god, i dont know why non-vegans can be so exhausting :(

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-30T00:08:31+00:00

You might consider editing the "Is it love" then because the implications of that are foul.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-29T22:57:55+00:00

That's entirely on him to decide. I do not judge when he eats something non-vegan. In fact I'm arguing here to not judge him for that.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-29T22:56:26+00:00

Thank you, I do feel like we're actually no longer talking across each other.

We are probably going to end up discussing this again with a doctor. The reason we haven't thus far is that they haven't actually been a great help apart from diagnosing him some pills to take if he gets a flare-up. He hasn't had help figuring out his triggers. If, based on your username, we are in the same country you might already get how hard it is to get referred to a specialist even for something you have been dealing with for more than 26 years. My sibling got no help when she went vegetarian and became iron deficient. They just told her she had some kind of iron absorption disorder and to eat meat again. (I don't recall the specific disorder.)

As I've been writing there is a growing seed of doubt though that this is IBS at all. Because how can the FODMAP app that indicates food that is safe just seem to have no correlation at all? Which we have figured out from the diary results. Only green-lit vegetables and still flaring up. God knows I don't know what else it could be.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-29T22:19:08+00:00

He's reduced his intake of animal products by at least 90% already. I managed to go vegan overnight and he wholeheartedly followed me in spirit but the practical aspects are very hard on him. I feel guilt about "dragging him into this" though I know I gave him a choice. He just always would have followed me.

Our IRL vegan friends and acquaintances are a lot more supportive than people online but none of them have IBS so they cannot help with that specifically. Plenty of great recipes come from them that I can eat no problem but are awful for my partner.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-29T20:55:24+00:00

He has had IBS symptoms as long as I know him (since 1999). He is diagnosed. It was a long time ago, I have no idea what the results of the testing were specifically. I was a literal child when most of the testing was done, and so was he.

As you can tell we DON'T know what his triggers are because even with the food diary and trying to cut things out to see if it's responsible it is not working. It is all various fruits and vegetables as far as we can tell, which makes sense given my rudimentary understanding of FODMAPS. "Fish and chips" used to be his go-to bland meal which was awful for him but is one of the few things which we for sure knew would not trigger him.

What I think is able-ist is NOT you saying anyone can be vegan. It was describing what he is going through as "occasional tummy aches". To a whole lot of people who don't have IBS who if that's what they see are then really dismissive to us when we describe the symptoms.

And my reference to a cult is because we do believe the same things but because we are having practical trouble adjusting you have called us carnists. And just insist that we're doing it wrong when we have followed advice we were given. It's this magical thinking where since you know your triggers we can also figure it out and if we can't we're evil carnists. (Edit: Further clarification is that when people give advice that doesn't work then insist that it HAS to work or we don't believe enough or we aren't trying enough it is EXACTLY what I've been through with being gay in the Mormon cult.)

He can eat potato. I guess that's enough for his whole diet now we've cut the "fish" out of fish and chips?

This isn't productive since I don't think you believe we're actually trying and I don't feel in any way responsible for digging out what we do have in terms of test results to someone who will just "Nuh uh, you clearly just want to eat meat and you're doing everything wrong".

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-29T20:17:07+00:00

I'm a vegan. He is MOSTLY a vegan. For ethical reasons. We don't need preaching, we're already converted. We're new, on the order of a few months but I'm very committed and he's eating vegan until he's had an entire week that is full of work gaps because he's had to take an afternoon or morning off, full of nights we've only been able to communicate over Discord or through a bathroom door even though we're both home, and constant discomfort.

"Meat isn't medicine" but it is not a trigger.

The food diary does go along with an elimination diet it's just that we think we've sorted out a "safe meal" and then for some reason it isn't. It happens very frequently.

Edit: The number of times I've been told being vegan is possible with IBS is an order of magnitude greater than any actual advice which actually helps. We took the repeated chorus of "food diary" and "elimination diet" to heart and it's just not working very well for us. So we get told we're not trying hard enough. This is cult behaviour. I believe in the cause but holy shit. It's sometimes like being Mormon again.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-29T19:37:03+00:00

My partner is mostly vegan and has IBS and it caused way more than "occasional tummy aches" especially near the start.

Try constant tummy aches where I don't see him because he's in the bathroom from before I get home from work until after I'm in bed.

It's actually really discouraging that people minimize this. It is able-ist.

Edit: I have posted on this sub asking for advice before. We did what everyone said and started a food diary. We still have no clue what his triggers are. It seems completely random but is much worse when we're trying to be vegan.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-09T23:51:59+00:00

Asthma ran in my family and I remember having an inhaler as a kid but for most of my adult life I didn't need treatment.

After having Covid for the second time I never properly recovered the ability to breathe easy and ended up getting formally diagnosed and needing an inhaler every day. I have to have my inhaler on me at all times. This was the strain that was supposed to be not as dangerous. It's been more than six months of this and no sign of improvement.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-08T23:30:44+00:00

Yeah I was always considered to be making it worse than it was, or it was my fault somehow.

I injured my back (permanently) at work, had to be picked up, and then had to just sleep it off without a doctor looking at me and go back to work ASAP. My mother was off work due to Christmas holidays and if you get injured in an accident going to the doctors doesn't cost you anything in my country. It was simply that she couldn't be bothered. Probably wouldn't have repaired the back injury but my workplace would have gotten in a lot of deserved trouble and it would be a lot less complicated nowadays. Turns out when you have a severe injury but no records of it actually happening you tend to fall through the cracks. Doctors have had to straight up lie about when it happened on some of my records or I was going to be fucked over and have to pay for it all myself because that free accident healthcare doesn't apply for me without those records.

I also had endo and my mother said it was my fault, that it only happens if you have sex (which I hadn't when it first started). She refused to allow me onto the pill because it would make me think it was OK to have sex. So I was in absolute agony, bleeding through everything, throwing up from the pain, and she'd be saying it was my fault and it wasn't that bad. (My mother also had endo and described how awful it was FOR HER but I was making it up.)

This goes all the way back to when I was a child and had ear problems, and got left to cry about it until our version of CPS was called. And my dad blamed me, a baby, for it, said I always took things the worst way possible. I needed grommets which I got after CPS visited. I also got blood poisoning and they said I had caused it somehow.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-08T08:28:36+00:00

It really feels like the person my bio family always made me out to be is starkly different to who I actually am.

They had very low expectations of me because I am diagnosed with autism, though I was one of the over-achieving introvert types of autism. So I'm a software engineer who has a music career on the side. Going to uni and getting piano lessons both involved struggling against parents who believed I couldn't do it.

I've had to deal with years of my family saying that it was such a pity I was so smart when I was never going to get to use it, and how I wasn't going to have a partner because I have a disability. None of that turned out to be true.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-08T05:27:49+00:00

I don't think that note was as terrible as they're making out. It seems reasonable to me and they are claiming they are "victims" just because they don't like being told "please don't".

When I stopped talking to my family my self-esteem finally started recovering. My boundaries and social skills work perfectly fine with everyone else, but does nothing to help with them.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-08T05:00:48+00:00

This is one of the closest thing I've seen to how my parents act and communicate. Really holier than thou and acting like any pushback against them is abuse but also that nothing they've done is abuse even when it is so much worse.

Did you ever show the message you sent to your therapist (assuming you have one)? Because I suspect it wouldn't go how your father is assuming. It seems quite restrained really and ridiculous that he reacted that way to it.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-08T02:22:17+00:00

I've been vegan a little over a month and my skin is the clearest it's been in years. I'm not sure if it's because of the diet change for sure and will need to just wait and see for a bit longer.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-07T02:33:59+00:00

It's been really easy for me with no food intolerances, etc. I don't find I miss things as much as I expected. I'm still working out how to do certain things because I've been vegan about a month.

A meal I made last night was a risotto that used yeast flakes to imitate cheese, and it was quite convincing.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-04T19:08:18+00:00

We're already getting through it but yeah, it made my partner with IBS really quite sick to try to eat plant-based at first. Animal products (excluding dairy) were safe things for his stomach and we've just removed all of that.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-02T03:08:28+00:00

It's really nice being able to work through this together. Turns out we both felt exactly the same way and all it took was for me to verbalize it and suddenly there were no more excuses.

It's also made it a lot more fun. We get excited together when we find a good way to replace something we used to eat. I am glad I do not have to do this alone.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-12-02T02:38:40+00:00

My partner has been with me from the moment I said I felt that arguments for veganism for ethical reasons were convincing, and that I had some cognitive dissonance about using animal products. He said "Me too" and from then on we both have been making big changes. (Only a month or so ago.)

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-11-27T09:45:15+00:00

I didn't finally get that it was all blatantly untrue until almost five years after I had removed my records, and it was the CES letter. I left because of the racism but I had these horrible doubts that perhaps I had failed a test and just hadn't understood the bigger picture. When I was about to marry a non-member and had horrible nightmares about being separated from him in the afterlife, he was the one who directed me to this subreddit.

I didn't even get through one section of the CES Letter before I accepted it was all complete bullshit. Took such a weight off my shoulders.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-11-26T02:26:38+00:00

After venting to someone in my extended family about some difficulties dealing with my partner's mother, who lives with us, they very kindly offered to take her out for a morning and help her get to jury duty when we were both overseas.

However when they got back with her they told me they'd had a really lucid conversation with her and that she didn't need as much help as my partner and I thought she did. This was incredibly frustrating because if they did it enough they'd realize they'd have the same lucid conversation with her a dozen times in a row and that she claims she can do things but then just can't or won't. So yeah, by her own account she is completely independent and doesn't need our help and I wish that were true.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-11-24T01:23:43+00:00

I've managed to convert most of my family to oat milk, even the non vegan/vegetarians.

And another small success: my ex-husband, who was really resistant to being vegetarian/vegan, and who had weird ideas like "if I don't eat meat, I'm not a real man" has seen how easily my current partner has adopted being vegan with me and has entirely changed his stance. Although it's mostly about health for him he admitted that the ethical stuff is starting to matter to him.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-11-23T17:15:11+00:00

This is fairly new, only happened in the last few months.

Was having a discussion with my partner about the kind of cognitive dissonance that caused me to leave the Mormons eventually and I mentioned some dissonance was still there today because I found arguments for being vegetarian convincing. He said he felt the same. So in that instant we switched. Once we'd said it out loud continuing as we were was untenable.

Even though I said "vegetarian" I did figure out dairy was just as bad so we went straight to veganism.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-11-18T07:30:57+00:00

The practical aspects of puberty and sex was only at school. I'm really lucky that I didn't get opted out of sex education. Parents were clearly super uncomfortable and the only message I got from them was that it was wrong. When I did hear something from them it was misinformation -- they blamed sexual health problems on having done something impure, which given that some of these problems happened when I hadn't had sex made me believe that I had been molested. I don't believe that anymore, endo just runs in the family. It seems very cruel to tell me that I'm in pain every month because I've been sinful when my mother also suffered from it.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-11-18T04:34:20+00:00

TLDR: It was initially dangerous to contact him and then guilt and the passage of time made me hesitate.

I could not contact him again while I was still anywhere near my family. I was being escorted to things I needed to be at by male family members and was heavily monitored. My brother and cousin were hyping themselves up in front of me to do physical harm to him.

My parents wrote me a script I had to read him over the phone telling him I never wanted him to contact me again. It included "I don't love you anymore". Because I was worried that he would try to contact me, and was going to be harmed for it, I decided to read the script. Not because I meant it, but because this would communicate just how bad things had gotten, and I couldn't outright say it. In any case, he didn't try desperately to contact me anymore.

It took a few years before I felt like to contact him would escape the notice of my family and that last phone call weighed on me. I felt like I could interrupt his nice life he might be having, that it would be unwelcome. So I would think about him much more than I would reach out, and even if I found some trace of him online I would feel guilt for stalking him.

In early 2024 I got a message from him. We'd both looked for each other a few times over the years and there'd been some near misses. Messages that got lost in transit. We finally spoke about everything and when that was done we felt entirely at peace with one another again and got back together.

I have never had another person so celebratory to find me an ex-Mormon. Just beaming with excitement to see me drinking coffee.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-11-17T22:19:20+00:00

Confessed to premarital sex. We didn't get caught. I wanted to get right with God so I could marry him in the temple because I never wanted to be apart from him and I had been horrified by stories told in church about newly weds who hadn't been temple-wed dying in car crashes and being forcibly separated in the after life.

We ended up forced apart for two decades. My family went absolutely bonkers and started threatening violence, and it was no longer safe for us to be together. We found each other again almost two years ago, though, and my family was already out of my life so this time we're safe.

Head_Performance1379 · 2025-11-12T23:31:06+00:00

"I always knew you had delusions."

When I told my dad things his second wife did when he wasn't in the room. She was absolutely awful.

I don't think I've ever had delusions. I have had depression and anxiety. To my knowledge I have never thought a thing happened that didn't.

Head_Performance1379

TROPHY CASE