I didn’t let my husband eat the meatballs, AIBU?

[dancebabybee]

My husband is an incredibly fussy eater. Basically, he will only eat beige foods and sugar. This makes going out to eat very difficult as well as cooking for him at home. There have been times in restaurants when he will complain there is NOTHING he likes on the menu (despite the menu being extensive) and he ends up eating a bread basket. I am giving you this history as it is important for what happened this evening…

I made meatballs, tomato ragu and spaghetti for dinner. Due to my husbands extreme fussy eating, I don’t usually cook for him and he is left to sort himself out. Me and the children had this for dinner. When I went into the kitchen afterwards, he had started picking at the sauce left in the pan, scooping the meatballs out, scraping the tomatoes and sauce off. I asked him whether he wanted me to make him some pasta, he said no he just wanted to eat the meatballs. I told him to please not, as it will just leave a load of sauce that nobody will want to eat without meatballs in it, and I wanted to save the spare for lunch or dinner tomorrow. He then got annoyed about this and sulked off…

AIBU?

He's not a child and she doesn't need to be impressed or delighted by him 'trying a new food'. There's also no suggestion that it even was a new food for him, his parents said he used to eat anything until he moved out and moved and then started living on shite.
Also he has a habit of picking stuff out of leftovers, meatballs, chicken from the fajita pan or all the fish from a fish pie, it's very rude, if he wants a portion of protein he should just stick something in the air fryer.

Tbf I would have just made seperate meatballs for him that are plain with plain pasta so he had a meal. Ur making the food anyways.

Just add more pasta so he has some and cook some meatballs separately 🤷‍♀️

Well on a site where the general clamor is for everything is shared in a marriage, mustnt have individual money for example, that doesnt seem to apply to food and in this case meatballs?

I think now is a helpful time to remind some posters that there is a very handy button at the top of the page that allows them to see all of the OPs posts.

They have an agreement that he sorts his own food due him moaning about what she cooks in the past.

If he wants meatballs, he can get some and cook them himself. It seems as though he lives on takeways and bread unless he's picking meatballs, fish etc from OP's food.

I dont believe I mentioned who should add the meatballs later. Why did you infer that?

This. Why is everyone infantilising this grown man? Maybe OP could put a sticker chart on the wall for every time he tries a non-beige food.

Not really. DH said that he doesn’t want to eat OP’s cooking, told her not to cook meals for him, and that he would sort his own meals out. This was his agreement.

Using your example of finances, this is like a couple agreeing to separate finances, then the DH takes OP’s debit card and helps himself when it suits him.

OP said that she’s the only one who cooks in their house. Who else would it be? 🤔

It doesn't apply in OPs house, no. Because he was so rude about her cooking that she stopped preparing food for him, and he doesn't bother cooking for his kids. Evidently he didn't think the presence of a shared marital money contingent on a website he probably doesn't use was reason enough for him to share in the food preparation and planning for his family.

Oh come on, that's ridiculous. You can't think of ANY trait worse than not liking much food? How about being unhygienic? Incredibly rude? Ridiculously boring? Self absorbed? And that's just general traits, not even going into genuinely arsehole territory. He's not saying everyone else has to just eat bread.

@dancebabybee if you were ok with him eating some if it was in a way YOU deemed acceptable, it wasn't about having leftovers for the next day, it was just you controlling how he eats. You could have all eaten the base (meatballs) together in the different ways you preferred and had a sandwich for lunch but you chose to die on the hill.

I'm not a fussy eater and neither is my husband, but I know a few and it's mostly sensory stuff or hang ups from childhood. Just let them get on with it!

This is so true - it’s hard to imagine a man putting up with this sort of nonsense from a woman.
I couldn’t agree more with the statement that it’s no wonder that men rule the world - it’s because there are so many women catering to them.
It’s sad to see so many ‘pick me’ types making excuses for an overgrown toddler.

How are some people not understanding this? If he had some meatballs with pasta then some meatballs would still be left to be used for lunch the next day but obviously if he's just eating the meatballs then he'd eat all of the meatballs without anything to pad out the meal such as the pasta.

Not to mention the fact that the agreement they have is for him to sort out his own food due to how picky he is. If he wants meatballs, he can just go and get some for himself.

It's funny how he only seems capable of eating anything other than bread and takeaways when someone else has done the cooking for him.

Why would he be adding meatballs to the sauce or having the sauce with something else? He won't eat sauce. I think that's clear. It's also clearly stated that he won't cook for anyone else. The inference really wasn't too difficult to make.

A sticker chart, oh yes! OP could also sit him in a high chair wearing a pelican bib and "aeroplane" the meatballs into his gob on a spoon 🤣

This. I think a lot of people missed OPs comment that he used to eat lots more food but gradually learned that he only HAD, as an adult, to eat what he really liked eating. So now he just eats the stuff he enjoys and not, for example, what OP has made for the family.

I think many of us know an adult like this, who only does the bits of things that they, personally, enjoy and leave the boring stuff to everyone else.

That how I see it but am clearly on the minority. Most people on this thread do seem to think it’s not a meal without meat and that the meat is alway the best bit. Pasta and tomato sauce is a perfectly acceptable meal. Also, people keep referring to the meat as the protein which I have never heard before in normal speech, only from an ex who used to go to the gym a lot!

It doesn't matter. I would eat pasta and sauce with no meatballs no problem.

Fact of the matter is OP wants meatballs left over for her lunch. That's fine because she cooked and planned the next two meals.

She cooked
She wants meatballs left over
He agreed to sort his own food
He got in a strop for deviating from his preference

I cook in my house and in return expect a little respect. I'm not preventing my other half from cooking for themselves but they don't so I'm the one who makes the decisions, much like OP.

I couldn't be with someone like this beige foods yuk.
Good on you for saying no thats a full meal for someone else scraping the sauce off would wind me right up.

Of course pasta and sauce is a fine meal. If that’s what you made and what you want. But she made meatballs

a roast with no yorkshires is a fine meal, but if you made them and they were just taken, that would be rude and annoying

I offered to make him pasta so he could have it as part of a meal, rather than just picking the meatballs out (he was planning on eating all of the ones left), and just leaving sauce

So had he dished himself up a portion onto a plate but just ate the meatballs out of it because that is all he liked and left the sauce behind and the pasta you were going to go to the trouble of cooking, is that wrong too? He is only entitled to the LEFTOVER meatballs if he eats the sauce off them and has them with pasta?

Make is make sense. It's leftovers in a pot and the issue is that you may have to throw out a bit of sauce covering them? You didn't even have to make the bloody pasta. I honestly don't get it.

I do find the jumping to diagnose people on Mumsnet tedious - it’s been suggested my DH must have autism, arfid, an eating disorder… I know with certainty that this is a preference issue, brought on by years of eating UPF and likely an addiction to the salt / sugar. I ate my DH’s diet for a short while when we first got together, gained 2 stone, found it really hard to eat healthily again… let’s face it, most people would prefer a dominos over chicken and vegetables. When he has tried to lose weight in the past and give up UPF, he gets withdrawal symptoms!!

I offered to make him pasta so he could have it as part of a meal, rather than just picking the meatballs out (he was planning on eating all of the ones left), and just leaving sauce

No, she offered the meatballs to him ONLY if they were eaten with the sauce and pasta.

Sorry but 'the rest' is some sauce.
We have no idea as to the rest of the marriage.

She at no point 'offered' him the meatballs she had made for herself and the children and he'd rejected in advance. He wandered in and started picking them out. She resigned herself to them being eaten and offered to make him a plateful, despite having plans for the whole dish that was left. On realising he was only interested in picking bits out and removing the sauce she'd presumably taken a while to make, she very reasonably drew the line.