Friendship ended because of friend’s vegan wife

Friendship ended because of friend’s vegan wife.

I am not the OOP. The OOP is u/AbsentmindedAuthor.

Original Posted Thursday, January 16th, 2025

Update Posted Friday, January 17th, 2025

I know I’m partially at fault for the friendship ending, and I’m willing to accept my judgement. And it’s really long. Sorry.

November of last year I (female) went to visit a friend (we’ll call him Kevin) and stayed at his and his wife’s house. Early last year, Kevin and his wife (we’ll call her Karen) moved a couple states away.

For context, we are all over the age of 35 and Kevin and I were part of a friend group from an old job. Another couple from the friend group went on this trip as well, but they were also visiting family and stayed with them. Prior to the move, our friend group didn’t really have much interaction with Karen as she didn’t really come spend time with us (she was always invited, just rarely joined). They never hosted us at their old house.

They are vegan. I am not. Well, Kevin is not full-fledged vegan, as he eats fish. However, his wife does the grocery shopping so everything outside of fish is vegan, and he eats/drinks it. He buys his own fish and has a mini-kitchen to prep his own meals away from hers.

For even more context, Karen is not a vegan for health reasons. She is the type that brings up their vegan status with every conversation no matter how irrelevant it is to the topic, makes fun of people that eat meat or use things made with animal byproducts, accuses people of murder, etc. (except she leaves Kevin alone). She calls any food that is not vegan "trash" and "garbage". Example: When we would hang out before they moved and she was there, she would always ask how people could eat such garbage any time any of us would have meat. It was annoying, but I never got confrontational with her about it.

The day before I visited them, Karen sent a short list of rules that I had to follow regarding food. One of those rules was that I couldn’t store any non-vegan food items in either kitchen. I did ask if I could bring milk, and she agreed, but I had to keep it in the Fish Fridge.

All of the food I ate at their house tasted off, even the breakfast waffles and then the tuna casserole that Kevin made for the two of us Saturday afternoon for lunch. It’s not like it tasted spoiled, it was just… off. Weird. A little gross. I’ve never eaten vegan so I figured it was just that—food made with vegan ingredients. I couldn’t really eat anything after a few bites. I had, fortunately, packed a few protein (non-vegan) snacks that I kept in my room, inside a zippered canvas bag, at the bottom of my suitcase. (I was not specifically prohibited from bringing snacks to keep in my room. I kept my trash and disposed of it after I left.) I did eat some street food from the market I, Kevin, and our friends went to Saturday after lunch, and I ate like a horse at the restaurant we went to that Saturday night and I am not ashamed.

My husband and I are supposed to be going to visit them this weekend, and Karen called me a couple of hours ago. She wanted to tell me that I wouldn’t be allowed to bring any milk this time around. She also said that my husband and I also couldn’t bring any snacks and that I should have asked last time. Apparently, she had GONE THROUGH MY SUITCASE when Kevin and I and our friends were out at the market and found my snacks.

In addition to that, she also told me that she replaced my milk with almond milk and thought that was just hilarious. I drank some milk Friday night before bed and one glass on Saturday morning. Then, Kevin told me he used it to make our waffles and wanted to save the rest for the casserole at lunch. What actually happened was that after I poured my glass Saturday morning before breakfast, Karen dumped the rest of it out and replaced it with almond milk. Kevin knew it but didn’t tell me. I never went to look for it because he said he wanted to save it. The waffles and casserole were made with almond milk.

I was so mad that I knew I wouldn’t be able to say anything nice. I told her I had another call coming in and hung up. After I calmed down, I called her back to ask why she went through my suitcase and why she dumped my milk. She told me that it was her house and she had a "right to know", so that’s why she was allowed to go through my things. She said she dumped my milk because nobody can tell the difference between cow’s milk and almond milk and that I wouldn’t have known if she hadn’t told me.

I called her a controlling, self-centered freak, told her that Kevin has a stash of real cheese hidden in the Fish Fridge that he sneaks into his food, and hung up on her. Then I called Kevin. He sided with her and told me that I pushed the line when I asked to bring milk and that it was incredibly rude to order meat when we went to dinner. We argued, and I told him that it seems our lives are going in different directions and that we don’t need to be friends anymore.

I know I probably should’ve asked if it was okay to have non-vegan snacks in my room, or I could’ve kept them in my car. I also shouldn’t have called her names. I was a guest at their house and Kevin has me half-convinced that as a guest, I should have respected Karen’s veganism and not had any non-vegan food at all.

My husband thinks they’re completely in the wrong and that since their lifestyle is not one the majority of the population follows, they should’ve made exceptions since Kevin gets a fish exception. He’s also as pissed as I am that she went through my stuff, and he also pointed out that if I was allergic to almonds, I could’ve gotten very ill. He says that I’m better off and thinks ending the friendship was reasonable. (He and Kevin got along, but just like Karen, my husband is a spouse of someone in the friend group so they weren’t really close.)

A few minutes ago I got the "hey can we talk" text, and honestly, I don’t know if I’m going to respond. I’m just kind of done with it.

Edit [same post]: Im so sorry that I can’t respond to all of your comments. Just know that I am reading them. I’m calling Kevin on my lunch break today and will post an update after since so many people have asked for one.

Top comment from u/Available-Fail-8090:

Going thru your suitcase because it's her house?? I don't even go into my guest room when I have guests because I want to respect their privacy.

She's a nutty control freak.

Comment from u/o2low:

NTA.

I wouldn’t want to be friends anymore either.

She had no right to replace your milk after allowing you to bring it.

She had absolutely no right to go through your bags.

She IS a crazy controlling weirdo so I don’t see why you would apologise for anything you said.

I certainly would never spend time with someone who thinks they can control what you eat at a restaurant.

I’m guessing the only reason this friendship lasted was because you never saw the wife.

You could maybe try that.

Reply from u/PresentationThat2839:

Right I would be sh!tting in her toilet and not flushing just in case she wanted to inspect that too.

Comment from u/PresentationThat2839:

I would have told her you could tell because you thought her cooking was rancid but you were simply to polite to say anything and that's why you ate anything in sight when you left her house. And if she even thinks about snooping through your property you will leave something worth finding.... Like a ziplock bag of human sh!t.... Don't worry it was donated willingly so it's "vegan"... But not really because you totally ate meat in there.

[Update one day later]

This is a long update, but it’s the last one. First, thank you to everyone who responded. Your comments were not only helpful, but others made me cackle in a very unladylike manner (looking at you, u/PresentationThat2839). Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/CharlotteDobreYouTube/s/BDuw0afzAr

Secondly, I wanted to clarify that the bag Karen found in my suitcase had emergency cash and a credit card in it as well as snacks. The reason it was hidden in my suitcase was to keep it safe, not to hide food. I wasn’t sneaking it in (important later), but I did have protein bars in there just in case I took issue with their food. Naughty me.

I responded to Kevin yesterday and told him I needed some time to think and I’d get back to him today.

I took some of your advice and reached out to our friend group last night. After the group chat and also talking just with the friends that were down that weekend, I learned some things. Long story short, out of our core group of six, I’m the only one that kept up with Kevin. The only reason those two friends accepted Kevin’s invitation to go down that weekend was because I was going (visiting family was a bonus).

After I took the rest of the night to think about and sleep on it, I realized that all of you are right about Kevin’s complicity regarding the switching of the milk. I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have because I was so focused on the fact that Karen switched the milk to begin with. I also realized he had never actually said anything in response to my telling him that Karen confessed to going through my stuff when I called him yesterday. He had changed the subject instead, talking about how it was rude to ask to bring milk.

Anyway, I called Kevin on my lunch break today and ran down the list of issues: Karen going through my suitcase, him not telling me about the milk switch, Karen switching the milk to begin with after telling me I could bring it, and how what I eat is none of their business as long as I’m not contaminating their food.

Basically he told me the only thing he would apologize for was saying that it was rude to order non-vegan food at the restaurant. He said that since they had plenty of food in the house for me to eat, he didn’t have to apologize for anything else.

Apparently Karen had told him not to tell me about the milk switch because she was trying to prove that I couldn’t tell the difference between vegan and non-vegan food (essentially the same thing she said to me yesterday). I told him that since I didn’t eat any of it except a few bites, clearly I could tell the difference. He also said that he was eventually going to tell me about it but "forgot". I said that she could’ve just said no when I asked to bring milk instead of being a swampy butthole about it.

He said that although he didn’t agree with Karen going through my things, I wasn’t owed an apology because I broke the rules by "sneaking" meat into their house. (There was a meat stick in that canvas bag.) I told him that I had only been told I couldn’t have non-vegan food in both kitchens and that it was left over from my drive to their house. As long as I didn’t switch it with their food like a certain someone, I hadn’t done anything wrong.

The last thing he told me was that the other reason I wasn’t getting an apology from him was because after I told Karen about his cheese stash yesterday afternoon, she unplugged his Fish Fridge. He didn’t get home from work until late, and according to his Google search, all the refrigerated fish had to be thrown away. This is apparently my fault.

He said that we were "even" now—he didn’t tell me about the milk switch, and I snitched about his cheese. I tried explaining that they weren’t the same thing and that I wasn’t responsible for what she did, but he didn’t care and said he knew I wasn’t allergic to nuts (I don’t remember ever discussing that with him but whatever).

I asked if he truly believed that I didn’t deserve any apologies from either of them, and he said yes. I told him that if he couldn’t see what they did wrong and apologize, I couldn’t help him and to give me a call when he got his balls back from his wife. He hung up on me.

Yesterday, I thought I owed him an apology because I was wrong. I thought if I gave him one, we could maintain a friendship. Today I think that the problem was that I was holding onto something that didn’t exist anymore. Until you guys reality-checked me, I ignored a lot of things and gaslit myself. So thank you everybody for the smack to the back of the head. Everybody should have people like you in their lives. Thanks for reading.

I am not the OOP. Please do not harass the OOP.

Please remember the No Brigading Rule and to be civil in the comments.