I love the way this guy dealt with his relationship problem which he discussed on reddit.com. There is no question that he is a classy individual (aged 22). His former girlfriend (21) is a vegan who wanted him to get rid of his beloved cat Mittens. To be fair I don’t know how she behaved other than that she wanted him to get rid of his cat. She may be classy too, but made a fatal mistake if she wanted the relationship to continue.
However because of her actions he was forced to decide whether he loved his cat more than his girlfriend. And some people told him that his girlfriend was trying to control him, which was the motivation behind her demands. On her part, she claimed that she simply couldn’t stand the idea of having a carnivorous predator in the same home as herself.
He dealt with it very calmly and sensibly and he agreed that he did see, on reflection, that it might be about her trying to control him. At the time he was blind to it. He telephoned his girlfriend and told that he was unwilling to give up Mittens under any circumstances. And because of the recent issues that they had had regarding their incompatible views he told her that it was best that they parted company.
He even said that he thought that she deserved a partner who shared her values, which I thought was a wise way to explain why they should break up. She asked whether they were breaking up and he replied, yes. She became angry which is to be expected but he was pleased with the outcome and it went better than he had expected.
I am no expert on relationships because I was divorced about 27 years ago. I’ve been living alone ever since. A long time ago I gave up on the idea of marriage. However, it is universally agreed (I believe!) that the best relationships and marriages are based upon acceptance of the other partner’s traits and characteristics provided they do not undermine the relationship. And in this instance you go into to the relationship in the full knowledge that your partner likes cats and is a cat guardian. You start from that standpoint and therefore you simply have to accept it throughout the relationship. Otherwise there’s no point making that first step.
Perhaps this bloke adopted a cat after the relationship started but that’s not clear from his story. Either way it’s about acceptance from both parties. She broke this fundamental rule and it broke the relationship.
On a wider issue, vegans tend perhaps to be overzealous sometimes. Is that fair? I’m not saying that this is a particularly bad thing because I tend to agree with the vegan philosophy but you can’t impose your preferences about diet on the person you love. The partnership deal that you take on board includes all the person’s characteristics as I have mentioned. That’s the reason you love him or her. You can’t engineer the person’s character and filter out the stuff you don’t like and retain the stuff you do like. It’s a bit like cat declawing. You have you accept the cat as they are in their entirety or not at all. You shouldn’t think that you can modify the animal to “refine” their anatomy to your requirements. Especially when it is incredibly cruel and disrespectful to do so. I had to get in a bit about declawing.
