Baking an Austrian yoghurt cake for breakfast this morning,
I thought back to Steve and my bad old days, when the kitchen became the area of the house were symptoms of our Narcissistic / Codependent Marriage often played out the worst.
Steve had worked as kitchen hand in a few up market restaurants before we were married and so he considered himself the culinary expert.
When we were dating I found it attractive when he would say to me, “Sit down! Only the sexiest Italian boys get to make the coffee!”
I liked his confidence and assertiveness and because Steve isn’t Italian of course it was funny, but over time his need to dominate in the kitchen began to undermine my confidence in cooking.
I had cooked for my family for many years as a teenager and always enjoyed being creative and inventing my own recipes. People liked my cooking and I don’t think Steve liked that. In his eyes this made me the chef and him still just the kitchen hand.
He would come and stand over me and tell me what to add; change the whole idea of what I was planning and make snide or haughty little comments about things I ‘always’ did wrong.
I would respond by arguing, complaining, and trying harder to make something he would really like; and then get my feelings hurt when that never worked.
Once my feelings were hurt and he didn’t notice or apologize or do anything to ‘make me feel better’ I would get angry and we would fight.
My feelings finally got hurt so badly and my confidence so badly eroded, that I just about gave up cooking. Especially at breakfast time, when he would be bossing the kids around angrily, I started to sleep in or just hide in our room. This of course ‘proved’ what a lousey mother I was and justified his further disrespect.
With Steve as chef it didn’t matter that the kids called dinner ‘prisoner soup’; in his mind whatever he made was the standard all other chefs should be judged by.
Slowly over time his cooking did improve, but as my confidence returned [from learning and practicing better leadership skills], eventually I decided it was time to stage a mutiny.
The power struggle in our kitchen continues to this day but now without fights or hard feelings. How I handle that is so completely different than what I did in the past, that today I felt it was worth sharing with you.
These days if Steve makes unwelcome suggestions, instead of arguing, I tell him straight out to stop trying to take over and if necessary I order him out of the kitchen like he was a very bad dog!
This doesn’t leave much room for him to argue.
When I staged my first mutiny, Steve did of course argue, but in a very matter of fact tone of voice I said; “I appreciate all of the cooking you have done for us but we are all overweight and spending too much money on food and so from now on I am taking charge in the kitchen.” With all the authority I could muster I then added, “The Mediterranean vegetables you do are great, and so early Friday mornings from now on we are driving out to the wholesale markets so you can buy a box of capsicum and zucchini and make that dish a couple of times a week to keep in the fridge as a staple.”
Steve loves going to the wholesale markets and his baked vegetables are one of his best dishes so this gave him something to take pride in and less cause to fight me.
After me being on strike in the kitchen for so long, of course he really did want my help, even if he didn’t want to let on that he did.
I didn’t stage this take over, however, until I was confident and had stabilized our life.
Stability is attractive and that is what my members only post this week is all about . . .
Kim Cooper
My bf does the same thing. Normally I just tell him if he doesn’t like what I’m doing then cook it himself. He actually doesn’t take this too bad. He usually just laughs. He knows he loves my cooking and has complimented me on many dishes. Nonetheless we still have a long way to go. Today I even admitted to him and apologized for forcing him
to be what I thought he should be (MY HERO) even when he told me he couLD not be those things. He actually doesn’t believe I can change and I don’t blame him (I’ve done nothing short of disregard his feelings) and it’s a bitter pill to swallow knowing I’m as much to blame as him. However now that I have my “Back From the Looking Glass”, and ” The Love Safety Network” books I am using my tools needed to turn things around and he has no idea. I’m proud to say today I
even ststopped a would be argument by simply saying “I’m not going to continue this conversation because I know its not going to go anywhere with you” After that there was total silence and we won’t have that conversation again. Thanks Kim and Steve…no matter how this turns out I will be a better and emotionally healthy person. I’m praying he will be able to face himself too. Oh and lastly he did make a comment after me apologizing to him for my wrongs that he wants to get separate homes. I thought back to my book and simply said “I agree”.
Great work Aysha, The less you give him to resist the better!
I could so relate – early on, my husband would come home and tell me how to do what I was doing (cake decorating business at the time) even though I had been doing it myself all day. He just had to make suggestions on ways to “improve”. Many things like this have occurred, as well as his lack of support for things of interest to me. It was like my life interests were of little importance – only his were. We separated, and are now back together. I confront all such inappropriate comments/behaviors now, simply stating they’re inappropriate – and he’s actually seeing it more and more. Another thing I learned through counseling – sometimes when going through a hurtful thing in life, I would come to him with the tale, hoping for comfort. Instead, I would be attacked. I learned that he had to “feed his narcissistic wound” – then later would apologize and feel he was now the nice guy, though I had already went through the pain of it all. That one, he’s beginning to see (and stop) as well.
Best to all!
I hear a lot of man bashing here, but in actuality there are a lot of women who expect the world to revolve around them while they treat their men with disinterest much of the time and yet portray their man to others as the culprit. One can rarely get both sides of the story, but I do not approve of a man giving a woman a hard time over her cooking there are much more hurtful things that go one.
I agree & so will many others Doc, there are many women who have this disorder too, and it is often even more perplexing because no one expects women to be so selfish! And as we know, many of these narcissistic people do not show themselves until they are married or cohabitating. Women are known to take more crap off men because that is what they saw their Mothers do. I am on blogs because my Narc cheated and caused me a lot of pain and I can tell you there are many devastated men out there too that tried to please a Narc woman only to be taken advantage of. Kim’s advice to take back your power is right on the money! Yet hard to fight back to. The way I look at it, I needed to do the work anyway so I did not fall for someone else & find myself in the same position. My relationship survived because it was over 20+ years together and quite an investment I never considered myself weak, but did have 2 alcoholic parents, both quite flaming & had no normal role models at all-just what “not” to be. No one is saying there are no females with this disorder, Kim says stats say 70/30 men/women. The women are probably the ones cheating with out Narc men. they both need a lot of validation.
As women we are emotional so sometimes we could just be passive and let him tell us the way to cook and not care, but when we are emotional we need to not act it out so get out of the kitchen is the right way lol sometimes the man might get his feelings hurt, so I liked what you wrote you complimented his cooking but without compromising