'AITA For refusing to cook for my GF anymore since she's too picky?' UPDATED

"AITA for refusing to cook for my girlfriend?"

So this has nothing to do with my relationship in general as it is great but about eating habits. So I am more or less a hobby cook and I am originally from Europe, as a result I cook a lot of food from my home countries(Mom is Greek, Dad is Austrian) and I try new stuff quite often.

As an example I worked at a Korean restaurant in the past and the owner taught me recipes and I frequent cooking sites and own a crapton of cookbooks etc. As a result I like to try a lot of different foods and try a lot of different tastes, spicy, sweet, sour etc.

My girlfriend on the other hand only really eats local food or fast food which is fine by me, the issue is she wants/likes me to cook her food, which I did for a good while but she basically likes nothing and tries nothing new which results in me having to cook bland stuff and trying nothing new unless I cook myself different food on top of cooking her food which is not an option because I work full time.

Now I also got a bunch of new friends and I have taken up inviting them over to cook for them twice a month or so, so I can try my hand at new stuff and having them enjoy my cooking makes me happy. Well of course my girlfriend is generally there too and where everyone likes it most of the time, she pretty much takes half a bite and orders take out later in the evening.

So I stopped cooking for her and now just make my own food and let her make whatever she wants, which is pissing her off as she cant cook so complains about having to get take out or getting tired of just eating mac&cheese and such where as previously I would cook full meals for the both of us.

Now I tried to meet her in the middle and make extra of what I am having but she rarely eats it unless it is something like a Burger, I made a spicy Stir fry yesterday and she would not even try it, leaving me with a heap of leftovers luckily my neighbor likes my cooking!

Thing is I am done meeting in the middle and I don't get why she is mad about it anyways since she wont eat what I cook anyways unless it is tailored to her tastes. But she is adamant about being angry as she says I should make stuff we both enjoy, now I would be fine with that, if it was not for the fact she is the pickiest eater ever. So am I just being a douche here?

What do you think? AITA? (Or in this case, "am I the douche"?) This is what top commenters had to say:

EnterTheBugbear said:

NTA. I don't want to be the "red flaG!!" guy, but food - and your relationship to it - is a relatively important part of a relationship. It seems like you have fundamentally different attitudes as to your diets; that's fine in and of itself, but her entitlement is super crappy. You've tried to compromise, and she hasn't.

She can eat what you make, make something herself, buy food for herself, etc...but chaining you to a world of chicken nuggets and plain hamburgers is not a reasonable option (fellow foodie here).

OP responded:

That's what I am saying, I am not the type to complain about eating take out every so often or making fried chicken, Burgers etc or something of the like hell I enjoy it sometimes, but she has such a specific bracket of stuff she likes that it is impossible for me to make anything if I take her tastes in to account.

Like I made her a Burger with blue cheese in the meat once, she thought it was disgusting, so I can't even experiment with the stuff she does like.

[deleted] said:

NTA. She's not a baby, if she wants to eat bland food, she can cook it herself. You can't be expected to cater to her and sacrifice your own tastes and appetite. She has 2 options, either she expands her palate to eat what you cook, or she makes her own food. Does she honestly expect you to stop cooking any food with depth of flavor and just pander to her?

[deleted] said:

NTA. You tried meeting in the middle, it didn't work, and that's it. It's natural to get fed up with someone not appreciating the effort you put into something. I suggest you should both talk it through properly, this really shouldn't be an issue worth fighting over.

She should try to broaden her horizons by trying new stuff & definitely learn to cook the stuff she loves. It's not that hard. Maybe you could even teach her? Then you'd even be spending quality time together trying to solve the issue. You're not her personal cook, so her attitude comes across as silly to me. Good luck either way, mate!

OP responded:

That is actually a good idea, they always say when you have someone make it themselves they will enjoy the food more or something, right? Also it'd be good quality time.

[deleted] said:

NTA. You eat what the cook cooks or you shut up and make/get your own food.

egghead1995 said:

NTA what are you supposed to do only eat food you don’t like? If she wants home cooked meals and doesn’t like what you want to make she needs to cook for herself. Maybe every once in awhile cook something you both enjoy but it shouldn’t be every night!

OP responded:

Well it is not even that I dislike a Burger and such, because I don't there is plenty of interesting stuff you can do with a Burger. The issue is, is that there is one rigid way she likes a Burger and once I experiment she makes weird faces and dislikes it, where as I try new stuff a lot and I dislike eating the same stuff twice in a week more or less.

And KrzyLdy said:

NTA. You tried accommodating her. I'm jealous. She doesn't know how good she has it.

DefinitelyCool asked:

Like I know you say shes extra picky, and I did read some replies of yours mentioning how she wouldn't eat a burger with blue cheese. Blue cheese is nasty. That's an acquired taste not everyone likes lol...

I'm gonna need some more examples of her pickiness- like what does she eat, what is on her "won't eat" list? Is it like a few things or is it like.. most vegetables, every cheese, only will eat chicken, plain noodles, no spices at all etc etc.

And OP responded:

Basically the only cheeses she likes are the plain store bought stuff even cheddar and Parmesan is a step too far, most vegetables are off limits, she likes green beans and stuff in terms of vegetables, usually just with butter and well potatoes if you call that a vegetable, it technically is.

As for meat, she'll eat bef, chicken and pork, just barely seasoned if at all, plain rice that sort of stuff, basically if it is bland she'll eat it, if it has any herbs, spices or something she usually dislikes it.

About six weeks later, he shared this update:

So roughly a week after the post me and my girlfriend had a rather large argument mostly due to how she was behaving towards me, which as some pointed out was rather disrespectful. The argument was triggered after one of my dinner parties where she behaved in the way I described where she tasted like one element of the dish, put it away and did not eat any more.

Now as you may imagine I was feeling embarrassed in front of my friends but this time Cleo(The wife of a friend I usually invite) Spoke up and told her she was acting extremely rude which then resulted in some of my other friends saying the same and well the party was ruined, my girlfriend got mad and in the late evening this argument happened.

I was pretty nasty to her, she was pretty nasty to me and we barely spoke for 3 days. But after she spoke to her mom(Who agreed that she was behaving badly.) She decided to apologize and we made some deals concerning cooking.

1: She would start cooking with me.

2: She would try new things.

3 She would no longer act rudely and if she did not want something she would not join a dinner party instead of acting snobbishly and not eating anyways.

4: She would eat healthier since I also told her, her diet was gonna kill her at some point.

In the last 5 or so weeks there have been large changes, she has opened up to eating a lot more stuff slowly but steadily, she has realized there is a lot more that is nice to eat beyond bland stuff and cooking together has been fun.(She is really, really horrible at cooking but we'll get there!)

So hopefully sooner or later this problem will go away! Anyways thanks for the judgment and advice everyone, also exchanging recipes was rather fun the Corn recipe someone sent me was especially nice!

Edit: Also since someone asked about a previous recipe(This is a comment from my other post where I explained it.) Well, I am not sure what you are looking for in terms of recipes, but I can toss you a simple one which I really like.

Grilled Feta, my mom used to make it when I was young and it is really easy to make, basically you buy Feta(Note feta, not white cheese as they often try to fool you in to thinking that garbage is feta), some eggs, a proper baguette, Breading, Rocket(The Salad stuff), A Lemon, basil, Cherry tomatoes and well some dried herb mix.

You just split the yokes from the egg whites, whisk the jokes, cut up the Feta in lines(You don't have to as Feta is brittle), Dunk the feta in the egg yokes, then dunk it in the breading and make sure it is fully covered, then you just put a whole bunch of olive oil in a pan and put the feta in, make sure there is a lot of oil in it, makes it easier to grill the sides properly.

You then just slice up your baguette , put some olive oil and herb mix on it on the sides and slightly toast it, then you just smear the feta on the baguette add some tomatoes, basil and rocket, squeeze a bit of lemon juice on it and bam you got a tasty ass starter that barely takes any time and only an idiot would dislike. You can pretty much do the same with Halloumi but you don't have to bread it.