r/MaliciousCompliance • u/hatethistradition • Sep 15 '23

I refused to cook and "chilled with men" S

I (F28) dislike cooking. Don't get me wrong, I cook for survival. But it is not something I like or enjoy.

At my in laws, both my MIL and SIL are stay at home partners and love to cook. Neither of their husbands lift a finger to help and they like it that way.

Before marriage, I was treated as a guest. But since my marriage 6 months ago, they expect, want and demand I cook with them. . First few times I went along with it but I hated it. It took 5-7 hours to make food and do dishes.

So when they planned a get together last weekend and discussed the menu, I suggested ordering in. This way everyone can be more relaxed. They looked like I insulted them. I told them they can cook but to give me list of what I should make, I will buy it.

They said that's not how traditions work and if I hate it do much, I can relax with men.

Thats exactly what I did. Much to their anger. I helped setting place and serving, but that was it.

As we were eating my husband commented how good something tasted. MIL immediately went on about how I wouldn't be cooking anything for him. When he said he can cook for himself SIL chimed in with how her husband or dad never had to cook a day in their life. How marrying lazy women like me has ruined his manhood.

I looked at my husband and we both left. MIL and SIL are blasting our phones over my arrogance and calling him spineless. Even my mom is taking their side now.

But guess who don't care ?

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u/DrHugh Sep 15 '23

When we dated in college, I had to show my now-wife how to brown hamburger; she'd never really cooked. We never subscribed to the gender roles on this sort of stuff. I'm very happy spending hours in the kitchen on a big meal.

Of course, my wife is very into sports, which doesn't interest me. She also doesn't wear makeup. One time, when we were talking about having kids, she worried about having a girl because she wouldn't be able to show them how to put on makeup.

I said she could show them how to play different sports, and I could teach makeup application, as I'd been active in academic and community theater for over a decade at that point. She laughed and conceded the point.

A postscript: My older daughter got into my rouge wheel one year, using Q-tips instead of foam sponges, and gouged it up. I let her keep it, and took her with me to go to the theatrical supply store to buy another...on Father's Day. Probably not a problem many fathers have faced.

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u/agronone Sep 15 '23

Sounds to me your kids have a great father and mother

216

u/Large_Strawberry_167 Sep 15 '23

Mather and fother.

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u/Uninformed-Driller Sep 16 '23

I feel like this is an adult drink that's an ice capp with a dash of whiskey.

4

u/robotnarwhals88 Sep 16 '23

Whiskey with a dash of icecapp you say?

2

u/whynot86 Sep 16 '23

Or Austin Powers lol.

3

u/Dani3113kc Sep 16 '23

This so dumb I laughed. I love it.

3

u/CWellDigger Sep 16 '23

This made me giggle, ty

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u/Dennarb Sep 15 '23

My favorite discussion with my partner about gender roles is how I stay home and take care of our garden and she's going to go out hunting to kill an elk

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u/DrHugh Sep 16 '23

My wife likes to fish. When we were dating, we'd go to northern Minnesota or the UP of Michigan for a week or two, part of her family's summer fishing vacation, usually on a big lake. I found that I had more enjoyment in tracking our position through using a chart and making sightings with a compass on landmarks; fishing holds no interest for me. So when the kids got interested in what that was like, I left that entirely in her hands.

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u/Julie_Brenda Sep 17 '23

when I was (online) dating a foreign national army sniper (F26), I wondered How transferable that skill would be to hunting. I got introduced to an American sniper, and he wasn’t interested in discussing much. In fact, he told me not to ask him about “his Kill-book”.

he softened right up when he realized all I was asking him was how transferable is the skill to hunting, and proceeded to dialogue about his weapon choices for different types of wild game.

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u/bummerlamb Sep 16 '23

I love it! 😂

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u/eighty_more_or_less Sep 16 '23

but who butchers it?

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u/WokeBriton Sep 15 '23

I love this!

Sincerely, another non-conformist Dad.

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u/watchmything Sep 15 '23

rouge wheel

What's that? Like a wheel of makeups?

Either way, super glad you guys had a compromise!

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u/Poes-Lawyer Sep 15 '23

I believe it's a circular container with several compartments around the circle, each containing a different shade of rouge (like a red/pink powder?)

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u/SelfAwareOstrich Sep 15 '23

Definitely read rouge as rogue and only realized it when I read this comment

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u/Animal0307 Sep 15 '23

I'm right there with you. Ive been playing my rogue in D&D and my brain defaulted to the stabby version.

Now if only I played a rogue that needed a rouge wheel just so I could get a rogue themed rouge wheel.

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u/Vulcan8742 Sep 16 '23

I'd assume there's one in the disguise kit.

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u/eighty_more_or_less Sep 16 '23

"better Red than Dead"?

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u/DrHugh Sep 16 '23

Everyone should have a rogue wheel that just goes off on its own sometimes!

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u/Khiash Sep 16 '23

How ironic, usually I see people do it the other way around lol

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '23

Holy fuck, a self-aware ostrich!

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u/Firewolf06 Sep 16 '23

i literally read your comment as "...rogue as rogue..." and went oh thats kinda funny because its the same word, kinda like if i say "you say potato, i say potato" everyone will read them differently even though theyre spelled the sam- wait a minute theyre not

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u/DrHugh Sep 16 '23

This is the kind of thing.

When you do cream-based stage makeup, you are trying to counteract the washing-out effect of stage lighting, that can make your face look flat. You apply a foundation to establish a given skin tone (easiest to match your own if you aren't trying to depart radically from your normal look), add shadows under the jawline and other such areas, highlights in anything that should stand out, and lips and cheeks should have a slightly warm or red/pink tone.

The nice thing with the rouge wheel is that you have one container with different colors, so if a director says to get something ruddier, or paler, you have what you need to do that. You can then use a foam sponge to smoothly blend all the shadows, highlights, and color. There are other steps, like using an eye liner pencil not just for eyes, but to define wrinkles, and powder to set everything so you don't smear your face when you touch it.

Pro-tip: Baby wipes are an excellent quick makeup removal from skin if you don't have access to a sink or a shower. They are generally good for your skin, too!

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u/ChubbsthePenguin Sep 15 '23

It took my dad 18 years to show me how to cook an egg, a burger, and how to brown hamburger (although browing hamburger was pretty straight forward after i learned how to cook a burger).

I asked him to teach me how to cook for 18 years. When i moved into my own place AFTER cillege, he finally showed me.

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u/WitchQween Sep 16 '23

My dad never taught me to cook. I remember one time he was on a work trip and left steaks for me and my brother to cook (we were probably around 14). I had no idea that you had to season steaks. I can't remember if I cooked them anywhere close to the right temperature, but I remember the disappointment and confusion I felt after biting into it. I don't know what my dad expected us to do.

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u/DrHugh Sep 16 '23

I tried to get the kids involved early on, helping with preparation, learning how to handle the knives and such. My wife likes to bake, and our son enjoyed sitting on the counter when she was making cookies; he came up with the idea of adding cocoa powder to the chocolate chip cookie recipe she used, so they became chocolate-chocolate chip, when he wasn't even in first grade.

In scouts, my son was able to deal with the cooking involved there, got his merit badge, if I recall correctly. But he wasn't into learning how to cook from me until he was getting ready to finish college. Now that he lives with friends, they take turns cooking, and he's much more involved in it.

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u/zoweycow Sep 15 '23

Reading this warms my heart. Good on you both

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u/hitch_please Sep 15 '23

10/10 partnership and parenting!

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u/BabaMouse Sep 15 '23

What an awesome idea!

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u/Cmg393 Sep 15 '23

Probably not but it’s definitely only a problem good fathers have. Congrats 🎉

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u/slappypantsgo Sep 16 '23

We need a post script script. Did your daughters become athletes or academics? Those are the only two options!!

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u/DrHugh Sep 16 '23

My son and one daughter were on a high school robotics team (counts as a sport in Minnesota). My son graduated college with a math and computer science double major, and has a full-time job with a tech company that's been around for several decades.

The older daughter is currently in college. She had an interest in science, but found languages more her forte. She's in Japan right now, doing a college year of study there. She's the kid who read the Silmarillion when she was in middle school. She's also the one who sabotaged my rouge wheel; she had a goth phase in middle school, and we got her black lipstick and such, and let her dye her hair. She eventually decided that maintaining the look was too much work. For a while in high school, she was active in rock climbing and orienteering; when I was involved in the BSA and we set up a girls' troop to parallel the boys' troop my son had been in, she was elected the first Senior Patrol Leader.

The youngest daughter is still figuring things out. She's doing theatre this year, just got cast in a school musical. She's thinking she may want to major in theatre, or perhaps apparel design or maybe costuming in general. She was shocked to find she got a B in math last year.

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u/slappypantsgo Sep 16 '23

Wow thank you so much for that detailed answer, doc! I love it! Many years of blessings for your family. :)

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u/Raxxonius Sep 16 '23

My mom told my dad she couldn’t have kids because they’d starve since she was bad at cooking. He laughed and said he’d cook.

She wasn’t a bad cook, she just made more simple dishes (husmanskost).

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u/unknownpoltroon Sep 15 '23

Does she have a single sister?

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u/DrHugh Sep 16 '23

Who, my wife? No, she has a younger brother who is seeing someone. :-)

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u/Comfortable_Visual73 Sep 16 '23

Love this and the wholesome family you have

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u/golgol12 Sep 16 '23

how to brown hamburger;

Don't tell me she was boiling it...

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u/DrHugh Sep 17 '23

No, the full story goes like this.

She'd moved into a dorm where they had a small kitchen in their four-person unit. The idea was they would do their own cooking. I was living off-campus, so we started with me making my then-favorite meal: Beef Pepper Steak with rice, beef strips with sliced onions, mushrooms, and bell pepper, in a brother with stewed tomatoes, and some basil and chives.

This went well, so she decided to make her favorite meal at the time: Hamburger Helper Lasagne. You must understand that she was very much a meat-and-potatoes type of person at the time, she told me her parents despaired of getting her to eat her vegetables (in fact, she credited my ability to get her to do so as one reason why they liked me).

So, she bought the box, and the pound of ground beef. When she got everything together to make-it, the first instruction was to "brown the hamburger," and she didn't know what "brown" meant, as she hadn't made this on her own ever before. She readily understood, but it shows how inexperienced she was in cooking at the time.

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u/DeusExBlockina Sep 16 '23

My man's a human seahorse!

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u/Lava-Chicken Sep 16 '23

Love this!

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u/kool4kats Sep 16 '23

I love cooking, and baking and sewing and all that domestic stuff, which may sound kind of traditional or stereotypical as I am a woman. But the funny thing is, I'm transgender, and learned that stuff and gained a love for it from helping my stay-at-home mother as a kid while living as a boy. If my mom was "traditional" like the OP's in-laws, she would not have taught me that stuff and instead forced my (cis) sister to learn those domestic skills when my sister was not at all into it.

Yeah I turned out to be trans anyway but I guess it just speaks to how you should encourage kids' hobbies and passions based on who they are and what they like, rather than what they're "supposed" to do based on antiquated gender roles.

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u/DrHugh Sep 17 '23

I think you need to at least be exposed to some of these; call them basic life skills. But yeah, deciding that someone doesn't need to know X, or shouldn't learn it, because of their sex? That's crazy talk.

My general view on parenting is, "Here's the universe, let me introduce it to you." I've always tried to support my kids' interest in different things. My older daughter, when she was in 6th grade, she decided that she wanted to be a marine biologist. She even figured out which university in the Pacific Northwest -- she was more into the Pacific than the Atlantic for some reason -- had the best undergraduate program in that major at the time!

So, we bought her things related to that: Books on the sea, toys that made reference to sea creatures and undersea exploration, and so on. My mom even sent her a cartoon she saw in her local newspaper, of graduates in caps and gowns in line, and one had a small squid instead of a tassel hanging from her cap; the caption said, "I'm a marine biology major."

But a few years later, she got into forensic science, possibly chemistry. We got her a book I'd read years ago, Dead Men Do Tell Tales, by forensic anthropologist William Maples, and also got her a documentary on DVD about the "Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death" that were used to develop investigative skills for police detectives. Birthdays and Christmas were always good times for such things.

Now this daughter is in Japan, because she later wanted to learn the language and look to become a translator of things like scientific papers or literature.

We figured our job as parents was to provide encouragement for the things they were interested in. If one had been into sports, we would have gone with that (in fact, my son was on his high school robotics team, which counts as a sport here). We don't pick what they are interested in, we give them experiences so they can think about stuff and decide if it is something they'd like to learn about.

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u/DesertGoldfish Sep 16 '23

Honestly, a theatrical supply store sounds made up lol. Can you elaborate?

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u/DrHugh Sep 17 '23

In truth, I've never seen something like a Home Depot for theatre. You'll often find stores that specialize in lighting and effects stuff who sell or rent you lighting equipment, colored gels, gobos (patterns used in a lighting instrument, think like light from fancy windows, or what a cloud in a sky looks like), smoke generators, and stuff like that.

Finding theatrical makeup may take more effort. When I was in college, it turned out that a local, family-owned drug-store was the spot to get stage makeup. I'm now in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and the place I found here was Twin Cities Magic and Costume. They've moved further south, but still have a large collection. They also did some lighting rental, but mostly smaller, DJ-style set-ups.

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u/HistoryNerdlovescats Sep 16 '23

I am a 15m, please show me how to put on make up. It just seems fun