Just checking on the mocking thing. I wanted to ask before assuming you were and then getting shitty about it.
Yeah, she was not right. Maybe when I get a chance I’ll start a thread about it. Let’s just say, when someone tells you they have Borderline Personality Disorder AND they refuse treatment for it, you should actually look up BPD then run.
(I’m not picking on people that have it, I’m saying, like any psych disorder, if untreated, it can be a nightmare)
Well, they don’t know her; you do. Good company, good heart, good sex – there’s a lot there to counterbalance the fact she’s a bit of a freak in the food department. It sounds like you’re invested enough in the relationship to want to give her some slack on the food thing, bug you though it may, and, hey, good for you. But in that case, leave her the hell alone about it. You’re not her parent, you are not responsible for expanding her culinary horizons or improving her eating habits. Cook your own food and let her forage for herself; there have been at least two or three posters who have said that’s the sort of relationship they have, and it works out fine for them.
Like Jodi said, the final decision about whether you should stay in this relationship is yours, no one else’s. You don’t have to apologize for putting up with crap to be with someone you like, and you don’t have to apologize for not wanting to put up with crap even though you may otherwise like the person very much.
Either way, I’d strongly suggest changing how you see breaking up. It’s not a judgment of the other person’s character, it’s not an assertion that you’re a better person than they are, it’s not a punishment for things they’ve done wrong, and it doesn’t mean you don’t like them. The other person doesn’t have to agree with your reasons.
Stay or go, I think that when you view breaking up as a reasonable, available option, you’ll form better relationships and be a better partner in those relationships.
Stuff like that incident with the pizza is exactly the kind of thing which will eventually make you psychotic. You might think you overreacted but the more time you spend with her, the more that kind of thing is going to shred your nerves. Even though it would have probably been better to wait until you were alone with her, you were right to at least say something and call her on it . That’s exactly the kind of negative social sanction she needs to receive. People like that often have no idea what buzz kills they really are, especially when they ruin everyone else’s meal (and just good time over all) by that kind of petty, childish whinging.
I think that kind of thing bugs me a lot because I’ve lived in Third World countries and seen literal starvation up close. A couple of years in Liberia tends to forever sap your sympathy for somebody who’s willing to waste a whole pizza rather than just pick the fucking tomatoes off.
No, it was a problem with her. He had to go without toppings he wanted because the baby didn’t want to just pick off what she didn’t want. It just so happens that the kitchen made a mistake with the other pizza too, but my point is that more and more outings are going to end up like that. One person is too infantile to compromise even a little bit and everyone else ends up having to pander to it. You can never cook anything for the both of you. You can never order a pizza with toppings you want. Her issues will always get imposed on those who want to host you as a couple. Cumulatively it’s going to add up to periodic meltdowns. No amount of anal is worth that.
Yeah, should you stay or should you go…that’s definitely up to you.
But listen to Dio when he says this because it is SO true. There are times when I just want to shake my BIL for the way he behaves. And I can tell you that my BIL is MILES better than your gf and I still get a fucking headache trying to think up places where our family can go eat that isn’t the same thing over and over again. He doesn’t eat Indian food. We’re ALL Indian, including him. He couldn’t even eat the food at his own wedding. He didn’t come to the tasting, which was one of the best meals I’ve ever had in my life (my parents had my sis’s wedding catered by one of, if not the, nicest Indian restaurants in Boston). They had a 7 course meal at their wedding and he didn’t touch one item.
It’s teppenyaki, time after time after time (he eats Italian, French, Mexican and Japanese foods…most dishes in said cuisines). We can’t go out to anything else. EVER.
I don’t care how much picky people say “well, we try not to discombulate your plans”-we will ALWAYS cater to him because we love him, and in a more major way, we love my sister and we’re not going to exclude either him or her from major family functions. It’s not even about me being inconvenienced, but I cannot sit and watch him drink a ginger ale and go hungry because my sis and I like tapas and he claims every tapas dish has a “smell”. Because you know, that thing called love. And wanting to share the experience of a meal, important in most cultures.
When my sister visits my parents she has a list of foods she wants to eat because my brother-in-law refuses to eat them at home. And she can ONLY eat them when she visits them. The first word out of her mouth when she gets off the plane is “Dosa?”
That is what life is like in the long-term with someone insanely picky, and my BIL is leaps-bounds-and-neverending-miles less pathological than your GF.
Good relationship, great sex whenever you want, “great gifts” (what is she showering you with them?), goes to the gym with you, puts up with your being an asshole. She’s only 19. You can’t get over her food hangups. So you go online to publicly rant about it and talk about dumping her over it. It sounds like you’re kind of a dick. Dump her.
So, what would you like picky people like your brother-in-law and me to do? Choke down food we hate? Risk throwing up on the table because we’re forcing ourselves to eat food we don’t like? How can we make the situation better?
I don’t want to sound snarky, but seriously…what would you have us do? I’m not speaking for anyone else, but personally, I’m not a picky eater because I like to be a pain in the ass. I’m a picky eater because the taste and texture of a lot of foods makes me feel physically ill, and life is too damn short for me to spend my time gagging on food I hate because it makes someone else’s night a little more convenient. Accept the fact that my personal menu is limited, or let me gracefully bow out of engagements that involve food, but don’t guilt trip me because I don’t like the same food you do. (That being the general you, not you in particular, anu-la1979. Personally, I love Indian food.)
So because she doesn’t want to do something as opposed to can’t do something she should be harrassed about it? If she didn’t want kids would it be okay for her bf to try to force her to have them against her will? If she didn’t want to have anal sex would it be okay for him to try to force her to do that? If she didn’t want to drink alcohol would it be okay for him to spike her drink because she needs to loosen up? If they were different religions would it be okay for him to say they were going to the mall and then take her to church so he could convert her? If she says no, that means no, every single time, even when that no is directed at food. Mentioning it, offering her something you feel is good is fine, but making food that she doesn’t like and calling it a gift* is * the equivalent of the dog-feces-diaper thing. That is like if she told you she is really uncomfortable with BDSM and doesn’t want to have that kind of sexual relationship and you constantly give her ball gags and whips for gifts. You are just trying to expand her horizons right? Doesn’t matter that she doesn’t want that, she should do it because it would make you happy right? :rolleyes:
Even if a diamond necklace is generally considered a good gift, so what? Bread is usually considered a good precursor to dinner. If she was on Atkins or suffered from Celiac Sprue she shouldn’t be forced to eat bread because someone else thinks she should. It doesn’t matter if it is generally accepted as great food because she doesn’t want it. The OP even mentions that she is trying to open up and has tried calamari which is a HUGE step for someone who doesn’t eat something outside of a core group of foods. She tries not to be too objectionable but is rude sometimes. I am not defending the rudeness. The peanut butter thing was weird and gross, and the hot pockets thing was rude (though from the OP’s explanation it seems she was doing it out of courtesy. Misplaced courtesy but courtesy none the less.) She shouldn’t be considered infantile for having different tastes than he does though. Strange maybe but she is an adult and is free to make whatever decisions she wants and shouldn’t be made to feel bad about them.
I am a semi-picky eater. I will try most things in front of me, I have a very small list of things I won’t eat, seafood being one of them. I would never force a vegetarian to eat meat or someone kosher to eat pork just like I would not want them to try to make me eat fish. I think if he likes and respects her he will let it go and she can come around to eating more variety in her own time or he will walk away and let her find someone who doesn’t have a problem with it.
In answer to your aside, my name is an onomatapia but it has nothing to do with food.
This kind of melodramatic exaggeration is exactly what harshes everyone’s buzz.
Try growing up a little. Expand your horizons. Learn how to eat something strange. You’re not going to die. Palates change with maturity. A lot of these kinds of blocks are more psychological than anything. You might be shocked at what you end up liking.
The more I think about it, the more I think there are two distinct types of picky eaters:
Type I: Have an aversion to some specific ingredient in foods (may be because of taste or texture), but are willing to try unfamiliar cuisines, as long as they don’t contain the particular ingredient they don’t like.
Type II: Unwilling to try unfamiliar cuisines, even if they like all the individual ingredients that go into a dish.
I’m a type I picky eater- there are a number of ingredients I don’t like (and some I won’t eat because they’re not kosher). I love how restaurants list pretty much everything that goes into a dish, because then I can see if it is likely to have something I don’t like. I may ask, “Does this have chicken stock?” at a restaurant, and eat it only if the answer is “no” (“I don’t know” isn’t good enough).
My parents are type IIs. We had the hardest time finding a place to eat with them when they came out for a visit last year. They only like standard American food and Italian-American food- no Thai, no Greek, definitely no sushi (you’ll get trichinosis from raw fish and also from eating unbaked cookie dough, according to my mother- yeah, whatever, Mom). They prefer chain restaurants to unknown local places, in general. Mom also claims that most Chinese restaurants have a particular smell that she finds objectionable. Mr. Neville and I very rarely go out for standard American food- for one thing, it’s a cuisine that is very likely to contain non-kosher ingredients, and also there are so many good ethnic restaurants around us. We try to accommodate them, because we do love them, but we can’t stand more than about two weeks of it (and we’re likely to send them out on their own at least one night of that, so we can get some more interesting food). The night after they left, we went out for sushi.
I don’t think they’re type I picky- they don’t seem to object to any particular ingredients. Their food pickiness seems to me to be fundamentally different from mine. I’m quite willing (and generally eager) to try an unfamiliar cuisine, as long as I can determine that a dish doesn’t have anything I don’t like in it.
I suppose a type I picky eater could dislike a particular cuisine if they disliked some characteristic spices that go into it, or something like that. But I think someone who says they “don’t like Indian food” is more likely to be a different kind of picky eater.
I’d expect him to grow the fuck up and eat Indian food, at least for starters. In fact, the not eating Indian food is about a zillion different versions of buzzkill more awful than the fact that I had to have teppenyaki at my Disastrous Graduation Dinner (disastrous for multiple reasons, actually) when I wanted to go out for Thai or Ethiopian or Indian at my own fucking graduation dinner, but you know because I love him and didn’t want my own brother (the in-law should be left off, I’ve known him my entire life) hungry at the table. It’s kind of a buzzkill because we’re all Indian, as I said, including him.
Every other kid I’ve seen pull the “ohhhh, I don’t eat Indian food” crap in the Indian community has grown the fuck up, he’s the last holdout from that cossetted camp.
What’s more obnoxious is that he doesn’t have some sort of gag reflex, the way you’re saying.
For example: onion is a “no” food.
My sister now cooks and purees them into dishes so he can’t pick them out and he doesn’t notice. In fact, he’s started claiming she’s a better cook.
I call all of his pickiness as bullshit. The boy doesn’t have a single thing wrong with him beyond the fact that he’s an only child raised by a hypochondriachal mother who catered to his every dictatorial demand. If he’d been born into my family, my parents would probably have starved him out, the way they did us.
Incidentally, Kairos, I have to say that you sound less picky than my brother, maybe a mile ahead of him. If you don’t like meat, you don’t like meat. I’m not going to argue with preferences like that. I don’t eat underripe tomatoes as a rule either, though I will do so in a bind. I mean, why not eat ripened tomatoes when possible?
I also said in my original post on this thread that I can deal with “reasonable picky”-yeah my posts are snarky but every time I have to cater to my brother’s whims I remember everything I DO love about him. And those positives completely outstrip his food eccentricities. PLUS, I put him the category of “reasonable picky”-the Indian food thing still steams me (except temple curd rice, THAT’S okay) but he’s given us 4 or 5 cuisines to work with-plus my sister has strategically started duping him, or overtly leading him to different crap on a slooooowwww basis.
And to that extent, rather than excluding him, I’ll bend and include him. It helps that he’s started to meet us 1/4th of the way (1/2 is too generous)
But the OP is talking about 4 items. 4 cuisines is irritating, and I’ve listed what life is like with someone who only eats 4 styles of cooking, think about 4 ITEMS. That’s when you roll into crazytown. My bro’s just a spoiled child…if he were limiting himself to 4 items, I would have seriously counselled my sister not to marry him.
Maybe picky eaters like the OP talks about are some combination of the two types of picky eaters I talked about? I know that, when Mr. Neville and I are eating together with my parents, the list of restaurants where we can all find something to eat is generally pretty small.
Sounds just like me with my parents…
I also realize that I’d probably be a total buzzkill to someone who liked barbecue joints, clam shacks, Southern restaurants, or fast food, which helps me to tolerate other people being a buzzkill to me by not eating Thai (or whatever) food. Takes all kinds to make a world, or at least all kinds is what we’ve got…
And yes, my parents’ food habits do make me wonder sometimes if somehow my sister and I both got switched at birth… The OP’s girlfriend is too young to be their kid that got exchanged for one of us, though- my sister’s 29 and I’m 31.
mark me down as a cook who would gladly accomodate you if you asked me in advance - i would probably have fun making you something nice. Heck, I am as allergic as all get out to mushrooms, and I keep veggieburgers, quorn nuggets, quorn fillets and quorn mince in the freezer for various veggie friends of mine. I would even try to make something quick and impromptu if you showed up as a guest of a guest and didnt have any chance to ask me first, as long as you were polite about it the way you seem to be =)
I am a rampant omnivore [within the limitations of my allergies] and have happily kept kosher, kept lacto-ovo vegetarial and strict vegan for roomies at various times. I wouldn’t, however put up with that girl’s behavior. She should have politely declined the peanut butter if she wasnt going to eat the whole peanut parts. [dont really like peanut butter, but i really dislike the lumpy crap if i do have to eat it.]
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