For autistic people, it can sometimes be a struggle to find safe foods that aren’t triggering in terms of texture or flavor. When they find safe foods that work for them, they often latch onto them. According to a blog post about neurodivergent eating on Bened Life, “A safe food is a food that is reliable in sensory experience and can be used as a regulation tool. This food item is usually consistent each time it is consumed.”
Redditor u/stewlessinseattle recently posted, “AITA for accidentally ruining my autistic boyfriend’s safe food” after revealing that one of the ingredients was something that he would never eat on its own.
“My boyfriend loves stew, he wants to eat it every day for every meal. His favorite stew is beef tips and vegetables from a local place, but it’s really expensive. Like $47 for a big bowl (they don’t do small orders for takeout) and he is grossed out by leftovers so more than half of it gets wasted. We’ve had a couple of arguments about it, he says I don’t understand his brain, I say he doesn’t understand our budget.
Recently I looked up some recipes, including doing a dissection of the takeout soup, and tried my hand at making a home cooked replacement for stew night. He loved it for a few days, and then one night he was hanging out with me in the kitchen and saw me put tomato paste into the pot, he was really upset and demanded that I make the soup without the paste.
I told him it wouldn’t taste the same and he said it would be better because he hates tomatoes, they’re not a safe food for him. So I made the soup with no tomato paste and big surprise, something felt off about it to him.
Instead of admitting that the tomato paste was necessary he threw a fit and told me he didn’t want home cooked food anymore if I was going to ‘play with him’ and not take his safe foods seriously, he thinks I changed more than just the tomato paste in an effort to get him to admit he was wrong.
$400 in stew orders later I had an idea to ask the chef when we were picking up the order if there was any tomato products in the stew, and lo and behold there is tomato in the recipe, fucking tomato paste. In my mind this was great because I thought he would get over it if he knew his original perfect stew had tomato paste like ‘oh I guess tomato paste isn’t so bad then’ but it was the exact opposite.
He walked out of the restaurant without saying anything and then refused to eat the stew that night and hasn’t ordered it again, and he’s been ignoring me while sulking around the house, using his whiny voice a lot, and slamming things.
His sister also texted me to tell me I’m a selfish a**hole for needing to ‘get back at him’ by taking his favorite food away.”
Folks on Reddit chimed in with their opinions of the situation, which were largely positive. A significant number of people who said they were autistic themselves gave helpful advice for what OP should do, saying that while he was valid in feeling how he did about a safe food no longer feeling safe, his reaction to the situation, in the long run, needs to be reevaluated.
“Being upset in the moment at being proved wrong and grappling with an unexpected discovery about a food that previously felt safe to him is reasonable. Poor regulation of that sort of emotion can be a part of the condition. However, that doesnt make the whole tirade since the initial upset okay. His reaction appears to be both prolonged, and calculated to cause you upset, enlisting others to gang up against you and being retributive.
That’s not fair, u/xtaberry wrote, adding, “It’s also not fair for you to go broke buying soup for him. You thought you had found a reasonable compromise. You thought you were helping, but were unfortunately wrong. There is no malicious intent on your side here, and you can’t be the asshole for that.”
‘If you take the autism out of the equation, this is just a fight about budgeting better’
Several people also suggested that u/stewlessinseattle set boundaries with their boyfriend because this is largely a budgeting issue rather than a safe food issue.
“If you take the autism out of the equation, this is just a fight about budgeting better. If you throw it back in there, they clearly dealt with his safe food issues his entire life and consider it your turn now,” Redditor u/phteven980 wrote. “$47 per meal and not eating leftovers is a one-way ticket to homelessness. Reckless spending on a food item you can clearly make yourself, bravo to you for doing it at home to save the money.”
Many on X accused OP’s boyfriend of financial abuse
In digging into the story, @moniza_hossain wrote how the boyfriend didn’t eat the stew as often when he lived with his parents, “but once he moved in with her he started eating it a lot more (on her dime)” and said in a later tweet that “The abusers use similar tactics to trap and manipulate” their victims.
@HarleyShah wrote, “If an autistic woman behaved the way soup guy did this would be such a non-topic. No grace or room for discussion just written off as ludicrous and that would be it.”
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