My [28F] friend [26F] keeps offering and buying me the only two things I really don't like and I need help on how to shut this down

Tldr: I hate wine and French cheese, and no matter how many times I say it or how differently I say it, my friend doesn't seem to grasp this. I need advice on how to approach it because I don't know how to be more direct without being rude.

My boyfriend and I would never have considered ourselves picky eaters before we moved to France, but as it turns out, we both really hate French cheese. I don't need to rant about it, but it's the kind of thing where we both feel physically ill if we are even in a restaurant with a particular cheese. We also have never liked wine. To me, it's extremely bitter and ruins any food I have with it. This is not for lack of trying to find something we could tolerate.

We've since moved out of France, and I'm living near a French friend of mine and her boyfriend. She LOVES French food and wine and has stated multiple times that she thinks it's better than any other cuisine. That's all well and good, but she just will not accept that we feel differently.

This all started when she invited us over for a French meal that consists almost entirely of cheese. I declined, saying that it just wasn't for me. She kept asking, and I kept declining, saying I "didn't really like French cheese." I think the "really" in that phrasing was soft enough while getting the point across.

Also, whenever we meet up for drinks, she always seems perplexed by the fact that I don't order wine even though I say every time that I don't like it.

She then invited us over for dinner and wouldn't tell us what she was making. I thought I made it clear that we didn't like cheese, but the meal was almost entirely a block of French cheese. To top it off, she really insisted that we drink some wine she brought over with her from France instead of the drinks we brought with us. It was... a challenging night, but I stayed polite and just didn't ask for seconds.

We recently had them over for dinner. I sent her a message beforehand saying that we weren't going to drink wine but that they were welcome to bring some for themselves. Instead, they arrived and said they bought the wine for us. I said again that we wouldn't drink it and she looked so upset. They both refused to open the bottle and drink it themselves, and we knew they really wanted wine with dinner, so my boyfriend offered to taste it. My friend poured us both a full glass and we felt like we had to suffer through it because they were being so childish.

At the end of dinner, they brought up that they wanted to have us over again for more cheese. I said, for the upteenth time, that we really didn't like French cheese.

At this point, I'm at a loss. I wish we hadn't coddled them by trying their wine when they were over for dinner. I wish I'd just left their house when I knew they were serving cheese.

Is there a way to handle this without being rude or is it time to say upfront that we both hate wine and French cheese and are sick of suffering through both because of their fragile egos?

Edit: I want to add that there is no language barrier here as my friend speaks perfect English and has lived without issues in an English-speaking country for years.

Submitted January 26, 2023 at 04:35AM by goatsnboots https://ift.tt/gSLXz6k