The Good Vegan Wife and the Big Bad Wolf

When only on person in a relationship becomes vegetarian, something has to give.

I guess it was bound to happen at some point. My wife and I are the typical young urban liberal couple. We both have matching white Priuses (Prii?). We bring our own bags to the grocery store to cut down on plastic (most of the time). We don't eat fast food, we use real ginger, prefer fair-trade coffees from a single origin, shop at farmer's markets, don't drink sodas, support localism where we can, etc. I guess one would also call us hipsters, but we don't have hobbies or interests that leave with the wind, but a core of principles that guide our behavior in a way that suspiciously is usually tandem occurring with the next cool kid cycle of products or ways to be healthy.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. We've often felt that we are ahead of the curve in many of our living philosophies. The world catches up and we were already there with a folding chair and a pair of vintage kicks to wave at the newcomers. It was about five years ago after both of us had small bouts of no-red-meatisms to meat-on-weekendisms to being vegetarian or vegan and then coming back to a classic turkey sandwich that something really changed.

This is where my wife and I split course. Yes, I'm talking about meat consumption.

I assume if you're reading this then you are aware of as much information that I am concerning meat consumption in America. You might not be. Here's just a few facts: As middle class economies around the world continue to develop, they are matching our levels of meat consumption. Right now, the US and Australia eat over 100 Kilograms a year, that's over 220 pounds. There is no such thing as a farm for our meat production anymore, as it is all become a mechanical factory of production to ensure that in the shortest amount of time, companies are able to make the fattest meat available. There is E. Coli poisoning that comes from their piles of poo that gets into our freshwater supply that then poisons vegetation and vegetable crops, ruins drinking water, eating a burger is the equivalent of driving a car on the road for ten miles due to the match in CO2 emissions that are created. This is just creation and consumption. When you add in the growth hormones, the unsanitary living conditions of the animals up until the time of death, the wasted vegetable crops grown in order to produce only one pound of beef, the story of meat gets worse and worse.

You can't really say it's healthy for the environment or for our bodies or for the workers that produce it or even for the aesthetic landscape in places where animals are killed for meat products. And despite all of this....I can't stop!

My wife became a vegetarian after both of us came face to face with a lot of these facts. She then slowly edged into veganism and has been a soft vegan ever since. I, on the other hand, played with vegetarianism for a while two days and then immediately went back to my turkey sandwiches, my chicken Cesar salads, fried chicken, hamburgers, some beef jerky, Philly cheese steaks, just bowls and bowls of raw red meat (okay, just kidding on that last part), but you get my point.

The problem isn't that when faced with the facts of the real world, I decide to ignore it. This is a problem in itself that many of us face and that I will explain below. The real problem is that I had an audience now to fail in front of on a daily basis. My wife knows what I know. She has seen the same documentaries, has read the same articles, has liked the SAME posts as me on Facebook. All of them with facts and figures, pie charts and graphs, that clearly spell out how bad a diet that is heavy in meat is to the planet and our bodies in general. Not only do I have an audience to disappoint now, which by itself makes you really stop enjoying it so much, but the stress in wondering how she also thinks of my resolve. This is way deeper than just a difference in diet, this became about my trustworthiness and my character. Not only could we never really eat the exact same thing again, my existence as a meat eater became an affront to her vegan lifestyle.

Now we throw our daughter in the mix. This is how life changed. Even as a meat eater, I eat a lot of items that happen to be vegetarian or vegan. This isn't purposeful. As I said before, I was already healthy. I ate a balanced diet of meat and greens, but I slowly realized how much meat or meat products I was eating on a daily basis. Pizza, even the gourmet flat bread style we used to both enjoy, went out the door. No more pasta. No more breakfast foods of really any type except bread, no more of really anything. Everything I enjoyed eating, my wife not only couldn't enjoy as well, it became a slap in her face for me to ingest it. Now my daughter needs to eat and while I love when she eats black beans and broccoli, hummus and squash, I also don't mind at all when she eats a turkey sandwich with me.

Even with my support for my vegetarian/vegan wife – cooking two completely separate meals, eating at restaurants that cater to her instead of both of us, sitting down to a dinner she has made that didn't include a meat option for me – and I am still in the wrong because, although the bbq sandwich only went into my body, it was a tacit acceptance that I don't agree with her lifestyle.

Knowing what I know about meat production and consumption in America, why do I still take part in it? This is the hardest question to ask and answer. The easy answer is because I just don't care. This isn't true at all. I try to change my buying choices, seek out alternatives, etc.. This is actually lifestyle as well. So beaten into my diet that when I was vegetarian, I missed meat. I wasn't living my life as a vegetarian, I was suffering through it for a philosophical choice that I believed in that slowly made me more and more unhappy. I did it solely so I could say I didn't support something I disagreed with, but to do so meant I was literally dreaming of hot dogs. It became ridiculous and I went back to eating meat. So how did my wife and I resolve this? Well, we didn't.

What my wife had/has to do is to do what I am doing: supporting a lifestyle of another person. While I support her, she wasn't supporting me because by supporting me it would be an agreement with my choices, which she no longer agreed with. I eat far less meat now, but cannot remove it from my diet and so have found a way to eat an even more balanced diet richer in fruits and vegetables than before. What some vegans and vegetarians have to realize is that while Americans eat too much meat, we do eat meat and enjoy it. We pick and choose our battles and I have a friend with a flag for every single one: the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, the deforestation of the planet, recycling, no GMOs in food, the list goes on. I'm clearly too liberal to be completely happy about the world and I believe this is a healthy thing – to recognize that change is needed and be a part of that change. My battle isn't with my personal meat consumption anymore because it can't be. It made me miserable. While my wife took this on as her personal crusade, we also still destroy the world around us in other ways because of the mechanized society we live in. Where one place received a band-aid, another sore opens somewhere else. Realizing that not everyone has the same fight as you is important because it then doesn't lead to something much worse, which is just a general distrust and frustration with that person in general.