Ask The Flytrap: My Partner Scolds Me About What I Eat

Welcome to your new favorite advice column from your favorite feminist journalism collective! New editions are published every Wednesday. Read on for the drama, the tea, and the commiseration—and if you want to submit a question, scroll on down to the bottom of this post for more info.

Let's get into it:

Hiya!

This question is going to sound really whiny, I know.

I cohabitate with my significant other, who is super duper into sustainability and minimizing emissions and social justice and all that good stuff. For the most part, I am on board! Left to my own devices, I eat very little meat and animal products, I buy local produce in season, and I waste much less food than the average American household. We have about 90% overlap on with each other's eating habits.

The problem is that other 10%. You see, I have a life that is not doing food sustainability research, and also work a demanding career. I do not always want to put energy into figuring out the least problematic food options! Sometimes I just want my comfort foods! I do not always want to figure out how to make whatever random ingredients are already in the fridge into something! It's feeding myself, not an optimization problem! He reacts by scolding me and guilting me about what's going wrong that I'm not putting the energy in, etc. I tell him the above, and also, that this is exhausting. It has been months, and he has not substantially changed his habits, nor have I. What to do?

Signed,
The Magnificent In-Season Fruit Basket Chiquita Banana Hat Lady, and mate

Dear Magnificent, etc.,

I take it from your (extremely funny) sign-off that you are an adult human woman, and not a child or a pet. I bring this up because the phrase "he reacts by scolding me" set off every alarm inside my own body and also every alarm within a five-mile radius. The local dogs are flipping out. The neighbors have probably started a NextDoor thread that has since devolved into NIMBY noise complaints about the local Tejano club.

I don't care what the situation is: Adults don't scold other adults. Not if they want to be in relationships built on mutual respect. Period. End of. Whatever your significant other's deal is about ~ food sustainability ~, he needs to cut that shit out, stat.

I promise we'll get to the actual ~ food sustainability ~ part of it. But I also want to flag that the first entire half of your question is apologia/over-explaining for your own, eminently reasonable, behavior. You apologize for sending in a "whiny" question (it's not a whiny question, and even if it was, well ... we're running an advice column here and bitching and moaning is part of the game) and then go to some lengths to describe how thoughtful you are about food, especially vis a vis your partner.

Let me be as clear as fucking possible: You don't need to do these things to be valid either in asking your question or in eating whatever the fuck you want to eat whenever you want to eat it, for whatever reason. Do you often find yourself pre-apologizing and pre-explaining when it comes to articulating your own needs and experiences? Something to think about; if the answer is "maybe/yes," consider exploring that through journaling or therapy.

Okay, so the food thing. I would expect that a person who does "food sustainability research," either for a career or out of personal interest, would understand better than most that individual choices have very little impact on solving large-scale, systemic problems—especially re: the environment and sustainability. (See: straws, plastic.) This is not to say that making pro-social decisions as an individual is not meaningful! It is! But you, my friend, of the glorious Chiquita Banana Hat, are not personally responsible for ending any worldwide crisis, of food sustainability or anything else.

I could do a lot of speculating about why your partner has made you a target for this particular bugaboo of his. Maybe he's full of anxiety in general, or desperate for control in an apparently crumbling world, or channeling his own issues around food and eating by making you the villain. Maybe all three, or many other reasons! It doesn't matter, because what he has absolutely got to do is let you live your ding-dang life without scolding or guilting you about what you eat, 10 percent of the time or 100 percent of the time. Any percent of the time, what you eat is your business.

As for what to do about it: Give him one more warning that you're not having this discussion any more (I don't think you should have to do this). But if you really intend to stay with the guy, grey-rocking him enough that he can't turn every microwaved mac 'n cheese bowl into an interrogation of your values and value as a person sounds like a pretty good start. Make it boring for him to be a dick to you in this way. Suggest he use the time he would otherwise spend scolding you doing literally anything else, maybe something that addresses, I don't know, the treatment of food workers! Or volunteering at the local food pantry, or changing local laws to allow restaurants and grocery stores to distribute extras to people in need! He's the researcher, he can figure it the fuck out.

As for what I really think you should do about it: Leave him. If he's so distressed by living with a person whose eating habits he despises, you'd be doing both of yourselves a favor.

— Andrea

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