After 20 years of the same old shit with the same old man, my marriage began to crumble. I thought one of the ways I could save it was by signing up for one of those meal subscription boxes. I was dead wrong.
Now, while I am an overenthusiastic, often extravagant optimist, I’m not completely off my rocker. The idea of cooking together as an act of romance is an old one and probably dates back to when my parents were dating. I mean, even The Knot claims that if you want to strengthen your relationship, you should start in the kitchen. And who knows more about marriage than The Knot?
My meal subscription box of choice was Blue Apron. Here’s what I can honestly say about it. Blue Apron is good, like, really good. If you’re perfectly happy in your relationship and you genuinely like each other, I think cooking together could be a wonderful enhancement to your relationship—even if “cooking together” means one cooks and the other cleans. That’s a team effort of which you should be proud.
But if there is an already existing tension in your relationship, an attempt to create something as a team will only emphasize the cavern that exists between you two. That’s what happened to me. He seemed perfectly happy with the meals, but he seemed perfectly unhappy with me. Truth be told, subscribing to Blue Apron was just one of the three ways that I knew my marriage was over.
I think subscription meal boxes like Blue Apron are an amazing concept. I am so glad they exist, and everyone I know that subscribes to them, such as Hello Fresh and Martha Stewart’s Marley Spoon, are very satisfied customers. But, me? I don’t know that I will ever subscribe to another again. They bring back bad memories and are a reminder of my inability to save something that, well, could not be saved, not even by a delicious meal.
