My husband and I get along quite well. We're both mellow people who don't like to argue, so we cruise along with minimal wrangling, even though there are a few things about which we fundamentally disagree.
The one thing that makes me really mad at him–and it's happening more and more often as we stay home to try to save money–is when he's critical of something I've cooked. If he so much as breathes a word of negativity about something I have made or plan to make, it instantly flips my hostility switch.
It happened the other day when I was laying out my plan to make roast beef sandwiches for dinner. He made what was no doubt a mild statement about the fact that he's not a big roast beef fan and I drew upon my inner longshoreman to verbally chastise him in the strongest possible terms.
When he rightly protested, it finally dawned on me (after almost sixteen years of marriage) that I really was out of line. And then I realized where it was all coming from.
While I was growing up, the dinner table was a frequent passive-aggressive battleground for my parents. My mom would make spaghetti and my dad would say he just had spaghetti for lunch. She'd cook ham and cabbage and he'd make a crack about "peasant food." These scenarios made my mom furious and I'm pretty sure I remember hearing a story about her throwing a plate of food at him in the early days of their marriage.
Over time, I'd internalized the idea that criticizing home-cooked food was grounds for righteous fury on the part of the cook.
I'm not saying my husband isn't a little unreasonably picky at times. However, he truly doesn't deserve to be treated as if he'd just committed an unpardonable sin just because broccoli isn't his favorite vegetable.
So I'll be working on that.
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