My SIL's Wedding Gift Left Me Humiliated and Crying on the Spot

Despite his wife’s firm stance on their family’s meat-free lifestyle, he couldn’t resist the desire for forbidden flavors. Hidden from view, his clandestine meals became a secret rebellion against the rigid dietary restrictions that he felt were imposed on him. This is the story of how he navigated the tension between personal cravings and the expectations of a vegetarian household.
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 gave 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 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). My wife argued that her values had 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 had 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 days-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.
In the end, his secret indulgences led to a deeper understanding of both himself and the dynamics within his family. His secret may have been about food, but the lesson was about trust and finding balance in a shared life.