I’d gone to a lot of trouble. I certainly didn’t expect criticism!
I once prepared a home-cooked meal for a man I’d been dating for over a year. (And here let me just interject that, as I have said many times previously and in mind-numbing detail, I have simply terrible taste in men!) We were having a simple stay-at-home evening, dinner with a video to follow, because Mr. Perpetually Unemployed couldn’t afford to take me out anywhere, and I was tired of paying for all our dates.
I’d prepared my favorite vegetarian meal: homemade baked mac ‘n cheese, served with garlicky peppered green beans and extra-chunky applesauce with added cinnamon and nutmeg. Dessert to follow would be vanilla ice cream with fudge sauce, topping off a highly caloric but delicious meal.
I had minimal expectations for Mr. PU’s response to this meal. “Mmmm, smells great!” might have been nice; “Wow, this looks delicious,” even better. “Thanks for going to all this trouble,” would have been truly appreciated, while “It’s nice to have a home-cooked meal,” was another fine possibility. After a year of knowing him, though, I wasn’t really anticipating compliments.
What I didn’t expect was criticism.
The baked mac ‘n cheese, it seemed, was not creamy enough. I let this slide; obviously, this man’s taste buds had been formed by plastic-cheese-sauce-in-a-pouch-of-blue-box-macaroni. My baked mac ‘n cheese, however, was the satisfying product of many years of experimentation to perfect a basic recipe. It was widely enjoyed by all my family, and I knew it was good. So I merely shrugged at his remarks, responding that I was sorry he didn’t care for it.
The next criticism threw me for a loop, though: I had used canned green beans.
It was the middle of winter, I explained patiently. Fresh green beans, even when available, were wickedly expensive, as well as scrawny and old. Well, why hadn’t I used frozen ones? Now my reply was decidedly more irritated: because I had the !@#$%& canned ones sitting on the pantry shelf! The garlic was fresh, peeled and minced and sauteed with cracked pepper, then simmered slowly with the beans, or had he somehow missed these little details?
Ignoring my growing irritation, he cast a look of utter disdain at the bowl of applesauce—the kind that’s so chunky it’s almost like eating apple pie—and pronounced his most contemptuous remark of all: “What are we? Three years old?”
If I’d been a smart woman. I’d have foregone any response whatever to his criticisms and calmly continued eating my own delicious meal. If I’d been an even smarter woman, I’d have handed him the phone and told him if he didn’t like the food, he was free to pull out his overextended credit card and order pizza. And if I’d been an absolutely brilliant woman, I’d have picked up his plate and dumped it in his lap before ordering him to get the hell away from my table and out of my life.
As it was, I merely remarked that it was too bad he found the meal so disappointing, but I really didn’t have anything else to serve him unless he wanted canned soup.
Mr. PU petulantly consumed everything that had been placed before him. I believe he even had seconds on the non-creamy mac ‘n cheese.
I don’t recall what video we watched after this dinner fiasco, but I distinctly remember that I selected a movie which I knew he would find disturbing. Passive-aggressive, yep, that’s me.
I looked back on this incident recently, though, while sharing a holiday dinner I cooked for my family, one that didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. I compared their responses toward the failed portions of the meal to that long ago dinner with Mr. PU. The smoked turkey breast was dry, I admitted; if I had it to do over, I’d have cooked it differently. Not at all; it was tasty, everyone protested; a little gravy, and it was just fine. The mashed potatoes were a bit grainy, I acknowledged. No one agreed. Again, with gravy and a dab of butter, the potatoes were delicious. The home baked beer bread was roundly praised and devoured by all. The Greek salad with my homemade dressing was delectable. The pumpkin and peanut butter pies were scrumptious.
I knew they were fibbing about some of it and praising where they could to soothe my feelings, but I appreciated their support.
What came home to me, though, when comparing the responses of my family and friends to the dinner failures, with those of a man who once professed to care for me, was the realization of exactly why my taste in men has always been execrable: low expectations, plain and simple.
I’ve long since connected my low expectations of relationships to my damaged sense of self-worth, and the unlikelihood of any of that ever changing at this late stage in my game. Following that epiphany, I made the commonsense decision that it’s far, far better to be alone than to be in a bad relationship.
And, besides, I like my own cooking.
As always, feel free to repost any quotes from, or this full essay, with author attribution.
Speaking to the Heart of Many Matters 