This Guy Flipped out Because Wife Started Cooking Healthier Meals

Spouses don't make spouses eat junk if they don't want to. But that's exactly what this woman's husband is doing. In a post on Reddit's "Am I the A-hole?" she explains that when she and her husband met, she didn't really care about her health or what she ate.

She cooked "comfort food" most of the time, and her husband loved what she made. "I think it's part of the reason he fell for me, to be honest," she writes. But, she's started working from home, which means she has extra time, so she's started using that extra time to exercise and get on top of her health.

She writes that her family has a history of high blood pressure, and it's recently "hit home" for her that it's time to get in shape. "My husband was supportive at first but as I've started to really lose weight he's become less so," she writes. He's always bringing home junk food and trying to make her eat it. 

Her husband is a mailman, so he's on his feet and walking all day, and he's in better shape than she is. Lately, and logically, she's been trying to make some healthier choices when she cooks dinner. 

"My husband can't cook to save his life," she writes, "and the grocery shopping and all cooking is done by me. When I say healthier choices, I don't mean tofu and kale, I mean I've started cooking our favorite foods but with healthier alternatives, like using one percent milk instead of heavy cream and adding veggies."

Seems reasonable, right? I mean, they're adults, they should be trying to eat square meals every day. (I say this as a person who tries but sometimes fails. It happens to the best of us.) But her husband flipped out about these responsible changes to his wife's cooking. 

She writes that he has "doubled his efforts in trying to get me to stop working on my health," which is insane and counterintuitive. Shouldn't the person you're married to, the person who ostensibly loves you, want you to be as healthy and happy as possible? 

She writes that she has stopped sharing her health milestones with him because "he gets all surly." That can't feel good! That being said, he's still eating several helpings of her food every meal, so it "can't taste that bad," she writes.

Most recently, she made a casserole with a lighter sauce than usual that had broccoli in it. "He flipped out," she writes, "and said I'm trying to push my 'get better looking' agenda off on him even though my efforts to get in shape have nothing to do with how I look." 

Somehow, I feel like this doesn't have a lot to do with the actual food she's making and has more to do with his insecurity around his wife finally taking control of her health. Part of the reason for that is this: "He then accused me of being sick of him and using my workouts as an excuse to get away from him, which is completely untrue." 

He said that he would "drop it" if she would "go back to cooking and eating" the way she used to. Talk about selfish and insecure. She said that "he was more than welcome to cook the way he wanted but he refused and left in a huff."

Sounds like a great guy! To make matters worse, she called her sister for "some perspective," and her sister sided with her husband! Wow, her sister sounds like a real peach, too. 

Her sister said she was wrong for "not providing him with the 'fuel' he needs for his physically intensive job." But this frustrated wife knows the food she's making now is more "nutrient-dense" and healthy and provides more than what she used to make, so that argument doesn't hold water.

Still, she was feeling confused about it, so she came to Reddit. Commenters were extremely supportive. Many suspect his behavior stems from something other than the food she's cooking. 

"This is all armchair psychology but it sounds to me as if he feels threatened by your interest in improving yourself and is afraid you might be doing it to start shopping elsewhere for a man.

"He may not even realize this himself but I think it's a fair bet to say his problem is NOT with the food," one person wrote.

One possibly important detail that commenters were quick to point out is that she is 28 years old and her husband is 41. That age gap is significant enough that he could be worried about her getting in shape and then leaving him. 

But back to the food for a sec — it's truly sad that a 41-year-old man cannot cook himself dinner. If he really hated the food she cooked (which it doesn't seem he does as he still eats two or three portions of it), he could make himself dinner. But that's not at all what this is about. 

Clearly this dude has some soul-searching to do about why he doesn't want to support his wife's efforts to take care of herself, and I think it's time that she pushes him to explore why he's feeling the way he's feeling, since he clearly won't do it himself. If he can't see what he's doing, she's got to think about moving on without him.