I Secretly Cheated on the Vegetarian Diet My Wife FORCED Our Family to Follow / Bright Side

Despite his wife’s firm stance on their family’s meat-free lifestyle, he couldn’t resist the desire for forbidden flavors. Hidden from view, his clandestine meals became a secret rebellion against the rigid dietary restrictions that he felt were imposed on him. This is the story of how he navigated the tension between personal cravings and the expectations of a vegetarian household.

I want to start by saying I (38M) love my family and wife (35F), and I have never been the type to do anything like this before.

12 months ago, my wife gave up eating meat. The whole family (me and our two young boys) were supportive of this, and we held a vegetarian-only dinner that night as a little sign of support.

Life continues for another ~8 months basically unchanged; the boys and I eat meat, and my wife doesn’t. However, things start to change around that 8-10 month marker (can’t remember exactly). Basically, along with not eating meat, my wife now no longer wanted to be around it. This wasn’t the only thing. Things continue to progress. Basically, my wife started to replace things in the house with substitutes.

First, the pork in the house was swapped out for Jackfruit, eggs were swapped out for substitutes like Just Egg, shirts were only bought from clean brands like Plant Faced Clothing, and Deodorants were swapped out for deodorant pills like GoScentless — you get the idea.

To say this was creating a rift would be an understatement, and eventually, I brought up to our wife that again, while we 100% support her in her decisions around these things, I didn’t think it should change things for the boys and me (unless of course, they wanted it). My wife argued that her values had changed and that being around some of this stuff was really hard for her, and wanted us to support her.

For the next 2–3 months, the house was a place of pretty high tension. It had gotten so bad that the boys had friends bringing them meat from their houses, since it was now completely gone from ours.

Anyway, about a week ago my wife went away on a few days-long business trip — meaning I was watching the boys Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Basically, and I’m a bit ashamed to type this out — but the boys and I mostly ate meat, basically every chance we got. This was all fine and dandy; the boys and I had a great time — until my wife returned home, and it somehow slipped out what we had done. I have never seen her so disappointed in us.

After putting the boys to bed, we argued for hours about how I was setting a poor example for the boys, that I should respect the decisions made by my wife, even if they’re “tough” and “inconvenient”.

It’s hard to argue back because I can see her side, but it boils down simply to just I don’t want to be vegetarian/vegan, and neither do the boys.

• “She said she got rid of it because she couldn’t be around it… well, she wasn’t around it.” WaryScientist / Reddit
• “Your wife is the bad guy for FORCING her family to follow the same beliefs as she does. You can’t control what other people do around you. This should be a unanimous decision between the two of you, and your kids are old enough to choose for themselves.” Infinite-Chapter2652 / Reddit
• “Her diet, her choice. Your diet, your choice. She is quite within her rights not to cook meat if she doesn’t want to, BUT SHE HAS NO RIGHT to dictate your opinions.” EvilBeasty / Reddit

• “It’s funny how you haven’t told her to stop her eating choices, but she is quick to tell you to stop yours. Your wife is manipulating your good-guy nature to guilt you into a choice you didn’t make. She is 100% wrong for that.
  You need to take a harder stance and let her know this ’support’ she wants comes with a cost. Her forcing her choices on all of you will result in respect being lost. In the end, people can’t live unhappily. They will remove what makes them unhappy at some point.” yakkerswasneverhere / Reddit
• “This woman’s opinion on meat is causing her children to hide/sneak food. That is going to result in her children having an unhealthy relationship with food. That is going to result in soooo many other issues.” neongrey_ / Reddit
• “Why do you have to respect the decisions that she makes when she has no respect for the decisions that you make? You and your children need to have a say in your lifestyles. One person doesn’t get to make unilateral decisions for everyone.” Sailor_Chibi / Reddit

In the end, his secret indulgences led to a deeper understanding of both himself and the dynamics within his family. His secret may have been about food, but the lesson was about trust and finding balance in a shared life.