lunch

Count your blessings friends - and be grateful for a healthy and hungry husband. I spend a lot of my time trying to tempt mine to eat: he's never been interested in food (eats to live unlike me, sigh!) but now on a form of chemo has lost his appetite altogether. I know he forces it down just to please me, and the constant worry of dreading weighing in time at the clinic is something I just have to live with.

Sounds like a habit ...as you have had a chat but its not got through ! I'd repeat the chat then remind when he asks about lunch!

When my DH was alive I never made him lunch If he was working some distance from home he would make his own sandwiches. If he was working close to home he would come in and make something for himself - if I was home he would ask if I wanted anything. He once brought a colleague home with him and started preparing lunch, when his colleague expressed surprise that I wasn't doing it he said that I was his wife, not his servant to wait on him or anyone else. Loved that man and still miss him!

If he is around, he starts foraging at 11.50 (to be fair he gets up with the lark), so the owness is totally on him (unless I have an evil plan to use something up that he wouldn't bother with). I would expect him to make mine, though sometimes we have different things to eat up. If I am on my own I eat much much later normally.

Several of my friends complain that once their husband retired he 'took over at home' leaving them bored, with nothing to do and no say in what and when to eat.

I must be very old fashioned - my partner works from 2-8, and I have made him lunch every day for the past 24 years. It is always home made soup, with a wrap and salad, and then he gets a home cooked meal every night, sometimes with pudding. He says it is the one thing he looks forward to at then end of a tiring shift, and he loves my cooking. It is a real pleasure to cook for someone who appreciates it x

Mine does that helpless thing of opening the fridge and just standing there, gazing into the depths, as though the snack of his choice will miraculously waft itself onto a plate.

I did have to point out to him in the evening, after we have eaten dinner, (which I cook and clear away), that he could get himself cheese or fruit. I wasn’t wearing a black dress and frilly apron...

My DH retired ten years ago at 60. He hated his job and had a number of health issues which have mainly resolved since retiring . But he still does absolutely nothing in the house . We are both retired now and he arises about 2 hours after me. I produce breakfast but never lunch as I usually need my lunch about an hour after his breakfast .So he has toast again at about 3 pm . He never cooks a meal in the evening as yes"it's women's work" . Both my DSiL and DS do most of the meals in their homes and are excellent cooks .I love the generations of today and their family involvement . I can thank Jamie Oliver for my son's interest in cooking . He could also iron and cut the grass by 14 years as I was determined not to have a son who was incapable of looking after himself !

I will retire next year and hope to do so abroad. I have worked all my life and in my retirement I shall not allow myself to be dictated to by anybody else who is able-bodied, fit and intelligent - least of all my other half who is easy-going about such things anyway.
I saw what my father's draconian demands for meals at specific times of day did to my mother in her later years and I am simply not prepared to become a doormat to anyone.
I intend being out a lot anyway and will not be stopping indoors counting the hours until the next meal. Life is far too short for such nonsense.

What REALLY annoys me is that I come downstairs after my shower to find him waiting for his breakfast!

I'd completely ignore him and go out for the morning.
Maybe saying "Seriously? You're acting like a little lost puppy", on my way out the door.

OP, just point him at the fridge! And tell him nicely that it's time - now he has the time - to get his own.

My dh always gets his own - the same (healthy) thing virtually every day. Ditto his breakfast. I never feel hungry at breakfast time - often have something eggy around 10-11, followed by no lunch as such, but a little something - usually savoury, around teatime.
The only meal we regularly eat together is dinner, which I always cook. Dh has never cooked - he always worked far longer hours than I did and earned most of the money. But since retiring we have a fair IMO division of labour - I cook, he clears up the kitchen. Suits me fine, especially since I'm a somewhat messy cook.

I am guessing here that your husband had already retired before you did.....in which case did,nt he get himself some lunch while you were still working.? I think you need to start as you mean to go on,suggest to him that you would prefer your lunchtimes to be much more relaxed, both of you enjoying the day and just having a bite to eat at lunchtime as and when. This would also free up your days and you might then enjoy going out for lunch occasionally as part of a day out somewhere. Failing that suggest that you take it in turns .....one week he does it,the next it's your week. This might be a way of lessening his expectations and when it's "his week" you can always say if you"re not hungry you"lle get something later. Also there are often lunch clubs for seniors in some areas that you might wish to join, again showing him that you don"t want lunchtimes set in stone. I do wonder if he is a more structured person than you and likes a more fixed routine.

Division of labour where the wife does most of the cooking is one thing but I'm aghast at the number of posters who even in retirement have to do all the cooking whilst husband sits around.

No wonder many divorced/widowed men move on to the next wife rather quickly - otherwise they'd starve.

It's almost a badge of honour to have a husband that can't/won't cook.

merlotgran I was laughing so much at your "mice" comment gd wanted to know "what's funny Nana".

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!!

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.

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.

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!