Not up for talking about relationship conflicts but enjoying the OT tangent:
Sometimes I try to express everything in metric units for fun ("I'll pick up 908 g of chicken"). I thought UK people were as bad or worse wrt Imperial/metric inconsistencies, though? Does anyone in the UK say "I am 177 cm tall" (except wacky people like me)?
The city of Windsor is wacky compared to the rest of Canada: it's the only Canadian place I've been to where everyone uses the Fahrenheit system.
Canadian English is even more inconsistent than those three words, tbf: "airplane" instead of "aeroplane", m/l a crapshoot regarding "s" vs "z" in words like "analyse" or "realize" (I follow the old RCM conventions and use "s" after "y" but "z" after "i"), single quotes are usually for scare quotes and not quotations. I have to edit my spellings if I submit something to an American OR a British journal or conference.
― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Wednesday, 14 March 2018 21:40 (six years ago) link
xpost Ian. I am critical about meals F prepares or even restaurant food. Hopefully, it's the same with the wife where she isn't criticizing you as a person but instead...like there are just so many cooking shows on nowadays, everyone is a f'ing critic on food. I used to think I was hurting his feelings when I later added more salt or spice or lemon but it's just different palates.
― Yerac, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 21:54 (six years ago) link
I think it's mostly that I get mad at myself for not making things better, then I feel sad.
― ian, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 21:55 (six years ago) link
ian, I'm sure this isn't what you intended, but FWIW from one unambitious self-critical sort to another, I'm mad at your wife now
― JRN, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:00 (six years ago) link
xpost I get it, I sometimes don't work and I also try to compensate by doing most of the household labor, back/head rubs, finding ways to save money, cut costs, etc. Just focus on the things that you can control. Also, making completely new things for meals sometimes makes people oddly super happy. Like I don't ask F what he wants to eat sometimes, but I like, for the first time whipped out some naan from scratch this weekend and some chana masala and he was giddy.
― Yerac, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:01 (six years ago) link
i have gotten really good at bringing her tea in bed on saturday mornings.
― ian, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:02 (six years ago) link
And about menopause, I can't even imagine what that is like, but I know when I am hormonal it has nothing to do with the other person, my brain is stalled, so many feelings, I just want things to magically be known and taken care of.
― Yerac, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:04 (six years ago) link
Don't be sad. You are the best, Ian. These times are hopefully temporary.
― Yerac, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:06 (six years ago) link
oh yeah, no, i'm not really sweating it!menopause is insane tho. and i know it's not about me or directed at me, but sometimes it can be tough when your partner is irrationally angry/irrationally upset and there's really not much you can do about it :(
― ian, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:07 (six years ago) link
Yeah, when I get like that F just starts shoving haribo and wine into my mouth and hopes I go to sleep.
― Yerac, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:09 (six years ago) link
https://www.everydayhealth.com/menopause/mood-swings-in-menopause.aspx
― ian, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:11 (six years ago) link
oh so my post was about going *out* to eat
who cooks and what they cook at home is a different matter
― F# A# (∞), Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:15 (six years ago) link
But one of my huge pet peeves is when I make a meal (sometimes nice, sometimes real basic) and inevitably she will find somerthing wrong with it.
Ugh, I needed to hear this because my partner is low on work atm and tries to help out in other ways and I'm often kvetching about it. "dont put the plates on that bench" "whys this been left out" "this teas got too much sugar" lol I am a fucking harridan sometimes :/ (I'm not snappy! just a negative idiot). But tbh until recently for a stay at home dad he wasnt doing very much housework either (dishes, boys lunches/toy cleanup... that was about it). So our fights would be me coming home from a very stressful job, exhasted to the point of tears, only to find that before I could even cook dinner I had to clean the whole kitchen I'd only cleaned 12 hours earlier. And then I'd get "when is dinnerrrrr" on top of all that. AND cooking dinner is a massive PITA in our house because we have 4 people with completely different diets so have to take turns. Drives me and my OCD insane.
― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:23 (six years ago) link
It's all very complicated!!! I think a key understanding that Helen & I have come to is that, as long as we're trying our best, it's important to be patient with each other. On the other hand, if she's been at work all day and she comes home and I haven't cleaned the kitchen and I havent done anything with my day.. yeah, she's got a right to be miffed.
― ian, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:28 (six years ago) link
And while I do enjoy cooking and am okay at it, anything that begins to feel like a chore is gonna be a drag.
― ian, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:29 (six years ago) link
probably the biggest fights in my marriage involved food. at home this was mostly my fault because despite knowing how much her life revolves around food, i had neither the cooking desire or cooking skills to please her.
on vacation it became a nightmare of indecision on her part. i'm not picky; i'll go anywhere. but for her every meal had to be somehow ~special~ (in ways that i myself was not qualified to select). sometimes this worked out great if she could plan in advance, like this one place built into the cliffs above grenada. on the fly, it turned into us walking fucking halfway around lake como because nothing was 'suitable' and going back to the hotel to eat leftover cheese.
i ate much better when we were together, but i'll be happy with the guilt- and disappointment-free turkey sandwich and hummus i have tonight
ps canada is great
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:40 (six years ago) link
every meal had to be somehow ~special~
This may honestly & truly be the foundation of my marriage (I mean on both sides, luckily)
― change display name (Jordan), Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:43 (six years ago) link
This is a little surprising how much couples fight about food. I thought it would be more about money or just incompatibility (which I guess the food issues are moments of that).
― Yerac, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:50 (six years ago) link
I don't think it's surprising. Food is something you put in your body. Some might deem it a question of consent.
― Moo Vaughn, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:51 (six years ago) link
tbf our other huge fight involved whether major league baseball players should be expected to know how to bunt
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:53 (six years ago) link
I am not even touching that consent comparison.
mookie, is she a chef? I feel like maybe I met her a long time ago?
― Yerac, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 23:04 (six years ago) link
For me its not the food itself, its the "prepare and clean up" (to quote Kristin Hersh). Having one kid with coeliac and a refusal to eat most things, both kids vegetarian, mr adult-kid hating his damn vegetables, and no one seeming able to wipe a bench or a dish, I tear my hair out lol.
― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Wednesday, 14 March 2018 23:07 (six years ago) link
it's pretty important that i date a woman who has similar taste in food tbh
i don't want to come to my house smelling like something that i consider awful
― F# A# (∞), Wednesday, 14 March 2018 23:08 (six years ago) link
actually a long term relationship
dating i guess it doesn't rly matter
― F# A# (∞), Wednesday, 14 March 2018 23:09 (six years ago) link
i hate cleaning up the kitchen, not gonna lie.
― ian, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 23:11 (six years ago) link
Y you may have met her, idk! (she was pretty great apart from these aforementioned issues, btw.) she is not a chef, but i think she might now do web stuff for m0m0fuku, so
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 23:13 (six years ago) link
My partner was vegan for over 10 years (he eats some seafood now - no shellfish)). I will eat anything, everything but that also means I am extremely flexible with being veg. But he is also flexible with me eating bone marrow, offal or game meat when we go out. The cleaning is probably more upsetting if I felt like he wasn't equal in it or bartering in that regard. I really love clean floors so I am more than happy to take care of that.
― Yerac, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 23:15 (six years ago) link
divine mrs m also has the ~it must be special~ thing re food, at home its ok cos we can both cook p well but when we're out for *non foody* reasons its pretty aggravatory behaviour not to just satisfice imo
― Moo Vaughn, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 22:51 (thirty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
you should be taken out the back and beaten
― the clodding of the american mind (darraghmac), Wednesday, 14 March 2018 23:31 (six years ago) link
I have to say that eating cheese and drinking wine for dinner in a hotel room while on vacation ( F has hummus) is what I try to do at least a couple of nights. But I also really like to go to grocery stores in other countries.
― Yerac, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 23:49 (six years ago) link
Is that a personal threat or just a colloquial expression of toxic masculinity?
― Moo Vaughn, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 23:49 (six years ago) link
its a casual musing, delivered as airily as tbe original comment nbd
― the clodding of the american mind (darraghmac), Thursday, 15 March 2018 00:14 (six years ago) link
an idiomatic way of saying "fuck off mate"
― ian, Thursday, 15 March 2018 03:26 (six years ago) link
hey try having arguments about food / eating out with a partner who has strict, ironclad rules about these things but will not discuss those rules and refuses to acknowledge they existapologies for venting, this thread is touching on a lot of hot topics for me
― startled macropod (MatthewK), Thursday, 15 March 2018 05:03 (six years ago) link
my wife got really mad at me this morning cuz i got transmission fluid on my jacket while working on the car and it is apparently a symptom of how i don't care about things and don't take care of them.
― ian, Thursday, 15 March 2018 16:57 (six years ago) link
but boy you gotta do you!
― surm, Thursday, 15 March 2018 18:27 (six years ago) link
hey dog latin sorry to hear about your breakup. Can we talk about the most petty things we've fought with our partners about? yesterday it was about logic in website search filters.
― kinder, Thursday, 15 March 2018 23:16 (six years ago) link
had a huge fight - well more just me being harangued - with my ex because i laughed at a guy getting busted after he drove by a cop car while texting on his mobile phone
― Louis Jägermeister (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 15 March 2018 23:18 (six years ago) link
like for not hating the police sufficiently - and i do hate the police, i also hate distracted driving tho
understandablyi have to watch myself as a pedestrian with the damn phone it's awful and v dangerous
― surm, Friday, 16 March 2018 16:13 (six years ago) link
i rly think i came out of a lesson from this last fight, i have to be honest. i know "perfect from now on" isn't a thing (holla built to spill) but i learned that i have a way of going from really high to really low in a split second, and my sanity depends on recognizing those moments, and stepping the fuck back.
― surm, Friday, 16 March 2018 16:14 (six years ago) link
hi! so i made it until last Friday. April 27th. that's more than SIX WEEKS. no fighting! until Friday :( ugh that sucked. I got annoyed with the boo about something he said, but anger got the best of me and it quickly became:(1) i said the wrong things(2) i'm making my boyfriend feel like shit(3) i'm a terrible person
which resulted in a me spiral and us having to talk about everything which was really annoying. i feel like i could have gotten in and out with an easy "hey, what you said kind of bothers me" instead of unleashing all that. we were able to resolve it and the night ended with a candid and chill conversation. didn't go to bed angry, woke up fine. it wasn't the worst, but it threw me for the weekend. i think both of us were exhausted from a long week. now trying to think about how i express my anger in the future. and that's my story.
― surm, Monday, 30 April 2018 15:51 (five years ago) link
6 weeks is great going surm. I wouldn't beat yourself over the odd argument. but it is worth trying to pre-empt arguments, pick your battles and work out how to address problems sensibly before things blow out of proportion. also worth trying to work out whether little bickerings are symptomatic of a bigger issue which isn't getting addressed.
― brand new universal harvester (dog latin), Monday, 30 April 2018 20:24 (five years ago) link
<3 thank you for that
― surm, Monday, 30 April 2018 20:29 (five years ago) link