Imagine you are looking on Craigslist for a vehicle. An ad that just says, “used car” and doesn’t have a picture won’t get your attention, will it? You want to know the body style, make, model, year, mileage, interior and exterior colors, amenities, and price, AND be able to see multiple pictures before contacting the seller. You want to already be imagining yourself behind the wheel of your new (used) sweet ride before even asking if it’s still available. You’re so excited, and then you call to find out that they didn’t tell you that the owner is a smoker, or it needs a new transmission, or it has flood damage.
That’s how dating can be as a vegan. You find someone who you think is attractive, friendly, funny, and then . . . that person says, “What’s a vegan?” (or worse, pronounces it “VEG-un”), “But you still eat fish, right?”, or “I could never do that.” I have lived in the Deep South most of my life, so I have even been asked if I eat turkey for Thanksgiving. I usually now just use my best deadpan and quickly respond, “No, I eat babies.” (Of course that’s extreme, but it’s an excellent filter to see if the guy can handle my humor and sarcasm.)
Surely resorting to online dating would take care of all those frustrations, right? I’ve used various online dating sites on and off for 10 years, and I’m 30 now. I have been vegan for just over a year now, but I was following various levels of vegetarianism during my entire online dating “career.” If you have ever looked into vegetarian or vegan only dating sites, you are probably snickering a bit. The selection there is . . . bleak . . . at best. It seemed like those sites would be the best fit for me, but I said to myself, “Why can’t I go mainstream? That’s what the bio is for, to explain what I do and DON’T want; who I am and who I’m not.”
I quickly realized the pitfalls of Match.com and similar sites. If I didn’t blatantly write VEGAN in my headline, most people wouldn’t even know. The only place it would show up was under diet, but the choice was “vegetarian/vegan” and still had to be explained anyway. I always have an extensive bio, a.k.a. filtering process, because I don’t want to waste anyone’s time just as much as I don’t want to waste my own. I guess most of the men on there didn’t have the attention span to read more than one paragraph, because they always referred to my three to five paragraphs as a “novel.” My bad, I thought you might like to learn a little something about me. Even if they couldn’t ignore the fact that it was written in there, a common response was something to the effect of, “Hey there, just so you know, I do eat meat.” Thanks for letting me know. I’ve never met a meat eater before . . . .
Another common response to my veganism from those who did actually want to get to know me or spend time with me was, “It doesn’t bother me.” It’s one thing to say “I support you even though I don’t share the same view,” but to say you won’t be bothered implies that you might worry you can’t take me anywhere to eat or that I’ll yell at everyone for being murderers when we do go out. Even the ones that do say they are supportive always have their limits. One example being the guy who asked if I would pay for our Thai dinner (which is fine, I’m a woman of the 21st century) and then asked if he could eat chicken. Sorry, buddy, my money covers tofu or vegetables dishes only, preferably just the vegetables so it will be cheaper. You’re fine with drinking water, right? He was upset about it for a minute, but in my defense he lived close to the restaurant and I had driven an hour to get there. He could go back and enjoy chicken on his dime. Another classic instance was the guy who pushed the food around on his plate during the candlelight dinner I had cooked for him. (Don’t tell anyone I enjoy doing this – it might ruin my alpha female image.) I noticed and commented, and he gave me a pathetic face and said, “I don’t like the texture.” I’ve never been a picky eater and I can’t think of a single non-animal food that I wouldn’t eat. I wasn’t mad that he wasn’t going to finish it (more for me!), but men have to know that insulting a homemade candlelight dinner will turn a nice girl into a woman scorned. It quickly escalated into how he could never be vegan and nothing he could do would make him good enough for me. Hey, buddy number two, did you notice you just mentioned how you wouldn’t do something that WOULD make you good enough for me? Next.
Some Friday or Saturday nights when I was up later than planned and feeling optimistic (or delusional) I’d use my favorite feature: the keyword search. How convenient to be able to filter through an entire country of people just by typing in five letters, right? My hopes were sky high until I scanned some bios. A handful of true vegans, usually living in CA, OR or WA, one or two people who referred to themselves as “Las Vegans” and a whole slew of dudes saying, “If you’re vegetarian or vegan, we won’t get along.” I got duped. Fine, whatever, not a big deal. But then . . . each of those vegan-haters could see that I looked at his profile, and then he would look at mine, and then he’d see I was vegan, and then he’d laugh. I hope someone at Match.com gets some pleasure out of this.
I have actually dated one person I met in real life since I moved to South Carolina in December 2012. The main reason I find it awkward to meet people by chance is because I’ve become spoiled by the demographics and major filters posted right by the picture online. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but the other two major life choices that would make my ideal man trifecta are for him to be non-religious and childfree. Yes, this is the appropriate time for us to all wonder together if I should resort to typing “unicorn” into the keyword search and see if I get a bite. I had a great first date with him and found out that he had rheumatoid arthritis. I wasn’t phased by it. By the end of the third date I had the courage to ask his views on religion and children, and they matched mine! I soon after began educating him on how eating an alkaline diet may improve his symptoms and offered to prepare kale for him. I saw the kale go into his mouth, but once he closed it you’d think I had fed him rat poison. I’ve seen babies take down greens more easily. He admitted, “I LIKE burgers and fries, though.” I forgot to mention we met at the gym, so you can imagine my confusion there. Sorry, but I don’t understand choosing to be on a medication that causes weight gain and face rashes instead of eating some kale every day. I couldn’t continue the relationship, and at that point I was becoming more secure with the idea that I might never meet someone who had the total package.
That was around the same time that I began training for my first figure competition. I enjoyed the process so much that I not only vowed to continue, but that I would hold out for my own vegan bodybuilder, dang it. It was really nice to take a break from endlessly searching through the close-minded SC wasteland and focus on building some big ole plant built muscles. I didn’t stay away from it completely, but I used more discretion. I received an email from someone who was 25, cute, fit and local with an exercise science degree (same as mine) who was also . . . vegan?! I immediately responded and wanted to set up dinner because I couldn’t wait to sit across from someone and know that he’d order a vegan dish on his own accord. I talked to him a bit before meeting him, and he seemed easy to talk to. This was IT, and HE found ME. I opened the door, and the exact opposite of most men’s fear with online dating happened to me. He was drastically smaller than what his pictures showed, and I was quite certain that at four inches taller than me he weighed less than I did. He looked like the sickly, malnourished vegan that I constantly have to convince other people doesn’t exist. I could overlook that, I just made a mental note to not break any bones by hugging him. About halfway into dinner, which was scheduled for 5:30 because that was “better for his digestion,” I could tell he was high maintenance.
I had heard it before but I didn’t believe it until then: Just because a guy is vegan doesn’t mean he’s perfect. Adopting a plant-based lifestyle doesn’t make someone immune to being weird, boring, rude, narcissistic, or any other negative quality. Would I have wanted to see the early-bird-special dinner guy again if he wasn’t vegan? Nope, so there was no reason to entertain that it might work because of a shared moral code.
My next big venture was to long-distance date a vegan bodybuilder. Yep, my wish came true, and I thought again, “Hey, THIS could be it.” It was so awesome to visit each other’s cities and be around someone who wanted to order the same things that I did so we could share every meal, and who enjoyed using canvas bags for shopping and recycling like a maniac as much as I did. Those were traits I couldn’t find where I lived and made me simultaneously optimistic and more isolated. Infatuation took over and I allowed myself to quickly become the one putting in more effort and giving him a pass on all his negative qualities. He decided to end it because of the distance, but I was able to see soon after that he was doing me a favor.
I thought dating had been ruined for me until (or if) I was able to find another vegan to date. I wasn’t excited about being available or putting myself out there again, but I couldn’t continue to view SC as a black hole. I think I may have struck a balance in how to advertise myself. There is no ignoring the fact that I am vegan and damn proud of it. I will continue to be amazed by people who date vegans and think that we are never going to bring up how important our views are or make subtle (or not so subtle) hints about how we’d love if they chose to adopt the lifestyle, too. I make myself approachable, though, and take opportunities to politely educate and encourage when I can.
Being a successful vegan bodybuilder is my top priority right now, and finding someone who is supportive of a competitor lifestyle can be just as hard as finding someone who is supportive of a vegan one. I use social media not as a way to push veganism on everyone, but to simply show how healthy and strong I am and how wonderful my life is because of it. I am choosing to adopt the same philosophy now with dating. I am going to search for people who have the qualities I want, such as a little bit of nerdiness overshadowed by obscure humor and an infectious laugh, and let veganism be a question mark for a bit. I will cook my secret candlelight dinners, wow him with vegan desserts, talk about the health and fitness benefits, make him a part of my bodybuilding journey, and maybe suggest we cuddle up to watch Forks Over Knives on the couch one night. I’d rather go the long haul with someone because he came around and made his own choice than to continue to end the possibility of getting to know someone as soon as I “find out” he eats meat.
Love this! Trying to find a vegan to date is so hard. I once went on a few dates in California with this vegan yogi before I moved to Utah. The dating part was fantastic; vegan food everywhere and he always wanted to bring me more vegan donuts and cinnamon rolls. However, he was soooo skinny and feminine I just couldn’t handle it. I’ve dated the meat eater who said, “It doesn’t bother me” but months down the road it became such a problem that he viewed my diet as unhealthy. Now, I’m dating this wonderful man who absolutely loves animals (I’ve never seen a man love his dog more than this!) but isn’t vegan or vegetarian. He did do 3 days a week vegetarian when we met and that changed when his Ironman schedule took over. Now that we’ve been together almost a year, his meat intake has drastically lowered, he only uses plant based protein, drinks a plethora of wheat grass, will now choose a veggie dish over a meat when he travels, and has even gone to a vegan restaurant on his own where he claims he had “the best tacos in his life”. He’s a good sport with my cooking and is always surprised when something new shows up in the fridge; i.e. nutritional yeast to him looks like fish food. He claims he will never go vegetarian 100% but he’s already almost made a complete switch to non-dairy milk and says how much better his athletic performance is when he eats more greens. Slow and steady. I’ve learned that to encourage change we must be lead by example and continue to be the compassionate individuals that we are. Slow and steady wins the race and any little bit helps. Good luck to everyone on their dating adventures!
I’m a vegetarian, very open to dating people with different diets. The things that stood out to me in this piece, that would bother me were:
-if you treat someone to a meal you do so regardless of what they order. If I treat, I treat even if they order meat.
-‘educating’ someone about the benefits of a diet, is usually obnoxious, do so only if asked
-and yes, if I make you food, the ONLY acceptable answer is “thank you for making this, this is delicious” anything else is rude! I’m sorry you had to deal with such rudeness.