“I’ve seen the light, babe. I finally understand everything. You’ve inspired me to go vegan.”
It’s every vegan girl’s dream. Or, it’s mine, at least.
For most of us, though, this doesn’t happen. As much as we would love for our significant others to feel the same way about health, ethics, and the environment, things just don’t always happen that way. Being vegan pretty much always involves those we care about having different dietary choices, and those people often include our partners. And that’s okay.
I am very blessed to have a boyfriend who is very receptive to my dietary choices and respectful of my habits. He loves trying new foods with me and is always excited to learn about veganism. Though he’s an omnivore, he’s very supportive of my choices and willing to learn more about my lifestyle.
I have also had the experience of dating someone who was the opposite. When I first decided to become vegetarian, he told me that it was stupid, and he constantly made me feel like my choices were wrong, even though I knew I was making good decisions for myself. His negativity toward my choices kept me from committing fully to how I wanted to live my own life. The day I broke up with him was the day that I decided to go completely vegan, and I haven’t looked back since.
Ultimately, it’s fine if my significant other doesn’t want to commit to being vegan. Obviously I’m going to continue thinking that he should, but I also know that I can’t make anyone do anything. There’s a good chance that nobody forced you into being vegan, or even coerced. We make lifestyle choices like this based on our own sets of information and beliefs, and we should want the same for our significant others. If my boyfriend doesn’t want to go vegan, that’s ultimately his decision – but he should certainly be respectful of my own choices as well. Veganism is a central part of my life and something that I care a lot about, and so my relationship partner should be supportive of it just because it means a lot to me as an individual. If he’s not, that probably says more about his views on the relationship – not his views on veganism itself.
If our significant others aren’t willing to accept even just our diet choices, there’s probably a deeper issue at hand. We shouldn’t bully them into changing their lifestyles to be congruent with our own. Even though I would love for my partner to go vegan with me, I know that it’s ultimately his own choice to make. In the end, maybe we should focus less on making our partners go vegan, and more on finding someone who is supportive of our own choices as we do the same for them.