Monogamously Partnered Carrots
As any postpubescent knows, the dating world is terrifying terrain. There are your standard creeps, cheaters, clingy potential stalkers, thirty-year-old Dungeons and Dragons enthusiasts and… meat-eaters?
Yes, as many of you have probably noticed, just because you’re an awesome veggie vixen or broccoli boy doesn’t mean that your dating pool is. In fact, depending on your location and sexual preference, the odds of you finding a partner who can spell “seitan” correctly may be slim.
With all the standard red flags to watch for on a first date, how important should we make sizing up a date’s diet? With so much of the mating game centered around local nightlife and restaurants, you and your partner are bound to take notice when one of you orders lentil soup and a dinner salad while the other orders Porky Pig and Foghorn Leghorn. We’re left to wonder: how/to what extent is a vegan/vegetarian (veg*n) to tolerate non-veg*nism in a partner? Here are the approaches I’ve seen others/myself take:
- Veg*nsexuality. You absolutely cannot date someone who eats meat/animal products. It’s either unappealing to you emotionally (usually the case for “ethical” veg*ns) or just gross to consider coming in contact with their “PG-13 and worse” areas because they consume/pass/smell like animal products. Your only interaction with non-veg*ns is when you lean from the balcony on your Fortress of Moral Superiority and shout at the unwashed masses, telling them they all smell like cheese because of their dairy intake.
- Veg*n Playstation. You get around, my dear. You are a die-hard animal advocate, putting your reputation on the line in the name of what’s right. You spend every weekend possible at your favorite bar, on the prowl for attractive, soft-hearted omnivores who you can win over with your superior stamina (I’m referring to dancing, of course…). Then, once they’ve experimented with or converted to veg*nism because of your persuasive arguments and their dedication to you, drop them and move onto the next one.
- The “blind eye” method. You might be a “health reasons” veg*n or just don’t feel it’s your place to judge or force yourself onto your partner. I’m guessing you probably enjoy listening to Tegan and Sara. Either you don’t mind smelling meat nor watching your partner eat it or you choose to eat and prepare your meals separately, then regroup for romance later in the evening. You might even be willing to cook meat for your partner, despite the fact that you probably have no idea what temperature it needs to reach to avoid possibly killing them.
Where do you fall among these approaches? Or do you have your own patented method of being both a great date and a great herbivore? Leave a comment to let me know!
I think it is important to size up your date’s diet, their diet could tell you a lot about who they are. If they have poor eating habits and don’t take care of their body, that could be a solid clue to how they feel about themselves and where they see themselves in the world (I’m talking about vegans here too–just because you are vegan, that doesn’t mean you are healthy!). My biggest thing when going out on a date: the guy better respect me. Veganism is a HUGE part of who I am, the guy should (at the very least) have respect towards my lifestyle. If you respect me, I’ll respect you. I think causally dating a meat-eater would be fine, maybe we could learn something from each other? But, for a long-term committed relationship, I would definitely want my man to be vegan. Compassion is a very endearing trait.
Vegansexual all the way. Tried dating meat-eaters.. just doesn’t work out, philosophies/mindset are too different.
I’ve done the vegan playstation thing. I was definitely on the verge of converting my ex (and not because of the differing in philosophies thing, but because he was a jerk). Before we started dating, he already didn’t eat beef or much poultry, drank soymilk, and when I started telling him over the phone once about all the disgusting things the meat industry does, he hung up on me because I was making him squeamish.
But yeah, my future boyfriend/husband will definitely be vegan/vegetarian. Living with nonveg parents is stressful enough, I can’t imagine having a functional marriage with a meateater.
It’s not a matter of personal judgment against people who lead different lifestyles or have come to different conclusions regarding how they should live, but I personally never could date a meat-eater.
I don’t date casually – I have no business getting emotionally involved with someone who’s my complete opposite or doesn’t share my values. I plan on raising any potential children to be veg*n, so if I dated someone long enough to feel like I could have a future with them, it would be quite a bummer to hit a wall like that. Veganism is at the core of how I view the world, and someone who disagrees with those views would not make a good significant other.
That, and the thought of kissing someone who just ate a steak or a burger is just way gross
In fact, if I see a woman I find to be really attractive chowing down on some Chik-Fil-A (or whatever) I become significantly less attracted to them. Again, it’s not a personal judgment against them, it’s more like a reflex. I know girls who are instantly grossed out by guys if they belch whenever they feel like it, so it’s kind of similar, haha.
I’ve been turnred off by seeing women eat meat before. I might casually date an omni but marriage would have to be with a vegan. I’m raising my kids vegan as well and we know that there would be a problem. Any way. I’ll just make sure I find someone that can’t cook. If I do all the cooking there won’t be much choice haha.
[...] Originally posted here: Love, Sex, Vegetables | DC Vegan [...]
I think the influences on our choice of diet–cultural, psychological, aesthetic, health, financial, ethical–are more complex and subconscious than most people acknowledge (as are the influences on our sexuality). Food is a big part of our social (and romantic) lives. I’d consider sincere respect for my choice of diet a prerequisite to any serious dating and I’d consider veganism a big plus in a potential partner but definitely not a requirement. Independent of the “yuck” aspects of intimacy and eating/cooking with a nonvegan, I think living a vegan/vegetarian lifestyle demonstrates some level of thoughtfulness, sensitivity and conscientiousness that benefits any relationship. But the willingness to compromise and to understand and respect things you dislike is also pretty crucial to a happy relationship.
I think restricting your dating pool to vegans can certainly be a legitimate choice, but it prioritizes diet above all other factors. There is such a complex web of factors–conscious and subconscious–that can make a relationship thrive or fail. I think a bright-line only-vegans rule is pretty short-sighted– it includes lots of people who are not at all compatible with you and, more importantly, excludes lots of people who could be very compatible. I also think its important not to gloss over the classes of people indirectly excluded when you exclude all nonvegans–people who lack the financial means (and associated leisure time), the relevant education, and the cultural compatibility/support to easily develop a vegan lifestyle. On the other hand, lots of people fairly openly restrict their dating pool by class, race, education, etc.; and studies tend to show that relationships between people of similar demographic backgrounds tend to be most successful.
I became vegan a year or so into a relationship with a vegan and have remained so in the years since we parted ways. I think it would have been hard for me to make the switch without the support of someone with whom to eat and cook vegan.
In the end, I think its important to focus on dating someone with good (and compatible) values. Veganism can be some evidence of that but its a pretty crude way of selecting a mate. Diet can evolve over time if the right values are there.
“I think restricting your dating pool to vegans can certainly be a legitimate choice, but it prioritizes diet above all other factors.”
Joseph – had to comment on this. Veganism is NOT a diet, it’s a lifestyle. Vegetarianism is more of a diet, but with veganism you typically avoid all products, such as leather, silk, even honey (I know plenty who skimp on that last one though).
Plenty go vegetarian for lots of reasons, few go vegan for anything other than ethics. A commitment to veganism to me speaks of the compassion and ethics someone has for all life. That isn’t to say that non-vegans act unethically, or are bad people, but they objectively have DIFFERENT ethical standards for themselves and have different values. A lot of the focus gets on the food, but it has far more to do with the reasons that people do (or don’t do) it.
When I become vegan, it won’t be for ethical reasons, and it will be dietary veganism*. The reasons I eat mostly vegan now are 1) I think critters taste bad 2) I think eggs taste bad 3) dairy is sickening. My kitchen is vegan, but I’m sure there are eggs lurking in some veggie burger or bread or something I eat when not at home.
* I will continue to make pysanky. I do avoid leather though because ewww skin.
Also:
My partner’s allergic to eggs & milk protein and meat is painful for him, so agreeing on food is easy.
Matt,
Fair enough and, as a lifestyle vegan, I agree its about more than diet, but I’d still say an overwhelmingly large part of the vegan lifestyle involves dietary issues. I might buy shoes once or twice a year and I think I’ve managed to avoid silk without really trying. But I eat and cook multiple times a day.
And I disagree that few vegans have anything but ethics as their motivation. Its certainly a common reason cited, but my impression of veganism hasn’t been as black-and-white as yours. For me, ethics certainly plays a role. I think its possible to ethically keep animals, treat them well, and use some of their products (eggs, milk, meat after death from natural causes), but I think its impossible in practice to design a system in an industrial capitalist society where those animals are treated ethically. Ultimately, a larger “aesthetic” motivates me. For example, say a cow lives a long, happy life and dies of natural causes. I think its arguably more ethical, compassionate, and respectful of life to butcher the cow, feed the meat to hungry people and make the cow’s skin into shoes and coats to keep them warm. But I still don’t want to participate in that because it offends an aesthetic I have developed (that meat is gross).
From a global perspective, I’d guess more people are vegan because of cultural/religious reasons than purely ethical reasons (you can argue that religion is ethics but one’s religion–especially outside the West–is much more often dictated by one’s birth culture/tradition than an openminded thoughtful choice among options). And, of course, lots of people in the world are vegan by default because of harshly limited economic resources. Granted, the dating market for readers of dcvegan probably doesn’t contain a lot of those vegans.
I guess my real “beef” with “vegansexuality” is that it seems to ignore where vegans come from. If we are talking about the typical 20- or 30-something middle class urban vegans that attend Vegan Drinks and eat at Java Green, I would guess that very few grew up vegan. At some point, maybe at 15 or maybe at 35, they became aware of a conflict between their values and their lifestyle. Maybe they figured it all out on their own and suddenly became datable vegans living a perfect vision of their values. But more likely it was a slow evolution, some education here, some experimentation there, trying out vegetarianism first, and usually with encouragement or inspiration from a friend (or someone they dated!) before making the final leap. Over the course of my life, I think I have slowly tried to make my lifestyle more and more consistent with my values and that seems to be a pretty common story of the “ethics” vegans/vegetarians I have met. So, at least for me, it seems silly to say nonvegans have such different values when so many of us have evolved and are evolving on this front.
I guess I would fall into the Veg*n Playstation category although I’m no longer in the dating field (happily committed to a vegan now who was formerly vegetarian). A few weeks or less after we started dating, he went from vegetarian to vegan without me asking him to change at all. Leading by example and lots of yummy vegan cooking seemed to be helpful. Also helpful that he already had the compassion of a vegan and wanted to be vegan someday. Glad I sped it along.
In the past I’ve dated omnivores although any food date we went on, the person would eat vegetarian in front of me out of respect. I would never want to know what else they ate. I knew it would never evolve to a serious relationship if these people continued to eat meat. I have also dated vegetarians and it presented conflict because they only wanted to eat cheese foods! It ultimately didn’t work out and I hated feeling passive aggressive about his dairy-eating.
Bottom line is I think dating omnivores/vegetarians is okay as long as they work towards veganism or as long as the dating is not serious.
am i the only meat eater posting a reply?
either way i was a vegetarian for a looong time and for mostly dietary reasons.
then i became a butcher. yes. a butcher. in a health food store. so i learned a great deal about ethical treatment of animals. i also realized that even ethical farms had P and R’s and quotas….
then i learned more about sustainable agriculture/farming and that’s when i opted to start eating meat again. i rarely eat meat anyhow but i will try something that has been raised locally. i live in switzerland and most of the meats and dairy here are from local provincial swiss farms. they really hone in on this type of market here and i love this. the cherries are incredible as is the cheese and yes, the sausages….but it is all local. not mass produced. this is how these small farms make a living and they have been doing it for ages…
as to the dating issue: it is about respect first and foremost but most of the vegans i know are with others that share their philosophy as to why they are vegan/vegetarian/pesco-vegetarians…but we shouldn’t discard people just because *gasp* they eat meat once in a while. it has happened to me. what bugs me the most is when vegans/veggies are pretentious about their lifestyle choice and judge others because of theirs. i don’t judge vegans. i have learned a lot from vegans and i have learned a lot from gun carrying texans who only eat BBQ.
that said sure, we want to share core values with those we bring closer to ourselves.
personally i know no vegan would want to date me because once in a while i eat bacon. i think we can all safely say that we don’t want to be with someone who disagrees with our lifestyles we have chosen as adults….
Joseph -
Only have a minute to reply. You make excellent points regarding the evolution of one’s ethics or values – I’ve been vegan for 5 years but was definitely raised differently. We are all just a sum of our experiences, so to that extent I make every effort not to judge someone based on the fact that they have different perceived values (or don’t take them to similar extremes), or to judge them for anything else, for that matter.
You’re argument, though, is usually what I apply more to friends, family, etc – other individuals that I’m not sharing my entire self with. You’re right – to an extent it IS silly to say that non-vegans have ‘different’ values, because I know very few people who wouldn’t stop someone from hurting or abusing an animal right in front of them. It’s the disconnect they have from how their food gets from the farm to their stomach that’s the problem 90% of the time. Having experienced that myself at one time, it would be completely unreasonable to hold it against someone else.
But, the ideal person for me would have come to similar conclusions and committed themselves to as compassionate a lifestyle as they could. I’m not in the business of preaching or trying to change people, so the whole ‘as long as they’re working towards being vegan or giving up meat’ is far too unrealistic for me, though hypothetically it would certainly be different.
Hi everyone!!
I absolutely agree with Michelle.
I think it’s important not to let go of your values and the importance of your lifestyle, because no matter how cute the guy or girl is, in the long run it all comes down to shared values.
For all the single vegans, raw-foodists and vegetarians out there – my friends launched vegetarian dating site (free sign-up, free membership) where like-minded veg-loving people can meet and make a connection.
Check it out: http://www.singlevegetarians.com/
I hope this helps,
- M