Struggling with sleep and cooking patterns and trying to find time to spend with DH.

[Positivityandcoffee]

Me and my DH both work full time with my day typically starting around 7am (6am if I need to travel to a different city for work) and I finish around 5pm but reach home around 6pm (or even 7pm if I am coming from a different city).

DH's working pattern is different in the sense he does night shifts but WFH sometimes. He works from midnight to around 6am and funnily he says good morning to me whilst I say good night to him. He then wakes up around midday and will work from around 1pm - 4pm.

We both try and spend some quality time together in the evening which is usually 6pm to around midnight. However, during that time sometimes I will fall asleep alot earlier around 10pm/11pm so we only have a handful of hours to spend time together in the evening.

My biggest hurdle is cooking. I enjoy cooking but it takes a long time. DH can't cook. Ideally, I wouldn't mind cooking when I come home around 6pm and have dinner for 7pm but DH wants to spend time with me at that time and we end up lounging around and me falling asleep (without cooking or eating) and DH trying to fend for himself (resulting in takeouts). This is unhealthy behaviour for both of us.

Problem is my DH's lunch time is around 5pm and dinner time around 11pm. I am asleep by then!

We both have tried fixing our routine (sleep and dinner times) and it's been more than a year and we both are exhausted and still cant get it right. His work is quite demanding and so is mine.

I suggested I wake up earlier around 5am to cook before I go to work but my DH thinks thats bizarre and out of love wont let me go downstairs at that time :)

I want to be in a position that I can cook for him everyday (my dinner/his lunch) by 5pm/6pm as well as have leftovers for the following day so he can have breakfast before he goes to work (whilst I am at work). And - I know it's stretching it - but cooking a snack on top for his dinner around 11pm whilst I am asleep.

HELP!

You don't get home til 6 though. So you can't if you aren't in the house?

You could jointly make [so him peel and chop and you cook] batch meals that he can pop into the oven [at a low temp] to get ready for you for when you get home and that you can pop in the oven before you go to bed for him to have when he gets home.

Things like lasagna, chillis, curries etc all put into take out type containers and popped out into dishes for reheating in the oven?

Do those all on the weekend ready for the week ahead?

That's what I would do.

Agree with @AlisonDonut
Meal prep on your days off so you can reheat something you prepared early in the week.
Husband not being able to cook is an allergy of mine. Everyone can cook if they want to. Not everyone is as gifted, but there are plenty of simple meals he could learn to cook. Not being able to cook means not feeling like putting in the effort of learning how to cook.
So cooking together with your husband and teaching him the basics (like chopping vegetables) is definitely feasible.

@Positivityandcoffee
Why not prepare some meals on the weekend and freeze them? A lot of meals (chili, stews, sauces,etc) lend themselves easily to prep and freeze. Preparing for 2 should not require an enormous amount of work.You can also do salads during the week, again not a lot of prep time required.

6hrs a day quality time is a bit extreme imo- very normal to go to sleep at 10pm- how much fun is it to force yourself awake for an additional 2hrs

The obvious one is that DH does dinner to be ready for when you get in at 6. I’m sorry but I don’t believe that he ‘can’t cook’. Any functioning adult can follow a basic recipe because it’s literally a set of simple instructions. He can then make himself a sandwich for his 11pm meal. You can do fancier stuff at the weekend when you’re not coming from work/don’t need to be up so early the next day, maybe even making some extra portions that DH could bung in the oven to reheat midweek meaning he’s only cooking a few times a week.

Or if it's about spending time together then try cooking together? One chop and peel / wash up as you go and the other put the meal all together / set the table etc. A nice dinner each evening sounds like great quality time to spend together.
You can't carry on not eating after a long day at work / falling asleep before eating etc.

The solution is that you cook together for the next few weeks. You meal plan together and you teach him to cook (although I have to say I do not believe he can't cook - what's he like with the other household chores?).

Then there is no excuse for him not to cook going forward. Cooking simply healthy food
Is easy if planned etc.

If you're planning on having children with him then he needs to step up.

As low cooker can be great in these situations. Half an hours prep the night before and a quick flick of the switch before you go out - makes your house smell amazing too in winter!!

It’s not that your DH can’t cook, it’s he won’t cook. Unless there are extenuating circumstances, he can cook. He needs to start one recipe at a time - or learn the basics - roast a chicken which is basically baste and shove in the oven. Steam veg. Bolognaise. Omelettes. Steam or bake fish. And so on.

You need to batch cook and freeze enough meals for 2 weeks so that you have meals ready. I saw a woman on TikTok who meal preps for a month and has meals ready for her family for the whole month ! Easy foods that you can just add a quick side dish too

Slow cooker is your friend here

and 6 hours is a lot and you are losing sleep don’t have a forced expectation when you are tired go to bed

I think a slow cooker or a instapot
plus a couple of lazy dinners (omelette or beans on toast or microwave ready meal) is the answer

you can do stews, risotto, pulled chicken, pasta bakes if careful!

Oh god I can't stand the "anyone can cook" crew. It's as reductive as saying "anyone can do gymnastics" or "anyone can learn Russian" or "anyone can play the flute". I can't cook, but I'd bet top dollar that I can do plenty of things they can't.

However I absolutely agree with the suggestion to cook together. It can either be your evening quality time, or - more enjoyable - you can spend a few hours at the weekend doing a batch cook. There are always plenty of jobs in the kitchen the non-cook can do - chopping, weighing, prepping or just washing and tidying. It's also by far the better way for the non-cook to learn basic cooking skills - by being shown or by observing rather than just being let loose in a kitchen by themselves with BBC Good Food. And if it's relaxed and not rushed then it can be fantastic quality time. Put some tunes on, dance around, chat while you cook and then enjoy a bang-up meal at the end of it.

Is he a grown up? Can he drive a car? Can he read? Then he can cook.

But most people can follow a recipe, as long as they can read. My teenage dc CAN cook if they follow a recipe, they just choose not to because they don't enjoy it.
My 78 year old dad CAN cook if he were given basic instructions and practiced but he tells himself he can't because he never has.

Cooking isn't a talent, it's something you get better at with practice. I don't enjoy it but we need to eat so I do it.

"Can't cook" is ridiculous unless he has a disability.

And if what happens on the hob bears no resemblance to what the recipe says will happen? If you don't have the right equipment or exactly the right ingredients to hand? And that's before you get into the subjectivity of so many instructions. I have spent so much time peering at something that started off brown wondering whether it's now the golden brown the recipe wants it to be. Loads of recipes take quite a lot of kitchen knowledge for granted.

Of course you can get better at cooking with practice, but saying "anyone can cook (an edible meal)" is like me giving you a Russian-English dictionary and saying, well, you can read, you can hold a conversation in Russian now.

That’s what I was thinking - I don’t even spend six hours a week with mine!

I agree. Not everyone can cook well, and I don’t want to eat something someone’s cooked for the sake of it.

My sister cooks because she has a family to feed, but I offer to ‘bring a dish’ often, as it’s not always great.

I don’t batch cook, but agree with it being a join activity where he preps, you cook, he cleans as you go.

Of course you can get better at cooking with practice, but saying "anyone can cook (an edible meal)" is like me giving you a Russian-English dictionary and saying, well, you can read, you can hold a conversation in Russian now.

@gannett No it isn't, it's like saying, "Well, you can read, you can sound out a few words of Russian". No one is suggesting that everyone on earth can cook like Gordon Ramsey. But any adult without disabilities can cook a few basic meals - at the very least, if they can't, they are capable of teaching themselves. Boiling some pasta and making a simple sauce to go with it (following a recipe) is hardly rocket science.

I think it's bonkers. It just seems like you're setting yourself strange, overly demanding goals for not sure what reason.

One cooked meal a day would be fine and normal for most working people.

Breakfast can be toast or porridge or all sorts of things that he can manage himself. (Does he really want leftovers for breakfast?!)

Just do a main meal together for around 6/7. As pps have said, treat it as couple-time doing an activity together rather than you being off in another room cooking for hours. Simplify what you're cooking during the week and only do more complex meals at the weekend or whenever you have more free time.

He can surely throw a supper for himself together late at night as well. Salads and cold meats, baked potatoes, reheat something, crikey, you can have decent meals without skill.

Do you have kids?

If you're planning to have kids, for goodness sake, get him doing some of the cooking, so he can look after you post-partum or when ill, and look after the kids on his own.

Treating him like he's incapable is making a rod for your own back, and it's not as romantic tending to a full grown adult man like a delicate flower once you have genuinely dependent children to look after.

Surely most couples get home on a weeknight around 6 or 7 and go to bed around 10 or 11, so you are getting a very normal amount of time together. In that time most couples cook dinner, do chores, maybe a bit of extra work, life admin, whatever, and still have enough time to socialise together. You are overthinking it.

So he has time from 4 to 6 pm to cook?

What exactly is the problem?

He can't cook you say?

Well, it's about time he learnt. Cooking is an essential life skill!

Jamie, Gordon, Delia, Ainsley + any number of YouTube chefs.

It's not rocket science FFS