Marriage Advice: Convincing a Wife to Cook What You Like
Here’s where we answer our readers’ questions. Please don’t blame us if our suggestions don’t work for you; you’re the one taking advice from a donkey.
Pasta Pandemonium
Dear Donkey and Wife: My wife always makes a pasta dish for me because I once told her I liked it. I was actually lying about liking it, but she has been making it for over two years now. How can I let her know that I don’t like it without hurting her feelings? -Slave to a pasta pusher
He says: When in doubt, get out
Two ideas immediately come to mind. First, you could try sabotage. This could include adding ingredients like salt and baking soda or it could include placing hair in the food. Either way, you could claim that you were turned off of the meal and just can’t eat it anymore. If your wife insists on making it, sabotage again. Soon she will doubt her abilities and you can live in peace.
You could also fake an allergy. Begin eating the meal and then tell your wife that you feel itchy. Tell her that you need to go to the bathroom. Exit the room and find the closest carpet. Vigorously rub your face on the carpet for 10-15 seconds. You should also get your eyes red and watery, so drip some mouthwash into your eyes. Come back and tell her that you feel terrible. “I felt fine before dinner, I’m not sure what happened,” you say. This will seem very sudden to your wife, so mention that you noticed similar symptoms the other day when you had some pasta at work. You have now laid the groundwork for the future. Next time your wife suggests the meal, explain that you just had pasta at work and that you don’t want to risk another attack.
She Says: Can’t Stand The Food, Get Into the Kitchen
Well, hopefully you’ve learned your lesson about lying to your wife; there certainly is a delicate balance between being encouraging/complimentary and being untruthful to the point that you each suffer.
Why not just tell your wife that some of the regular dinner dishes are getting old, and suggest that you try out some new meals together. The key to success here is to be involved with planning the menus. Take some time to sit down together and look through cookbooks or online, find some new things to try, make your menus and shopping lists (again, together), and try it all out. If your wife usually does the cooking, offer to make some of the new meals yourself or at the very least to work on them together. Some of the best meals we have are the ones The Donkey and I make together on a regular basis–we each have our jobs and enjoy cooking side-by-side (as soon as we finish bickering about whose turn it is to cut the gross stuff off the chicken breasts).
In the future, be more involved in planning the weekly menu; unless your wife really likes that particular pasta dish, just be sure to have other meal ideas to take its place.
That’s it for our suggestions… Any other ideas for getting what you want on the table?
(Do you need advice from The Donkey and The Wife? Contact us and ask away)
4 Responses to “Marriage Advice: Convincing a Wife to Cook What You Like”
I agree with the wife. You should both have an active part in the menu AND in the preparation of your meals. If the Donkey doesn’t want to do that, he can’t complain…or sabotage.
Sooo, what’s going on with the names?
P.S. Love reading your blog, just wish you’d post more often
By Employee No. 3699 on Jul 30, 2008
Here’s a new thought (not), tell her the truth.
By Carol on Jul 30, 2008
Neither. I’m a fan of the good old fashioned honest truth. If the husband isn’t grown up enough to express to his wife that he really loved the effort, but not the meal, then he can just suck it up and keep on eating it until he grows a pair and can tell the truth about it.
And if the wife gets all bent out of shape when she’s told the truth (as long as it was not mean-spirited) then she needs to grow up too and don’t be surprised when her husband stops telling her the truth just to spare himself the drama of her reactions to it.
By Shannon on Jul 30, 2008
I think, Honesty and communication is so important. Marriage takes work. You have to give a little and so does the other person. Little things make life grand. Never go to bed angry, always try to compromise.
By Jaison Williams on Aug 20, 2008