Starters as a main course, permanently

Started 21 January 2025 · 16 replies · 170 hearts · read 2.1k times

NkosiJohannesburg, ZA · 21 January 2025

1.5 years ago

A question rather than an update: Starters as a main course, permanently

Anyone else navigating this? I feel as though every piece of advice I read was written for someone with a completely different week.

Every piece of advice I read appears to have been written for somebody with a completely different week from mine, so I am asking people whose weeks look like this.

I would like practical detail rather than encouragement. What people actually do, in what order, and what goes wrong when they get it wrong.

I would rather hear one person's actual arrangement in detail than five general suggestions, if anybody is willing to write theirs out.

Thank you. This circle has solved four practical problems for me already and I am hoping for a fifth.

KateBelfast, NI

What I would say is that leaving food is allowed. I had a lifetime of not being allowed to and unlearning it took a year.

NolCork, IE

Something I got right was continuing to go out. I nearly stopped for six months and I am glad I did not.

WystanCheltenham, UK

The commentary from one particular relative was relentless and I eventually said, once, that I would rather not discuss it, and that was that.

8me too 6

NoorFacilitatorSingapore

Stepping in to say that asking for help with logistics is not a smaller kind of asking. It is most of what makes this sustainable.

GildaTrieste, IT

Something that helped was going out at lunchtime instead of the evening, because my appetite is much more reliable earlier in the day.

DelphiThessaloniki, GR

My rule is that I go for the company. If I eat, good; if I do not, that is also fine, and reframing it that way fixed most of my anxiety.

10me too 1

AmbroseYork, UK

The buffet is the one I still find difficult, because there is no natural boundary and I have to make one up.

TavitaApia, WS

Picking up Gilda’s point rather than starting a new one.

I ask for a box now without any embarrassment, which is a small thing that changed the whole experience of eating out.

OttiHarrogate, UK

My partner orders something we can share when he senses it is a difficult evening, without ever making it a thing, and it is quietly brilliant.

5me too 5

GwilymCaernarfon, UK

#10

Tavita — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

The wine question comes up in this circle a lot and mine changed considerably, and having something else in the glass removed the discussion.

WinkleWeymouth, UK

#11

Holding this with you rather than answering it.

PerryCardigan, UK

#12

I had one genuinely bad evening early on where I felt unwell at the table, and having a plan for that now means I am not braced for it.

14me too 1

OsgarKillarney, IE

#13

Something practical: I sit near the end of the table if I can, because it is much easier to be less observed there.

NkosiJohannesburg, ZA

#14

Reading Perry, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

What I would say to somebody dreading a big meal is that it will almost certainly be less noticed than you fear.

NoorFacilitatorSingapore

#15

I am going to redirect us back to the original poster, who has not had a chance to answer any of the questions put to them.

NolCork, IE

#16

The business dinner was the last thing I got comfortable with, and what solved it was simply doing three of them.