So I’m the house keeper. Not a big deal. I love cooking and I love her response to the food I make.
At least three times a week, she tells me she felt bad that her coworkers didn’t have a lunch, so I adjusted my cooking so her coworkers would have some sort of lunch if they didn’t or couldn’t bring anything. All she needed to do was bring the leftovers that she could share, and I would leave a small plate for myself for lunch the next day. SHE TAKES MY FUCKING LUNCH I MADE FOR MYSELF AND LEAVES THE LEFTOVERS FOR 4 PEOPLE! It drives me fucking insane. Stop bitching about coworkers not having enough to eat if you’re not going to fucking help. It makes me so God damn angry because now this food is either sit and go bad or I have to eat the same meal twice a day. My fucking GOD!!!
I understand what you’re saying, but the one defining factor is her requesting I make them food. I’ve made many dishes for her to share under the idea they’re meant to share, and we’ve agreed that whatever leftovers are available after she got her fill are free game. I’ve even made special dishes for the people she works with upon request. Absolutely zero problem with that. If they asked directly to make them a meal, I’d 500% do it because, and like I said, I’ll be damned that someone is hungry if I have control of it. But the past few nights, I’ll make enough leftovers for her coworkers, and she doesn’t take them. It pisses me off because now I’m in a situation to either eat the leftovers or throw the food away, and I’ve always been under the idea that if you microwave food and don’t eat it all, the rest is garbage.
I always aim to avoid that altogether making enough for multiple people to eat after microwaving it, but when she doesn’t take the prescribed leftovers, it’s going to be heated up once, and then it’s garbage after that
For the occurrence you referred to in your first post today, did she ask you to make this extra food for them today or did you offer to make them food and she said “yes”?
You can communicate to her how strongly you feel about wasting food, and that if she explicitly asks you to create food that you then have to throw away because she doesn’t do her part in taking it to coworkers, you are being forced to do something you hate because of her carelessness and how frustrated that makes you. You can even put boundaries on what you’re willing to do:
“I love you, and want your coworkers to be fed, but it pains me deeply to spend the effort of cooking then be forced to throw that away. It makes me feel like you don’t care about my efforts and it feels like disrespect from you to me. In the future I will wait for you to explicitly ask me to make a meal for you co-workers, and if I do that and I have to throw it away again, I may not be willing to cook for your coworkers anymore.”
I’m not sure where you picked that up, but I’ve never seen a limit on the amount of times you reheat. The only limits are consuming leftovers within a few days. Now I’ll do some solutioning: If your concern is on the number of reheats, what prevents you from dishing out a smaller portion from the refrigerated leftovers and just eating that portion? The rest of the leftovers haven’t been subjected to any reheating events yet.
I get what you’re saying, and I’ve cooled off. You’re right.
This is hard stuff. There’s nothing that seems natural about this. It goes against our very nature. However, seeking this understanding of your mate is an act of love. Knowing yourself and your needs, and those of your mate is a super power!
As long as you are both open with each other, and respect each others positions and needs, you are going to not only get through this but come out much stronger together on the other side. This is a small brick that builds a very strong foundation for your relationship with your mate. You’ve got this, man.