Why are you trying to “fix” her? Why are you trying to train her to make chocolate chip cookies? Did she ask you to teach her how to make chocolate chip cookie? Surely, she can tell that what she produced wasn’t the same as the chocolate chip cookies you made. Maybe she likes them this way. Maybe she likes the autonomy of making cookies however she damn well wants.
Quite honestly, i would leave a man who was trying to train me, unless it was a skill i specifically asked for help with.
She offered you a chocolate chip muffin. Say thanks, and either eat it and enjoy the muffin, or don’t eat it if you don’t care for chocolate chip muffins. Don’t harass her about how many eggs she used.
I am appreciating this thread as I see a lot of myself in the OP.
I am admittedly a perfectionist and have strong opinions about the way things should be done. I micromanage my wife all the time and she hates it. And I know I am wrong to do it, but it is SOOOOO hard to keep my mouth shut. Sometimes it is literally an instinctive reaction and my mouth says something before my brain can stop it.
I really appreciate the feedback being shared here and hope it can help make me more tolerant. I need to learn to keep my mouth shut and just eat the fucking cookie!
She asked me to teach her how to bake. But she only wants one lesson on each new dish with no suggestions after that. It doesn’t work like that. These are very large batches that she distributes to family members and she is very proud when she delivers a nice product. Cooking is for adults; it is not some place you can play games. I don’t open my peep unless I see a pending disaster. Another thing I was very clear about. When she asks me to teach her I made it very clear I had certain rules. We always use a timer. We discuss any changes to a recipe or technique. After each batch we evaluate if any changes in time or temperature are needed. We never crowd things. I might as well been talking to a wall.
yes she asked me to teach her. I am very sensitive to her need for autonomy, and I respect that to a fault. There is just a limit.
I am glad you asked, yes I encourage her input and go out of my way to create situations where she can create some value on whatever project it is. I have been in relationships for about 50 years of my life and controlling on my part has never even been a minor issue. I ran truck repair shops since the age of 22 and have trained countless mechanics. I have run into a couple like her but again, I have no desire to control for the sake of control, I enjoy watching someone grow and develop their own sets of skills.
Well, we have very different standards. I don’t think of cooking as an activity with a right answer. A disaster is when you walk away from the hot frying pan and the kitchen wall catches on fire, not when your cookies come out differently than intended. (My father, generally an excellent cook, did that once.) i remember, as a child, my sister was making chocolate chip cookies and ran out of flour. So she substituted powdered sugar, because it looked similar. As the cookies baked, they melted and she produced lace cookies. They were surprisingly tasty.
Is it possible there is some communication gap between your idea of teaching her to cook and hers? Is she just overly sensitive to criticism? (My daughter hates even constructive criticism. She’s trying to learn to accept it better, but it hurts her.) I don’t know what’s going on here, of course, but it doesn’t sound healthy or fun for either of you.
Because this situation sounds familiar to me I am certain there are areas where your perfectionism misses the mark and your wife does not mention it to you. Reverse roles once in a while and see where you are bound to come up short wrt perfection. I’ll withhold my real Life examples of living with a so called perfectionist who has no filter on their mouth.
But I appreciate your forthright acknowledgement of the dynamic.
Her foray into cooking began with a banana cake about a year and a half ago. We were throwing away too many bananas so I suggested we make a banana carrot cake. It was delicious and she started making one every week with the left over bananas. As time went on the cake kept evolving until it wasn’t even a shadow of the original. I suggested we look up a recipe on line and restart the process. That was the last carrot cake. A few months later she asked me to teach her baking, breads, cookies, pies and cakes. She is always fine on the first one but wants no feedback after that no matter how bad they come out. She really enjoys being the boss in the kitchen and I do appreciate that but she just doesn’t have the skill sets to go with it.
Seems that her idea of being taught something is not the same as desiring to learn something. What is there for you to do in teaching her to bake that she couldn’t learn from reading a recipe herself? Professional teachers have to try to teach uncooperative students. SO’s ought not be so required.
In the past, I have had a couple of people ask me to teach them how to golf. It became immediately clear that they did not intend to actually practice in such a way that they incorporated my instruction into their game. IMO, such people do not truly wish to learn. Instead, they wish some secret that will magically result in improvement.
In the dynamic you describe, I could imagine saying (in effect), “Go ahead and cook whatever you wish. But don’t expect me to pretend to enjoy your efforts/failures.”
I wonder how other people deal with SOs who cook horribly, or even whose tastes just differ tremendously. There are some few things my wife likes that I don’t. For example, I don’t eat eggs. But if she wants to occasionally make herself eggs, I have no difficulty finding something else to eat.
I have a question about Golf, I had to quit about 35 years ago after a neck surgery. But, I remember taking lessons one time and he had me putting all my weight on my left foot throughout the swing with no shifting in the hips. I liked it ok for my short game but had poor results on my longer game. Is that still a thing or was it just a fad?
Makes no sense at all. I assume you golf right handed. In VERY general terms - for full shots, start with weight evenly distributed. On back swing you shift your weight to your back leg. Start your downswing with your hips, transferring your weight to the front leg. If you don’t shift your weight, you will have no power as your swing will be all in your arms.
For short game - putting/chipping, should probably have weight pretty evenly distributed. But some weight shift occurs on any shot other than right around the green. Say outside 30 yards or so.
And most neck surgeries oughtn’t preclude golf entirely.
Golf and chopping wood were the only two things I had to eliminate after the surgery. A few hours after playing I start developing this horrible pain in both my forearms and my hands are locked up in an extreme open position. It only lasts about 12 hours but is about the worst pain I have ever experience. If I don’t hit the ball too hard or go the driving range before playing, I can get by but it kind of took the fun out of it.
You are not entitled to giving her “input”. She is an adult, she has the right to mental autonomy.
I won’t say that you’re not allowed to be mad at her. You have to own your feelings. But when you are mad at her because she isn’t wanting your input - that is emotionally unhealthy. And a strong indicator that you are being abusive.
The only right you have to give her your input is when she’s risking physical damage, or when she is being abusive to you.
If I have to eat the food and buy the food I feel I have a right to give input. But it goes beyond that, in my 76 years on this earth I have never ran across a woman who didn’t actually enjoy a little input. I do not enjoy being with someone who does not respect me or my opinion. I do have the right to end the relationship
My take is two 76yos are not going to be teaching each other new tricks.
You are each ossified in your respective characters. For both good and ill. Those two characters either naturally mesh well or naturally do not mesh well. It is up to you, and her, to decide if that mesh is “well enough”.
Here is another possible aspect unrelated to the above. …
I will suggest that if you are providing her a place to stay and food and cash, and all the rest of that routine middle class American logistical support, and she can’t provide that for herself due to her history, then you have a different problem. Even if she could get by alone, but your situation is lots more comfortable, that’s just a milder version of the same sauce.
You now have an economic prisoner. She knows she’s a prisoner. And resents it. She’ll be being oppositional in other areas to buy herself something to feel self-respect about.
I am not suggesting you entered the relationship with predatory intent. Probably rather the opposite; you had a generous helping intent. Yet, real easily that turns into the “rescuer” persona of the drama triangle. Which turns the other person into the victim persona. Drama inevitably ensues.
Sometimes my wife gives me advice, and I make it obvious to her that I do not want her input. But sometimes she continues and I’ll simply ignore her. Based on what you wrote here, though, my wife is being “abusive”?