I think the question should be “is she happy with herself?” If she is, then there’s nothing you can do about it. She’s old enough to know that eating poorly leads to poor health. The fact that she is overweight is no surprise. If she’s okay with her weight then there’s really nothing you can do about her eating. You can’t change someone who really doesn’t want to change.
If I were you I would cook what I wanted and let her fend for herself. If she really likes eating “her food” by herself that tells you a lot about what your future relationship is going to like…
How long have you been dating her, Incubus? How is she with trying new things in other parts of her life? How is she with control issues? How seriously do you feel about her?
Personally, I could never date someone that picky, but I love cooking, especially for other people. Like Trunk and his wife, sharing meals with my husband is an intimate and important thing to me. For other people, it might be playing music together or going to church together, but for me, it’s eating together.
Uh… I’m not sure, since that obviously wasn’t the case. I think eventually I’d start feeling a little uncomfortable taking her to bars or to parties where, literally, everyone had a beer in their hand.
There were a couple instances where we were out at a bar or something and even though she assured me she was comfortable, I just assumed she wasn’t and wanted to go home. I’d have gotten over that, I imagine, but never got the chance to.
Yeah, but it clearly irks Incubus, so regardless of how “reasonable” her preferences look on paper, he’s bothered enough by it to question whether he can cope with it. So he needs to ask himself whether its worth the headache of continuing this relationship.
This may be an unpopular belief, but I think that when you are really attracted to someone that you are compatible with and truly enjoy their company, you’re probably more inclined to see these kinds of habits as cute and quirky instead of aggravating and insane. If you do find these kinds of personal preferences so aggravating and insane that you have to coach yourself into accepting them, and they become the source of many disagreements and silent grudges, then it may be a clue that you’re not all that into them or you’re not really compatible.
I think it’s interesting that you mention a couple of times that you are afraid you are being a control freak…because, frankly, I think she is the one who may have control issues here, not you. I have to second the advice that you don’t deal with her and food…cook for yourself, not for her. Let her do her own thing when it comes to meals. I think the key is for you to not let her control you…and the only way to do this is to not get involved at all in what she eats. Otherwise, you have to worry about the lettuce, and the peanuts, and everything else, and it will drive you crazy.
I am trying to process the part where she took the peanut bits out of her mouth. I am reading the words “meticulously spat out the chunks of peanuts and put them in a little pile on her knee” but I’m not believing it on an emotional level.
I agree with the posters who have said that it’s not worth the effort to take it upon yourself to reform a picky eater. It’s not going to change and it’s only going to make you crazier in the process.
If I were in this situation, the problem would not be with the pickiness of the eating, it’s how the pickiness presents. Spitting out food and piling it up is not an option when eating with others. Would she do that at a meal with your parents? With her boss? If the peanut thing was a fluke and she is generally gracious about politely declining food she doesn’t care to eat, then I would encourage you to try to let this issue go. If she is vocal about her pickiness, including whining or making unusual demands, spitting out food or allowing her choosiness to dictate what others are able to eat, then I would let her go.
I think your probably right. When I was dating, I don’t think I ever paid that much attention to what someone ate. If I suggested chinese and they said they didn’t like it, I’d just suggest another place. When you get to the point where you’re annoyed about someone picking peanuts out of peanut butter it sounds more like the relationship is on it’s way out.
At the risk of offending a total stranger on the Internet, I have to say your girlfriend sounds really immature and self-centered. Picky eater or no, rejecting food that you’ve cooked for her is just rude, to say nothing of spitting out something that you served her. :eek: Lots of people have weird quirks without being a jerk about it.
She sounds a lot like my boyfriend. He is a fussy eater and will also pick through something and remove any elements he doesn’t want. The main result has been that I just don’t cook for him. On the plus side, if I don’t feel like sharing I just have something with beef or mushrooms in it. (those are two of his big ‘I won’t eat that!’ things)
To his credit, over the last couple years he has started broadening his horizons and is somewhat willing to try new things. That has been fun since I’ve been able to introduce him to japanese, greek, cuban and various other types of food. Sometimes he likes it and others not but he is at least willing to try them. When we first got together 6 years ago he wouldn’t have done that. Maybe over time you’ll see the same sort of thing.
If your main concern is her weight and health then that is a totally different matter than her being a picky eater.
Man, I’m glad I’m married. A lot of the comments here demonstrate the most self-centered, judgemental, childish, total lack of any semblance of ability-to-understand-a-viewpoint-other-than-your-own worldviews that I’ve ever heard. You call this person “juvenile”, and yet you’re the ones actiing like little spoiled brats, criticizing someone because they’re not just like you. Where the hell do you get off being so critical of this person JUST because her food tastes are different from yours?
Do you like every single thing in the entire world that anyone calls “food”? If not, you have no call to criticize someone else simply because some of their dislikes are some of your likes. If there is ANYTHING in the world that you don’t like the taste of, I would have just as much right to call you juvenile for not liking it as you do for calling this person juvenile for not liking chunky peanut butter. I mean, you don’t like the taste of bull testicles? How juvenile, just get over it and change your taste buds so that you like them. You like a “good” wine but can’t stomach Two Buck Chuck? How picky of you, go get some counseling and change that, I mean really, you need help.
She was hardly raised by wolves. They sound sort of young and she was sitting in his apartment eating peanut butter off a spoon.
I am a picky eater, I admit it. I don’t want to inconvenience anyone but I eat what I like and no one is going to talk me into eating what I don’t like. It’s food. If someone has that much of a problem with what I eat, that’s their problem. Trust me, no one ever dumped me because I didn’t like white sauce or beets.
Unless you were a top chef, I wonder what kind of world some people live in that it’s that much of a big deal.
With all due respect, I don’t think anything I’ve said in either of my posts judged her at all. I just said our lifestyles weren’t compatible in that way.
On the contrary, I said her lifestyle was probably more healthy than my own.
Like I said, entering the relationship I didn’t figure it would be an issue. It was. It was niether of our faults, but that’s how it ended up working out. Such is life.
She is not going to like something because you want her to. You should make what you want, she’ll have to make her own meal that has what she wants. The peanut butter incident is gross and I wouldn’t put up with that. Spiting out food in a pile in front of somebody, is way rude and gross. I had a cooworker that would nibble apart a milkyway as suck on the insides for five minutes like a popcicle. I made it clear after a few times that she grossed out everybody in the breakroom while she did this. I asked her to please suck her milkyway in privite or not at all. Her respose was she didn’t know it was grossing out all of us, and stopped. Maybe you should film her when she does this, so she can see how bad it is.
I’ve put up with it for 8 months. We don’t live together.
I don’t know if she actually spat the bits of peanut out- the point is that she was definitely not allowing them to be swallowed. Reading the posts definitely make me realize how much I’ve pandered to it. I think part of it is that I get really hurt if I make dinner and she won’t touch anything I made, or take one bite and say, “I don’t like it. Can I have something else?”. We get into aguments over it and sometimes its better in the short-term to comprimise and make something we both enjoy.
It can also be embarassing sometimes. Both of us were invited to my mom’s house for dinner. Her boyfriend is a GREAT cook, and he helped ‘cure’ me of my pickiness by preparing very good and balanced meals. When my girlfriend asked me what was for dinner, I said ribs, salad, corn, and rolls. She then went over to my mom’s boyfriend (who was cooking at the time) and asked if he could just microwave her a hot pocket instead. She had never tried anything he made, just flat-out assumed she wouldn’t like any of it, and didn’t want the embarassment of winding up making a face at her meal or something. :smack:
Not liking chunky peanut butter is one thing. I just don’t eat it. I don’t eat it, and then spit out the chunky pieces and pile them up on my knee in public. THAT is what is disgusting and juvenile.
wasson, fair enough. Maybe I just tend to be a little sensitive about it, because I get so tired of people constantly saying, “What, you don’t drink? WHY?” and looking at me like I have two heads. Why should I have to tell them rather private details about my medical history?
I WILL have a drink on occassion, but when I do, it makes me sleepy, so I’m obviously not meant to be a great social drinker, sadly.
I don’t think there’s a been a single post saying that the OP’s girlfriend is a bad person because she doesn’t like any particular food. Everyone has different food tastes and some are wider than others. But, there’s this thing that mature adults do called compromise. Like eating something your partner made for you, even if you think you won’t like it that much, because it’s important to them. Like controlling what you eat without making a big disgusting scene about it. Like recognizing that your particular tastes aren’t the end-all be-all and you might just enjoy something new if you gave it an honest try.
(those are two of his big ‘I won’t eat that!’ things)