Is your spouse a veggie head too?

[Julia is a human]

I was wondering how many of you veghaven headies have spouses that share your same outlook of vegetarianism/veganism.....and how many do not.

So tell me, is your spouse a veggie....if not, how do you reconcile your differences?

Much love and joy, Julia

[pradtf]

yes each moment is an opportunity to live again.
as the saying goes, today is the beginning of the rest of your life.
what do you think produces this resistance to change even when "we no n r hearts when somethin feels rifgt"?

in friendship,
prad

[Krystal Dawn]

Yes we are both , i could not imagine being a vegan or vegeterian married to a meat eater! Must be difficult, i dont even like walking next to the meat section let alone smell it cooking in my house

[laresia blair]

I'm single, but I won't marry a meat eater. I don't want meat in my house, and i don't like the idea of kissing him after he's had meat. gross,
I guess I'll either find someone and change their mind, find a male vegan (hard to do) or be single forever.

we shall see,
laresia

[pradtf]

there is a saying that goes something like this:
compromise in temperament, but never in principle

in friendship,
prad

[lessthanthree]

Yes, yes!

=-)

[Beckie]

My hubby is a meat-eater, but he eats vegan at home with me. I love him for that, because we only bring vegan food into the house.

[Paul Sanders]

I think it's easy to say you won't marry a meat eater, until you fall in love. I will tell you that love wins every time. When I met my wife-to-be, she was a meat eater. She didnt care that I was vegetarian. I gave her the same respect. What happened is that after a few years, and with no pressure from me, she became vegetarian through seeing the overall benefits it has on my life and through her own awareness of how much better she felt when she was eating vegetarian. Also, in a relationship, there's alot more difficult things to deal with than the food on your plate. You have to be friends and be very selfless if you want it to work. I think if you base who you are with on what they eat, you could be missing a lifetime of an amazing friendship.

[pradtf]

that's admittedly a good point paul.

unfortunately, the same logic can be applied to 'falling in love' with people who do questionable things. for instance, some people choose to marry robbers, extortionists, murderers etc, simply because 'love winning out' is more important to them than the ethical standards of their mate.

in this society, what one eats is generally not considered to be an ethical imperative - in other words, supporting the imprisonment, exploitation and termination of non-human sentient beings, just doesn't seem to rank that high ... yet.

there are plenty of tofu fish in the vegetarian sea and there seems to be nothing wrong with looking for and choosing to be with someone who's ethics are aligned with your own.

i am not, btw, condemning mixed marriages. i think it's fine whenever a non-veg becomes veg by association with a veg. (it should be noted that it can go the other way too.) i am saying however, that fear of 'missing a lifetime of an amazing friendship' is an invalid basis on which to pursue a mate.

contrary to the folklore, love is anything but blind.

in friendship,
prad

[Paul Sanders]

actually, contrary to your negative comment, love can be blind and you should be more careful about what you comment. it's just like anything else, if you haven't experienced something, you are quick to say it doesn't exist and make yourself sound silly to others who have experienced it.

it is the responsibility of loving people to lead by example and not live high and mighty above everyone else. no spiritual leader ever lived separated from any person, no matter how 'evil' the person. love can be blind, and if you aren't at that stage, it only makes you sound young on the path to say otherwise. especially when you put 'in friendship' blindly on every post, including the one where you say love is not blind.

[pradtf]

paul,

i'm not sure just what you consider negative in my post.

my point is simply that fear of 'missing a lifetime of an amazing friendship' is an invalid basis on which to pursue a mate. as explained above, that concern can lead some people to 'hook up' with the most unpalatable partners. i don't think that sort of 'blindness' is particularly beneficial. i think it is more infatuation than love (though it is possible you will not take what i have said seriously, since you have already suggested that i have not experienced the latter and therefore i know nought of what i speak).

i'm not sure what you mean by "no spiritual leader ever lived separated from any person". are you suggesting that spiritual leaders love blindly? if so, which form of love is it? is it eros? is it philos? is it agape?

paul, i'm glad things have worked out for you the way they did, but as noted above, they don't always.

in friendship,
prad

[Paul Sanders]

i cant believe i'm being sucked into this conversation. i fear i may be feeding into just another person who likes to argue on the internet for no other reason than to see their words on the screen. but here i go. hopefully someone gets something out of this.

1. your point is hypothetical, and in your hypothetical example your imaginary person is falling blindly for someone out of passion, not love, which anyone would agree is senseless, but has nothing to do with my post. my example is real, and is based on a long term relationship built over time where love grows to the point that you see the other person for who they really are, not for what they eat. any mature person understands the difference between passion and love and needs to make no argument about the shortcomings of passion. so yes, it's hard to take you seriously at all when you argue against the 'potential' of love using irrelevant examples of passion. the two aren't in the same league and you should know that.

2. 'hooking up' with an 'unpalatable partner' is something that unhealthy people with emotional shortcomings do, and again has nothing to do with anything i said. and, by the way, who uses the term 'hooking up' when talking about love? seriously, how old are you? it sounds like you are talking about sex with a drug dealer, not a relationship with a decent person.

3. You say basically that 'things dont always work out perfectly'. Well as anyone knows, if you wait for guarantees on things to work out perfectly in anything, you'll never live any real and satisfying life. I'd rather go through 10 faulty relationships with decent people to find the one perfect one, than wait forever for a fairy tale that will never come true. If you are a young person, then when you are older you will understand this more. If you are over 30, you should know this by now.

Finally, I want to make another point. There are much more than 'bad meat eater people' and 'saintly vegetarians'. There's all types in between and we all have our faults. I'm often disappointed vegetarians for acting so high and mighty when I have meat eater friends who are more saintly and generous and loving and non-judgmental. We all need to get over ourselves sometimes and stop being so petty.

[pradtf]

paul,

you really seem worry a lot about my age and now my intentions as well!! may i suggest those have very little to with the conversation we are engaging in.

we are agreed then on there being a difference between passion and love.

now look at what you've just written (and quite eloquently too, imho):

... based on a long term relationship built over time where love grows to the point that you see the other person for who they really are, not for what they eat

surely you understand from your own words 'love that grows' and 'love that sees' that love is not blind by any means (my original point) and since i did differentiate between love and infatuation in my last post, you should have no further difficulty in taking me seriously.

(however, there is the adage that "you are what you eat" which would suggest that you may wish reconsider the bit about just how you see a person.)

i'm not sure where you get the idea that the people here who don't want to live with a corpse-eating spouse are being "high and mighty", "petty" and "need to get over themselves". do you possess certain credentials that entitles you to comment about these people in this way? surely this isn't your demonstration of the "responsibility of loving people to lead by example"?

no one here has said anything unkind about the path you have decided on. why do you feel it necessary to criticize the vegetarians who have simply chosen a different set of criteria from yours?

in friendship,
prad