Woman Cooks Separate Meals For Her Husband Because 'He Literally Won't Eat' Otherwise — People Say She Deserves Better But She Doubles Down
"You deserve better than a man who treats you like his mother," one person wrote.
TikTok Most of us want to do whatever we can to make our partners happy. But there is a fine line, of course, between caretaking and being taken advantage of. One woman on TikTok sparked a ton of backlash when she showed off just how far she's willing to go to meet her husband's standards.
A woman on TikTok cooks her husband separate meals because he's a 'picky eater.'
Brianna, known as @themamabrianna on the app, recently filmed a cooking video showing how she makes the nachos her husband loves. At first blush, it seems like a normal TikTok cooking tutorial, but her onscreen text reveals there's far more to the story. The video quickly becomes a shining example of a phenomenon all too many wives have to put up with—husbands who act like children.
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The TikToker serves her husband's separate meal to him on the couch while he watches TV.
"My husband didn't eat the dinner I made," Brianna writes in her onscreen text, "so let's make him some nachos." As she begins assembling his favorite nachos, her onscreen text goes on to say, "If I don't feed him he literally won't eat." Which is wild since he's a grown man in his 30s.
She then serves her husband his separate food on the couch, where he is wrapped up in a blanket watching TV. When she hands him his pan of nachos, he barely acknowledges her. In fact, he doesn't even make eye contact—he simply takes his eyes off the TV long enough to take the pan from her and goes back to his show.
Cooking separate meals for him isn't the only thing Brianna does for her husband that most people would consider a bit much. Their relationship takes the whole husbands who act like children thing to a whole new level—Brianna revealed she also goes to his doctor's appointments with him because he can never remember which antibiotic he's allergic to or "which card is the insurance card."
The TikToker blames her mother-in-law for her husband refusing to eat anything but nachos and mac and cheese like a kid.
"This used to irritate me," Brianna goes on to say of her husband's eating habits. "Now I just blame his mother for never making him try salmon."
In her video's caption, she offered some advice for parents of small children based on what she's learned from having to make her husband a separate meal all the time. "Moral of the story: always serve your kids allllll the food, even if they say they don't like it after the first time," she writes. "Twenty-five years from now your child’s spouse will thank you."
Which is good advice. Experts say exposure to foods is key to keeping children from becoming picky eaters. Professor Dina Rose says the approach a parent takes is all-important, however—"exposure" could mean helping mom or dad prepare the food, or simply looking at it while a parent explains what it is if they're dead-set against trying it.
These low-stakes exercises, Rose says, work better than forcing kids to actually eat things, because it makes kids more curious and can help avoid them developing anxious, combative, rigid standards about food that turn them into, you know, a grown man in his 30s who refuses to eat salmon and has to be served nachos on the couch "while he watches 'Bluey,'" as one commenter put it.
People were outraged on Brianna's behalf and accused her husband of acting like a child.
Many commenters were genuinely shocked by what they saw. "The way you just served him in his blankie on the couch," one woman wrote. "He even looks like a baby," another wrote.
Others had no patience for husbands who act like children and were downright angry on Brianna's behalf.
"If my man refused to eat a dinner I made him, I’d never cook for him again." a woman commented. "Sorry, my inner beast would come out," another user wrote. "'Then go ahead and STARRVVEE!!!'" One woman went so far as to say she'd "laugh in his face" if her husband ever asked her to make him a separate meal.
Others pushed back on Brianna blaming her husband's mother for his refusal to eat regular foods. "He is an adult…time to stop blaming mommy," one person commented. Another added, "If your parents don't do a decent job raising you, it is your responsibility to finish the job, not your spouse's."
Brianna was unfazed by the criticism and doubled down with another cooking video.
If any of the commenters' backlash registered with Brianna, she didn't show it. Instead, she responded to one of the man comments criticizing her husband with another video of her making him a big bowl of scratch-made macaroni and cheese.
Once again, she delivered it to him on the couch where he was watching TV, playing on an iPad, and playing on his phone. This time he did, however, make eye contact and smile appreciatively, so at least there's that!
"Bro has three screens on him," one viewer commented. "Literally the epitome of an iPad baby." The video struck some people as so absurd they wondered if Brianna's whole account might be part of a growing TikTok trend of satirical videos in which wives pretend to be something more like their husband's servants than their wives as a way of poking fun at gender roles and so-called "trad wives" and other social media trends.
"This has to be a joke. The blankie and iPad??" one woman wrote. Another commented, "Tell me this is staged please," while one woman mused, "This HAS to be satire. Right???" Some even theorized the dynamic was a form of fetish play. "It's ageplay guys," one person commented, referencing the fetish practice where partners pretend to have a parent-child relationship.
But more than anything, people wanted better for Brianna. "I just filed for divorce against this man and I’ve never even met him," one woman joked, while another was more serious—"Girl I don't even know you and I know you deserve better."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social media and human interest topics.