Originally published at: Husband divorces wife because she would only cook him instant noodles for all meals | Boing Boing
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For me, it raises the question of “Why did they get married in the first place?”, which I wager comes down to a cultural custom where saying no to a wedding is much worse than saying no to marriage.
Unless there’s some other reason one might want to get married one day, and divorced literally the next? I mean, I’m sure there are some husbands who hide who they really are until the wedding night, but enough that the Judge had to point out that they are receiving a “drastically increasing” number of them?
Speaking of changes on the wedding day:
Still, there were warning signs. As we danced at our wedding reception, Elon told me, “I am the alpha in this relationship.” I shrugged it off, just as I would later shrug off signing the postnuptial agreement, but as time went on, I learned that he was serious. He had grown up in the male-dominated culture of South Africa, and the will to compete and dominate that made him so successful in business did not magically shut off when he came home. This, and the vast economic imbalance between us, meant that in the months following our wedding, a certain dynamic began to take hold. Elon’s judgment overruled mine, and he was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking. “I am your wife,” I told him repeatedly, “not your employee.”
“If you were my employee,” he said just as often, “I would fire you.”
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I hope she’s now making the meals she really wanted for herself, now that she DTMFA.
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It’s possible they hadn’t spent much time together (or alone together) beforehand. Cooking a meal for or with someone has generally been one of my early dates, so it’d never get to a marriage proposal if we were that incompatible on food
It was likely an arranged marriage, with neither of them having much (if any) say in the spouse choice ahead of time.
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The husband in this story doesn’t know how to shop or cook for himself?
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Somehow, getting divorced is easier than learning?
That woman had a lucky escape.
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Not making excuses for it, but they’re raised with a whole set of social norms that I’m glad to have avoided. My best friend married a guy from India, and he’s really great in general, but if my friend wasn’t very good about setting and maintaining boundaries, she would likely be doing all the cooking, cleaning and mending of clothes by now.
Whenever his parents come to visit, she has what are to us really funny stories about the different cultural expectations, but for someone who couldn’t stand up for herself would be miserable experiences.
From what little I do know, I suspect this woman did not want to be married and did the noodle thing to prove a point. Or didn’t want to be relegated to that role. It’s harder to imagine that she truly didn’t know how to cook.
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Perhaps it was her plan, the whole time…
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Yeah, maybe she’s a totally fabulous cook, just not for that dick
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I totally get it that it probably has a lot to do with their culture; that was just me being my usual snarky self.
Where I’m from if you have to reply on others to do anything, then it’s very possible that nothing will get done. And if you want something done right, then you’d damn well better do it yourself.
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My aunt got married while she was in college in the late 60s (in the US). By the day of the wedding she knew it was a bad idea, but she couldn’t figure out how to tell anyone. She realized later her mother suspected she was having cold feet and was giving her a chance to say “call it off” but she didn’t and was divorced within months. You don’t have to look to “foreign” cultures or arranged marriages to see people who get married and immediately regret it. I’ve seen it happen plenty in the 21st century too, even between couples that were together for a years before their marriage including living together.
To give the husband here a benefit of the doubt which he probably doesn’t deserve, another custom that used to be common in the US before no-fault divorces became universal is that couples who just didn’t want to be married would have to make up absurd stories to tell a judge to get their divorce approved. In the US, that usually meant alleging abuse or infidelity. If they are divorcing by mutual consent but have to make up a reason and “bad cooking” is sufficient for the court, its definitely what I would pick.
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I guess some cookware company should have taken Ariel’s example to make a “why is cooking only a wife’s job?” themed commercial…
FWIW there’s a mom version too:
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Just learn to cook
Kinda late in life to get beyond boiling water.
Yeah. If the wife only knew how to cook one dish, that was still one more dish than her fucking husband apparently knew how to cook!
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Husband staved to death a few weeks later, or went back to his mother who had been enabling him since birth. /s
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That was my initial thought. We have/had the same issue in the UK. In previous decades it was bad enough that there were people offering a service to provide suitable “evidence” of adultery for use in divorce proceedings.
The latest incarnation of The Ipcress File has an example.
Cheap hotel room, suitably attired model in bed with hubby, enter photographer to take News of the World worthy snaps and off to the divorce courts we go…
In latter days things were less extreme but my colleagues would still negotiate what claims would be made in the divorce petition with the other spouse’s lawyer. Those were often what is politely termed “legal fictions”.
We’ve finally moved to no-fault divorce this year.
As it turns out though that doesn’t seem to be the problem.
Like many things in India what the law is depends. Marriage laws vary depending on the faiths and origins of the spouses, where they got married, etc.
These appear to be Hindus or at least governed by those parts of the law - due to the mutual consent part.
As best I can work from a very brief bit of googling, that doesn’t seem to require any grounds as such.
Both parties need to file an affidavit, they have to agree on alimony and child support and they have to wait for the divorce to be finalized during which time either party can change their mind.
I would therefore suspect this was a case where people couldn’t reach agreement and one side started proceedings to put pressure on the other.
Or was just an entitled asshole.
That’s always an option.
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