Autism, Cohabiting & Food
I moved in with my partner in July - though realistically, it was more like March when lockdown hit, but officially, July. I foresaw a lot of problems, but I didn’t foresee food being such a big issue.
Prior to moving in together, I obviously could eat what I wanted, when I wanted. My daughter is autistic, and she eats very specific meals, so I tended to cook for her and then have something easy for myself. This would be something like cereal for breakfast, a can of soup for lunch and a cottage pie ready meal for dinner most days. I ate repetitively, and was usually pretty happy when it came to food. I didn’t bother to cook from scratch for myself, because it was too much effort, I liked to keep dirty dishes to a minimum because I didn’t have a dishwasher etc.
But when we moved in together we tended to start having proper meals most evenings. I cook for my daughter 3 times a day, which takes up a lot of my mana (think spoons, but nerdier) for the day. The cooking often ends up falling to him, which he isn’t too happy about because he works all day, though he doesn’t often complain.
But I’m really starting to struggle with certain aspects of it. I guess, for a while, I quite liked the novelty of having meals every day, even if they were mostly the same selection, due to my limited diet (pickiness and food intolerances). We would have burritos, or spaghetti bolognese/meatballs, curry, soup, a few other things. But generally not deviate from the few meals that I can eat, which he gets a bit sick of, but he doesn’t really complain too much.
But I think my preference for repetition is coming back. Often, he asks what I want to eat that night, and everything we have in just seems so unappealing that I would rather have nothing. All I want to eat at the moment is spicy Pot Noodles, and egg fried rice from the Chinese takeaway (which is too expensive to do every day, unfortunately. But we do get it quite a lot).
But tonight, we kind of agreed that we would get Chinese. He laughed ‘it’s the last time, though,’ which is what he says every time, because I also always complain about gaining weight from eating too much fried rice. Then he went on a phone call, and said that when he was finished we would talk about getting Chinese food. So he came down and asked what we were having, I kind of shrugged, because I don’t know why he asked that, since I always get the same thing.
Then I ended up going on a call of my own, and when I came back downstairs, he was already making other food for himself. He told me that, because I just shrugged when he asked what we were having, he just made food for himself. Now I’m upset because I thought I was going to be having my special interest food tonight, and now I’m not, and I honestly just feel like I now want to eat nothing.
I’ve already not eaten very much today anyway - I’d usually have a Pot Noodle for lunch but I found a live maggot (yes, really) in the one I opened yesterday, and it has absolutely put me off them. So I haven’t eaten lunch yesterday or today because the Pot Noodles are somehow my preferred food, whilst I’m also simultaneously disgusted by them. Make it make sense. All I’ve eaten today is cereal for breakfast and Aero chocolate/Twix bars. I’m pretty hungry now, so to have the sudden change of food plans, when I’m already hungry, has made me very upset. So I’ve kind of gone non-verbal and came upstairs to hide. I managed to not cry, which is very difficult in situations like that.
Another example of food issues that arise is difference in preferences when it comes to a single meal. He offered to make mince & dumplings last week. I agreed, because I like that meal a lot. He added various ingredients to the shop including chopped tomatoes and tomato purée. I found it strange and suggested he didn’t make it ‘too tomatoey’. I generally kept out of the way and tried not to micromanage it, despite being scared it would turn out wrong. It did totally turn out wrong, and was very tomatoey, whereas I usually have it with more of a beef stock, gravy type sauce. It actually tasted alright, but it was just totally wrong, and I fought back tears the whole time eating it. I wish I didn’t have to react that way, I kind of end up feeling like a spoiled brat. But I really can’t help it. I was just happier when I ate my cheap, easy, always-the-same microwave meal cottage pie and baby carrots every night. It was always just right, and I never ended up upset.
No now I’m sitting upstairs trying to decide what to eat, if I’m going to eat at all. I don’t want to go downstairs anyway because I’m genuinely upset with him for saying we would do one thing, and then doing another, without really any discussion. I wanted to vent somewhere, but I am pretty sure people in my autistic Facebook groups are getting sick of my moaning, so I decided to start this blog, so I can happily moan all I want about any time changes of plans upset me or whatever.
