My spouse has assumed the responsibility for ensuring that the family has a dinner every evening. I have assumed the responsibility for ensuring that every ind

My spouse has assumed the responsibility for ensuring that the family has a dinner every evening. I have assumed the responsibility for ensuring that every individual family member is capable of providing their own dinner from available materials every evening, if they choose to eat a dinner. This is "give a man a fish" versus "teach him how to fish". In this, we are at cross-purposes. I can prepare salubrious meals. I rarely have the opportunity to do so, because the spouse oversupplies the household needs, such that on days when no meal is freshly prepared, there are still 3 to 4 different choices for which leftovers to eat. I frequently get asked about what requests I have for the grocery shopping. My response is always "get nothing", because our standards for the conditions differ so widely. This is not "get nothing specifically for me," but "do not go grocery shopping at all." When I look in the pantry and see enough food to last for three months, my spouse sees the same, and thinks "OMFG, we literally have nothing to eat; I need to buy more food right now." I could draw up an inventory and 90 meal plans using nothing but what we have on hand, and hear, "We're not eating that." In a sense, the burden of that "emotional labor" is piled upon a great sleigh of my spouse's own making. I cannot explain, "You should not be worrying about doing this, because this is a thing that no one needs to do." It gets done anyway. Often, the emotional and communications effort of worrying about doing the thing, or convincing me to do the thing, is greater than the actual physical effort of actually doing it and being satisfied with the result. Like some cousin posts, I often have no specific preference for what I may eat for dinner. I will literally eat garbage (if it's on top--the Costanza rule). As such, about any restaurant with a food safety inspection score rated at "Waffle House" or higher works for me. In the rare instance where I actually do want something specific, my suggestion is usually countermanded by, "I don't want that. Pick something else." You can imagine my "WTF face". It is largely self-flagellation. The only way I could ease the burden is by taking away my spouse's freedom to make those irrational choices, which results in a different set of problems. Or maybe by springing for some deluxe anxiety counseling. In this instance, choosing the restaurant is like volunteering to wash a compulsive hand-washer's hands once a day. Even if you are a surgery nurse, and have perfect scrub-in technique, your hand-washing will not relieve the emotional burden, because the irrational compulsion is still there. It's not something you can share.