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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/EyeGlad3032 on 2025-06-11 18:09:00+00:00.

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/Total-Dingo5709, account now suspended

AITAH For Secretly Cheating On Our Vegetarian Diet That My Wife Made Our Family Do?

TWs: Emotional Manipulation/Gaslighting, Deception

OOP Posted to r/AITAH

Original Post August 14, 2024

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 converted to a new religion, which included her giving 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 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).

Wife argued that her values have 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 have 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 day 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.

AITAH?

VERDICT: HEADING NTA (the sub doesn’t have a vote counter)

TOP COMMENTS

Infinite-Chapter2652

NTA - she said she got rid of it because she couldn’t be around it… well she wasn’t around it.

Also, you guys did NOT convert to her religion, so she can’t expect that you follow it… not really sure what the problem is when she wasn’t home.

Creepy-Project38

OP should have simply refused to take the diet so they wouldn’t feel guilty for “cheating” whilst they’re not

Update August 28, 2024 (14 days later)

I want to thank everyone again for your help.

My wife and I sat down and read through most of the top ones, and it helped her see some of the stuff we were dealing with.

Here’s the original post if you’d like to read it; feels so long ago now:https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/comments/1es4eeo/comment/li34srm/

Here is quick Recap of the first post:

12 months ago, my Wife converted to a new religion, which included her giving up eating meat.

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 those GoScentless deodorant pills - etc. etc.

Basically, it had gotten so bad that the boys were have their friends sneak them meat at school.

It eventually boiled over to a crazy situation once me and the boys had some meat dinners while my Wife was out of town.

Afterwards

After my/our post went crazy, me and the wife basically sat down and tried to talk everything out - using the comments as a guide (some were pretty mean, though)

After hours and hours of debating and about a week of going back and forth, the final “place” we came to was is somewhat hard to put it into written words, but basically:

The boys should be able to live how they want, as they didn’t “make a decision” to be part of this family, but I’ve (Me) chosen to be part of this family, and be with my wife, and If I can’t meet my Wife in her values, I should decide if I actually want to continue to be a part of this family.

So basically the boys are “off the hook” until they get a bit older and are able to make decisions at this level on their own, but in order to continue being with my wife, I need to sacrifice and meet her where her values are.

I know Reddit doesn’t want to hear this, but I’m willing to make a sacrifice like this to

1.) Keep my family together

2.) Allow the boys to have their freedom

When I wrote the original post, all I cared about was my boys’ ability to “choose” their own lifestyle - whether that be the one we have or some crazy lifestyle that they want.

And I think I’ve gotten us to that place now.

I don’t use Reddit much, but I’ll check back within a month or two and let everyone know how we’re doing. But I think we’ve finally found a path forward.

AITAH for sacrificing at this level to keep my family together?

TOP COMMENTS

cthulularoo

NTA for making the sacrifice. But this is the slope that you’re starting on. She’s going to need you to keep meeting her values.

“I’ve (Me) chosen to be part of this family, and be with my wife, and If I can’t meet my Wife in her values, I should decide if I actually want to continue to be a part of this family.”

This argument is faulty. You didn’t choose to part of this family. You made this family with her on terms you both agreed on. She unilaterally changed some of the terms and expects you to still abide by your original terms. That’s bullshit. You need to renegotiate if anything. As for “you choosing to be part of the family” so did she. If her values aren’t the same as yours, then she’s the one choosing to not be in this relationship. dude, you just let her gaslight you into thinking you’re responsible for failing the relationship. YTA for sucking everything down.

eve2eden

Also, I read this as basically saying that the boys will be required to “decide if they want to continue to be a part of the family” too when they get a bit older.

All Dad has done here, at best, is defer the situation for his sons for a few years.

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