I was a bit naïve when it came to understanding the importance of food in a marriage. Trying to figure out what, where, and when to eat was, in the beginning, seemingly benign chitchat between newlyweds, but after having the same discussion more than three hundred times, it made me start to develop a slight facial tick. We’d fallen into the what-should-we-do-for-dinner? rut. In fact, we’d been flailing in this rut for so long that it had become the dreaded deep dinner ditch.
My husband, Cosmas, always started the discussion: “So what do you think in terms of dinner?” Then I’d say, “I dunno; what do you feel like?” Then he’d say he didn’t know, and then I’d started naming things, Chinese, Thai, Indian, Mexican, pasta, etc., etc. Then we’d have to discuss each choice individually. No on Chinese, not in the mood. Thai is out because we had it last night. Maybe Mexican, but which restaurant should we go to? Yadda yadda.
Cosmas would say, “You do know that we can’t eat out and order takeout for the rest of our lives.” He’d remind me of the thousands of dollars in kitchen stuff that we’d received as wedding presents (from my in-laws). This caused me to undergo a flashback to my bridal shower. I can still hear the voices rising above the oohs and ahhs, “Look, Jenny, it’s a frying pan. You can use it for eggs.” Did they think I was a moron? Even when I used a frying pan to hammer a nail into my wall once, I still knew that it was a frying pan.
I grew to despise the very thought of dinner. I eventually calculated that if both of us live to be 80 and we ate dinner together 24 nights a month, then we were faced with figuring out what we were going to have for dinner a whopping 14,650 more times.
So I told Cosmas, “I’m surrendering. I’m officially declaring you the dinner dictator of our marriage. There will be no more discussions, as this is no longer a democracy. I give you unmitigated power of attorney to be solely in charge of my dinner welfare.” He decided that having a dinner dictator every night might actually be a pretty good idea, but he thought we should trade off. I suggested a four-year term of office, and he suggested switching it to a week-to-week basis.
We agreed that when it was your turn to be the dinner dictator, you had to make all the decisions. If you decided that we were going to eat out, you had to pick the place. If you decided that it was a good night for takeout, you’d order the food and pick it up. Same rules applied for cooking. That way, the other person would have the luxury of not having to worry. Of course, there was the standard no-complaints clause for whoever was receiving the meal.
Like any good dictator, I wanted to be respected by my people (Cosmas), and to be respected, I knew I had to lead. So I began to think about dinner in a whole new way. We had let dinner take over our lives when we were the ones who should’ve been in charge. Each week involved strategy and a plan for execution (I’ve seen a lot of war movies). I thought about what Cosmas would like for dinner and what I would like for dinner, and I figured out how much time I could give to the task at hand. Cosmas enjoyed his weeks as dictator too because he was finally able to get me into restaurants that I, a Twinkie and
SpaghettiOs fan, would never have tried before.
Our new dictatorship rules slowly but surely got us out of our ditch and to the point where we were just back in our old rut. Now, as for getting us out of the rut we’re currently in—I knew that would take a bit more creative energy (or a personal chef), but I guess if we absolutely had to be stuck in a rut at all, it was far better for us to be stuck in one together, right? Only 14,640 or so more dinners to go.
Adapted from Jenny Lee’s book
I Do. I Did. Now What?!; Workman Publishing Co., Inc.
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Illustration by Viktor Koen
-- Jenny Lee
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