CH writes:

I don’t want socks. I’m tired of pizza. I’d like home-cooked meals. I’d like someone to share life with. Unfortunately, I’m tied into the Pizza Hell Matrix myself, what with there being hardly naught but cranky, ‘unfulfilled,’ “I Ain’t Cookin’ Crap for No Man” little girls running around in women’s bodies out there. The Pizza Industrial Complex has me sorely within its grip. The bastards know I’m like any other bachelor—I want to eat but I’m not the chef type and, despite all the things I could offer one of the women-children running around, I can’t find a single one who doesn’t seem to find the idea of cooking for me to be anything within her realm of things that don’t make her nauseated.

So Totino’s, DiGiorno or Tombstone it is, more often than naught.

Was there a time when men could go home from slugging it out with deadlines, narcissistic bosses, the commute to work, making ends meet and generally going through the war that is just trying to survive and happen upon pleasant things? Was there a time when men had hope of someday meeting someone for whom he could work and toil and she would appreciate this? Was there a time when video games and pizza did not constitute the lives of so many men who just simply want to care about someone, as God intended?

There must have been. I’ve seen pictures and heard tell of these times.

But all I have now are socks with slices of pizza on them. Hmm. Seems like something went awry somewhere, don’t it?

— Comments —

Anne writes:

Dear CH,

Please don’t worry. I feed my husband like a king and he’s still not happy.

 Anne

Shannon Hood writes:

Laura writes:

You say that a good woman is hard to find and then condemn CH for making that point.

That’s very resourceful of your father, but it doesn’t seem that he had all that much to complain about, given that his situation was temporary. Many men are obviously good cooks who even cook for their wives and families, but your father apparently has a good woman to cook for him most of the time, a fact which makes his life better, and, while CH could cook for himself, most men are deficient in this department and besides cooking food alone  is different from creating a home that features home cooking.

You say,

You want a wife who cooks for you? Learn to cook yourself. Take a cooking class.

So in other words, he should become the cook. It is generally impossible for men and women to excel at being both men and women. I personally would never have married a man who cooks, which is not to say there are no manly men who cook. But I don’t see how learning to cook will make it more likely that he will find a woman who cooks and I don’t think it is unreasonable to want a woman who has ability in the kitchen provided one is willing to make it possible for her to use that ability and is appreciative of her hard work.

By the way, I would add to CH’s rant that while there are many girl-women, there are also many boy-men.

Abigail writes:

Laura writes:

If CH goes around complaining all the time about the lack of women who cook and if he cruelly criticizes or attacks the women he knows for not being able to cook, well, then I would agree with some of what you say.

But his invective is rhetorical. It does not prove that he does any of those things.

I have sympathy for CH, assuming he is not single-mindedly focused on what he does not have and assuming he realizes the large part that men have most definitely played in driving women out of the kitchen, but I also have sympathy for all those women who would like to have a man to cook for but don’t and for those who would like to cook for a man but are too busy and pressured to be masculine and to do everything else.

By the way, I think you are taking CH too literally when he says he eats mainly pizza. Even if he survived on take-out kombucha and made arugula and tofu salads for himself, his complaint would be — or should be — the same.

Also, if men shed the attitude that women owe them anything than women must also shed the attitude that men owe them anything. It’s a bum deal. I remember when I was in the hospital giving birth, one woman took a cab home with her newborn baby. There was no one to take her home. And apparently no one to support her while she raised a child. Men didn’t owe her anything.

You are seriously deluded.

Ch writes:

To Abigail:

Happening across my rant as you did—out of the blue, knowing nothing of me–I can certainly understand your irritation at your perception that I am not self-aware and am whiny and the like. Completely understood and I grasp what you’re saying, despite that you’re utterly incorrect.

 You write:

“… he claims he is forced, FORCED!, to subsist on unfulfilling pizza meals”

I said no such thing. You grasp hyperbole when you type it out, clearly, but you don’t grasp it when someone else types it? This I find confusing.

“Now, of course, what CH is really bemoaning is his unfulfilled desire for love and companionship”

Is that what I’m doing? Well, I suppose you could be correct. I’ll check with a therapist.

“Shedding the attitude that the women of the world owe him something will make him more appealing and thus more likely to find a woman who will lavish love, affection, and various acts of service upon him because she wants to.”

Laura may be correct: you might just be deluded, Abigail. You missed the entire point. Entirely. Let me bold it for you. Here’s what I said:

“Was there a time when men had hope of someday meeting someone for whom he could work and toil and she would appreciate this?”

I said nothing of women owing me something just simply because I’m breathing. I said ‘work and toil,’ i.e., provide for her. That would be my contribution to this entitlement you think I’m expressing. That would be the deal—I bust my [bum] to provide for someone. Maybe I get a home-cooked meal out of that. Maybe I get a little appreciation for working to provide for someone.

Isn’t that what you want, Abigail? A little bit of recognition for the hard work you do? Isn’t that the basis for your ideology, which you’ve noted is different than mine and Laura’s? Don’t you seek to be respected for the things you do, and to have that respect reciprocated by someone showing you a little appreciation?

You certainly made an gigantic mountain out of a tiny, hyperbolic molehill, Abigail.

Laura, carry on then!

Marissa writes:

Why should CH learn to cook in order to be a “catch of a man”?  The vast majority of feminine women who want to be mothers and wives don’t make their marriage decisions based on a man’s cooking skills.  And it’s probably pretty obvious that CH isn’t looking for a woman who cares about his cooking skills – that’s expected to be her sphere.  What is with these absurd, disgruntled harpies who come out of the woodwork every time a man has the gall to have expectations and standards for the woman he intends to marry?

ST writes:

I read your post that began with a lament from CH and continued with women harping on how he should learn to cook for himself.  I did not read his post and come to the conclusion he was whinging. I read it more that he was lamenting the state of womanhood in the 21st century.  And Shannon and Abigail just proved his point.

Some men do cook and love it, some men do out of necessity.  I don’t know any man who would live off nothing but pizza or any carry out.  But that isn’t the point he was making.

I have read this over and over again, how men cannot find decent traditional women to share the life they have envisioned.  Where were they when I entered my adult womanhood? The men I met and dated all wanted and expected me to work after marriage to help bring in the finances.  That did not sit well with my traditional values on the role of a woman. I felt they were abandoning their role as a husband to provide for the family.  So I did not compromise.

I am a woman who loves to cook for anybody.  Cooking for me is fun because I love it. Still, I would have loved to have been married and delightfully cooked for my husband.  It wasn’t to be. I cook for myself.  I get to try out my recipes on others when I go to potlucks, or host a party myself. I work because I have to, and I don’t whinge.

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