'How do I handle my boyfriend's weird, inappropriate behavior around my family?' UPDATED

"My (22F) boyfriend (29M) fed turkey giblets to my parents' dog after they told him not to, among other rude things."

We've been together about 10 months. He kind of has a pattern of being weird or childish in situations involving food. I found myself very embarrassed by how he acted at Thanksgiving with my family today, and want to know if I'm being too harsh or dramatic.

The first thing was that when my mom was about to start preparing the turkey for roasting, he stuck his hand inside it and pulled out the little bag with the giblets. She asked what he was doing. He asked if he could give them to the dog. She said no, they don't feed him anything besides dog food as they don't want him learning to beg when they're eating.

He then got a knife and fork, and started dissecting bits of the giblets on the counter, staring at them close up and touching them. I had to remind him to wash his hands. All the while my mom, brother, brother's girlfriend, and myself are trying to actually get stuff cooked. He doesn't offer or ask if he can help at all and just hovers around picking at things and being in the way. I could tell my mom was annoyed.

At the dinner itself he commented out loud several times on food he didn't like. Not just politely turning it down, but comments like "eww I hate gravy" and "this stuffing has onions, onions are gross." He asked what type of cranberry sauce there was and then said "oh that's the gross kind."

My family definitely noticed. They looked uncomfortable. My mom even offered to make additional food if he wanted something else in particular. He said he was fine with what was there, but then hardly ate anything. My mom felt bad afterwards and I had to reassure her it wasn't her fault at all.

Towards the end of the meal he left the table, I figured he was just getting something or going to the bathroom. My dad got up shortly after. He later told me that when he went in the kitchen to bring out dessert, he found the dog eating the giblets from earlier off the floor and my boyfriend in the act of scraping a pile of food from various dishes into the dog's bowl.

My dad said he was giggling to himself as he did it. Wtf? He was explicitly told not to feed him people food and then did it in secret like a child... and even got caught like a child? I have never seen another adult do something like that.

Then, back at the table for dessert, he loaded his plate with 2-3x as many sweets as everyone else took on the first time they were being passed around. 90% of what he ate was dessert.

When clean up time came, everyone including my elderly grandparents volunteered to help except him. I had to ask him. He did a half assed job, and kept "inspecting" the turkey carcass pulling bones apart and making a mess of it. My dad (irritated from the earlier thing with the dog I now know) snapped at him to either put it in the fridge or leave it alone.

He went back in the dining room and ate more pie while the rest of us were finishing cleaning up the kitchen. Overall I am majorly embarrassed of his behavior. I feel like the mom of a little kid, except a kid wouldn't know better. I shouldn't have to correct the behavior of a grown man right??

And before you ask if he was just anxious about meeting my family or something - he's met them all before several times. Even if he hadn't that wouldn't explain it because he's done similar things before in front of his own family and when it's just the two of us.

I am tired of the weird way he acts around food. Tired of worrying if he's going to get weird looks from other people. As someone in my 20's I shouldn't be getting "reports" from my parents that my boyfriend did something rude and immature. They questioned if I felt like he was on my same level.

I feel like I generally am happy with him, and then things like this pop up and I remember he has this other side that really turns me off. He's older than me but I feel like I'm the older one sometimes.

So I guess my questions are, how important is this, is there any chance he'll grow out of it and what would help that happen, and how would you recommend I bring it up to him? I don't feel comfortable bringing him around my family again unless he acts normal, so I can't just pretend nothing happened.

TL;DR: How should I address my boyfriend's weird, inappropriate behavior at my family's Thanksgiving?

This is what people had to say to OP:

Witty-Stock-4913 said:

You've been with him 9 months, he's demonstrated that despite the fact that he's pushing 30 he's a giant man-child, and the dog feeding was a huge f u to your parents. Why are you with this person???

proveitlikeatheorem said:

I’m having second-hand embarrassment on your behalf. Imagine having to bring him to a work function/dinner and him acting a fool in front of your colleagues and boss? Drop this dude like a hot potato. You can do better.

Outrageous-Ad-9069 said:

Are you sure that this is about food? I’m not saying that he doesn’t have food issues, but it seems a lot more like that. It seems like this is more about purposefully pissing off your family. Maybe until you’re put in a position of being told not to bring him around anymore. Be careful.

And IsshinDZahul said:

He is 29, he is not going to grow out of it. You could try and discuss it with him but all honesty you just got a glimpse of what a life living with him will be like.

The next day, OP shared this update:

Update: I've broken up with him. I talked about it more with my parents yesterday and realized if I'm embarrassed to honestly answer their questions about my relationship, then that's a bad sign. I found myself trying to give a bunch of excuses to make his weird behavior seem less bad than it was.

I also outright lied a couple times about other things in our relationship. Eventually this got exhausting and I just confessed I'd screwed up and had no good excuse. My mom asked what I thought would be best for me. The answer at that point was obvious.

I also left out some details when I wrote my first post. I guess I was too embarrassed to give the full picture. I want to provide it now as a confession thing, but also because I can now more clearly see HOW WEIRD this man was and just want people to validate that after I spent so long in denial!!!

- The giblets he fed to the dog? He fished them out of the trash bin to do that. My mom had thrown them away after he cut them up and made a mess on the counter. He would have needed to dig through the garbage to find them again.

- My parents found chocolate bars missing from the cabinet. Those were not part of the dessert that was available to everyone. We think he snuck them at some point, like a little kid.

- His general diet is atrocious. It's like what a 5 year old would eat except I know there's tons of kids who eat way better. Pizza, chicken nuggets, pasta, fries, chips, grilled cheese, mac and cheese, lucky charms and other sugary cereals, ice cream, candy.

Not a single thing that isn't white, beige, or some hideous artificial shade of orange/yellow. Whenever I'd try to share my food or get something else for him, he'd snap at me angrily.

- He.....doesn't have a job. I know. I know. Fully expecting to be raked over the coals for ever accepting that in a partner at this age. When I finally admitted it to my parents, they were like "are you serious???" I'd told them he was in school and living with his parents to save money.

He actually was "thinking about going back to school", which never took the form of any action, and lives with his parents because where tf else can he live with no income. I guess I thought I could help motivate him. I thought that's what you do as partners, support each other like a team.

Now I can see there never was any team. It was just him doing what he wanted. Because he was broke I also ended up paying for most of the stuff we did together when we went out.

- Some people asked about the part where I said he did similar weird food things with his family. You guys wanted to know how his family reacted - they didn't. They'd either pretend not to notice, or else thought it was normal. I'm not sure which.

He did things in front of them like blowing bubbles in his drink, cutting grains of rice in half with his fork over and over, and eating ice cream directly out of the container instead of spooning it into his bowl.

There was one time his parents were going to take all of us out to dinner and when discussing which restaurant to go to, they eliminated a bunch because they "didn't have anything boyfriend would eat." His mom would sometimes serve him a completely separate meal if whatever she'd made for the family was something he refused to eat.

- Intimacy between us was weird. He didn't reciprocate stuff and our physical relationship was very one sided. The whole thing was just really weird and uncomfortable. I don't know what his issue was.

So that's pretty much that. I'm unspeakably embarrassed I ever dated this loser...sad thing is if not for my parents insisting on talking with me about it I'd probably still be dating him. For who knows how long. Thinking this is just what it's like. Well it doesn't have to be, I'm very grateful they helped me see that he wasn't normal.

Thanks for all of the same comments on my first post. Seeing that consensus also made me realize I needed to leave.

TL;DR: I'm done with him. There was a lot wrong with him that I had been in the habit of trying to do damage control for.