Non - Vegan relationships. Dying to make it work.

                In my last post I mentioned a new relationship. It lasted about 8 months and now that it’s over I have some insights about vegan with non vegan relations and maintaining your individuality while trying to make a relationship work. Please understand that I am certainly not a relationship expert and these are simply my opinions and observations.

                Vegan or not I’ve always had a tendency of focusing so hard on maintaining my relationships and the other persons happiness that I end up giving up the things I love and losing my own sense of self in attempts to keep them and therefore “us” happy. Obviously this ends up not working as overtime my self-worth, confidence, satisfaction, and inevitably my happiness falters, thus tainting and in turn self-imploding the relationship. I believe the technical term is called Self Sabotage.

                If you’ve read my other posts then you know that I have been working on myself for a few years now. Isn’t that what life is after all? The search for oneself, and the constant struggle to become a better person. For me it is. It’s been four years now of serious reprogramming and I have never been happier with myself as a person. I found myself ready to make another attempt at love.

                The biggest lifestyle change that I made for the sake of this relationship was getting back on birth control. This is in my opinion the main culprit. For years I have been charting my cycle and using that to know when I am fertile. I had a fling that lasted a couple months using this method and never had an issue. But for my partners peace of mind I agreed to again use the depro provera injection form of traditional birth control. I warned him that I experience severe emotional side effects from hormonal birth control. Sure enough every month was worse than the last and even though we were trying other possible solutions it just got to bad for us to keep waiting for it to get better.  I will address feminine hygiene and my fertility struggles in another post.

                From the beginning I knew being vegan was going to be a challenge for my partner but it ended up being a bigger challenge for me. I found that it made the family uncomfortable when I would make my own meal to eat at dinner while they ate hamburger helper, taco salads and such. Albeit their eating habits were balanced and by today’s American standards would be considered healthy, the meals simply were not vegan. So more and more I started slipping back into eating ‘normal’. It started with things like “I steamed some broccoli so you can eat with us.” But he had melted cheese on it, and for the sake of not hurting anyone’s feelings or coming off as a stuck up B, I would smile and say that it looks good. All things in moderation, right? Wrong. The negative changes within me were obvious within just a couple months. From weight gain, skin problems, energy loss, exhaustion, loss of motivation, to depression anxiety, and feeling like I was going straight up crazy.  My whole life I’ve struggled with energy levels and being able to keep up with peers as well as depression, anxiety, and endometriosis. Since going vegan I had raised energy levels, no longer had depression, rarely had any anxiety, along with having consistently stable moods, and hadn’t had an endometriosis attack for a couple years. Although we were a relatively active couple I found my energy levels lowering and my muscles would be sore for days after doing a 3k when the first month that we were together I was able to run a 5k with minimal soreness. The only changes in lifestyle were the birth control and diet. So I found myself not being able to keep up with my boyfriend and as a result we became less active which aided in us both gaining a few pounds. All the nesting jokes aside it affected us both as individuals and in turn took a toll on the relationship. Long story short I ended up so depressed and with such horrible mood swings that we just couldn’t survive any longer. Not that we didn’t give it our all, we did and I am eternally appreciative to him for all his patience, understanding, and efforts. While I wish I had known better and as much as I wish we could have made it to the other side together it simply wasn’t meant to be and I am grateful for the many wonderful memories and even more so for the valuable lessons that I’ve learned from and will apply to what will hopefully be successful future endeavors in love.

                Lessons to learn from: Never sacrifice what’s important to you for the sake of another. It is far too easy to fall into bad habits! I gave up my yoga classes and regular workouts to fit into his family’s schedule better. The guilt I felt for eating non vegan just to please the family made it hard to focus on the positives of the relationship. Longer term, the SAD (standard American diet) put me back to the health levels I was at before going vegan. I developed cervical cancer before going vegan and after having the cells removed and being strictly vegan for over a year the cancer had not returned and my doctor was in awe of how fast I had healed. I now have to start all over again to regain my health. In addition, I knew that using hormonal birth control was not right for me and should have stuck to my gut on it. I hope this insight is able to help others who may be experiencing similar difficulties in their lives. While we all must learn our own lessons I also believe in learning and taking ‘pointers’ from others. Why suffer if you don’t have too? Stay tuned for a future post about my experiences with SAD diet, endometriosis, cervical cancer, birth control, how being vegan changed things and natural feminine hygiene.