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Food

All the Ways That Food Has Nearly or Actually Ruined Our Relationships

The MUNCHIES staff shares memories of when their love un-blossomed because a date drank milk with a fancy dinner or put hot dogs in their spaghetti. Sorry, but sometimes, what you eat or don't eat can be a dealbreaker.
Photo via Flickr user Stephanie Keeney

This article originally appeared on MUNCHIES in February 2016.

Love hurts.

People say love is about compromise. Acceptance. Learning to value and accept (if not merely tolerate) all of the unexpected quirks, behaviors, neuroses, and attitudes of your betrothed. And that includes all of the gross shit that they eat. Or all of the amazing foods that they won't even try. We're talking culinary offenders and food prudes, and they lurk among us, only revealing themselves when you stumble into some kind of intimate tryst.

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Some things are forgivable: an indifference toward sushi, maybe, or an unfounded avoidance of gluten. But there are other things that can really, really get under your skin when you're sitting across the table from someone several times a week: an unexplained aversion to anything green, a diet comprised entirely of canned chili, or maybe a hatred of pizza.

We asked our staff to share all of the times that food came between them and a potential (or current) partner. Sometimes, attraction prevailed even when eating preferences diverged. Other times, these differences were straight-up dealbreakers. You've been chopped, freaky-ass eaters.

Sorry to any of our exes who might be reading this. Now you know why it just didn't work out. Or maybe you felt the same way about us.

Photo via Flickr user brett jordan

Photo via Flickr user brett jordan

Helen Hollyman, Editor-in-Chief

The relationship seemed really great, until it crumbled for a variety of reasons. But the moment I realized this was not the dude for me became crystal-clear as we walked by his local corner store, his favorite pit stop for dinner. "Sometimes I'll go in there, grab a potato, and microwave it for dinner. Sometimes I'll add butter or ketchup to it if I want some variety. And if I'm still hungry after that, I'll eat some saltines," he explained.

Thankfully, he never tried to cook me a romantic dinner at home. I'm mostly relieved that in the end, he didn't stick a rotting chicken carcass or cheese behind the oven. I've heard some horror stories of scorned lovers who've done just that as revenge on their ex's kitchen appliances, which will leave your place reeking of love gone bad for years to come.

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Photo via Flickr user Michael Bentley

Photo via Flickr user Michael Bentley

Felicia Alberding, Editor, MUNCHIES Netherlands

Basically, I never continue dating a guy the moment I found out he doesn't care about food, or doesn't like cheese, for example. But with my first real boyfriend ever, it was never really fun to dine. When I cooked him a really nice dinner and we were about to eat, he never wanted to share a bottle of wine… but milk instead. I thought that was a super mood-killer. Also there was the time we went on vacation on a Spanish island, and he never wanted to have a glass of wine—just Coke. Eventually the wine was not the real reason for our breakup (thank god), but the wine thing kind of became a symbol of us enjoying life in different ways.

Photo via Flickr user Chris Chen

Photo via Flickr user Chris Chen

Sydney Kramer, Social Editor

When I first started dating my husband, he wouldn't eat anything more adventurous than pepperoni pizza. I remember trying to get him to go out for Chinese food once and he really wasn't into it. Sushi was a huge step for us.

Eventually, though, he came around. Most recently, while we were in Japan, he ate shirako, otherwise known as cod sperm sacs, and actually enjoyed it. See? Love really does conquer all.

Photo via Flickr user ernie .ca

Photo via Flickr user ernie .ca

Margot Castaneda, Editor, MUNCHIES Español

A few years ago, when I was a young cook, I had a boyfriend who was also a cook. We would skip social commitments in order to try new restaurants, order Champagne with a face that read "Of course I can appreciate it… and pay for it," and eat as we had never eaten before. I spent so much time with him that I thought a good boyfriend came bundled with the characteristic of being the perfect companion to eat with. But that isn't so.

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I've met guys who cannot eat a whole burger without feeling that they are sinning. Boring! I've met greedy ones planning a first date in a bad restaurant just because it's cheap, or who wouldn't want to order an entree or wine because they felt they would end up in bankruptcy, or worse! Some that would not leave a tip. One who limits himself at a table also limits himself in… other things. Bye. I simply do not like people who do not enjoy eating.

Once I ended up eating tacos after a very successful first date with a handsome guy who stared at me in disgust when I asked for a beef tongue taco. Obviously, there was no second date; what did he expect? I recently went with one that seemed perfect, but he made me feel as if I was a bad person because "having a glass of wine at dinner is alcoholism". Too bad; he was (almost) a good guy.

Photo via Flickr user Stockypics

Noor Spanjer,MUNCHIES Netherlands Copy Editor

I was 15 years old, and my very first boyfriend—he was 17 at the time—came from a totally different background than me. His parents had soft, pink carpet in the living room, his mom made him toasted cheese sandwiches every weekend and did everyone's laundry, and his father had never even tried to cook a proper meal. His older sister had a pink room full of piglet posters, statues, and stuffed animals, and although she had finished her high school years and was a smart young lady, she didn't seem to have any plans to move out and go live on her own.

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One weekend, his parent and sister were away, and we woke up and he wanted to make me breakfast. I asked for a cup of tea. The water cooker stood next to the electric stove, and instead of putting the filled water cooker on its base, he put it on one of the electric burners on the stove, and turned the heat on. I was in the living room, and once I smelled the melted plastic of the cooker, I knew he and I weren't meant to be. A man that can't make you a cup of tea? Shame on you, and on your parents.

Photo via Flickr user Nadir Hashmi

Photo via Flickr user Nadir Hashmi

Javier Cabral, Staff Writer

My romantic life hasn't been so much a pursuit of finding that special someone, but more like finding that special someone who can hang with my possibly unhealthy obsession with food and drink. I can recall a few dates that abruptly ended because they didn't understand the brilliance of properly-fried pakora made with 100-percent chickpea flour, or because they didn't find a vegan drumstick amusing in the least.

Also, I found out—the heartbreaking way—that it is not as easy as just dating a chef… unless you don't mind becoming an alcoholic while you're at it, and inevitably getting cheated on with one of their co-workers.

However, I'm happy to announce that I found my soulmate in 2011, who doesn't mind going to four supermarkets in one night just to buy our weekly groceries. Love you, bae.

Photo via Flickr user Sylvia Wrigley

Photo via Flickr user Sylvia Wrigley

Matt Zuras, Senior Editor

Thanks to a mildly disastrous first date, my eight-year relationship with my current partner almost never came to be. In retrospect, I was being an asshole and he was being sweet: He had planned dinner and a movie, but the movie ended up being godawful and we got caught in one of those especially hellish New York rainstorms that turn your hastily purchased umbrella inside-out with the force of an IED. We'd also planned to see a series of sculptures (of Santa Claus holding a butt plug—molded in chocolate, naturally), but the gallery had closed early.

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So we ended up at a middling Cuban restaurant. Wet and testy, I ordered ropa vieja; he got a Cubano. Then, without asking, he ordered us a pitcher of sangria. Now, I've never met a sangria I liked, though I will drink just about anything that contains even a soupçon of alcohol. But of politeness and a strong desire to lubricate this increasingly awkward encounter with some booze, I took a few sips of the overly sweet swill, the soggy chunks of fruit bobbing against my lips, and proceeded to not get drunk enough to enjoy my meal.

When we left, we took the subway home together but we parted at our respective stops. No kiss, no hug. And I figured I'd never see him again.

But he stuck in my brain somehow, and I texted him after a couple days to see if he wanted a date redux. A year later, we moved in together.

It was in those early days that his aversions to certain foods—far stronger than mine to sangria—started to emerge. He has no food allergies, but he wouldn't touch fish or any fruit that wasn't a banana or a pear. No apricots, oranges, plums, or tangerines. He wouldn't eat onions, mushrooms, or bell peppers. He didn't like a lot of spice and turned up his nose at lamb. Offal was never even up for discussion.

He only wanted burgers. He loved burgers. He still loves burgers.

In truth, he did try to expand his palate. I challenged him—on our second date, as some kind of revenge for the rained-out first one—to eat chapulines that had been been smuggled in from Oaxaca. He gamely crunched through a few, determined, I guess, to win me over. (It worked.)

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In the years since, he's warmed up to the occasional bite of seafood and begrudgingly eaten a lot of deliciously fucked-up animal parts at my behest: pigs' faces and their feet; sweetbreads and tongues and livers; spidery tangles of tripe; brains; sheep's udder, braised and grilled and dabbed in salt and cumin.

And yet he will not, even to this day, eat an orange.

To paraphrase the great minds of both HG Wells and Maroon 5, love is all about compromise.

Photo via Flickr user Frank Farm

Photo via Flickr user Frank Farm

Hilary Pollack, Associate Editor

I was a vegetarian for ten years, so I was probably considered the finicky one in a lot of my past romantic relationships, excluding the few I shared with fellow vegetarians. But honestly, I've always been a pretty flexible eater. I get down with Taco Bell and $1 pizza sometimes, but I also respect vegetables and enjoy white tablecloths.

A first date a few years ago took a sharp nosedive when the guy I was hanging out with—who I'd thought was the Amex Black Card of babes from a distance for a while before we actually interacted—informed me that his favorite food was "spaghetti with, like, some cut-up hot dogs in it," sometimes with ketchup or mayo added. He also made DMT in his basement and shared a bedroom with a roommate at age 26, but this depressing, Gummo-esque dish he loved so much was somehow more offensive to me than all of that.

Also, for four years, I was in on-again off-again relationship with a dude who has a morbid fear of butter. It stemmed from his experience working as a telemarketer in his late teens, where one of his coworkers would microwave buttered fish in the office every day. He had developed an honest-to-god phobia of many dairy products, including sour cream, cream cheese, mayonnaise, ranch dressing, and pretty much anything else white and creamy. He would eat dry-ass bagels with just egg and bacon on them, and plead desperately with waiters to keep butter away from his plate like a bulimic high-school gymnast. I couldn't overlook this. One should never be subjected to the smell of microwaved fish, but what kind of monster never puts cream cheese on their bagel?

He was also a really bad tipper. That was the biggest red flag, other than the fact that he categorically denied the potential existence of aliens. Sometimes I'd wait until he went to the bathroom at the end of the meal and then scribble out the tip he had left and add a few bucks. You're welcome for the karma!

Have a great Valentine's Day, readers. Good luck, and we hope you can agree on where to go to dinner.