OP is offering advice to vegans who are in relationships with omnivores. They caution against seeking advice from others in similar situations because of the sunk cost fallacy, where people are reluctant to abandon something they have invested in.
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The sunk cost fallacy can be amplified in relationships where love, time, energy, attention, money, and reproductive materials have been invested, making it harder to acknowledge issues or discord with their partner.
OP believes that staying with a partner, regardless of their diet, is ethical once children are involved because two-parent families generally have better outcomes than single-parent families.
However, OP advises those seeking advice to be aware that some may not acknowledge the full extent of the issues they experience with their omni partners due to the psychological pain of acknowledging problems in their relationship.
Some Relatable Stories
The thread of this post has a number of people empathizing with OP’s position. Many have their own personal experience of a very similar situation occurring and the positive outcomes that accidentally occurred:
“Here’s the thing. My wife has cut her animal product consumption by like 90%. Her family now eats less meat and consumes fewer animal products as a whole since she and I have gotten married. Not just her parents. I mean her sister, aunts and uncles, and cousins too.
I believe this is a net positive. And any amount of progress is still progress.”
This Redditor notes that having two dietary preferences in the relationship has helped both come to a more reasonable solution. During the course of their relationship, his wife has come to terms with her consumption and began reducing it, which has had a substantial effect on her extended family too.
This is a direct reflection of the OP’s dilemma. They are stating that there was an overall positive outcome to their relationship, which would nullify any ethical dilemmas that could occur due to constraining who people date.
There Are Some Hard Line Examples
Numerous commenters are very much in favor of more extreme views on the vegan lifestyle and morality. They suggest that OP is not considering the moral comparable that their partner is unwilling to address:
“If you have a partner that you’ve explained veganism to, and they’re totally aware of the horrors of animal agriculture and choose to eat meat anyway, I don’t understand how you can justify staying with them. They have no excuse, especially since they know eating meat hurts someone they supposedly love.”
This comment suggests that once the vegan explains the animal farming industry, their partner must relinquish their feeling and follow the dietary system. It is explained that a vegan can only justify staying with a partner that did not initially adhere to vegan principles.
They also note that should once the vegan in a relationship explains their viewpoints that their partner is hurting them, to continue with their meat-eating habits. Therefore, they are advocating that the best advice for the OP is to stick to dating partners who are already in support of or following vegan or vegetarian lifestyles.
There Isn’t Much Choice
However, some other Redditors are suggesting that finding a partner with the exact lifestyle practices as niche as veganism is unlikely:
“I only met one vegan my entire life, this week. There’s no sunk cost fallacy involved; the phenomena you’re describing is when someone has no choice. It’s just common sense to people living in most places that the people they love probably won’t be vegan or ever will be.”
They explain that the proportion of people on earth who are not vegan is much higher than those who are. Therefore, it would make more sense to be open-minded to the idea that vegans can have relationships with whomever they like. However, this lifestyle will be a point of negotiation going into the relationship where a middle ground can be met. This will guarantee the best opportunity for everyone involved.
Source: Reddit
