This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Born-Philosopher-121 on 2023-09-15 13:42:02.

I (28M) always had a good relationship with my family growing up and even into my 20s. It was after my wife (27F) and I had our first child that things declined. My wife suffers from an eating disorder (anorexia), and she also has Sensory Processing Disorder, though that’s less of an official diagnosis because it’s not fully recognized on it’s own currently but she has doctors and therapists recognize this as something she struggles with.

My wife’s childhood was difficult with strict parents who were unkind to their three children when it came to food. My wife got the worst of it because she struggled badly with eating certain foods and after several years of being berated over food, told she was behaving like a spoiled little brat and having food forced on her, she developed an eating disorder.

At the age of 17 she started seeking help on her own. At first it was just through her school counselor but then when she moved out and went to college, where we met, she started seeing a therapist who specialized in eating disorders and sensory feeding issues. She was also able to recognize because of therapy, that the reason she struggled to wear certain clothes was related to her SPD and was not her being “weird” about clothes.

My wife has educated herself a lot on food, childhood diet and how to healthily and joyfully introduce new foods to kids. She did this knowing she wanted kids.

I gave my family a heads up the first time they were meeting my wife that her diet was not one they were used to and I said we could bring food if it were easier, which they said it would be for the first time. In the years they knew her before we had kids they never complained about her eating differently to the rest of us or eating less.

Our daughter is 3 and our son is 1. It wasn’t until she was born and we started having family dinners again post-Covid that I noticed they would comment on my wife’s eating or how she was feeding our daughter. I told them it wasn’t kind to pick at her for eating the way she does. They said it wasn’t good to still have so many problems after so long. I explained she is still working with her team and it’s a day by day thing sometimes. One day they decided to make a meal where there wasn’t a thing on the plate my wife could eat. They called her out for being rude and wasting food. I called them out for cooking a meal she couldn’t eat when they told us we didn’t need to bring anything for her. My sister also made a snarky comment about how colorful our daughters plate of food was.

I spoke to my family and told them they had one more chance after that and they didn’t listen. So I said they had two options. Shut up about how my wife and kids eat, be kind and allow us to bring food for her OR we don’t join them for dinners anymore. They said I was an asshole for giving them those two options. I said they need to pick or I’ll do it for them and I’ll go with option B.

AITA?