Posted on Wed, Mar. 14, 2007

In kitchen, couples may whine before they dine

KATHERINE WHEELOCK

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."
If there were a clinical diagnosis for her problem, it might be called beta cook disorder. Even though Edwards blithely prepared flank steak for dinner parties when she was in college, she is now married to someone who takes charge in the kitchen: an alpha cook.

"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."
True, life with an alpha cook can mean sitting back and watching while someone else prepares restaurant-quality wild mushroom risotto on a quiet Tuesday night.
But it can also mean putting up with small culinary humiliations and an unending patter of condescending remarks.

When Robin Henry, an interior designer, helps make dinner with her fiance, Andrew Goldman, a writer, she endures his constant, conspicuous scrutiny.
"I'll be standing there, sauteing onions, and I can feel him standing over my shoulder, staring down at the pot and gnashing his teeth," Henry said. "He'll say things like, `You should really turn that down now.

' "
Henry relayed this -- along with her feeling that she is expected to greet any meal he might make on an average weeknight with the equivalent of a marching band reception -- with affection.
"It's part of his charm," she said. Like many betas, she seems to have made peace with her lower status.

The only time bitterness crept into her voice was when she talked about the tasks her fiance assigns her when she plays sous-chef.
"He's like, `Great, yes, come cook with me.' And then he gives me the take-the-chicken-out-of-the-package-and-rinse-it job," she said.

"I am like that," Goldman agreed. "I wouldn't blame Robin if she didn't want to cook with me. I've caught myself.

It's not so much me telling her she's doing something wrong. I think it's just that she catches my glances."
It was a nice fantasy while it lasted: Rather than letting the lady of the house bear the constant burden of cooking dinner, the modern couple would share the work.

Husbands would take an interest in casseroles. Wives would slap slabs of meat on the grill. They would read cookbooks and watch the Food Network together.

The kitchen would be a peaceful domain ruled equally by two people.
For many couples, this never happened. Instead, wedged there in the kitchen together, they fell into a power dynamic just as unequal and emotionally fraught as the arrangement that puts the female half in a frilly apron.

Instead of a partnership, some couples say that their relationship in the kitchen more closely resembles a tiny dictatorship.
This, of course, is the way it works in restaurants, where the chef's authority is nearly absolute.
Therapists are all too familiar with marriages that run aground in the kitchen.

"If there's a power struggle, it will come out in cooking together," said Dr. Marion Solomon, a couples therapist in Los Angeles. "If a person feels that they're not recognized for their abilities in other areas, they can start to resent the partner who takes control in the kitchen.

"
But couples who embrace their culinary inequality can still find happiness, Solomon said. Solomon said that a couple can enjoy playing student and teacher in the kitchen "if one person doesn't feel capable and the other loves to be a mentor.