...To Think There Is Male Shopping Brain...?

[AlteFrau]

Spouse said he'd do the shoppipng we needed yesterday, to stock up after the holiday break.

He went to the local High Street a few minutes away, and spent an hour shopping. On his return he said he'd been to two supermarkets, the two Asian run grocery shops and the chemists.

What he came back with
400 g cumin seed
1 jar mango pickle
4 bottles beer
2 toothbrush heads in contrasting colours - because the old ones were the same colour
Fancy little tomatoes
Sliced white sourdough

What he didn't get
Butter
Bananas
Frozen Peas
Bacon
Cheese
Milk

Thoughts?

There is no such thing as a "type of brain". We're all different, but we can all improve and adapt. If you're not very good at something fairly basic and essential for every day life, you train yourself. Shopping? Take note of what is needed. Literally. Make a list and tick it off.
It doesn't require a "certain type of brain" and it certainly doesn't depend on the sex of the owner.

I agree with you, @Eudaimonia11 .
I've never met a man like this, in my family or my friendship group.
I have a nephew with significant additional needs and he has been taught to do a shop, and does it well.

Mine likes to go about 6 times a day to buy things like nigella seeds… he’s more a ‘big match’ performer- will decide to cook something random (and delicious) and will completely fail to check ‘if we have any milk’ or ‘what’s going out of date in the fridge’ - it’s infuriating (particularly when I’m the planner / shopper) apparently it’s too much pressure to decide in advance what one might want to eat in advance…
he also used to buy tiny portions of things - ie a single pint of milk, small pack of loo roll necessitating further shopping trips. I would swear he was having an affair with the checkout woman in Sainsbury’s if I didn’t know better…

Excellent post.

Yesterday MIL and I were making a lasagne but realised (once we got to the point of assembly) that we’d not got any lasagne sheets (not sure what that says about our female brains!). FIL popped out to the shops to get some along with top ups of milk, bread etc entirely unprompted. I had assumed that this was because he’s a functioning adult with common sense, had no idea that he was actually defying his brain chemistry.

I have, sadly, met men like this. And I do think that sometimes the reason we think they don’t exist is that women are covering for them, either deliberately or unconsciously.

I think Spouse's functioning is quite variable. He does make lists sometimes and can be organised. He'll happily go back for stuff he's forgotten. I think yesterday he was more in recreational mode after a period of having manflu/the shops being shut.

As the High Street is just a few minutes away it isn't a big deal.

There's always the option of dishing up a very boring or weird lunch - saying, 'Well as there's no milk, cheese, bacon or eggs - here is a fancy tomato and cumin seed salad with mango pickle salsa on sourdough. If all the seeds get stuck in your teeth, at least we have those useful new toothbrush heads.'

What’s sad is when these people bring up the next generation with exactly the same attitude and perpetrate the same cycle.

your spouse is useless.
Mine is great. We used to have a list on the wall in the kitchen, and if you needed something, or opened a new pack of something, you wrote it on the list. DCs joined in when old enough and now do the same at their homes.

Now we have an app it is theoretically even easier.

I hate to "NAMALT" you here, but - meh

That is exactly the problem.

Yes, it doesn't surprise me that his functioning is "variable".
I strongly suspect that, when it suits him, it's actually quite high level.

Unless your dh has a cognitive difficulty, he's perfectly capable of performing a normal household task. Does he struggle with basic competence at work? If not, he's choosing to behave like this, probably to control you into not asking him to do as much of the household labour. He's happy for your life to be worse, more restricted and with less leisure time, in order for his life to be better.

It's not a good look.

It's mainly habit.

DH was perfectly capable of buying himself a balanced range of shopping in his single days.
For various reasons, I do the food shopping and the core of it I do on autopilot with 90% of it the same each week. If I go into a supermarket with a different layout and different brands, I'm more likely to make mistakes.

DH is not in the habit of buying for the family and planning how to balance what they will eat against time commitments and nutrition, but if he had to do it for a few weeks, he'd pick up the routines and the autopilot thinking.

In the same way that I now get more 3s and fewer 5s at my daily Wordle than when I started. I haven't become a genius, my brain has just got more efficient and quicker at logically thinking through patterns of 5 letter words.

My Dh manages the monthly shop very well, he goes through cupboards the freezer and manages a list he is a "clever boy"😀

I recognise this. I think a lot of men really do think like this, probably more than we realise. This is why they lambast single mothers who buy cheap food - they don't have as much control as THEY would have if THEY were in the house... It is always men who haven't ever parented, too. Usually the co-parent who has grandiose ideas of parenting but has never had to actually implement anything.

I think OP has done a runner.

How would we feel if it was said that female brains can't comprehend that when armies mobilised (the Huns, Romans, Hangers, Mauryan etc) they were all male and didn't starve to death because women weren't about to shop/cook and keep them clean? The grooms were responsible for the horses. The farmers took care of their animals. The Butler/Gentleman's valet, would alk be male. Ten years ago it was unusual to see women working, even as cleaners, in hotels in Egypt etc. Then men worked in hospitality/tourism. The women were at home, miles away. Or can our female brains not handle history and other cultures? Seriously, stop this shit. I want better for my granddaughters.

so what did you do, OP?
I would have just served up what he brought home and then sent him back to buy sensible things.

Instigate a shopping list system. Then there is no excuse.

I find it totally cringey when someone glibly excuses basic and obvious incompetence like this as "aw shucks, silly men amirite?!"

Either he is doing it deliberately or he cannot manage basic adult functions. Both are incredibly unattractive traits.

@Brefugee hopefully OP didn’t do anything and the big boy engaged in some problem solving all by himself with no prompting from mummy

i live in hope, but then i read the relationship board and the hope evaporates like morning mist

Same here. Worryingly, there are boys - and girls - raised in this environment, and socialised to believe that it's acceptable.

I don’t think it’s male brain. I think is masculine socialisation.

My dh is very domestically competent. But he swings between laser-focused shopping brain and rabbit-in-the-headlights shopping brain. Laser focus is when he feels in control, he understands what we need and he understands what’s on the list, regardless of who’s generated it. But spring something unexpected on him and he goes into a flap.

I’m far more likely than him to forget the milk, or to buy milk when we don’t need it!

@Brefugee I try to avoid the relationships board, it’s just thread after thread of downtrodden wives complaining about their shitty husbands “but he works hard and he’s a great dad”.

I need to stop clicking on these threads but it can be difficult to avoid when they pop up in the active list, it just makes me angry and it’s never actually helpful for the OP having me sticking my oar in.

No I'm male and good at shopping, especially for womens clothing...a result of having lots of female friends and working in the city centre and wandering around the shops with them.

Re food shop my partner suffers from if it's not on the shopping list I won't buy it....so if ask for milk, if it's not written down, it's not bought

This sounds like weaponised incompetence. Did he have a written list? Or was he winging it?

I've had to ban mine from Aldi and Lidl, because he gets too excited by the middle aisle and comes home with the most random things!