Ah, food…definitely one of my favorite topics! We have similar issues in our house - I’m celiac (gluten-free) and mostly dairy-free and my husband loves the wheat and dairy goods. For my health and safety, we have to agree that wheat doesn’t come in the house very often. I only ever really let it cross the threshold when we have guests staying with us, who might want a sandwich. Feeding gluten-free bread to a crowd gets expensive fast! When wheat does come in the house, I have a special cutting board, and wheat stays on a separate counter, away from other cooking surfaces and no wheat may touch my toaster. If he wants dairy - he’s welcome to buy it, but generally doesn’t. My husband is totally fine with the way we eat - I’m a great cook, and he happily eats whatever I put on the table, so it works out well for both of us.

My former husband ate meat and I was a vegetarian and then a vegan while we were married. I had been young and never had my own kitchen, so the idea of having a mixed kitchen in our home wasn’t a problem for me. Over the course of time (1999-2006), the meat policy varied a lot - it went from me purchasing for him conventional meat foods to the only meat he would bring into the house was locally grown and “processed.”
Fortunately, neither one of us are picky eaters, which made the logistics of vegan meals for two easier. Though there would be days he would just want meat. One way we often handle this is by making a vegan dinner at home and he would supplement with a meat-filled appetizer from a neighborhood restaurant.

My current partner is a l-o vegtn and I’m a vegan, but he’s cut most dairy & egg products out of his diet recently. When we do move in together, we plan to keep a vegan kitchen.

We are a mixed vegetarian and omnivore house and this can work out really well. As the omnivore I don’t mind the occasional vegetarian dish. We have some cutting boards only for veg and we do cook in separate pans if meat is being made (often if it is a mixed dish one can cook the meat in a little pan and add to the vegetarian dish after). I have Crohn’s disease so the high fibre found in veg is an absolute nightmare. Something like a fresh raw salad can mean a visit to the ER, so we are both understanding of our ways. Besides any healthy plate of food contains three things, protein, starch and veg, it is only on the protein part we differ so the rest can be the same for both of us. It works so long as each person is respectful of the other’s choices, attempts at conversion or guilting someone into changing their eating habits are not going to work in the long run.

I think of Team Tiny Choices in this as well! we’ve managed to balance our different perspectives and dietary habits and goals in a very respectful way, and I think it’s reflected in our readership as well - we’ve been writing for two years here, and we haven’t had the almost-expected vegan/environmentalist/etc. fall out! Go Team!

I’m really curious how this works out for couples who decide to have children. In the last year and a half my one of my very few vegan friends and her omni-husband decided to have a baby. My friend and I are both nurses, but she took from all of our training that she had to eat dairy and eggs to have a safe and successful pregnancy (that’s not at all what I took from all our training, but I digress). So she went from being vegan to being vegetarian. Now a few months after the baby is born, she’s gone back to eating meat, because it’s “just easier.” Her husband is one of those people who feels like it’s not a meal unless there’s meat, and she got tired of there being two separate dinners (or lunches, whatever). So she’s back to being omni. I know several of my other married-with-kids friends were once vegan or vegetarian themselves, but are now omni for basically the same reason: it just gets really hard to maintain two meal rituals when you have to take care of kids at the same time- not to mention the omni parents who don’t want their children to be deprived of meat.

Since being veg, I did date one omni who was in the really respectful about my choices camp, but I really have no idea how that would have worked with kids, either (didn’t work out for non-related reasons, but still).

Anyone have any experience with that?

I am a l-o veg. He is a Texan CARNIVORE, who wouldn’t dream of eating a meatless meal. Plus, he likes highly processed foods. I love high quality, local, organic foods. I have a garden and am part of a CSA. He couldn’t care less.

It is very difficult for me!!!!

Thanks for bringin up the subject. Now, pls HELP! :)

Luckily for my husband, I was never much of a meat-eater before we met, and was already on the path to vegetarianism. He’s been a vegetarian for nearly 15 years, for me it’s closer to 6 years. After all this time, we just wouldn’t permit meat to be in our kitchen, on our dishes, or eaten with our utensils. The compromise is that I don’t care what friends eat when we are out, what they cook in their kitchens, etc., as long as they are cautious in using different utensils for cooking meat and veggie stuff. I worry about cross contamination since veggies aren’t usually cooked to the same temp that meats are. It’s such a huge part of our shared life choice and philosophy that I honestly don’t see how we could get around it if we fundamentally disagreed. It baffles me how dedicated vegetarians could buy and prepare meat for someone they loved. If I love the person, and think eating meat is morally/physically/spiritually/ecologically wrong, I couldn’t contribute to their eating it.

Jenn, sounds lovely!

My husband eats meat and I don’t, and he is very cool about not having it at home. Every few months he does get real sausage (which has its very own cooking pan) but besides that we never cook meat in our house which makes me very happy. He orders it at restaurants all he wants of course! I do eat fish sometimes so that bridges the gap a lot, but we both eat vegetarian almost all the time at our house, and I honestly think the cooking is a lot more fun and interesting this way.

FWIW, we’re raising our daughter to share my diet instead of his until she’s old enough to choose what she wants. She goes to a Waldorf school where the kids help cook their own vegetarian meals and it’s been really cool to see her enjoying food so much!

This book is on my Christmas list - it’s by a friend of mine here in town. She’s a meat-eater married to a vegetarian. She shares tons of recipes that can be adapted to be vegan, meat, or vegetarian with a few ingredient switches. I’ll report back!

http://www.amazon.com/Adaptable-Feast-Satisfying-Vegetarians-Omnivores/dp/1570615837/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260934400&sr=8-1

I am mostly-vegan and my fiance is omni. We don’t live together yet, so it’s not an issue, but when he is visiting my house he is perfectly happy to eat whatever vegetarian meal has been prepared. We’ve discussed it and agreed that when we live together we will mainly eat vegan–he can have packaged cheese and meat in the house as long as it’s not going to contaminate my food! Of course, when we go out he can eat meat, and he can add it to things if he wants, but I won’t cook meat for him and he says he probably won’t bother adding meat to things. We’ve also agreed that when we have kids they will be vegan until they’re old enough to understand my reasons for veganism, at which point they can make their own choices. We’ll see how it works out.

The funny thing is he agrees with my reasons for not eating meat or dairy (mostly anti-factory-farming), but just doesn’t feel strongly enough about it to do anything at this point…

[…] on issues of how to deal with a partner who doesn’t always believe the same thing you do - this post, for example, has some amazing and generous comments about making those relationships work. Plus here’s a sneak peak: Jenn and I have been talking […]