My H thinks it’s a really big deal to eat together and even if I’m heating something up and we are just eating on the couch and I say I’ll be there in a minute, he will wait till I sit down to begin.
Otoh it’s not a big deal to me at all. I just indulge him in this because it’s important to him.
To clarify - that’s about dinner on the nights he is home for dinner. On the nights he works til 9 pm, I do my own thing but he really appreciates it if I sit w him when he eats.
I usually have dinner with my husband, if he’s not working late. We both like to cook and enjoy cooking together and planning a dinner. H is a much better home cook than I am. I don’t usually exercise in the evening except for Mondays when I take a yoga class with one of my favorite instructors. H is home on Mondays and dinner ready for me when I get back. I really do like sitting down and not having to do anything, even though I like cooking. There are times when it’s just nice to have someone else do all the work.
When something is important to me, I will say to my husband “eating dinner with you is important to me.” Have you specifically said those words to him? Guys are direct, and they understand direct requests, and most guys want to make their wives happy.
They don’t understand passive aggressive nearly as well, like them coming home and finding you sitting at the dinner table with a nice meal gone cold and an angry expression on your face.
That just confuses them.
Just got to this part and I have to say you are being SUPER not supportive of your husband.
He’s trying to do the right thing by staying healthy. He’s not asking for you to sit at home and wait for him. If you are CHOOSING to sit at home and stew, that’s on you. There are a million things you could be doing so you could meet up later to eat. Including exercising.
He’s asking you to have dinner at a later time so he can stay healthy-it helps with stress, it helps with feeling good, it helps with longevity. Not being supportive of a spouse’s wish to exercise to me is incredibly, incredibly selfish.
You need to take a hard look at yourself and what you want from life, because you’re expecting him to make you happy and cater to your needs, and that’s just selfish.
No wonder it’s the only time you spend together-you’re probably not being very nice to him.
Spend some time working on yourself, you’ll be a lot happier and you’ll probably discover your husband wants to spend more time with you.
That was pretty harsh but I think MOD is spot on in that it’s good to support a spouse’s desire to stay healthy.
DH and I mostly eat dinner together… but sometimes I eat a “snack” at 4 (he gets home around 6) and I’m really NOT hungry when he gets home, in which case I’ll have a piece of fruit while he eats dinner. Lots of people are saying the OP should wait and have dinner when her husband gets back from the gym–that would really not work for me, as the later it gets, the less I want to eat. Our dinner is usually pretty light, in any case, as DH also likes his major meal of the day to be lunch.
We do however eat breakfast together and sit and talk, every single morning, before the day begins.
There are some things that really bring out the dragon in me, and selfishness is one of them.
Sometimes you have to metaphorically shoot people right between the eyes to get them to see what they’re doing to other people.
I’ve done it to my IRL friends, and when they get over being mad at me for telling them what they don’t want to hear, they thank me for being straight with them when they ask me what I think.
Marriage is not easy, and you have to think your spouse has the best intentions when stuff happens, or it’s even tougher. The OP thinks that the husband is exercising just to stick it to her (“it’s not like he’s training for the Olympics or anything” is incredibly disparaging to the person you are supposed to love the most), and that’s incredibly damaging to the relationship.
The sooner she takes another look at how she’s approaching things, the happier the two of them may become, and that’s always my intention at the end of the day. The world can never have enough happy people, even if you have to cry a lot to get there.
This is a time we now need OP (@tiredalready) to come back on and give us some more feedback - otherwise we start generalizing and overguessing or supposing - it happens! 
Fully support the idea that many people cannot eat a big meal and then work out soon afterwards and/or eat soon after working out!
OP, does the issue have anything to do with you being upset that you went to the trouble of cooking and you want dinner on the table - for everyone - when it’s ready??
Every night except when H is out if town or it’s a late night at the office; and the night I have yoga class because it’s not good to eat right before yoga - so I eat a very late lunch - then I have a bite to eat when I get home. I don’t expect H to wait until 8:30 to eat and he doesn’t expect me to wait for him on nights he is late.
We don’t always cook dinner or eat the same things (usually on left over night) but we sit down together no matter what we are eating.
We both enjoy cooking. When we first started dating he told me then eating dinner as a family was something that was important to him. It was interesting how the kids would miss it if schedules got a little crazy.
Unless we have waffles or something big we don’t really eat breakfast together. We work from home and have an office near by so if we are both home we’ll have lunch at the same time. I’m kind of boring, I eat nearly the same lunch all the time.
It sounds more like you’re concerned with spending time together vs living separate lives. Perhaps you need to come up with ways to spend time together that is routine.
My husband and I eat together most nights , but his schedule is erratic and sometimes he comes home to eat , and then back to work because it’s the only time of the day he can get things done without interruptions.
Now that we are sort of empty nesters, I have enjoyed making foods that the two of us like that our picky daughter wouldn’t eat. That has been the thing I actually like about our time alone. We do not have a set dinner time at our house because of his work
Flexibility and communication seem key to me. If the parties BOTH want some togetherness time, they will work to figure out how it best fits for both of them. Unilateral directives and pouting are destructive and counter productive. There is no one way for things to work for any couple. I have friends who live in different cities but commute to be together on weekends. Now, the wife is accepting a job in a different state. The couple is still very close, but it does create stresses and strains in their marriage that they have to make these choices. They are still able to figure out how to make things work for themselves.
Like I say, there are lots of ways, but BOTH people in the couple have to want it and make it work.
@rosered55, I’m sorry you are having such stress with your H and your FIL. I hope you do all you can to keep yourself as protected as possible. A good forensic accountant and divorce attorney are key to start with. Good luck! I suspect your kids may know more than you think–most kids are pretty bright, especially those on CC.
We eat together most nights unless one of us has other plans.We also always ate dinner as a family when we had kids at home. We rarely eat breakfast together. It was not a discussed decision it just evolved. I think it might be because we both grew up in families where everyone ate dinner together. I usually cook but sometimes we go out or just have quesadillas. I’ve noticed both my kids in long term relationships also eat dinner with their mate.
My GF isn’t a dinner person. She had a similar situation @“tired already” but in her case it was her H who was disappointed. On the advice of a therapist and several friends she made an effort to set aside 3 evenings a week for a meal together even if she just sat with him. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
^^^^ Good compromise. @tiredalready, is this an everynight thing or just a sometimes think that you don’t eat together?
Also, I wondered how it was when you had kid(s) at home? Did your husband eat with the rest of you then?
I also can’t exercise right before bed. I have been going to an 8-9 deep water exercise class a couple nights a week, and it takes a couple hours for me to even consider sleep afterwards.
Well in OP’s situation it would be important to consider how her H is communicating to her that he can’t have dinner with her. Is he telling her “it’s not important” to him that they sit down together? Or is he saying “can I get my workout in first?” There is a big difference between those 2 statements. And if it is the first statement, then I agree that OP has every right to be upset. If someone said that to me, I would not accommodate them by waiting to dine with them - they have made themselves perfectly clear.
Now if he is saying he wants to get his workout in first, I totally get that and would look for some sort of compromise. OP, could you eat yourself first and then sit with him and enjoy a glass of wine while he eats after the workout?
I think that this is overly harsh to the op. If you read some of her earlier posts it appears that she isn’t married to someone who is very invested in their relationship. Exercising in the evenings is better than not exercising at all but my husband works out first thing in the morning and my gym is extremely busy from 6 am through 8 am so clearly this is not an unreasonable time for many people.
Could he compromise and work out in the mornings or at lunch time at least a few days a week? A considerate spouse could make this work if he knows it’s important to his wife. MOD, does the wife always have to be the one to work around hubby’s schedule? Is it possible that he is being selfish?
Sometimes when someone claims they are just being honest, they are really just being mean.
@“tired already” , your post did reply in the thread you started.
Hubby and I eat together. However, on my book club nights, I need to eat earlier, so sometimes our menu is such that I can eat before leaving and the meal can stay warm so he can eat when he wants. On the nights that we eat leftovers, I’ll sometimes eat before he does. I get hungry earlier than my husband does. In the beginning of our marriage, he wasn’t ready to eat until 8 pm, but I was starving at 4 pm. It took me years to figure out the problem was he ate a substantial lunch and I didn’t. Once we had children we had to eat earlier, and now as empty nesters we have settled on 7 pm.
When I read your post, I thought if you are hungry, it could seem like a very long time waiting for your husband to come home.
@FlyMeToTheMoon - just an aside…the threads were merged…
My husband and I are empty nesters, and we eat together at night, “except when we don’t.” I usually wind up seeing a friend a night a week, and my husband eats by himself that night. One night a month, we both have late meetings, so we eat separately that night. Friday we usually keep as “date night” (which may end by 6:30, but we almost always go out that night). We almost never eat breakfast or lunch together, because our schedules are just different. Weekend nights we usually cook “real meals” but as the week goes on, the pickings get slimmer and slimmer.