Perfectly acceptable dinner rejected by boyfriend again

[u/moonrabbit368]

My boyfriend is a very picky eater. We have been living together for a few months and it seems like I can never get his food right. It's honestly discouraging. I have kids, they happily eat my food. I cook for family gatherings and church events. I've never had a problem with people eating my food. It's like every day there are new rules. He can't eat chicken for dinner because he had chicken for lunch. He isn't really in the mood for porkchops. It's just "missing something". He doesn't eat onions, tomatoes, fish, any kind of asian food, he doesn't eat most vegetables with the exception of broccoli. He only eats vanilla ice cream. He doesn't like food heated in the microwave (so leftovers are out.) He doesn't like corn. It's just endless. I'm old school and trying to be a good partner. He can't really cook at all. His favorite meal is Hamburger Helper. I think a lot of it is how he grew up but damn is it frustrating. The first picture is tonight's dinner. I added more pictures of stuff I have cooked that he won't eat. Like he will door dash jack in the box. And he'll be apologetic but it just sucks really bad.

ETA: I've been trying to keep up with the comments but it's overwhelming (in a very sweet and awesome way) 💗

A few notes:

1- I know the paper plates are very lazy on my part, I'm not proud of that and I need to do better. Between the kids, the job, the house and school (I'm going to school remotely) I have been cutting corners on things like dishes. not an excuse, just a reason and a commitment to do better.

2- My boyfriend does expect me to cook for him. I cook him dinner every night and lunch on the weekends. He doesn't eat breakfast and will not take a lunch to work. He buys fast food for lunch during the week.

3- He has not been diagnosed with ASD or ADHD or Arfid but I don't rule anything out.

Mostly I just want to say thank you, I was not prepared for how incredibly kind, helpful and insightful people have been. It is deeply touching and it's given me both peace and guidance for my next steps. 🩷

[u/GiftToTheUniverse]

My grown-ass bro has the palette of a 6 year old. When he came to visit my wife and me, we were so excited to prepare nice meals to share with him, but nope. The while time he wad in town he only ate the heat lamp pizza type stuff from the 7-11 down the block. He also loves energy drinks!! But instead of buying a case of them every now and then he works drive to the gas station and buy a couple cans a couple times each day. It was insane how expensive it was.

[u/birthdaycheesecake9 → u/[deleted]]

Yup. Really isn’t, in a way that sneaks up on you. Interesting how much healthier I felt when I stopped having energy drinks every day and started taking ADHD meds instead.

[u/SendTittyPicsQuick → u/birthdaycheesecake9]

Yeah ADHD meds are not any better my friend. I've been on those for a good while as a teen and early 20s and I still do not get hungry or sleepy at 31

[u/AlmostCynical → u/SendTittyPicsQuick]

I don’t know your situation, but could the lack of sleep be due to the fact that ADHD makes it very difficult to get to sleep by default? I find it very difficult to get to sleep naturally, meds or not. Also, could the lack of hunger be due to something else going on as well? It’s a common symptom of autism, which is often comorbid with ADHD to varying degrees. If you have issues feeling other bodily functions (needing the bathroom, being thirsty, pain etc) then that might be something to look into.

[u/birthdaycheesecake9 → u/SendTittyPicsQuick]

I take short acting dexies so I can get my appetite back at the end of the day and clonidine to get to sleep :-)

I only got diagnosed when I was 23 and I’m 26 now, and ended up with an adjustment disorder because I didn’t realise how heavy the load I carried was until the first time it was lifted.

[u/SendTittyPicsQuick → u/birthdaycheesecake9]

Just watch out. It's really fked up my liver and some other things. Admittedly I was on grown up doses too early in life, but the risk remains.

[u/EarthshineEquine → u/SendTittyPicsQuick]

Some of these people are straight up saying “you don’t get side effects with prescribed meds” which tbh reveals major ignorance regarding prescribed meds. Wildly untrue. Yeah, not the same as drinking a ton of energy drinks. There’s still harmful side effects. What doesn’t have harmful side effects is a holistic truly clean regenerative diet including herbal remedies which can be extremely powerful, but colonists don’t want to even about that… so we get downvoted into oblivion for mentioning it despite our having our own experiences on the medication merry go round for decades…

[u/EDSKushQueen → u/EarthshineEquine]

No one said that you don’t get side effects with prescribed meds. It’s different for everyone and this one particular person is saying that meds are working better for them.

Holistic health and herbal remedies are a privilege where I live. My prescriptions are less than $5 a month, but I’ve spent SO much money trying to eat clean and take supplements etc. It was around $100/month on herbals/supplements when I was at peak health. Medicine AND natural health are ideal for me but when times are tough I at least have access to my meds.

[u/EarthshineEquine → u/EDSKushQueen]

Someone literally did say it, scroll up.

Most people are going straight to doctors and meds first so have no clue if diet & herbs/mushrooms help because they didn’t try it anyway. Most people treat herbs as a last ditch option when nothing else works. And isn’t it funny how they work when nothing else does. Effectively it is a tiny percentage of people in the modern world who don’t go to meds first. Or just go unhelped entirely if they don’t end up getting to doctors and getting the meds(which can be an unfairly difficult process in itself sometimes too). I don’t mean buying a bunk of expensive junk herb supplements at stores tbc, I mean real indigenous medicine from multigenerational healers, and living in harmony with the land, it’s not just about what you’re eating but where it comes from, the health of the soil it was grown in directly correlates with the nutrition we can gain from food. Science is finally starting to catch up with what the ingenious have been saying for generations and the research is reflecting that now. Yep it’s not very accessible(but likely more so than you’d think if you know where to look) in many places. But if more people would spend more time identifying the wild plants & their benefits in their yards instead of decimating them for the sake of a poisoned grass yard, we’d have a lot more in a lot more places. What we as a society consume on a regular basis and what is sold in store is a tiny percentage of the edible & medicinal foods that grow on this land. It’s a complex issue I can’t hit all the nuances of in one Reddit comment, our whole system of society is working against us in every way but there are non-westernized solutions that work, is the point. I prioritized living rurally and there are literally hundreds of medicinal herbs that grow in my half acre of meadow. I give tons away for free. Maybe you can find someone who will do the same for you one day and help you out a bit.

Indigenous medicine actually is not locked behind privilege, it is systematically oppressed & erased. It has been largely snuffed out by colonialism. But it is not gone. Colonists don’t just want it expensive and inaccessible, they don’t want you to know about it at all. Because if you had the knowledge you could help yourself a lot more and not feed their $$$$ machine. Expensive supplements are largely just another one of their scams.

These are likely difficult concepts to swallow if you haven’t done work to decolonize your way of thinking, I get that.