Did You Get Enough to Eat?

Recently I've been having this conversation with a friend about how my husband always asks me about my dinner and it drives me crazy and makes me extremely uncomfortable.  It's always made me uncomfortable because even before I knew of binge eating, I had the weight problem so I did not like talking about the food or eating the food. 

The questions were innocent enough:

"How's the food?"

"Did you get enough to eat?"

"Would you like some more?"

However, they drove me crazy.  Just stop asking and let me eat my meal in peace because you are irritating the crap out of me and making me even more self conscious than I already am.  It got to the point that I even asked him to stop asking.  He would forget, I would politely remind him not to ask me again.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

Now, I could just be remembering incorrectly but I recall when growing up in New York, it didn't seem to matter who we had dinner with - Mom, Nana and Grandpa, Dad, Uncle and Aunt, you get the idea - that you sat down, mentioned how good everything smelled and ate while having some sort of conversation.  At the end of the meal, everyone then made it a point to mention the meal was great or how they really enjoyed a specific dish.  No one was bothering anyone two seconds after taking a bite and asking how the food was.

Back to my conversation with my friend, who can both commiserate that she dislikes when this happens to her then admits that she does the same thing to her family which drew from me a hearty laugh.  She goes on to point out that it may be a Southern thing.  Both she and my husband are from southern states while I grew up so close to the Canadian border I could toss a rock at it would almost reach. 

Cultural differences?  Would that be a correct term in this instance?  I believe it applies.  It gave me something to think about, and to laugh about because my friend explained when it is she doing the asking, it just comes out.  The question is just part of the ritual of mealtime without really giving it much thought despite how it makes her feel when she's asked.  Though even without her telling me that, I've figured out that he just does this and it isn't malicious nor is it when she asks, or when her family asks.

I did end up asking him if this was a common question in his house, since I could only vaguely recall experiencing it once or twice while I had visited my mother-in-law in the past.  He said it was.

Well, the issue is my own and something I need to work on. There is no reason for me to let food stress me out or the innocent questions that are posed to me about it.  I will go ahead and remind myself the next time my husband asks me how my food is that it's ok to answer him that my food is ok instead of getting upset over it and let it go so I don't get upset or possibly angry about it later.  This will just take a little bit of work.

P.S. Are you sure you got enough to eat?  Because I have plenty more...