Caught between his desire to support her learning and the frustration of tasting salt-heavy, vodka-soaked pasta, he drew a firm line. He urged her to cook for herself and clean up after, revealing a deeper struggle for respect and understanding in their shared space. This wasn’t just about food—it was about the delicate balance of love, effort, and the unspoken expectations that bind a marriage.
My(30M) wife(26F) is a disaster in the kitchen. She leaves a huge mess behind after she’s done with cooking. She uses a zillion utensils even to make a coffee. Today, she said she learnt this new recipe from her mum and went into the kitchen to prepare it.
When She was done it turned out to be vodka pasta. It tasted horrible because she added an entire bottle of vodka. She also put too much salt and it ended up tasting like salt with pasta on the side rather than pasta seasoned with salt.
So I told her to make whatever she wants only for herself and never for me and also to clean up the kitchen after she’s done cooking. I work as a chef at a restaurant and I work nearly 12 hours a day.
So I have just enough time to get as much work done as possible at home and then go to sleep. When my wife cooks, the food turns out to be inedible and it ends up in the trash. Then, I have to clean up, cook again and them clean up once again.
So it’s so much work for me. She refuses to go to a cooking class too. I don’t have time to for and teach her. She boiled the pasta in vodka and water. Then she made the sauce with more vodka.
Her logic was that since vodka is one of the important ingredients, adding more of it would make it taste better than the given recipe. She didn’t realize that vodka makes food bitter when added in large quantities.
Conclusion
The husband expresses significant frustration because his wife’s attempts at cooking result in inedible meals, excessive mess, and ultimately force him, despite his demanding 12-hour work schedule as a chef, to clean up, discard the food, and cook a second meal for himself. The central conflict lies between the wife’s stated desire to learn to cook and the husband’s practical need to maintain order and efficiency at home, exacerbated by his professional commitments.
Given the husband’s profession, the wife’s resistance to formal classes, and the resulting wasted time and resources from inedible food, is the husband justified in setting a firm boundary that she must cook only for herself and clean up her own excessive mess, or does this boundary unduly discourage her efforts to learn and contribute?
Here’s how people reacted:
Also if she just cooks for herself she’ll be wasting a lot less food on her mess ups. Just saying.
All the comments here bashing the husband for being rude. But noone seems to notice that the wife creates a mess but doesn’t bother to clear it.
If she is learning to cook and makes a disaster, it’s her responsibility to clear it up as well. You don’t make a mess, and then leave it to someone else to clean it up.
If you want to learn to cook, you should first understand that cleaning is a major part of it.
Also, she doesn’t want cooking classes. She can’t follow a recipe given to her.
He works 12 hours and does all the cooking and cleaning the kitchen for them.
This incident doesn’t seem to be the first one to happen either. I can see why he is losing it now and is sounding rude. Frustration can do that to you.
You’re not the asshole for not eating what she makes, you’re an asshole for being an asshole about it. And your cooking is probably shittier than you think.
I would imagine that when you first started cooking that your stuff was pretty inedible. You don’t get to be a good cook without practicing. Instead of kicking her out of the kitchen, you should work together and she can see how an experienced cook handles the kitchen, and how go clean as you go along. Beginning cooks always make things much more difficult, use a different knife for everything and make tons of dirty dishes. Cooking efficiently requires practice to build confidence. It doesn’t happen overnght.
She knows she is not feeding anyone with her attempts. So she’s engaging in a hobby. Fine. But you don’t expect your SO to walk behind you and clean up your hobby.
Also, writing out some simple recipes for her to try out and follow directions step by step, may boost her confidence so that she can feel productive.
She should also be cleaning up after herself, even if it’s putting dishes in the dishwasher.
Your wife doesn’t even eat the food she’s cooking. So she’s making unnecessary messes and wasting food? While making you double work after working 12s? In a kitchen? She either needs to swallow her pride and go to cooking classes (I saw where you said she refuses) or stop wasting food by ruining dishes. She didn’t learn that recipe. She skimmed over it and threw that shit together.
This shows that she is being dishonest about the whole wanting to cook for you scenario…or your wife has the mentality of a 8 years old : someone else will clean up after me.
Some people really are terrible cooks, even if they try. But leaving a mess like that is absurd.
She wants to learn how to cook. You’re a good cook. You both want to cook for each other, so why not be a team and you can teach her to cook while making meals together?
I just feel she’s trying on a whim.
>Lol if my cooking was shitty I wouldn’t be working at a 5 star restaurant?
Can they fix your attitude too?
JESUS CHRIST
ETA: NTA
How the hell is she still alive?