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Marriage and Family
My Husband the Meat Eater
by Tammie Ortlieb
My husband and I have been married twenty-one years. He's a nice guy. He washes dishes, shops for groceries, and helps with the laundry. He is Dad of the Year to our four beautiful children. He tolerates my mother and supports me in my quest toward finding my ever changing life purpose. He never once complained as I brought one ragged pup after kitten after fish into our orderly suburban home. I could search the four corners of the earth and never find a better life partner.
Yeah. See. My husband? He eats meat.
I loved him, though, long before I saw the proverbial vegetarian light. We dated over burgers and hot dogs and his mother's standing rib. After rousing games of miniature golf, we would order triple scoops of praline pecan and mint chocolate chip. We dated, also, in the days before even looking at a slab of Chicago style cheese pizza would add pounds to my hips. I said I do in the midst of this flesh eating frenzy. And, then.
It was four years ago that my older two children converted this plant eating wannabe. I had tried vegetarianism once. For all of six months. I think it was a Big Mac that led me back to the dark side. But I was determined this time was for good. My mother and both of my sisters had been put on cholesterol medication. My mother was diagnosed with diabetes. And all three had been taking something for high blood pressure for quite awhile. I just didn't want to end life with a windowsill full of prescription bottles. I figured a diet high in fruits and vegetables and low in meat would help my odds.
My husband was not so quick to jump on the broccoli train. In fact, he let it leave the station without him. Admittedly, he downs way fewer boneless chicken breasts than he did prior to my purging the kitchen of frozen packages marked Grade A. And given a menu, he's just as likely to order pasta with marinara as he is to ask for meatballs. But he will not completely rid his diet of what once was able to swim, run, or fly.
I could pressure him, I guess. I could insist on having my way. I could coerce, bribe, and argue my point until my face turns all shades of blue. I could. I'm rather good at that. But why would I want to? Isn't a marriage based on patience and tolerance? One partner overlooks dirty socks on the floor while the other forgives a weakness for too frequent soy lattes. This spouse learns to deal with projects that never get finished. That one has to take his shoes off if he's even in the house for two seconds. He tries pitiful attempts at tempeh stir fries and tofu scrambles. She sits across the table from skewers of beef.
I do educate. At every opportunity. And he has come to enjoy veggie crumbles in his sloppy joes and in his chili. He wants to know why the soup tastes like chicken even though there's no chicken in it. Then, of course, I have to explain that a little nutritional yeast has a cheesy flavor. If you use more, you get chicken. Why, he asks, have I stopped eating eggs and dairy products? Isn't it good enough just to stop eating meat? Then, I go into how the cows are kept pregnant so they will keep producing milk and how the babies are taken away. I go into how terrible I feel when I think of the chickens in those nasty, filthy, stench ridden torture chambers. I go into this because I want him to know.
Do I wish he would change his ways? Yes. Do I enjoy watching him take knife and fork to some creature's dead baby? No. Would I prefer he leave off eating meat in order that we might travel the globe together when we're older? Yes. But I need him to come to this on his own. Not because I pinned him to the ground with his arm behind his back making him yell, "Cruelty free." I didn't become vegetarian because someone threatened me with never ending runs of Meet Your Meat. I did it because I had gathered enough facts to know that a plant based diet is a kinder, gentler, more healthful way of eating. In time, maybe, my husband will come to the same conclusion without me sneaking copies of PETA fliers into his luggage or sneaking soymilk into his cereal. Then again, maybe he won't.
Tammie Ortlieb is a freelance writer and adjunct instructor with a Master's Degree in Developmental Psychology. She resides in southwest Michigan with her omnivorous husband, four veg kids, and small menagerie of pets. Tammie writes for various vegetarian sources, mostly on being okay with your vegetarian self. She's a book nerd, a research nerd, a health nerd, and a huge glass of soymilk half full kind of creature. Visit her blog at www.middle-agedveganchick.blogspot.com.
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