Love and Respect

When your partner takes over the cooking but treats you like dirt in the kitchen, it's not love. It's emotional abuse:

Yolanda Edwards was at a friend's house in Brooklyn for dinner when the hostess asked her to pull out a pot for boiling pasta. Edwards froze. As her friend looked at her in disbelief, she said she was not up to the job.

"I used to think I was a good cook," said Edwards, an editor at the parenting magazine Cookie. "But my husband's a kitchen bully. He's so critical, I second-guess myself now." [...]

"I have no problem admitting that I'm an alpha," said her husband, Matthew Hranek, a photographer. "Yolanda wouldn't know a corked bottle of wine if you put it in front of her. When we met, she had four days' worth of dishes in her sink, most of which had what looked like black bean on them. Ever since then, I've cooked for her."

Jeeeze. I don't know this couple personally, but something's wrong when a spouse willingly makes his wife sound like a dumb slob in a major newspaper. Even if said in jest, it wasn't funny. No wonder the poor woman, an intelligent magazine editor who used to cook flank steak for dinner parties, is now reduced to a quivering piece of jell-o terrified to even boil water for pasta.

I'll never understand how a person can casually humiliate someone they love. There's nothing more hurtful than being at the receiving end of condescending putdowns from a partner or spouse; it's like dying a little every time. At the end of the day, love without respect really doesn't amount to much.

Tags: emotional abuse, love, relationships, respect

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