Sharing homemade food with someone can be a wonderful way to express love, gratitude, and care, but it can also be a wonderful way to look like a goddamn 1950s housewife. You want to put your heart and soul into preparing dinner for your partner while also exerting your independence, edge, and uncowed defiance of traditional gender roles, and now you can! Here’s how to cook a beautiful meal for your significant other without appearing domestic:

Play groove metal while you cook.

If you could have it your way you’d probably be waltzing around the kitchen to Carla Bruni, adding a sprinkle of salt here, a lick of thyme there, treating cooking like some sort of playful and elegant dance, but that shit is not going to fly today. Blast groove metal while you cook so that if your partner peeks in they will see you sweating it out to the musical stylings of Rob Zombie and say, “Whoa, this rebel is not domestic at all.”

Wear a chef’s uniform.

Distance yourself from the domestic sphere further still by donning a full chef’s uniform while you cook. This look will say, “I am passionate about making this slow cooked vegetable stew perfect, but not because it is an extension of my love for you, rather because I am the very embodiment of detached careerist professionalism.”

Make them taste the stew in a sexy way.

Call your partner into the kitchen where Dragula is bumping on the Bluetooth and you are wearing an outfit you seemingly bought just to cook this meal. Prop them up on the counter and make them taste the stew from a big spoon in a sexy way. This is something only a man would ever do. Are you a wifey or a perv? It’s anyone’s guess.

Light candles ironically.

Be like, “What if I lit candles? Haha,” and then light them, but as a joke about the concept of a candlelit dinner.

Say, ‘So this is dinner, I guess’.

Now that the table is set and your boo is significantly shaken by the events leading up to the meal, you can casually toss your four-hour, 16-step stew over some couscous, garnish it, plop it down on the table, and shrug, “So this is dinner, I guess.” Wife badge NOT unlocked.

Follow these steps and it will be clear to your partner that you hardly care about them, stew, or anything except groove metal and not giving a fuck. Congratulations, no one will ever suspect you of domesticity, and dinner is served!