cook for a husband.

@JennyNotFromTheBlock no DH is otherwise great at all the other housework.

@deeperthanallroses that was very wise of you. I am grateful that DH is an all rounder (sans cooking) so I had perhaps naively once thought it wouldn't be a big deal if he couldn't cook 😭

Once baby is here and starts eating perhaps you can bring it up again in the context of you need to be able to feed your child a healthy meal?

That stunt with the oil in the pan is bloody ridiculous.