Her attempts to nurture both their bodies and their bond clash with his unwillingness to embrace anything beyond his narrow tastes. The kitchen, once a place of creativity and care, becomes a quiet compromise, where her own needs fade beneath the weight of his culinary limitations and unspoken frustrations.
So, me and my husband have vastly different tastes in basically everything. For the most part it doesn’t matter, but we clash heavily when it comes to food. Before we met, I basically never ate out, drank nothing but water and unsweet tea (with the occasional juice) and ate mostly vegetarian, always pretty healthy meals.
When we started dating I started eating out a lot more because that’s what he always wanted to do and I’m honestly easily influenced. I learned pretty quickly that he doesn’t like ANYTHING that includes anything other than a variation of meat, cheese, and starch (rice, bread, pasta, potatoes).
Not a single vegetable other than corn, no dairy except butter, no fruits, no grains, nothing. He also hates a majority of seasonings.
I ended up adapting my cooking to suit his tastes, occasionally making myself healthy sides but it bothered him so I mostly stopped. I tried to at least have healthy lunches or choose healthier options when eating out, which was still regularly.
Eventually we had a daughter, and now that she’s getting old enough to eat with us, I’m pretty much done with how we eat. I don’t like eating like this, I’ve gained weight and feel out of shape, my body feels awful, whatever.
And I don’t want our daughter to grow up not eating anything healthy and substantial. So I stopped agreeing to fast food and made him only get it for himself and started cooking nice meals again…
which he of course hates. Ive begged him to at least try and find SOMETHING remotely healthy he likes eating (quite frankly, my food doesn’t even taste healthy, our friends and family rave about how delicious it is even when it has stuff they normally don’t like in it), it really shouldn’t be that hard.
But he refuses. So I told him he can make his own meals if he doesn’t like ours, that I’m tired of eating unhealthy all the time.
He accepted it at first, but he’s gradually been getting more upset about it. He says it’s not fair that we have these nice meals and he’s stuck eating crap. I told him he’s free to join, and what he’s making himself is literally the same things I’d make him anyways (minus some “fancier” things), and that I’d be willing to still make some of the fancier ones just not so often.
But he says its not the same and he wants nice healthy meals like ours and it’s not fair that he’s being excluded. I told him unless he’s willing to let me add spices and vegetables to the meals, I literally CAN’T make him nice healthy meals like ours.
There’s only so many ways you can make a meal with just meat and starch, and you can only make it so healthy.
Now he’s been pouting because he says its not fair he’s the only one who doesn’t get good food, and that I could at least try and include him and im being an asshole by not trying. I think he’s being ridiculous to expect the same type of food we eat without me putting in literally any of the ingredients.
AITA?
Conclusion
The original poster (OP) has reached a breaking point regarding long-term dietary compromises made for her husband, prioritizing her health and the desire to model healthy eating for her daughter. The central conflict arises from the husband’s insistence on eating meals prepared to his extremely restrictive palate, even when the OP has established healthier food standards for the family unit.
Is it fair for the husband to demand participation in the family’s new, healthier meal plan while simultaneously rejecting the necessary ingredients and preparation methods (spices, vegetables) that define those healthy meals, or is the wife justified in setting firm boundaries that require him to prepare his own food if he will not compromise on the basic components of a balanced diet?
Here’s how people reacted:
Oh wait, what’s that, this is a grown ass man who is married and helped you produce another human being? Nevermind then! As an adult human being, he is fully capable of at least TRYING one of the nice meals that you graciously cook for him. Just like you tried, FOR YEARS, to accommodate his tastes (in cooking his meals for him, mind you), to your own detriment. And whether he wants to try your cooking or not, he is also fully capable of obtaining meals for himself that he likes, either by cooking or by going through the drive thru. But this garbage, where he basically says “I refuse to try the things you cook because I don’t like them, so please cooking those things I don’t like even though I don’t know if I like them, in a way that I will like, though” is BS.
NTA.
I had a roommate in college who only ate chicken tenders, mac and cheese, and grilled cheese. And occasionally a burger (this was added only a year before). His mother had coddled him like crazy as she thought she was infertile (my friend had two older adopted siblings) and then she got pregnant with him the “miracle baby”.
I love food and felt bad that my roomie was missing out on so much. Plus he was going to die young with that diet. I would try and convince him to just try a bite, he can spit it out if he hates it. The food I finally got him to try was a strawberry while we were drunk. I told him it tasted like candy. He liked it! The next time we were drunk we tried something different. Eventually he didn’t have to be drunk for him to take a bite of something. He had been so set in his ways for so long that I think he had been scared of the new tastes and textures.
I am in no way saying that you need to do the above. That is not your role. Your husband is an adult. I just thought I would share a story of my picky-eating friend.
Like, look at what you wrote. He was only okay with things when you completely adopted his way of cooking: even you making yourself healthy sides “bothered” him to the point where you stopped doing it.
You’ve given him option after option after option in terms of compromises, but the only thing he actually wants is total capitulation to his preferences. You shouldn’t feel bad about what you’re doing, and certainly shouldn’t give in to his pity party.
Your husband is acting like a petulant child – he can either eat healthy meals you make or he can eat his artery-clogging unhealthy foods and watch you and your daughter eat nutritious meals and shut his mouth.
But if your husband insists on eating with you, you two need to find a middle ground as far as meals. Make a main course that you’ll both eat and add sides that you like and some sides that he likes, you both get the options of what you want without having to go so far to the left or right in this situation.
Are you married to an 8 year old? This is some next level infantile behavior. Send him back to Mommy’s house and tell her to teach him how adults eat. For Pete’s sake, this would be comical if he wasn’t an actual grown ass man with a child. Now it’s just sad.
NTA.
I can’t stand picky eaters who won’t even TRY to address their picky eating!
Also INFO how does something taste healthy? Thats a nutritional descriptor not a flavor.