Shikha Sharma

I should tell you upfront that my husband cannot cook. I mean this with love and complete accuracy. The man can boil water, make instant noodles, and operate our microwave with confidence. Beyond that, we’re in uncharted territory. I once watched him stare at a raw onion for a full minute like it had personally wronged him and he wasn’t sure what to do about it.

And yet, cooking together is one of the best things we do for our relationship.

It started about two years ago, mostly out of necessity. We’d both had a long week, neither of us wanted to order in again, and I didn’t want to cook alone while he watched cricket in the next room for the fourth consecutive evening. So I handed him a knife, pointed at a pile of vegetables, and said “chop those.”

He looked at the knife. He looked at the vegetables. He looked at me. I looked back. He chopped the vegetables.

That was it. That was the beginning of what has since become, without either of us planning for it, a genuine relationship ritual.

We cook together most Sunday evenings now. I handle anything that requires actual skill or timing. He handles prep work, which he has gotten surprisingly good at, and DJ duties, which he has always been excellent at.

We have chai first, usually with a couple of Sunfeast Marie Light biscuits while we figure out what we're making, because apparently we cannot make a single decision in this household without first sitting down with something warm and familiar. My husband started this tradition and I have no complaints about it whatsoever.

The cooking itself is chaotic in the way that only happens when one person knows what they’re doing and the other is genuinely trying their best. He chops things the wrong size. I redirect without making it a thing. He asks questions I find slightly bewildering, like “how do you know when the oil is ready” and I explain, and he nods seriously, and then asks again the following Sunday because he has retained nothing. This used to mildly irritate me. Now I find it one of the more endearing things about him.

What's Actually Happening While the Dal Is On

I’ve understood. The cooking is not really the point.

What’s actually happening during those thirty or forty minutes in the kitchen is that we’re collaborating on something with low stakes and a guaranteed outcome. Nobody’s career is on the line. Nobody’s feelings are going to get seriously hurt. The worst case scenario is that dinner is a bit bland, which is fine because we have pickle.

But within that low-stakes environment, we’re constantly doing the things that make relationships work. We’re dividing tasks without negotiating about it. We’re adjusting when something isn’t going to plan. We’re communicating in real time, quickly, about small things. We’re being patient with each other’s limitations, or at least trying to be. We’re working toward something together and then sitting down to enjoy the result of that work.

It’s collaboration practice. Except it doesn’t feel like practice because at the end of it there’s dinner.

The Couples Who’ve Figured This Out

My friend Divya and her husband Siddharth have cooked together every weekend for their entire eight-year marriage. I asked Divya once if they ever fight in the kitchen and she laughed like I’d said something genuinely funny. “All the time,” she said. “But they’re small fights. Who forgot to buy coriander. Whether the jeera needs to go in before or after the onions. We fight, we sort it out in two minutes, and we move on. I think it's actually good practice for not letting things fester.”

That’s it exactly. The kitchen gives you a contained space to disagree about something, resolve it quickly, and move on. You can’t exactly storm off dramatically when there’s something on the stove that needs stirring.

My colleague Nikhil and his wife are the opposite pairing from me and my husband. Both of them can cook, both of them have strong opinions about how things should be done, and by his account their Sunday cooking sessions are a lively negotiation from start to finish. “She thinks I add too much salt. I think she doesn't add enough. We've been having this argument for six years,” he told me, smiling in a way that made it very clear he wasn't actually bothered by this at all.

Six years of the same small argument, resolved every Sunday over dinner.

Why the Stakes Being Low Actually Matters

The reason cooking works as relationship practice, I think, is precisely because it doesn't matter that much. You can afford to be wrong. You can afford to defer to your partner's judgment even when you disagree, because it's dinner, not a life decision.

And what that does, over time, is build a kind of muscle memory for collaboration. You get used to asking rather than assuming. You get used to saying "actually can you do it this way" without it turning into a whole thing. You get used to the rhythm of working alongside someone, adjusting as you go, without needing to be in charge of everything.

Those habits don't stay in the kitchen. That's the part worth paying attention to.

My husband still cannot tell when oil is ready. He still chops everything slightly too large. He still asks me the same questions every Sunday and retains approximately none of the answers. But he shows up every week, knife in hand, genuinely trying, and that is honestly more than enough.

Last Sunday he made the chai without being asked, arranged the Marie Light biscuits on a plate like we were hosting guests rather than just deciding between dal and pasta, and stood in the kitchen doorway waiting for instructions with the energy of someone who has fully accepted his role in this operation and made peace with it.

I married the right person. I'm fairly sure the Sunday cooking sessions are part of how I know that.

The Part Where I Tell You to Try It

If you're not cooking together yet, try it this weekend. It doesn't have to be ambitious. Rice and dal is fine. The point isn't the recipe.

Give your partner the job they can handle and let them handle it without supervising every thirty seconds. Accept help even when it would technically be faster to just do it yourself. Disagree about the salt and then let it go. Sit down together and eat what you made.

It's thirty minutes of low-stakes teamwork with dinner at the end. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday evening, and far fewer that do as much for your relationship without either of you noticing.