lunch

I don't see it as a 'badge of honour' to have a Dh who can't or won't cook. Mine would willingly have a go if I insisted, but to be frank I'm happy to cook once a day - as long as he clears up! - plus he's utterly non fussy and always appreciative of whatever I make, whether it's taken a lot of prep. or is just jacket potatoes with beans and cheese.
I really couldn't do with a fussy eater!

I'm appalled at this expectation, and by so many men. I do breakfast for us both and yes I know that is easy but I've always believed in a good breakfast. Lunch is a hit and miss thing that varies on what each us want to do. My wife does dinner but I help as much as I am allowed!

During the day I make coffee and tea as required. So I do the easy things but my wife likes it that way (apparently I make the best coffee but I am no judge). If necessary I can get my own dinner.

Sharing in retirement is surely the fairest way.

Your Advice Needed

I have a DS who lives in Portugal with his partner and their young daughter. The relationship has long since run its course but of course there is the DGD to consider.

The partner is Portuguese and was the driving force in making the move there. DS assumed he would be able to commute to the UK to carry on with his IT jobs (he was a project manager). Unfortunately this did not happen and he was dependent on Mum and Dad when his savings ran out.

Obviously he needs to speak Portuguese (the partner is bilingual and does translation work from home). DGD speaks fairly good English but better Portuguese of course.
The partner refuses to help him with the language, to the extent she even refused to come and translate to enable him to sign on with a doctor as one example. She stops him attempting to talk to DGD in Portuguese. He took an evening class and benefitted but obviously he needs conversational skills. It's a catch 22, unless he finds people who can speak English he is stuck. To be fair, many do.

He would very much like to leave her, find somewhere else to live in the same city (and as his father (my husband) has just died there will be funds available to him quite soon) and maintain a relationship with his daughter.

The partner too has funds tucked away which she inherited and refuses to touch, saying it is for the daughter. (I should add that provision has been made for all our grandchildren in my will).

The partner refuses to have a rational discussion about a way forward and seems to expect life to go on as normal with him paying the rent and helping around the house and her doing as little work as possible. He feels he cannot leave his daughter but the rows are of course very bad for her. If he comes back to the UK he risks losing contact with her as he would be dependent on the partner letting him facetime her (which he does when he visits me) or even face-to-face visits being limited at her whim.

He has been attempting to make a life for himself with his
photography but doesn't really earn anything with it. But it gets him out the house while DGD is at school.

Reading this I can see there is very little you can comment on - it is what it is - but if anyone has any suggestions I would be very grateful. I am due there on a visit very soon (but staying in a hotel).

I'm dreading the day my OH retires. He's always expected to be cooked for & waited on, even when I worked full time and has always expected me to make him a packed lunch every day aswell. I just know he will continue to do nothing to help when he's retires. However I do let him fend for himself at lunchtime when I'm occasionally out for the day or feed himself when I go on holiday with friends, so he's perfectly capable when be has to be. Although there is always a freezer full of home made casseroles etc! I just can't seem to say no....

Lunch is for wimps.

...it’s is better for our health to eat our dinner at lunchtime.

Catlover23.We had always had our main meal of an evening so there was never a lunch time as such merely if I was not at home mid day which was frequently then DH fed himself or starvedYou are a wife not a
servant.

We don't have breakfast together during the week, but on Saturdays & Sundays we sit down to something eggy/toasty and the newspapers. DH lunches out with friends/ex-colleagues on Tuesdays & Thursdays; if we are both in at lunchtime on the other days I will usually assemble something light as we have our main meal (prepared and cooked by me, very happily) in the evening. Unless we've been somewhere for a "proper" lunch, in which case DH will make us a light supper. If I'm out all day, DH loves to get his hands on the oven - he makes a mean pasty!

I retired a few years after my DH and he seems to like to make an occasion of every meal! We have breakfast together but both keep quite busy doing different things so I tend to leave him to his own devices at lunchtime. I always get the evening meal ( we are that generation) but if I am out for a meal with girlfriends I leave him something all ready to heat up. Couldn't imagine him doing that for me when he is off on a jaunt!

We assemble our own breakfasts and have a tray in the fridge of lunch things to eat over the week, we make up our own sandwiches at slightly different times as suits us.

When my children were at the age of staying in bed until all hours I told them and my husband that I would cook once a day and the rest they could get themselves. It worked well and is still working now we are retired and the children have left home. It means we can eat what we like, when we like.

Yes- I get this as he works at home sometimes. Drives me nuts so I try to be out at lunchtimes as much as possible. I rarely have lunch unless I have missed breakfast. He also wants coffee supplied all day- even if he has a half finished one. Strangely he can work the coffee machine when I am out!

Mine makes his own breakfast and lunch he loves Cheese and I'm allergic to cheese so problem solved.
I go to choir every Tuesday and he expected me to cook dinner but now he just sulks a bit and does his own dinner of a Tuesday. Problem solved.

Christinefrance. My husband does the same. It's his thing. He likes to prepare food, and does a much better job than I ever did.

Good News in my house. Neither of us eat the same thing at any time. So, we each do our own thing....this includes lunch/dinner/supper. He is a much better cook than I am so on occasions he will make a stunning Satay dish and he is great at scones! It works well for us as our body clocks are totally opposite, he is a late riser, while I get up at the crack of dawn. My afternoon is his morning so it just wouldn't work if he or I had to cook lunch or any other meal for each other. It all works for us. I can only think if you cook lunch badly enough, he won't ask again!!

I must be very lucky. DH cooks dinner every day, and usually asks me what I’d like for lunch, sometimes suggesting mid morning that he’ll make some soup. He clears up after himself too!

I too feel very sorry for posters on here whose DH's suffer from dementia, or any other life changing condition, and I do feel lucky that for all he's SO untidy DH is still reasonably sound in wind and limb.

My mother used to wait on my dad hand and foot, when he was working down the pit. He was a lovely man but totally incapable in the kitchen. I used to bite my tongue when she even put the salt on his meals for him! On the other hand he worked long hard shifts as a coal face worker and my mother didn't work outside the home.

When they took on a pub and worked together he started to take on more around the house. When he retired they shared the jobs, and he learnt to cook. It's only fair that jobs should be shared when you both have the same amount of time, if you're both fit and well.

DH gets breakfast every morning while I shower and dress. I clear up while he dog walks. I do housework as he's hopeless on that front!! Lunch is usually at 1230-1pm, (The news!!!) We get our own, sometimes the same, sometimes different! Biscuits and cheese, soup, poached egg, whatever!
Supper I prepare, DH usually cooks, I clear away. DH always brings a COT in bed first thing! DH does the veg gardening I do the flowers. DH cuts the grass/hedge in the orchard, weed kills, and sees to the bonfire. I do the little lawn + edges. We both do grocery shopping! DH does most of the home maintenance, new taps in the bathroom basin are being fitted as we speak!, I THINK we have a fair division of labour!!

Yep, my husband does this and I tell him it is whatever he wishes to get. It doesn't stop him asking though or being disappointed that I don't whirl into action. You can always guarantee the question is asked at the moment I have stopped doing the tiling or laying the floor and have settled down for a peep at Gransnet so I get the mutterings of how the group is more important than him! If I didn't laugh, I'd cry.

In the late 1980s my husband got a new job which meant sometimes he would be taken out to lunch by contractors so when he came home the evening meal was too much for him and often got wasted. He decided that he would cook in the evening if he needed anything and from then on he has always shopped for and prepared his own meals and so have I as our tastes are very different so now I can have spicy meals when I want as he hates them.

His mother came to stay and on learning of our new arrangement she wasn’t impressed and told all and sundry that she was upset that her son had to get his own meals despite him explaining the reason behind it.

He goes out most mornings and will get what we need day to day, things like bread or fruit or things we need for a particular meal or forgot to get in the main shops which we do together on Friday and Saturday. Sometimes I will cook a casserole, stew or shepherds pie which suits us both and we have that together and he cooks Sunday dinner and Christmas dinner as he is much more methodical than me and gets the timings spot on.

The only times I have prepared and served all his meals are just after he had his hip replacements and I was happy to do it but he was itching to get back in control which wasn’t long at all.

I am astonished at the number of men who expect/demand that their wives provide every meal for them, (not those where there is a fair division of labour through choice) . I assume most husbands referred to here are in their seventies , therefore products of the swinging sixties when the sexes shared chores more equally. Many of these husbands sound like my father, who was born in 1905, and resolutely refused to learn to cook; this was a problem at the end of his life when my mother was in a nursing home and I lived nearly two hundred miles away. He couldn't even defrost food (prepared (by me) from the freezer.

I strongly support the approach of one meal a day prepared by one or the other (usually this one in my household!) and forage for yourself in the fridge for the rest of the time.

Hi Allegra22...you’re so right...overgrown kids and/or simple. Mine is a product of an overbearing mother...when I met him (25) he was hopeless.She was still cutting his toenails and washing his hair for him ...he expected me to do the same!! Straightened him out!! So all you overbearing mothers are ALWAYS to blame!! Although laziness is also a consideration.... my son and daughter were treated equally ...whatever the job needed doing..they learnt to do it. Laziness wasn’t an option...relaxation was!

My husband expects me to make it, and waits till I return if I’m out. I’d leave it at that but he’s diabetic! I now say if I’m not back by such and such time, make yourself lunch, there s stuff in fridge. For health reasons I can’t make an issue.

I really enjoy feeding my DH who is always hugely appreciative and not at all fussy. I see it as nurturing and cherishing him. He does all the clearing up afterwards including loading and emptying the dishwasher and putting away, emptying the bins and wiping down the kitchen worktops. It works for us.

He also cleans the bathroom and downstairs loo, helps me with gardening, does the car maintenance and emptying the vacuum cleaners etc. I think he is a treasure and making his meals is one way of showing my love and appreciation for him.