Woman shares relationship saga; 'My BF's mom insists on putting an ingredient in her cooking that I'm allergic to.' UPDATED 3X

"My (23F) boyfriend's mother (56F) keeps putting an ingredient I'm allergic to in her dishes."

This has been somewhat of a nightmare so any advice would be amazing. My boyfriend is also 23 for clarity.

I have a garlic allergy. It's not lethal, and I definitely wouldn't get anaphylaxis or something from it. The problem is that I get asthma if I eat it and it'll really mess with my digestion later.

Everyone in my life knows that I can't have garlic and I won't have garlic. It makes eating out a nightmare because of how prevalent it is. So usually my boyfriend and I have date nights at our apartment and we cook for each other.

But my boyfriend's mom has a family tradition and she insists we all come to dinner at least once a month. She's a fantastic cook and usually a really nice lady to be around, but there's one problem.

She wants me to come every time, but she always adds garlic! To every dish! At this point, I've just started taking an inhaler and just eating the Hawaiian rolls she always serves. My boyfriend drives us, and we just go get fast food right after.

We've talked to her over and over again about the garlic. I've asked her over and over to please not use garlic. And she says she doesn't understand how it's "such a big deal" because "it's not like you'll die".

I've tried skipping the meals, but she throws a fit and drags her entire family into it. I've been with my boyfriend for three years now and I'm best friends with his sister. I'm at my wits end.

How do I get this through to her?

TLDR: My boyfriend's mom insists on serving food with garlic at every meal even though I'm allergic.

ETA: I have brought my own food before, usually something simple like a mac and cheese. I did it twice, but both times she was angry and basically made for an incredibly unhappy evening.

Before we give you OP's updates, let's take a look at some of the top comments:

freate writes:

I'm not allergic to peanuts or peanut butter, but I HATE them. When I was younger, the smell would make me nauseous.

My ex-mother-in-law was poor and on food assistance and food stamps. She would bake cookies with my daughter as acvording to her, "a way to bond with her". They were peanut butter cookies, and it was XMIL's idea to make them. In a nice way, I refused to eat them.

Next time, the cookies were made again, but I was told that they were sugar cookies and there was no PB. Unfortunately I am a PB bloodhound and can smell it from a mile away, and knew that the cookies had PB and wouldn't eat them, again being nice about it.

She made more batches of cookies, each time diminishing the amount of PB in them. On her last batch, I couldn't smell PB, so I took a little bite and tasted it right away. I politely swallowed it, set the cookie down, and said "This has peanut butter in it, so I'm all set with this, thanks."

She tried it at least six times making 2 dozen cookies each time. She wasted so much of her government assistance trying to play some stupid power game of trying to trick me into liking peanut butter for...reasons?? Maybe I don't get it because I'm well liked and have hobbies to occupy my time, hobbies that don't involve controlling my family members, idk.

garopera writes:

It’s so creepy for an adult person to completely lack boundaries to their parent. I mean it’s kind of a minimal requirement in a relationship that your partner don’t allow or side with people that intentionally harm your health.

How could a grown person seriously feel any reason to have contact with their parent who disrespected them to this degree?

Like if my mom actively feed my husband things he was allergic to, she isn’t just disrespecting him, but she is disrespecting me and my choice of partner, so why the hell would I want to have such a ”mom” in my life?

Seriously if you wouldn’t even put a boundary to a parent who intentionally harm your partner, you are not ready for an adult relationship, you are moreover not ready to have kids.

A part of being an adult is your parents stop being your number one priority. Parents don’t have a life time get out of jail free card playing all sorts of shit just because they are parents, being included in your adult kids and grandchildren’s life is a privilege not a damn right.

I mean a mom displaying this type of malice and disrespect to a girlfriend, imagine what with happed of this OOP married her boyfriend and they had kids. What would be stopping this maniac of then a grandma to doing the same things to her grandkids? I might not like them either as an extension of the OOP.

This is the type of person who feed your dog chocolate in secret if she doesn’t like it, I wouldn’t feel safe have contact with an unhinged relative like this, and I can’t fathom a logic where this behavior would make an enormous dent in my respect for my parents or any changes in regards to how I would want our contact to be.

frappalappa writes:

I’m allergic to nuts (also not deadly but will make me sick for a while). My mom still doesn’t understand this and thinks I just don’t like nuts.

During the original post I thought maybe it was just a cultural thing but am surprised that the lady straight out doesn’t like her. I mean you can not like a person and not try to poison them. Glad OOP got out because this entire family sounds like a nightmare.

seeeker writes:

I can't eat bell peppers without getting bad stomach cramps that can last hours. Not sure if it's some type of allergic reaction or if my body just doesn't like them but they always make feel like shit if I eat food with bell peppers in it.

Despite that everytime we had dinner with my partner's parents they had a steamed veggie medly side that contains bell beppers. We've mentioned multiple times how sick they make me but they always shrug it off, say they forgot, and tell me to just eat around them.

They'd also scold us like children if we didn't eat the vegetables on our plates and it would turn into a big fight so I would just suck it up, eat around them, and deal with stomach cramps at home later to keep the peace.

My partner was always just as upset as me and told me multiple times to just not eat it at all and he'd deal with the fallout but fights with his parents always hit him really hard and made him very depressed because they always knew just what to say to really cut him deep.

So a few hours of bad cramps seemed worth it to keep them making his mental state any worse than they already had.

I also don't eat lamb for personal reasons, which they also knew because we told them. A LOT. But more than once they'd served food with lamb in it only to tell us after we started eating what it was. And then they had the nerve to act offended when I stopped eating.

Needless to say, this is just one of the MANY reasons we haven't spoken to them in almost a year and aren't in any hurry to do so. No one should have to tolerate someone doing this kind of shit to them.

Update 1:

So, hi again, and thanks for the advice! I also saw that there was already a YouTube and TikTok video on my post which was weird, but I digress. Anyways, onto the update.

To those of you who said she just didn't like me: you were 100% correct. After my boyfriend woke up yesterday, we had a long talk about how bothersome his mother's refusal to take out garlic is. He agreed that we should skip the dinner until she takes it out.

Something about it still bothered me so I ended up calling her and just bluntly asking her. She kept evading the question, saying she's just a garlic lover, that she doesn't understand what the big deal is, et cetera, et cetera. Finally, after like thirty minutes of back and forth, she finally admitted that she just doesn't like me.

I think I'm correct in drawing the conclusion that she was trying to drive me from her family with garlic shenanigans but maybe I'm just overthinking, I dunno.

Anyways, I asked if it was because of my job (receptionist), my age, background, whatever. And she just flat out told me that she doesn't like that I have my septum and tongue done, and that I color my hair "unnatural colors". She thinks it's unprofessional and proves that I'm too much of a "wild child" to date her son.

Which sucks, because I really like this woman but I guess she was just polite out of courtesy rather than actually liking me herself.

After I ended the call, I went to go find my boyfriend and he basically fessed up and said that yeah, his mother was not a fan and kept basically hinting that we should break up. Mostly by mentioning stuff like "my friend Jenny has such a cute daughter" and that sort of thing. Which hurts like hell, but I'm glad I know.

Anyways, my boyfriend and his sister have both agreed to just start up a group dinner once a month. I'm going to stop going to the dinners, and my boyfriend will just go without me.

Update 2:

I can officially say I've gotten the ick. This man sucks. I'm going to break up with him tomorrow. I'm too sleepy and pissed, but I'll post an update on my profile. I'll be honest, this entire reveal has left a bad taste in my mouth of "what else have they hidden?"

I just...I dunno, it bothers me that he didn't tell me and his reasoning for not telling me was that he hoped she'd get over it and he wanted to spare my feelings. Which...is really annoying.

Update 3:

Hi! Me again. I broke up with him and basically spent the day fielding texts from him asking wtf was going on and why I was freaking out over his mom.

As I said in the update, I got the ick. The more I thought about how he didn't defend me to his mother, refused to tell me about her underhanded tactics, the more I just didn't like him anymore. It was like a switch flipped.

So when he woke up, he got a call from me saying this wouldn't work out. We had a long conversation that basically turned into him being defensive. In the end, I was firm. I also sent a text to his sister along the lines of: If you've got questions, ask your brother.

Before I blocked her, of course. It's kind of sad that I lost my best friend and my boyfriend, but on the bright side, at least it wasn't cheating and they just suck. Thank you everyone for the advice, and hopefully I find a better man with a better family.